ALBUQUERQUE — None of the interior or exterior doors could be locked from the inside at San Ildefonso Day School near Santa Fe. As a result, staff needed to go outside to lock doors with keys, exposing staff and students to potential dangers.

Emergency drills weren’t conducted at Te Tsu Geh Oweenge Day School because staff said "the children would be scared."

And at Ojo Encino in Cuba, no security guards or hall monitors were visible and visitors were not required to wear identification badges when on campus.

Those are examples in a report released Friday that says the Bureau of Indian Education is "dangerously unprepared to prevent violence and ensure the safety of students and staff." The 17-page report was prepared by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which visited nine BIE schools, including the three in New Mexico that were surveyed in April.

And while only nine schools were inspected, the report implies that the findings may represent only a glimpse of the problems at most, if not all, the schools operated by the BIE, which is responsible for 184 schools and 24 colleges serving about 60,000 students on 63 reservations in 23 states.

One BIE official went so far in the report to say it was a matter of "when and where" not "if" a violent act would happen at one of its schools. Other BIE officials told Inspector General officials that some schools give safety only minimal attention, according to the report.

Finally, the report says that "none of the education facilities visited had adequate emergency preparedness plans to deal with violent incidents such as bomb threats, shootings, fights or hostage situations."

The Inspector General has recommended that the BIE should immediately implement a plan of action that includes keeping unauthorized people from gaining access to the campus through unlocked or unmonitored doors and that all facilities have operable and regularly tested central alarm and intercom systems.

The Inspector General has given the BIE until September 1 to reply to the report and to provide its action plan for correcting the safety situations at its schools. Policy at the Inspector General’s office is to not comment on the work of the Interior Department beyond the published report.

It Inspector General’s office, however is asking to be kept updated by the BIE on implementation of their recommendations.

 

The impetus for the report was a finding in 2005/2006 that 78 percent of public schools nationwide experienced one or more violent incidents of crime, including rape, sexual battery and physical attacks. In 2000, another report regarding BIE operated schools showed that 37 percent of students reported carrying a gun to school during a given month.

Nedra Darling, spokeswoman for the BIE, said "At this point, we are just getting the report circulated. After it is reviewed I’m sure there will be some response as requested by the Inspector General."

According to the report, the BIE does not have any formal written safety protocols in place for schools and individual schools seemed to each handle safety on their own with little comprehensive plans for preventing or addressing violence.

Since the IG found no required safety measures for its schools, it used 18 critical safety measures from public schools in areas such as access to campuses and adequate communication systems in order to evaluate the nine schools studied. The results were not good.

Safety measures were absent at all BIE schools visited, with the average facility failing to use more than half of the measures identified. Based on the critieria, San Ildefonso and Ojo Encino have a 61 percent risk of experiencing a catastrophic situation at school.

Te Tsu Geh Oweenge failed in most of the 18 categories and is at a 72 percent risk of a violent situation. The only school at a higher risk of those studied was the Santa Rosa Boarding School in Sells, Ariz., which was at a 77 percent risk.