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A child plays with her toys at a child care center in Alamogordo. Photo credit / Sylvia Ulloa for New Mexico in Depth/2020.
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Indigenous education experts and advocates are outraged over the state’s draft action plan for improving education, which they say lacks detail and fails to meaningfully incorporate community input. “We may be stuck with something that is unconscionable” if the Public Education Department doesn’t make changes before it submits the final plan to the court in early November, said Regis Pecos, a former governor of Cochiti Pueblo and co-director of the Leadership Institute at Santa Fe Indian School. “There has been a growing consensus that this is not what we need, and this is not what our children deserve.”Pecos made those remarks Tuesday during a five-hour gathering attended by dozens of people just north of Albuquerque. It’s been over seven years since a state judge in the landmark Yazzie/Martinez court case found New Mexico was violating its constitutional duty to provide a sufficient education to Native American and low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. The plaintiffs went back to court last fall, arguing the state wasn’t complying with the 2018 ruling.
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Additional reporting provided by Nick Reynolds and Anna Wilder, The Post and Courier; Yasmeen Khan, The Maine Monitor; Lauren Dake, Oregon Public Broadcasting; Marjorie Childress, New Mexico In Depth; Louis Hansen, Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO; Mary Steurer and Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor; Kate McGee, The Texas Tribune; Alyse Pfeil, The Advocate | The Times-Picayune; and Shauna Sowersby, The Seattle Times. This story was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
