Rough Rock School no longer accredited

Posted by Cindy Yurth | Feb 16, 2017 | News |

CHINLE

Rough Rock Community School, the first BIE contract school on the Navajo Nation, has lost its accreditation as of Jan. 31, the director of the school’s accrediting agency confirmed last week.

The school’s previous accreditation expired Jan. 31 and it has not been renewed.

Anselm Davis of AdvancEd Navajo Nation said two individuals from AdvancEd visited the school and will be giving their final report to the AdvancEd Council at its next meeting.

Meanwhile, Davis said, AdvancEd met with the new school board and CEO last Wednesday and went over with them the timeline for their school improvement plan and the process of reinstating their accreditation.

“This isn’t anything new we’re telling them,” Davis said. “We will just be going over the same things we told the last board and CEO.”

The turnover of the school’s CEO is one factor in the loss of the accreditation, Davis said.

“In the implementation of the school improvement plan, their whole goal was to develop stability,” he explained. “We want to see things institutionalized so they can begin to develop some longitudinal data on student progress, but they haven’t really been able to do that.”

The school has had a succession of interim CEOs for several years, and at its last meeting before new board members took office, the previous school board replaced Sharon Toadecheenie, who was appointed last fall, with Mary Keyonnie-Cly.

Contact information could not be found for the previous board members to determine why they made that move after being repeatedly warned about the lack of administrative stability.