Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

New Mexico’s Attorney General, Raúl Torrez, is seeking control over the state’s languid advancement in the reformation of its public education system. This move is in an effort to guarantee that all children receive the adequate education mandated by a significant court decision in 2018.

In this lawsuit, the judge concluded that the state failed to uphold the educational rights of Native American, English language-learners, disabled, and economically disadvantaged children.

“There is frustration with the lack of progress over the past five years,” Torrez told New Mexico In Depth. “We’ve informed the governor’s office that we intend to resume control over the Yazzie-Martinez litigation.”

Since the 2018 judgment, the administration of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has opposed endeavors for comprehensive transformations to public education, as demanded by the plaintiffs of the lawsuit and a group of advocacy bodies advocating for modifications. In 2020, the administration requested a state judge to terminate court supervision of the case, asserting that the state had entirely adhered to the 2018 decision. Nevertheless, the judge rejected this request, stating that oversight should persist until enduring reforms are instituted.

Caroline Sweeney, a representative for Lujan Grisham, justified her administration’s efforts to settle the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit by highlighting the considerable augmentation of public school funds, the establishment of new state departments concentrated on special and early education, and the extension of mandatory instructional hours. Sweeney proposed that Torrez should concentrate on making local school districts accountable.

“We need to find a way to more directly hold school boards and school districts accountable for fully implementing the critical investments this administration has made over the last four years,” Sweeney wrote in an email. “The attorney general’s office has the power to do just that.”

The Attorney General has broad statutory authority to manage litigation in situations like Yazzie/Martinez where the state or an officer of the state is sued in their official role, according to Lauren Rodriguez, Torrez’s director of communications. According to her, neither the governor nor any other state agency must give their consent for this jurisdiction.

“We are working with several stakeholders and hoping to accelerate satisfying the terms of the judgment,” she said in an email.

Torrez stated that he wants to follow in the footsteps of the Lujan Grisham administration in bringing together state agencies, the tribes, education specialists, and plaintiffs to develop specific objectives and deadlines for enforcing the verdict.

“Of course, that depends on the willingness of everyone to take a fresh look at what the judge’s order actually requires us to do and what resources are going to be necessary to achieve those goals,” he said. “We hope to have another round of conversations both with the administration and the Yazzie-Martinez plaintiffs.”

The state’s early response to the 2014 Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit involved the AG’s office.

However, the state’s Public Education Department (PED) has assumed the lead in the state’s efforts to comply with the Judge Sarah Singleton’s July 2018 judgment. It published a draft action plan in May 2022, four years after the decision, outlining what it had already accomplished and potential next initiatives, but it has yet to publish a final version. When the final strategy would be made public was not specified by PED on Tuesday.

“In the five years since the ruling – a third of a child’s entire grade school experience – we’re still not seeing the progress we need for the students who need it most,” expressed Melissa Candelaria from the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty in an email on Tuesday. In collaboration with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), the center initiated legal action against the state, representing numerous parents and several school districts across the state, “For years the state has wasted resources on a legal defense that’s protecting the current system, instead of deeply examining and getting to the root of the problems to fix things.”

To address the state’s response to the decision, Torrez met with the All Pueblo Council of Governors last week. He also plans to confer with the Navajo Nation and the two Apache nations in the state.

“The Attorney General has committed to collaborating with tribal educators and education specialists in crafting a solution-focused framework, encompassing the plaintiff’s perspective, along with the necessary resources that will hopefully bring an end to the litigation,” the All Pueblo Council of Governors said in a press release.

The 23 federally acknowledged tribes of the state have presented a Tribal Remedy Framework for overhauling the state’s education system to align with the ruling. However, advocates like Regis Pecos, co-director of the Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School and former governor of Cochiti Pueblo, have expressed dissatisfaction with the state’s tardy reaction.

The biting Yazzie-Martinez ruling by Singleton marked a pivotal point in the history of New Mexico’s public education. Highlighting the state’s dismal reading and math proficiency rates, and a woeful graduation rate – which, at 70%, was then the nation’s lowest – Singleton determined that the state’s public education system had infringed upon the students’ constitutional right to a sufficient education that readies them for college or a profession.

She ascertained that the PED had not ensured all students receive the necessary services for success, including quality pre-kindergarten, language and culture coursework, social services, smaller class sizes, and sufficient funding for the retention and training of teachers.

PED Secretary Arsenio Romero stated in an email on Tuesday, “We have not had a conversation with the Attorney General at this point and we welcome one so that we can share with him all the work the Department has been doing in service of our Martinez-Yazzie student groups.”