I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
Nov. 25, 1999
By Devlyn Brooks
The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe will break ground on a $2.3 million addition to its child care facility Tuesday in Cass Lake, tribal officials announced.
The new addition should allow for better care of Leech Lake's children and a streamlined process for parents using Leech Lake child care facilities, Head Start Director Lee Turney said.
"The greatest thing about this facility is that we're going to have a modern-age Head Start facility for all our children," he said.
The multimillion dollar project has been in the works for about a year and a half, Turney said, but the funding for the Head Start wing just recently came to fruition.
The band has received a $400,000 Indian Community Development Block Grant from the Eastern Woodlands Office of Native American Programs, a division of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In addition, the Leech Lake Tribal Council has approved $1.2 million; the U.S. Department of Human Service will pay $495,000; and the state Department of Children, Families and Learning also has contributed $200,000 to the project.
The project is to be completed in spring 2001.
The 15,700-square-foot addition will be built onto the Dikinaagan Child Care Services Center in northeast Cass Lake, and will house six classrooms, a resource library, administrative office space, an open gymnasium area and an expanded kitchen to accommodate the increased food service needs of more classrooms.
The Head Start program is now housed in an unsafe building a couple blocks away, Turney said. In addition to safety, the new facility also will give continuity to the child care program and Head Start programs serving the Cass Lake area.
"We'll have a more nurturing environment for kids. We will be able to provide services for the families we serve, and we will be able to bring in more families to our programs," Turney said. "We want to have one-stop shopping for parents using our child care facilities."
The Leech Lake Head Start program serves 244 children in five communities, with about 50 percent of those children in the Cass Lake area. there also are Head Start centers in Inger, Ball Club, Bena and Onigum.
The ground breaking ceremony will take place 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Dikinaagan Child Care Services Center.
Comments