Nevada tribes plead for new school to replace current building near hazardous contaminants

Cracked windows, a bat colony in the ceiling, spotty heating and close proximity to hazardous contaminants in a long-dilapidated school brought over 100 tribal members to the Nevada Legislature on Thursday, where they said longstanding funding pleas for a new school have been neglected.

The public Owyhee Combined School on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation hosts 330 students from pre-K through 12th grade. It is in a remote area along the Nevada-Idaho border, 100 miles from the 20,000-person city of Elko, Nevada, and 100 miles from 16,000-person city of Mountain Home, Idaho. The Shoshone-Paiute Tribes on the reservation have about 2,000 members, nearly all of whom have attended the school built in 1953.

As tribal leaders have pleaded with county and state lawmakers for new school funding, conditions have grown worse. The bat colony living in the ceiling leaves drippings that ebb into the home economics room. Stray bullet holes in the front glass windows have remained for years. It's a stone's throw from a highway, where passersby sometimes use the school bathroom as if it’s a rest stop. And it’s adjacent to toxic hydrocarbon plumes that lie under the town, which tribal doctor...