We performed this inspection of the Tonalea Day School, located on the Navajo Reservation in Tonalea, AZ, to determine the quality of safety measures in place to prevent violence against students and staff from internal and external threats. The quality of safety measures in place at Tonalea Day School was inadequate.
Specifically, Tonalea Day School's comprehensive emergency plan was difficult to understand and did not adequately cover four of five topic areas we chose to evaluate. Also, the roles and responsibilities during an emergency were not clearly defined. Further, training was not provided to staff and students on several violence prevention and emergency preparedness topics we reviewed.
Further, of the 18 safety measures we checked for, Tonalea Day School did not have 7 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 four recommendations to help Tonalea Day School improve its safety measures and its violence prevention and emergency preparedness training.