Pam Eschief assumes new role as Sho-Ban School superintendent
New Shoshone-Bannock Jr./Sr. High School superintendent Pam Eschief.
By LORI ANN EDMO
Sho-Ban News
FORT HALL — Pam Eschief has returned home to serve as the Shoshone-Bannock Jr./Sr. High School superintendent.
Her first day on the job was July 8 and since then she’s been busy studying the budget because Bureau of Indian Education budgets are more specific and detailed. “I'm working on communication with BIE to make sure that I know what I'm doing, and that I have the right formats in the paperwork and the right documents so that I can do the job here for a Sho-Ban School.” And for accreditation, she’s making sure they follow all the steps and go through all the reports.
Eschief is Shoshone-Bannock and her background is in teaching. “I’ve been teaching for 21 years and an upper administration principal for seven years.” She has a Master’s degree in leadership that provided a principal license in Colorado. Pam also has a principal license in the state of Idaho, along with a teaching certificate in Idaho and Colorado.
Initially, she started teaching at Sho-Ban back in the early 90s. Then she worked in Gallup-McKinley County Schools at Tohatchi Middle School. After that she was at Santa Fe Public School District for two years. She worked for 21 years as a teacher in the Elizabeth School District in Colorado then was dean of students, assistant principal then principal all at the same school.
She decided to return home to be closer to her family. “This is where I’m going to finish out my career. This is my home,” and her mom’s getting older. Eschief returned in October of 2023 and got a job at the Shoshone-Bannock Casino Hotel in maintenance then applied to work in Human Resources as a trainer. Now she’s back in education.
In the meantime a number of school positions need to be filled so they’re being advertised. Eschief said her outlook is good — it’s not for her to dwell on and try to fix the past with what happened at the school with previous administrators. “It's more of, okay, yeah, we're a little short-handed, but we're good. We're still good to move forward and be ready to open August 13.”
Regarding communication and her approach to it, she sensed there was a lack of communication, “I’m a collaborative (work together) person, I want staff to be collaborative with each other and be collaborative with families and our kids.” “We want to be open and transparent,” Eschief continued. “We want to celebrate our kids – they have a lot of good things going on here despite the fact we lost our administrators – our kids are smart – they’re on it.”
She explained they want the kids to graduate, go to college or whatever they want to do. She’s met with the Fort Hall Business Council and the School Board that consists of Jessica Jay, chairperson, Jessica Matsaw, Leah Tindore, Effie Hernandez and Alexandria Alvarez. She wanted to know what their projection is, make sure they hire appropriate staff and have the budget to hire them.
They want to continue to work with the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) regarding STEM programs because some of their kids future may be at INL. “If we keep connections with stakeholders around us that’s positive, it helps grow our programs,” Eschief said.
Part of BIE’s curriculum is to have a language teacher and have culturally relevant programming and they plan to do that. She noted in summer school, a project was scraping hides with the idea of making a drum out of it. “It’s important for our kids as they are more hands on learners. All kids love to engage in projects.”
“I’m learning a lot in how BIE school function, I’ll meet with staff and determine how to communicate.” Her passion has been education for 30 years, I’m pretty positive.” She realizes things aren’t going to be an instant fix because change takes time.
Eschief’s goals are to help staff be more communicative, work together as a team, help their kids have more success in whatever it is they want to do and it doesn’t necessarily mean they have to go to four year schools or two year schools.
Concerning the open positions, there could be situations they may not be able to fill them but she believes they will be okay. They just need to assure the people that are hired pass their background checks.
