Echo Hawk to Speak at School Funded with Stimulus $

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Larry Echo Hawk - Pawnee

WASHINGTON - Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk will participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony and speak at the official opening of the replacement Rough Rock Community School on Monday, August 15.

Echo Hawk will be joined at the event by Bureau of Indian Education Deputy Director - School Operations Bart Stevens; Indian Affairs Office of Facilities, Environmental and Cultural Resources Director Jack Rever and Office of Facilities Management and Construction Deputy Director Emerson Eskeets.

The replacement project, which included the school’s academic building, dormitories and other facilities, was completed in two phases by the Office of Facilities Management and Construction with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 - also known as stimulus dollars.

This will be the Assistant Secretary's second visit to the school. In September 2009, he participated in a groundbreaking ceremony for Phase II of the project. ARRA funds were used in Phase I to construct a replacement K-8 dormitory for residential students and in Phase II for a replacement K-8 academic building, two dormitories (for K-8 and high school students), a kitchen and dining facility, a bus garage maintenance shop and a transportation office.

The Rough Rock Community School is a Bureau of Indian Education -funded K-12 grant school located 35 miles northwest of Chinle, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation reservation. First named the Rough Rock Demonstration School, it opened in 1966 as the first American Indian-operated, and first Navajo-operated, school within what was then the Bureau of Indian Affairs school system. That school system is now administered by the Bureau of Indian Education.

WHAT: Assistant Secretary Echo Hawk will participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony and speak at the official opening of the Rough Rock Community School's new replacement academic buildings, dormitories and other facilities.

WHEN: Monday, August 15, 2011, 8:00 - 9:30 am (local time)

WHERE: Rough Rock Community School, PO Box 5050 - PTT, Chinle, Arizona

WHO: Larry Echo Hawk, Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs, US Department of Interior
Jack Rever, Director, Indian Affairs Office of Facilities, Environmental and Cultural Resources,
Emerson Eskeets, Deputy Director, Office of Facilities Management and Construction, the Office of Facilities Management and Construction, Bureau of Indian Education
Bart Stevens, Deputy Director-School Operations, Bureau of Indian Education, US Department of Interior

posted August 12, 2011 6:10 am edt