Story by Sav Chavez. Photos by Sophia Evans.

When students walk into the cafeteria at Rocky Boy Elementary School, they are greeted by a salad bar with fresh vegetables, a warm meal that was prepped in the school’s kitchen and a woman named Kathryn Baldwin. Often referred to as Ko-kom, meaning “grandma” in Cree, Baldwin greets the busy bodies as they dance around the room with their cultural meal of boiled meat and bannock, requested by a school board member.
One-by-one, the small voices of the children thank Baldwin as the classes circulate through the small cafeteria. The smell of boiled beef, as bison was not accessible for this meal, and bannock filled the room. Giggles and squeals fill the air as the kids sit with their class to enjoy the meal Baldwin helped make.
The Rocky Boy schools work hard to make a cultural meal, like this, once every month for students. On March 18, 2025, Baldwin arrived at the school at 6 a.m. to prepare the “juneberry soup,” which was made with blueberries, simmered in a large vat. This meal would be fed to all 500 of the students.
This is significant on different fronts. For now, it’s the fact that the school has the resources to feed its entire student body, all of which are on the free and reduced lunch program. Under this program, Rocky Boy schools can feed more than 500 students twice a day and provide snacks for the classes and after-school programs. Statewide, about 51% of students are eligible for free lunches at schools, which is designed for students from lower income households.

The free lunch program is just one of the identified targets that President Donald Trump’s administration has focused on as it seeks to cut billions of dollars from the federal budget. In its first 100 days, the administration has caused a stir in the education field with program cuts, canceled grants and an ever present threat to gut, if not completely dismantle, the Department of Education.
While many of the fears have yet to come true, educators across the country are preparing for the worst case scenarios. On Montana’s reservations, administrators are still hoping for the best.
The free and reduced lunch program is federally funded and with proposed federal budget cuts, there is a risk to not just Rocky Boy students. The free and reduced lunch program is funded by the Department of Agriculture, a department that nixed $1 billion from two programs that helped food banks and school meal programs in March.
“I know we are going to be able to keep going, we are. It’s a really tough topic and it’s one I have been avoiding having a conversation on because I’m emotional about it,” Krystal FourSouls, principal at Rocky Boy High School, said.
When the Department of Agriculture cut $1 billion, it directly affected the Local Food for Schools program, which started under President Joe Biden in 2021. The program helped schools and child care facilities buy from local farms to give them an opportunity to purchase fresh food and use smaller producers rather than rely on large corporations. It lost $600 million in the cut.

Losing the numbers

Earlier this year, the National Center for Educational Statistics laid off all but three of its 130 staffers, a move that could put funding for vulnerable, reservation-based schools in jeopardy.
The center was established in 1867 to collect and analyze data on education trends across the country, including student academic success and teacher productivity. Over time, the results gathered by the center have become crucial to determine the amount of funding that should be directed to Title I and rural schools. In Montana, there are 296 school districts considered rural and many of that fit the Title I determination. This includes 31 schools located on Montana’s tribal reservations. Public schools have not yet been directly affected by President Donald Trump, although many have been hit with the fallout from canceled grants and budgets cuts. However, it is no secret that the administration has targeted public education by removing staff from the Department of Education and by reducing grants.
On reservations, which operate on land held in trust by the federal government, there is minimal, if any, tax base. Trust land is generally not taxable. The statistics center provides the necessary numbers that determine the amount of aid a school receives based on the number of students, which can fluctuate every year.

Without a center to update the numbers, schools may see a decrease in funding. For instance, Rocky Boy is already seeing a 4% dip in its funding due to inflation. The aid covers instructional supplies, mental health counseling, library books and more. It also funds 38 of the 104 staff at the schools, which is all the central staff for the district. This includes all custodial staff, the district’s Cree immersion teachers, special education tutors, clerks, administrative assistants in both schools, the dean of students and more.
Stone Child College lost two grants: One for technical reasons in its grant report; the other because the program was stonewalled from the funder.
“It’s very scary right now,” FourSouls said. “I was almost in tears. I had to turn the TV off because my mind is wondering what’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen with the kids?”
She was referring to the executive order that Trump signed in March calling to dismantle the Department of Education. Before that, the move was a threat that had been hanging over the head of administrators since 2024.
“I have poured so much into these kids, the teachers have poured so much into them, what’s going to happen to them?” FourSouls said.
The executive order did not officially shut down the department as that would take an act of congress, but it is another slash at the public education system in America. The order came a few weeks after the Department of Government Efficiency cut about $800 million from the Department of Education, staff and faculty at schools across the nation are feeling threatened.

Home grown

FourSouls grew up in the Rocky Boy Public School system, then she attended Stone Child College to pursue her degree in early education. She taught at the Head Start program, working with children from ages two to five. She moved her way up into her position now as principal of Rocky Boy High School, which she has held for two years.
“I’m here as a tool to help my students, my staff. I’m here to make sure things run accordingly. I don’t believe in authority, I believe in compassion,” she said.
While she has these fears, she has trust in the district’s superintendent and believes in his plan to keep education on the reservation safe and accessible for all the students.
“Our superintendent has a really high regard for our kids, for our school, for our teachers and for our way of life,” she said.

Preparing for the worst and hoping for the best

For Voyd St. Pierre, Rocky Boy Public Schools superintendent, planning for the future means looking at Impact Aid funds. Impact Aid is available to schools that are located on federal lands, including tribal reservations. St. Pierre said the district has managed to conserve these federal dollars into a backup account that should help stave off effects from budget cuts, at least for a while.
“Impact Aid has a hand in every one of our 11 budgets,” St. Pierre said. “If we were not getting any Impact Aid for the next two years, we would survive. We wouldn’t have any problems meeting payroll, upgrading and maintaining because we have that reserve in the bank right now, but that’s our reliance.”
Of the 42 school districts in Montana that receive Impact Aid funds, Rocky Boy Public Schools are the fifth highest recipient, amounting to $5.5 million. Impact Aid brings in a total of about $85 million to Montana in 64 schools. The aid makes up about 45-50% of the school’s annual budget.
The reserve of funds has been slowly growing over the past 15 years, leaving the high school with $3 million and the elementary with $7 million to last on if the aid was gone. For the past five years, the schools took 20% of the funds they receive from the aid and put it into the reserve.
Because the reservation is on federal land, the amount of taxable land is small compared to surrounding towns. For the 2025 taxable valuation, Rocky Boy sits at the bottom with $205,741 for both the elementary school and high school, while neighboring towns like Havre and Box Elder both break $1 million, Havre receiving nearly $24 million for its elementary school and more than $27 million for the high school.
“If the funds run out, we would have to start cutting positions and programs. All nonessential positions would be cut, programs would be cut and then we would have to look at staffing position cuts. This would create larger classroom sizes,” he said.
According to the National Center of Education Statistics, Rocky Boy Schools has a student-teacher ratio of just over 14-to-1 during the 2023-24 school year. St. Pierre said, should the district lose its Impact Aid, a classroom could increase to about 25 students. The schools already struggle to fill positions and find substitute teachers which leaves teachers with little time for emergencies and ailments. The loss of any instructor would be devastating to the remaining staff.
The Rocky Boy’s reservation has a 25% teacher turnover rate. The turnover rate for Montana is 9% of full-time teachers leave every year. In the state, nearly 31% for first year teachers and more than 27% leave within their first five years.
“We used to get 15 applications at a time. Now we are lucky to get one or two,” St. Pierre said. “Everyone wants to teach in Bozeman, Missoula, those urban areas.”

Battling in the classroom

While her position at the school is not currently at risk, fourth grade teacher Bonnie Rosette thinks about her students every day.
“All of these changes, all of these mandates are going to affect them [the students],” Rosette said. “Preparing by supporting each other is all we can do right now.”
Rosette has been at the school for five years, after taking a break from the teacher preparation program at Stone Child College. The break was originally to take time to reflect and ground herself, but quickly she found herself spending time in local libraries learning more about public education.
She went through old constitutions and learned how superintendents in each county were elected and where each school was planned to be built and on what land it was going to reside on.
“If I didn’t quit my job and I didn’t go into researching, I wouldn’t have understood all of this about education,” Rosette said. “We had issues in the history of education, we’ve always had issues.”
Rosette, a first-generation college graduate, now goes through her day feeling an array of emotions when she thinks about what could be happening in D.C. She, among many others, feel a heavy anxiety blanketing over them, an anxiety that has led children to begin asking questions about federal policies. Still, she feels optimistic.

“Native people have always been resilient,” she said. “People have gone through difficult times in life and continue to be resilient. At the same time, I find it to be very detrimental for rural spaces. What options are there when there are no more options.”

As her classroom filled with the small voices of fourth grade students asking for help on their assignments, Rosette thought about what the future of education might look like after the next four years. Working close with students with Individualized Education Program plans, she tries to offer the additional help that may be needed while pushing through the storm of questions that clogs her mind.
Individualized programs are designated for students who require tailored teaching for specific classes. They are designed by a team of school administrators, educators and the students’ parents.
Rosette works with students in language arts, focusing on nouns, adjectives and verbs, to make sure the tailored lesson plans are followed for each student. In March she walked her students from classroom-to-classroom, taking them to learn their next subject. She thinks about the privilege teachers don’t have: time.
“What do we do when there is no time to plan, no time to think. I feel sometimes teachers are defeated too, and they just think ‘Well, whatever happens, happens,’” Rosette said. “We need to start planning for potentials. I wonder how can I be of service? How can I help outside the classroom?”
The attack on education isn’t solely felt within the Rocky Boy Public Schools, but at Stone Child College. With two grants already out the door, confusion and worry continues to rise at the college as faculty begin to plan their worst-case scenarios and what to do if they happen.
“There is nothing we can do at this moment,” Cory Sangrey-Billy, president of Stone Child College, said. “It’s scary, but I am choosing to be optimistic.”

Feeling ignored

Among the cuts to the Rocky Boy’s reservation district include a $357,000 grant from the National Institute of Food and Culture, which was lost in March. Under Trump’s executive order targeting diversity programs, the grant included the word “equity” and had been flagged. This grant supported 11 students at the college who were enrolled in a science, technology, engineering and mathematics related program with their tuition and fees, some receiving a stipend as well.
Eric Shulund, math professor at Stone Child College of 21 years and grant coordinator, said the program has managed to cover the students’ semester fees and the college is financing the stipend amount with money from the American Indian College Fund. Without this aid, administrators fear the students could drop out.
Stone Child has received the grant for more than 20 years according to Shulund, who has been running it for 16 years. The removal of the grant was unexpected as they were given no notice.
“Business services logged into ASAP [Automated Standard Application for Payments] and on there you can see a list of all the grants we’re getting funding from. Well, our grant just wasn’t there anymore,” Shulund said.
He received an email in March from the people in charge of the program stating that the first tribal meeting, which would require Shulund’s attendance to comply with grant requirements, was canceled and would resume in the near future. There has not been a meeting since.
The early education program has also felt stonewalled by the government. They have received no updates on the future of the grant program. The meetings, held monthly in Washington, D.C., were for the school’s personal grant coordinator to meet with the grant managers in the capitol to check in.

“We usually have monthly meetings like clockwork but recently they have been continuously canceled,” Department Head for Education Clintanna Colliflower said. “We don’t know for sure whether we will be receiving the grants for our third cycle or not yet. We usually would know by now.”
Originally from Fort Belknap, Colliflower came to Stone Child to work specifically on one grant and has now been there for two years.
The college acts as the grant coordinator for all of the partners that receive the 2001 Coming Together for our Children grant, which supplies a total of about $2 million for Stone Child and its five other partners throughout the state.
Since the turnover of the presidency, the college has received little to no word on what is happening with this grant. The grant is distributed by the American Indian College Fund; a nonprofit group which supplies grants and scholarships for Indigenous schools and students.
“These grants fund our students and if there’s no funding, there are no students,” Colliflower said.
She works in one of the five offices that reside in the log cabin next to the main building for the college. The cabin only houses the education department. If severe cuts were to hit the department, Colliflower would be the only one safe from losing her job as the head director.
“What about us? If he [Donald Trump] decides to take funding away, we’re screwed,” she said. “We’re out of a job, a paycheck. I would probably be the only one safe because of my position, but then I would be the only person teaching all the classes and running the department by myself.”
While the overbearing worry for the students on the reservation may feel as though it outweighs the joy of every day, the staff are finding ways to offer the children and college students the experience they deserve.
For the public schools this means the faculty and staff are not looking at issues with classroom programs, but instead focusing on putting food on the students’ plates. FourSouls worries for the students, as for some, it is the only meal they recieve..
“I’m really worried about the program because there are some kids that come to school to eat. We have our backpack program where on Fridays, the coordinators put stuff out so the kids can grab something, so they have food over the weekend,” FourSouls said.

Holding out hope

Every other Friday, the high school holds a half-day for “Language and Culture Day” where the students hear from a community member during a morning assembly and after have the chance to participate in different activities.
The Elder Advocacy Group that works at the high school participate in the activities as well. Some options for activities that day include singing songs in their language, cooking cultural meals, playing Indigenous games and participating in a language lesson with Mahchiwminahnahtik, the language revitalization program on the reservation.
“What’s happening here today is a dream come true. To have days other than Native American day where you’re able to immerse yourself in culture, immerse yourself in language, to be able to be in the presence of elders, it is literally a dream come true,” FourSouls said. “If programs are cut then all of our hard work as Indigenous people, what are we going to do? I know we’re going to keep going but are we going to have that support?

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A SPECIAL PROJECT BY THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM

ADDITIONAL FUNDING SUPPORT FROM THE GREATER MONTANA FOUNDATION

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