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District 2 — Three candidates face off in school board election's most contested race
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Modified
Less is sometimes more.
While it’s no longer the most crowded, the race for Albuquerque Public Schools’ District 2 board seat is still arguably the election’s most hotly contested.
Once a field of five candidates, the race for the seat, which represents a chunk of Northwest Albuquerque, is now down to just three — Adrian Nogales, Ronalda Tome-Warito and incumbent Peggy Muller-Aragón.
Still, all three candidates have managed to spend the most of any of the three school board races, collectively more than $31,200 on such things as print ads, campaign consultants and fundraising events.
And although school board candidates run nonpartisan campaigns, District 2 is also the most politically split of any of the contests — Tome-Warito is a Democrat, Nogales is an Independent and Muller-Aragón a Republican.
The race also represents a chance for the Albuquerque Teachers Federation to flip a seat after seeing most of its picks lose to business-backed candidates during the last election cycle and, if union picks win the other two board races, gain a majority on the board.
Muller-Aragón is one of the longest-serving members currently on the board, joining in 2015. A retired teacher who graduated from West Mesa High School, she’s received large donations from local companies as well as support from the local chapter of Moms for Liberty.
The incumbent has thus far run on her record, referring to her work on the current board to establish long-term goals to improve student outcomes in APS.
Tome-Warito, an educational consultant endorsed by the union who behind Muller-Aragón has raised the second most in campaign contributions of any Albuquerque school board candidate, has touted herself as an advocate for children, especially those with disabilities and Indigenous students.
She’s lashed out against Muller-Aragón, accusing her of failing to put children first, especially LGBTQIA+ students. The incumbent, for her part, has largely refrained from publicly responding.
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A teacher at Tres Volcanes Community Collaborative School, Nogales in 2022 challenged incumbent teachers union President Ellen Bernstein to lead the ATF. Bernstein, first elected in 1999, won in a landslide.
Nogales has billed himself as a teacher who’s personally faced the hardships many of the district’s educators have, including being shuffled between schools.
The issues
There are some things on which the candidates generally agree.
For example, each has stressed the value of parent input in their children’s education, though Tome-Warito from a more critical lens. Two of the three argue the biggest issue APS faces is teacher shortages, while Muller-Aragón spoke of student proficiency at grade level. But while they didn’t consistently clash in their responses to a Journal candidate questionnaire, they didn’t necessarily agree on everything — their views on the current board’s vision for the future, for example.
For one, Muller-Aragón defended the five-year goals board members laid out earlier this year, saying they’re “all worthy goals that speak to what every child needs to have success beyond the K-12 public school system.”
Nogales said he isn’t opposed to laying out a roadmap, but added the past board “doesn’t run the future” and that the goals they laid out “fail to address actual issues” in the district. He doubled down on APS’ need to recruit more teachers if the district has any hope of achieving any goals.
Tome-Warito also said the goals needed to be streamlined if they are to ever make “parents, community members and stakeholders … feel like they belong and have ownership” of students’ educational futures.
