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“At least 19 tribal schools in Arizona went four years or more without the inspections that are supposed to be performed every year by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, according to a recent Government Accountability Office audit.
A GAO official called the missed inspections a sign of a “systemic” issue, and one Native American advocate said the lack of action on the part of the bureau is “baffling” for a problem that has been known about among advocates for a long time.
When GAO officials visited bureau schools across the country, they found kids learning in buildings without fire extinguishers or sprinklers, with exposed wires, asbestos and – in one case – an overflowing sewer system.
“The broader concern is that we need to make sure that students and teachers are safe at these schools,” said Melissa Emrey-Arras, author of the report released last month. She added that school inspections are “not rocket science.””
– Cronkite News, Audit: 19 tribal schools in Arizona went uninspected for four years.
“Thousands of children attend schools operated by the federal Bureau of Indian Education, and for years, no one has known for sure if the buildings where they learn, eat and sleep are safe.
That’s one finding from a recent report issued by the Government Accountability Office that has shaken the bureau, which oversees schools that serve about 7 percent of American Indian students — nearly 50,000 schoolchildren — scattered across 23 states mostly in the rural western and southwestern United States.
The report says more than one-third of all 180 school locations have gone longer than one year without health and safety inspections. Of those, 54 sites haven’t been inspected in at least four years. The Bureau of Indian Education mandates annual inspections for all schools.”
– PBS Newshour, How safe are Bureau of Indian Education schools?.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
