Review of Violence Prevention at the San Ildefonso Day School

We conducted an inspection of the San Ildefonso Day School, located on the San Ildefonso Pueblo in Santa Fe, NM, to determine the quality of safety measures in place to prevent violence against students and staff from internal and external threats. We found the school’s safety measures to be inadequate. 

 

Specifically, San Ildefonso Day School did not have a comprehensive emergency plan. In addition, training was not provided to staff and students on several violence prevention and emergency preparedness topics we evaluated, including conflict resolution, anger management, and suicide prevention. Further, we were not able to run either evacuation or lock-down drills during our visit on May 22, 2014. School officials believed it would be unsafe for staff and students to perform the evacuation drill since it was not practiced regularly and the lock-down drill because it had not been practiced in years. As a result, we were unable to determine the impact of the limited training on the school’s ability to effectively and safely evacuate or lock-down the school in an emergency. 

 

Further, of the 18 safety measures we checked for, San Ildefonso Day School did not have 8 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 provided five recommendations to help San Ildefonso Day School improve its safety measures.