Deep Roots

Raised on the Warm Springs Reservation, Kayla Kneeland-Jaimes has returned home to help expand the possibilities for students in her community and beyond By Rachel Brumfield

It’s 2:30 p.m. on a Wednesday. Kayla Kneeland-Jaimes unlocks a set of double doors and steps into a noisy cafeteria, teeming with kids arriving for the after-school program at Bridges High School. She makes her way around crowded tables, greeting kids and staff as the room continues to fill. Two girls call her name and wave excitedly.

Every day after school, nearly 125 kids gather for this grant-funded program in Madras, Oregon – and it’s clear they know Ms. Kneeland-Jaimes.

‘Schools are the hubs of the community’

“In our community, we have high poverty rates and a lot of working families,” she says. “After-school programming was hard to come by. There were not that many options available.”

As director of Jefferson County’s 21st Century Afterschool Program, Kneeland-Jaimes oversees four sites that serve more than 600 students over the course of the year, including during the summer. The program is free for families and provides a safe place for kids to spend time outside of school in addition to academic and enrichment activities that encourage growth in key areas like literacy, math and science.

“We’re building this ecosystem of support around our kids,” she says. “We want them to thrive, because they are the future of our communities.”

The program provides wraparound support for students and families in Jefferson County – offering meals, transportation, summer programs and a variety of classes for families.

“Our schools are the hubs of the community,” she says. “Especially in rural communities like ours, we help provide the connection, openness and ongoing communication that keeps families informed and connected to what’s going on.”

Serving Native American Students

For Kneeland-Jaimes, schools are where she found her calling – though her own educational journey was not without its bumps. Her high school experience was not positive. Eager to be done, she dropped out her sophomore year, earned her GED and began taking community college classes. At 19, she became a mom and eventually landed a job as an educational assistant on the Warm Springs Reservation, where she grew up.

It was there that Kneeland-Jaimes recognized the need for educators like her who reflected the community.

“What drew me into teaching was wanting to work closer with Native students,” she says. “I feel really connected to the students and the families in this community – it’s my home. Seeing the need for more Native educators really propelled my efforts.”

“What drew me into teaching was wanting to work closer with Native students. I feel really connected to the students and the families in this community – it’s my home.”

Although around one third of students in the Jefferson County School District are from Native American families, Kneeland-Jaimes did not have a single Native American educator throughout her K-12 experience. That fact, along with her struggle to connect in high school, have given her deep empathy for her students.

“It’s really important for our Native students to have a strong sense of belonging at school and to be able to connect with the adults who are teaching them,” she says. “It’s also important to have an understanding of how historical trauma impacts generations and how different experiences like growing up on the reservation might impact a student’s educational experience.”

With a young child at home, taking a couple years off to pursue a teaching degree wasn’t an option for Kneeland-Jaimes. But through George Fox’s accelerated teaching program, she finished her bachelor’s degree in just 20 months and became a fifth-grade teacher at Warm Springs K-8 Academy.

“Having the teaching program accessible in our community made it absolutely doable to move forward with my education as a mom working full time,” she says. “We have a lot of people who were born and raised in Jefferson County who are graduating from these George Fox programs and are now teachers in our schools. That’s everything for our community because for a long time we struggled to have our own people in our schools.”

‘My Doctor Era’

Kneeland-Jaimes continued keeping a pulse on the needs of the community, eventually earning a master’s degree in special education. Then in 2023, she enrolled in George Fox’s Doctor of Education (EdD) program.

“I really wanted to find ways to be able to lead more, mentor others and grow the number of students that I’m able to serve in our district,” she says. “I joke about entering my ‘doctor era’ – pouring myself more into this community and thinking bigger about what we can do next to build this ecosystem of support to surround our kids.”

She gives credit to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, of which she is an enrolled tribal member, for supporting her educational journey. With fewer than 1% of doctoral degrees held by Native Americans, graduating with her EdD this spring has set a new precedent for the students in her community.

“I’m super passionate about continuing to inspire other Natives to continue on a journey of higher education,” she says. “I want them to say, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.’”

Now, at age 38 and a mother of four, Kneeland-Jaimes hopes to spread this sense of possibility beyond Jefferson County. One of her next goals is to partner with tribes across Oregon to expand support for students and bring more diverse educators into schools throughout the state.

“What drives me is being able to support students to obtain their dreams and instill in them the gift of lifelong learning,” she says. “Just because we’ve finished with high school doesn’t mean learning stops there. We’re going to continue on. What can we do next?”