{"id":30248,"date":"2023-01-02T13:42:08","date_gmt":"2023-01-02T18:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianz.com\/News\/?p=30248"},"modified":"2023-01-02T13:47:53","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T18:47:53","slug":"propublica-native-students-face-harsher-discipline-in-new-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2023\/01\/02\/propublica-native-students-face-harsher-discipline-in-new-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"ProPublica: Native students face harsher discipline in New Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":" \"High<\/a>
The High Desert Trail in Gallup, New Mexico. Photo: Tony Klesert<\/a><\/figcaption>\r\n
This School District Is Ground Zero for Harsh Discipline of Native Students in New Mexico<\/div>\r\n
Monday, January 2, 2023<\/div>\r\n
By Bryant Furlow, New Mexico In Depth, with additional reporting by Asia Fields, Maya Miller and Joel Jacobs, ProPublica<\/div>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nThis story was originally published by ProPublica<\/a>.\r\nProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter<\/a> to receive stories like this one in your inbox<\/em>.

<\/P> One chilly March afternoon, dozens of Navajo children spilled out of their middle school to play in the snow before heading home. Students in jackets and parkas can be seen on grainy security camera footage chasing and pushing one another to the ground.

<\/P>The next day, the principal called one of the children into her office. \u201cShe said I was expelled,\u201d the child said in an interview, looking at his feet as he sat with his grandmother on their living room couch. \u201cWe were just playing around.\u201d

<\/P>His offense, according to school records, was \u201cassault and battery\u201d for pushing another student down.

<\/P>The seventh grader, whose middle name is Matthew, said that was the culmination of months of being written up for \u201ceverything\u201d \u2014 from being off-task in class to playing on the school elevator. (Out of concern that the boy will be stigmatized at school, his grandmother agreed to speak on the condition that she not be identified and that he be identified only by his middle name.)

<\/P>In New Mexico, Native American students are expelled far more often than any other group and at least four times as often as white students.

<\/P>Matthew\u2019s school district, Gallup-McKinley County Schools, is responsible for most of that disparity, according to an analysis of state records<\/a> by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica. The district has a quarter of New Mexico\u2019s Native students, but it accounted for at least three-quarters of Native student expulsions in the state during the four school years ending in 2020.

<\/P>Gallup-McKinley is one of the largest school districts in the state by enrollment and geography, but even so, it has just 4% of the state\u2019s students. Twice the size of Delaware, the district sits along the western edge of New Mexico and includes wide swaths of the Navajo Nation. The Chuska Mountains stretch northward, overlooking sandstone cliffs, mesas and canyons, in a landscape dotted with pi\u00f1on pine, juniper and the fossilized remnants of long-gone oceans.

<\/P>About three-quarters of Gallup-McKinley\u2019s roughly 12,000 students are Native American, most of them Navajo. It has the largest Native enrollment of any public school district in the United States, according to federal figures.

<\/P>Gallup and other towns that ring the Navajo Nation have a history of bias<\/a> and exploitation. In a recent book, University of New Mexico professor David Correia wrote that Gallup\u2019s businesses, including payday lenders, unscrupulous art dealers and liquor stores, have a history of exploiting Native people<\/a>.

<\/P>Wendy Greyeyes, who is Navajo and an assistant professor of Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, said that history plays out today in a more subtle way: through school practices that lead to Native students being disciplined more harshly than others. School policies \u201care used to justify racist behavior,\u201d she said.

<\/P>In addition to analyzing statewide discipline data, New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica interviewed 80 people, including 47 parents, grandparents and current and former students, to understand discipline practices in Gallup-McKinley schools. District officials, including Superintendent Mike Hyatt and school board President Christopher Mortenson, did not respond to repeated interview requests.

<\/P>The state education department requires school districts to report all disciplinary incidents. Those reports track the type of discipline, such as suspensions and expulsions, and note whether police were involved. Gallup-McKinley school officials sometimes called the police or juvenile probation officers over physical altercations, tobacco or drug possession and disorderly conduct, those records show.

<\/P>Over the past decade or so, the number of expulsions and incidents involving law enforcement has dropped substantially in New Mexico. While Gallup-McKinley\u2019s discipline rate has fluctuated over the past decade, it has remained far higher than the rest of the state.

<\/P>That has happened under the nose of the state.

<\/P>Since 2018, New Mexico has been under a state district court order<\/a> to remedy its failure to provide a sufficient education to Native Americans, students learning English as a second language and other underserved youth. The child of one of the lead plaintiffs in the case that led to the order attended school at Gallup-McKinley. Though most of the court order dealt with state funding and oversight, the judge did address school discipline, noting that high discipline rates are a signal students need more help in school.

<\/P>The New Mexico Public Education Department uses school districts\u2019 annual reports to track racial disparities among special education students, as required by federal law. Unlike some other states, it doesn\u2019t otherwise track racial disparities in discipline.

<\/P>The department declined to address the news outlets\u2019 findings. Kelly Pearce, a department spokesperson, said the state could discuss only the \u201cbig picture\u201d because school districts are in charge of discipline. If families have complaints about school discipline, she said, they should go to the federal Office for Civil Rights<\/a>. No one has complained to that office regarding school discipline in Gallup-McKinley from the 2015-16 through the 2020-21 school years.

<\/P>A spokesperson for New Mexico Attorney General-elect Ra\u00fal Torrez called the news outlets\u2019 findings \u201calarming\u201d but said the office doesn\u2019t have authority to investigate civil rights abuses by school districts or other public bodies. Torrez will advocate for legislation to change that, spokesperson Taylor Bui said.

<\/P>Daniel Losen, who studies racial disparities in school discipline as director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles, said someone needs to investigate discipline rates in Gallup-McKinley.

<\/P>School districts with higher concentrations of students of color often \u201chave higher use of police and just more draconian discipline practices,\u201d Losen said. \u201cWhy is what\u2019s happening to kids in Gallup so much worse than what\u2019s happening to kids in the rest of the state?\u201d

<\/P>\r\n

And here\u2019s how ProPublica\u2019s data journalist Joel Jacobs and I analyzed the state\u2019s student discipline data: https:\/\/t.co\/z2xFamIi9E<\/a> (17\/18)<\/p>— Bryant Furlow (@BryantFurlow) December 22, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote>