Original Research by School Decision on Navajo County Accommodation District #99 (4386)
Navajo County Accommodation District #99 is a small, specialized entity serving a particular population of students across Navajo County in Arizona. It is an accommodation district, a type of district that in Arizona's public system is designed to serve students who need an alternative setting, often those who are at risk or have special needs that a traditional school cannot fully address. The district operates a single school, Navajo County Instruction for Success (NCIS), which is the only place where students in this district receive instruction.
The district serves grades seven through twelve, but the actual enrollment is tiny, with only a small number of students reported, all of them in grades nine through twelve. No students are enrolled in seventh or eighth grade. The student body is made up entirely of a handful of individuals, and the composition reflects the county's population: about half are Hispanic, a quarter are American Indian or Alaska Native, and the rest are White, Black, or multiracial. Information about how many students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, receive special education services, or are English learners is not reported, so a parent cannot see those details from the available data.
State testing results and the district's four-year graduation rate are both absent from the data. This is a common pattern for a small alternative or special-purpose district, where the students are often not assessed through the same standardized tests or where the grade band and setting mean that conventional accountability measures do not apply. A parent looking for typical academic performance benchmarks will find none here, and it would be sensible to ask the school directly about what academic progress looks like for its students.
The one comparison metric that is available places the district among Navajo County's districts. The chronic absenteeism rate is reported at the highest end of the range, in the bottom quartile. That means that essentially every student was absent a substantial number of days. For a school serving students who are already disconnected from school, this is not surprising, but a parent should understand the context. The district's per-pupil current spending is in the upper range among the county's districts, reflecting the higher cost of running a very small, specialized program.
No information about the district's locale or surrounding community is provided. The district's brief notes that a search for recent district changes—such as property tax shifts, referendums, or curriculum overhauls—turned up nothing, which is typical for a very small rural accommodation district without a large public profile.
This district is not a conventional neighborhood school. It is a targeted alternative program for students who need a different path to finish high school. The enrollment is minimal, the student population is diverse, and the chronic absenteeism is extreme. A family considering this district would be looking at a highly specialized, small-scale environment where the primary goal is to re-engage students who have not succeeded in a standard setting. The absence of test scores and graduation rates means that measuring outcomes requires a direct conversation with the school. For a student who needs that kind of flexibility and support, this district may be a fit, but it is not a place where a parent would find typical academic data or a broad array of programs.
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