NMDOJ: Gallup-McKinley County Schools violated Open Meetings Act at controversial May meeting

Gallup-McKinley County Schools is facing another challenge for voting to terminate its contract with a for-profit online education provider, marking the latest twist in a months-long saga.

On May 16, the district’s board voted to cancel its contract with Stride K12, an organization that has provided online education for the district since the pandemic. However, the circumstances surrounding that decision are being called into question.

Roughly a month after that meeting, a letter from the New Mexico Department of Justice (NMDOJ) to Board of Education President Christopher Mortensen and attorney Andrew Sanchez was sent, notifying them the board violated the Open Meetings Act (OMA).

In its letter, the NMDOJ states that “the public body shall take prompt corrective action” to remedy the situation and if it does not comply with the OMA, the department “has authority to enforce OMA through injunction, mandamus, or other appropriate order.”

“To be clear, this letter’s intention is not to address any matters related to the board’s contractual relationship with Stride Inc./K12 or the New Mexico Procurement Act. Rather, our office’s concern lies strictly with compliance with OMA and the validity of the board’s action,” the letter says.

The letter states that the board denied virtual access to its May 16 meeting, failed to enter its “closed session” of the meeting correctly, did not conduct the public comment portion of the meeting adequately and that the agenda was improperly ratified.

In response, Sanchez wrote “It appears to us that you are acting pursuant to a complaint or complaints lodged by Stride/K12 Inc., a billion dollar corporation, or its agents, and your letter is premised entirely on its allegations and its subjective interpretation of the facts. It is clear that your Bureau did not proceed with any form of formal investigation.”

Mortensen said he had not received the letter and was notified of it by the Journal. In a Thursday interview, he did not entirely dismiss concerns cited by the NMDOJ, saying that “some of it’s probably legitimate,” but pointed the finger at Stride.

“I’m sure that that stuff was submitted by Stride. It’s just more sideshow that Stride’s trying to create,” Mortensen said.

Stride Superintendent Adam Hawf said in an interview that the company had not alerted the NMDOJ on the matter. He also denied that the company’s action taken against the district was a “sideshow,” saying that the “legal work that went into it was serious and rigorous.”

In April, Stride filed an ethics complaint with the state against Gallup-McKinley County Schools Superintendent Mike Hyatt as the district began the termination of its contract.

Stride said Hyatt had applied for a job with Stride — which was denied in February — and then sought to terminate the company’s contract with the district. The company alleged that violated the Governmental Conduct Act and state Procurement Code. The state’s ethics commission did not provide an update on the status of the complaint.

“I’m not a lawyer by any means, but I think that that sort of a plain language reading of the Procurement Code, the Government Code. ... I think it makes it pretty explicitly clear,” Hawf said. “It’s really out of sync with professional norms.”

However, according to Mortensen, the company was not providing adequate teacher-to-student ratios in its instruction, and that was part of the rationale for terminating the contract. Hawf said that the student-to-teacher ratios were the district’s fault and that Stride didn’t have control over the number of students enrolled in courses. The district said its purchase order with Stride came out to $30.7 million for the 2025 fiscal year.

“It’s a classic case of catching a billion dollar for profit company with their hand in the cookie jar,” Hyatt said in an interview Monday. “Unfortunately, I had thought they were an honest company, working with integrity with us.”

He also said he agreed with the letter Sanchez sent to the DOJ and added, “We didn’t get a chance to respond ahead of time before they made their ruling on that. So hopefully we can get things worked out and move forward.”

Hyatt also did not rule out taking legal action against Stride for its ethics complaint against him.

“What happened is they were in a corner. They’re going to look bad because of what they did to our students. We caught them, and they felt that they would be better off trying to spin the narrative against me,” he said.

Mortensen said he doesn’t blame Hyatt for applying for the job at Stride and that “it was way better from a financial standpoint” but was unaware he had applied for a position with Stride until the ethics complaint was filed.

Hyatt’s salary was not provided, but the base salary for the district’s superintendent is listed at roughly $226,000. Hyatt requested a salary of $235,000 to be Stride’s vice president of innovation. Deputy Superintendent Jvanna Hanks said in an interview that she was aware prior to the ethics complaint he was looking for other jobs, including the position at Stride.

She echoed the concerns Mortensen had about class sizes for Stride courses, and added that “over 1,700 students drop(ed) out of that program this past year.”

“I would say that often people tell the story that they want you to hear; they don’t necessarily tell you the truth,” Hanks said.