Eagle Butte School District 20-1,[1] is a school district with its headquarters in Eagle Butte, South Dakota.[2] The district covers sections of Ziebach County and Dewey County.
The district and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) jointly administer the Cheyenne-Eagle Butte School (C-EB), with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe being represented in the management process.[3] The BIE categorizes the school as BIE-operated.[4]
The school and the community lie within the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.[3]
As of 2021, the school buildings are scheduled to be replaced by the Bureau of Indian Education using funds from the Great American Outdoors Act.[5]
As of 1989[update] the BIE school entity and the school district have two separate school boards and two separate pools of employees, and the two entities also combine a jointly-operated school board. Kevin Woster of Rapid City Journal described the school as "a federal-state mix of money and staff" and that therefore its budget changes depending on how much money is available from South Dakota state government and/or the federal government.[6]
As of 1989[update] the students take both tests required by the South Dakota state government, including the SAT, and tests required by the federal government.[6]
Within Ziebach County it serves Eagle Butte.[7]
Within Dewey County it serves Green Grass, La Plant, Lantry, North Eagle Butte, and Swift Bird.[8]
The district has a total area of 1,646 square miles (4,260 km2).[3]
The main school campus is partially in Eagle Butte and partially in North Eagle Butte.[9]
The system has dormitories for students in grades 1–12. Boys and girls are separated, and students in grades 1-6 are separated from those in grades 7–12.[10] As of 1989[update] the dormitories house Native American students who were rejected from other schools.[6]
Divisions include:
As of 2021[update] there were 1,143 students, with 98% being Native American.[3]
In 2009 the school had 800 students, including 30 in kindergarten and 150 in junior high school.[11]
In 1989 the majority of the students were Native American though there were also White American students.[6]
In 1989 officials from the South Dakota state government criticized the management of the school. The management of Cheyenne-Eagle Butte stated that it is working to address the issue though it stated that the school did not have high enough scores and had too high of a dropout rate.[6]
The school district adopted school uniforms for students in Kindergarten and grades 7-8 for fall 2009.[12] The Cheyenne River Sioux tribe filed a lawsuit against the school district, saying that the code, announced shortly before the start of classes, forced inconvenience on tribal members.[11]