One of the largest school districts in New Mexico subjects Navajo students to pervasive discrimination and a climate of fear, according to a report released last week by the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission.
The 25-page report draws on testimony from parents and community members at four public hearings in Navajo Nation communities within the school district. It urges the New Mexico attorney general’s office to release findings from a two-and-a-half-year investigation into the district’s discipline of Indigenous students.
The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission’s report cited an investigation published in December 2022 by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica that found Indigenous students were punished more harshly than other students in New Mexico during the four years ending in 2020. The Gallup-McKinley district, which has the largest Indigenous student body of any local school district in the country, was largely responsible for that disparity, an analysis of student discipline records from across the state showed. Attorney General Raúl Torrez opened an investigation into the district’s disciplinary practices in 2023.
On Wednesday, Torrez’s chief of staff, Lauren Rodriguez, said the office’s long-running investigation is complete and has found “troubling disciplinary practices.” She added that the agency’s “exhaustive” investigation calls for the state Public Education Department to enforce student discipline data reporting requirements and better track that information. Previously, the district’s former longtime Superintendent Mike Hyatt, had downplayed the amount of discipline Native students receive and pointed to poor data collection as an issue.
“It’s our kids, our students, who are suffering the consequences of entrenched racism,” Wendy Greyeyes, the chair of the commission that released the new report and an associate professor of Native American studies at the University of New Mexico, said in an interview.
The Public Education Department should have caught the discipline disparities in the data it collects from districts, Greyeyes said. “There’s obviously not a clear auditing of data that’s being collected,” she said.
The attorney general’s office told New Mexico In Depth that, despite its findings, it’s not clear under state law that the office can “pursue formal legal action against the district for this particular conduct.”
That lack of legal clarity, the spokesperson said, is why Torrez has pushed for comprehensive state civil rights legislation since 2023.
Under the New Mexico Civil Rights Act, private individuals can sue public bodies for violations of the state constitution, but law does not explicitly authorize the attorney general to investigate and prosecute public bodies for systemic inequities, the way the federal Department of Justice can. In 2023, New Mexico lawmakers passed a bill that would have given the attorney general broad authority to investigate state or local agencies for civil rights violations. The bill had bipartisan support, but Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham killed it with a pocket veto. (Lujan Grisham did not issue a formal statement about the veto but said at the time that the bill was well-intentioned but would “create confusion” and that “much of the work outlined in the legislation can be undertaken by the AG regardless of whether or not the bill is signed.”)
At the time, Torrez told New Mexico In Depth that his office has an implied authority to pursue such cases, but that having it enshrined in law would have made it “crystal clear.”
Torrez’s spokesperson said he remains committed to seeing such legislation pass.
At the four meetings held by the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission in September and October, parents, students and community members described harsh discipline, language barriers, discriminatory hiring practices, problems with special education plans and inadequate classroom heating systems.
Greyeyes described a pervasive fear of retaliation. Some witnesses cried at hearings, she said — afraid their words would get back to the district — and parents spoke on behalf of children too afraid to testify themselves. Transcripts of their testimony were not publicly released.
The commission’s report recommends a formal agreement between the Navajo Nation and Gallup-McKinley for the district to adopt a discipline policy based on restorative justice, a strategy that seeks to rebuild relationships, not simply punish the student who caused the harm. Such a policy could be modeled on existing talking-circles programs at New Mexico’s Cuba Independent School District and the STAR School east of Flagstaff, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, Greyeyes said.
The report also recommends a comprehensive state financial audit of the district’s spending on Native education compared to that of other students, and it calls for the state education department to better manage and track districts’ student discipline data.
The school district did not respond to voice messages and emails seeking comment about the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission report.
The problems identified in the commission’s report are “rooted in colonization,” Greyeyes said. “It’s rooted in institutional racism. A lot of these things are accepted sometimes even by our own Navajo people, and we need to bring this information out and figure out a way to address these issues.”
The report’s recommendations “begin that conversation,” she said.
