Rapid City Journal from Rapid City, South Dakota • 9

Section Sunday, October 8. 1989 the Rapid City Journal Inside: Obituaries B2 Local Struggle to survive makes welfare fraud tempting would live on that kind or money. They don't understand how hard it is. My kids were going ragged, and I had to get out and work," To catch up on her bills she took a tence for allegedly collecting more than $900 in illegal benefits over rour months. The relony rraud charges were dismissed, and she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor 7 kept saying, next month when I'm caught up I'll report it.

And then before you know it, I got caught up in this mess. Welfare mother Ron Brown Staff Writer Weirare rraud is on the rlie in Rapid City, a trend that may continue because weirare payments of-ten are not enough to live on, said a weirare recipient who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor weirare rraud. The woman, who asked not to be named, said to make ends meet many weirare recipients had to either get a job and not report the income, or rail further and further behind on their bills. The state reports that weirare rraud claims in Rapid City have jumped 20 percent over last year. "I know a friend or mine, she's on weUare, she steals her clothes." the woman, a mother or two, said.

"I'm not like that. I don't want to go that far." The woman did get a part time job without reporting her salary to her social worker. The state says that is stealing, just as II she went into a store and stole clothes. But the woman said what she did was not an isolated case. She said many or her friends on weirare also had jobs they didn't report.

Assistant Attorney General Karen Cremer said. "There's no reason to cheat taxpayers. There are other ways to survive." But some who receive weirare say state officiala aren't aware or the reality or living on weirare. "I was only getting $232 a month, and you can't live on that," said the woman. "I just wish a social worker case or weirare rraud.

She said it was relatively easy to check labor department computer records on weirare families to rind out if anyone was earning money they were not reporting. Cremer said she was sympathetic to the circumstances or weirare ramilies. but added there were other ways to receive help. Those in need could apply for help through church groups, rather than committing weirare rraud. she said.

Martha Armstrong. assistant program administrator for the state Department or Social Services, said the typical rraud case involved about $2,000. She is in charge or collecting fraudulent claims. The total amount or fraudulent claims is about $80,000 a year statewide, but moat or that money ia recovered, Armstrong said. "Of the last 14 ordered to pay restitution arter a conviction, we're collecting on II or them." she said.

Most rraud charges are dropped to misdemeanors if they are a first ofrense and if the offender cooperates with the sUte investigation. Cremer said. The jump in Rapid City violations may appear to be bad news, but the good news is that the fraudulent weUare claims are discovered sooner than before. Armstrong said. "This year the average dollar amount is less than last year, which means we're catching it foster." part time job at $3 45 an hour, she said.

"I kept saying, next month when I'm caught up I'll report it. And then before you know it, I got caught up in this mess." "This mess" was two relony charges and a possible prison sen- with a promise to repay the state. She now works two jobs and is further behind on bills than ever, the woman said. She still draws reduced weirare benerits because or her income. Cremer said she had never lost a Indian education working at Eagle Butte aw flaW aa aBaaaas fX aaVr aaaWjas' aaaF 3mF IT vJlF yjajrJaijpjaB 'MT PMgayjE-.

gid si gflak aaaaat 'aPlBSsaa4 'e if 'jU llrVI RtLsvawK "EwwPn FrFm ttxaal lr i gjH aft 1 WmLn Mi saaV a aw taaa atWr jIibI flaV Ife' aUT aaaaWft mm -1 aaaa! HJf asaaM aaaa aaa aaas aa jSifc. 8 '5m 9 BaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHt JH i- "Sbm BaaMaWwBp1 dormitory. (Staff photo by Kevin Kevin Woster Stafr Writer EAGLE BUTTE Despite statements nm some state officials that Indian education is foiling its students, educators at Cheyenne-Eagle Butte School say they are dealing with their problems and can "compare with anyone in the state." School officials agree their dropout rates are too high and some academic test scores are too low. But they say they are chipping away at those problems, slow but sure, in a school system that demonstrates a cooperative educational effort between the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the local school district. Like others at the school, Terry Yellow Fat, a BIA education specialist, was upset by comments made by Jim Hansen, the secretary of the state Education and Cultural Affairs Department.

Hansen said Indian students in particular were suffering high dropout rates and incidences of academic failure. He said the state would try to correct those problems that the schools couldn't. "My first impression was, 'Oh my goodness, they're going to save the Indians said Yellow Fat. State graduation statistics show a dropout rate for Indian students of about 60 percent, compared to an overall rate of 16 percent, which includes Indian students. School Supervisor Cherie Farlee, a graduate of the school herself, agreed the Indian dropout rate was too high.

But she said state statistics were misleading because a number of Indian students switched schools. An actual dropout rate would be difficult to determine, she said. The remedial part of the school system is important, but doesn't represent the majority of the 1,100 students at the school, Farlee said. And test scores used for comparison by state educational officials aren't entirely valid, said Gerald Stapert, superintendent for the school district. The school is required to use a different achievement test than the state requires.

But the students nevertheless must take the state test, too. Stapert said the students put their energy into the federally-required test one week, then must come back the next for the SAT, which is used Cheyenne-Eagle Butte high school students Dayton school's boys' Eagle Chasing, Jesse Olvera, Chris Mexican, Jody Woster) Bad Warrior and Tom Olvera relax outside the Yellow Fat said the Cheyenne-Eagle Butte School needed to defend itself by making it a point to gather statistics showing the real educational picture here. "We know how good we are. We just don't go around telling it. until something like Dr.

Hansen's state- said. Farlee said she and other officials resented the characterization of schools on Indian reservation as being inferior to others. "I think a lot of time reservation schools get looked at as sort of backwoods schools." Farlee said. The Rev. Mike Woster, vicar general of the Rapid City Catholic Diocese, blesses an anti-abortion monument dedicated Saturday at Blessed Sacrament Church in Rapid City.

Attending the ceremony were delegates to the state Right to Life convention held in Rapid City. (Staff photo by Jim Holland) Pro-lifers may introduce restrictive abortion bills 'We know how good we are. We just don't go around telling it, until something like Dr. Hansen's statements raises our hackles. Terry Yellow Fat But the system works for its students, Indian and white, Farlee said.

In the case of some Indian students, the school campus can be home as well as a place of learning. Troubled youngsters abandoned by other schools end up in supervised dormitories at Cheyenne-Eagle Butte. The students live there, attend special classes and receive counseling and support. "I think we are unique in that aspect, that we don't turn away kids here, even though some of them have very severe problems," Farlee said. "We're trying to provide a stable environment for those kids who have been shipped from boarding school to boarding school and foster home to foster home.

They don't know where they belong," she said. Farlee said that to her knowledge, state education Superintendent Hansen had never been to the school. She questioned whether studying statistics gave a true picture of educational quality. "We're only 90 miles away from Pierre, but I feel like we're rather foreign to them," she said. foreign to them," she said ments raises our hackles," he said.

Educators at the school work to provide a quality education to the predominantly Indian student body, they said. Their already difficult educational chores are complicated by well-documented joblessness, alcohol abuse and related social problems on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. "But because we work together, "And I think we could compare with anyone in the state." The school system is a federal-state mix of money and staff. There are two systems of administration and employees, one employed by the BIA and the other by the school district. And there are separate school boards for each, plus a joint school board for the overall system.

It creates a budgeting system that by state officials for testing com is complex and changing, depending we've been able to keep (the problems) at a minimum," Yellow Fat lems) at a minimum," Yellow Fat she said. "With that information we feel our legislators will be open to reasonable legislation," Karim said. Karim and state Rep. Delia Wishard, R-Prairie City, just returned from a national RTLC meeting in Washington, D.C., which recommended legislative strategies for state pro-life groups. Also at the convention, a director of a pro-life legal defense fund said state pro-life leaders needed to continue to "chip away" at Roe vs.

Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal. Clarke Forsythe, on the General Counsel for Americans United for Life Legal Defense Fund in Chicago, hailed a recent Supreme Court decision on Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services. Forsythe said the Webster case gave states more authority to control abortion, but how much more won't be known until the court hears more cases.

Three cases soon to come before the Supreme Court will provide further opportunities to overturn Roe vs. Wade, he said. Minnesota and Ohio have parental notice cases before the court and Illinois has a case on public health regulations, he said. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is the pivotal court member needed to overturn Roe vs. Wade, he said.

Muriel Shepard Staff Writer Pro-life advocates may introduce bills during the next legislative session to further restrict legal abortions in South Dakota, said Ruth Karim, legislative director of the state Right to Life Committee. Speaking at the state Right to Life convention in Rapid City Saturday, Karim said the Right to Life Committee (RTLC) might consider introducing a bill to tighten funding of legal abortions. Another possibility would be an informed consent bill, which would require certain information, such as alternatives to abortion, be presented to women before they had abortions, she said. "But these things are still in the planning stages," Karim said. She said it was important to sponsor credible legislation, "not just for the sake of getting attention" or "to keep the matter before the public," because legislators' time was too valuable.

But Karim said states had a strong chance of restricting abortions based on new National Right to Life Committee polls. Those polls showed 89 percent of the general public opposed to using abortions for birth control, she said. Ninty-three percent of abortions were performed for birth control, parisons. in part on available federal dollars. Space lands McNally in Dakota map flap Memo to President Bush: When you mmm things than saving space, even in wouldn't have been so open bids to build a spaceship for TL space.

Sometimes it's important to hadn't come just two wouldn't have been so hadn't come just two bad if it days after Newsweek magazine writers John know what's between Iowa and the manned mission to Mars, don't Bill Harlan Wyoming or what a "zooid" is. Webster's dictionary describes "zooid" as "an entity that resembles but is not wholly the same as a separate individual organism." For example, the Rand McNally publication is the zooid of atlases. And speaking of zooids, North Dakota Tourism Director James Fuglie didn't do us any favors last week, either. Responding to the atlas omission, Fuglie said, "It sounds to me like this is an upscale book for the world traveler, who. frankly, may or may not be interested in the Great Plains region." Perfect.

A stroke of marketing genius. This guy just told America that if you're a successful person who has been to EXCITING places like France, you probably wouldn't be interested in boring old North and South Dakota. Good grief. Why didn't he just take out a full-page ad in USA TODAY: "Got a low forehead? Try McCormick and Bill Turque called the Dakotas and four other western states "America's Outback." In a four-page story, they described the Centennial West as a region of "scarcity" and "broken dreams" at "the end of the cracked whip." Ouch. On the other hand, at least Newsweek mentioned us.

"Perhaps Rand McNally should distribute a copy of Newsweek with each World Atlas," McCormick told me. "Our map clearly highlights the Dakotas." That's true. In the Newsweek map, eastern South Dakota was clearly labeled "Dying towns." Compared to that, maybe Rand McNally's approach wasn't so bad, although I'd like to see a slight revision in the next edition maybe something along the lines of those medieval maps of the New World. Just west of Iowa the cartographer could draw a stylized plate of lutefisk rising from the prairie, with the warning: even bother opening the envelope from Rand McNally. Rand McNally is the company that left South Dakota, North Dakota and Oklahoma out of their new, fancy shmancy, Mr.

Big Shot world atlas because well, darn it, there just wasn't enough room. "It was an editorial decision," said Con Erickson, who pluckily described his job at Rand McNally as "public relations representative." "We're told it was space limitations," Erickson said. "In a nutshell, that would summarize it," said John Leverenz, the editor of the un-atlas. Indeed, the folks at Rand McNally have a unique approach to putting things in a nutshell. They just leave them out.

For example, I tried to look up the word "zooid" in Rand McNally's new dictionary, which is subtitled "Abridge Too Far." I couldn find zooid" or any other words. "There are so many letters in the alphabet," a Rand McNallv editor 2 drivers charged after wreck explained to me. "Way more than 20, I think. Anyway, by the time we got to 'y' we already had 137 pages. It's a space thing, really." That's how President Bush describes the trip to Mars, which brings me back to the Rand McNally spaceship.

Imagine those hapless astronauts radioing back to mission control: "Now let me get this straight, Houston, there's no fuel for the return trip?" "I understand your concern, commander. Believe me, we'll seriously consider adding return-trip fuel cells to the next Mars vehicle. We just thought, what with Gramm Rudman and all It was a space thing, really." Those astronauts might argue that there are more important NEWELL Two men were charged with driving while intoxicated and one of them was taken to the hospital with minor injuries after an accident Saturday evening near Newell. Paul Lehman, Fort Benton, was transported to the Stur-gis Community Health Care Center. Lehman's car struck another car in front of him that was turning off U.S.

Highway 212 three miles east of Newell, according to the state Highway Patrol. The driver of the turning car was Robert Harris Jr. of Bismarck, N.D. He was charged with DWI and not having a driver's license. Lehman was charged with DWI and improper overtaking.

Still. tMis whole sordid affair "Here be Ntrrweeians." -4-.