Funding bill for Yazzie-Martinez students clears first Roundhouse hurdle

A bill that would invest millions of dollars into addressing a landmark education sufficiency lawsuit passed its first legislative committee Wednesday.

House Bill 39, which largely aims at closing educational opportunity gaps for Native American students, garnered support from dozens of people during a meeting before the House Education Committee, the first hurdle the bill faces on its path through the Roundhouse.

Those in support included Tiffany Lee, professor and chair of the University of New Mexico’s Native American Studies Department, which would receive about $3 million, at least, from the bill.

“The majority of our students are Native American from New Mexico and surrounding states,” she said. “So we are really in the business of human resource capacity building, and this funding will support that as our students move into careers in government, community (and) education.

“They impact our communities in numerous ways that can provide remedies for the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit,” she added.

The bill, which would invest more than $27 million combined in many of the state’s colleges and universities as well as the New Mexico Higher Education Department, would address areas of need identified in findings in the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit.

In 2018, the judge in that suit found New Mexico was not providing a sufficient education for Native American students, English learners, students with disabilities and those with economic disadvantages.

HB 39 would provide investments aimed at making college more accessible and establishing recruiting efforts for Native American students; building pipelines for students to become teachers, including in bilingual and Native language education; and developing culturally relevant curricula for all levels of education.

The bill would also help build suicide prevention and behavioral health resources for people in Native American communities.

Bill sponsor Rep. Flor Yanira Gurrola Valenzuela, D-Albuquerque, told the Journal earlier this month that HB 39 was about “concrete solutions to address the real struggles that our students are facing.”

“This is something that goes deep to my heart: to make sure that we have not only the resources in books and materials, but also the people that we need to be able to fulfill the needs of the Yazzie-Martinez case,” she said.

Last legislative session, Gurrola helped push a similar bill, which appears to have failed without being taken up by the House Education Committee.

On Wednesday, HB 39 passed on a 7-3 vote, with Reps. Brian Baca, R-Los Lunas; Jack Chatfield, R-Mosquero; and Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell, voting against it.

“I truly support many of these initiatives,” Baca said in explaining his “no” vote. “... For myself, there were some parts of this bill that I thought did not necessarily fit with the intended group of the Yazzie-Martinez (students).”

After Wednesday’s vote, the bill is now headed to the House Appropriations and Finance Committee.