Facility Improvements Still Needed at Pine Hill School

We completed a follow-up inspection of Pine Hill School to determine what progress had been made to correct the issues identified in our prior reports and determine whether the facility conditions have changed since our last reviews.We found that the school addressed many of the issues identified in our previous reports and that the overall facility conditions had improved. Specifically, Indian Affairs (IA) and the school implemented 9 of the 12 recommendations from our 2016 inspection and addressed a number of safety and health issues we previously identified including the inoperable fire alarm system.However, some of the issues identified in our 2016 inspection remain unresolved—mainly the extensive water damage and mold in the library, kindergarten classroom, and the gymnasium, as well as general deficiencies that were present throughout the school. We also found that Pine Hill School’s 25,000-square-foot dormitory remained significantly underused and that the IA’s facility inventory continued to be inaccurate, even though the IA reported that it had made corrections to its inventory since our last review.We also identified additional safety, health, and security risks during this inspection not covered in our 2016 inspection. For example, routine inspections of critical equipment and potential indoor environmental contaminants were not regularly completed and access to potentially dangerous areas was not restricted. Although the IA conducted annual safety and health inspections at the school as required, we found that neither the IA nor the school could confirm that the deficiencies identified during those inspections were addressed. Furthermore, an IA official informed us that it was not tracking deficiencies identified during safety and health inspections to confirm they were being addressed. We made 13 new recommendations to ensure that the progress made to date will be maintained, and that future improvements will properly address many of the long-standing facility issues facing the school. We also recommended that the Office of Financial Management reopen one recommendation from our previous report that we found was not addressed, and we repeated one recommendation from our prior inspection report that had not yet been addressed.