It is easy to get lost in the vast lands of the Navajo Nation, with its mountains, rough terrain, endless desert and long stretches of highway. A quick turn can take a visitor into Utah, New Mexico, Arizona or Colorado.
But in this stretch of land, known as the Four Corners, it is not only the visitors who get lost. This is a place where untold numbers of Navajo students have gone missing from educational systems — their numbers unaccounted for by schools, their attendance records lost to parents and teachers alike.
Hundreds have fallen off the grid since the start of the pandemic, pulled out of schools by parents who feel angry and unsupported. Many have transferred to other districts, sometimes crossing state lines to do so. Others switched over to homeschooling or dropped out of school altogether. The one constant is that the children are considered missing or unaccounted for.