Review of Violence Prevention at the Ahfachkee Indian School

We performed an inspection of the Ahfachkee Indian School, located on the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation in Clewiston, FL, to determine the quality of safety measures in place to prevent violence against students and staff from internal and external threats. We found Ahfachkee Indian School’s safety measures to be inadequate.

 

Specifically, Ahfachkee Indian School’s comprehensive emergency plan did not contain sections on how to handle bomb threats, shootings, fights, hostage situations or off-campus emergencies, the five topic areas we chose to evaluate. In addition, students were not trained in several violence prevention topics we reviewed. Further, the school had never run a lock-down drill.

 

Finally, of the 18 safety measures we checked for, Ahfachkee Indian School did not have 9 in place. While no single safety measure is so critical that its absence at an educational facility is cause for immediate concern, we found that the more safety measures not in place, the less prepared the school is to respond to an incident.

 

We provide four recommendations to help Ahfachkee Indian School improve its safety measures and its violence prevention training.