Yazzie-Martinez plaintiffs, NM activists hope to shape PED’s final remedial plan

Over the past decade, Wilhelmina Yazzie has become one of the most prominent voices in an effort to improve the education New Mexico provides to students.

“We still have to fight for what we feel is right. In this instance, it’s for our children,” she said in an interview last week.

The Gallup mother joined other parents in 2014, filing suit against the state’s Public Education Department, alleging it violated the constitutional rights of underserved students with the quality of education provided.

They won in 2018.

In April, seven years after the landmark “Yazzie-Martinez” ruling, a Santa Fe judge found that PED had not improved enough and ordered the department to develop and submit a finalized remedial plan by November.

The draft of the remedial plan was submitted on Oct. 1 and came on the heels of a statewide tour in which PED officials traveled to a dozen cities in August to gather feedback from parents, teachers and other stakeholders.

“Just clearly looking at it, skimming through the pages, there’s a lot of lack of details, a lot of dismissal of community voices,” Yazzie said of the draft plan. She added that she hopes the PED will correct issues she and her legal team have raised before the finalized plan is submitted.

The plan identifies four critical need areas: equitable access to high-quality instruction, equitable access to well-prepared, culturally and linguistically responsive educators, equitable access to academic social well-being and behavioral services, and effective funding support and accountability to drive systemic improvement.

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Each of those needs also comes with a three-year action plan laying out different ways the PED looks to address the issues.

Department Secretary Mariana Padilla told the Journal last month that the PED had been working with the plaintiffs on the plan — something lawyers representing both Yazzie and Martinez denied. Padilla was not made available to be interviewed for this story.

On Thursday night, about two dozen people attended an event hosted by Transform Education New Mexico and the Southwest Organizing Project at Central New Mexico Community College’s Northwest Albuquerque campus to voice what they wanted to see the PED include in its final draft of the remedial plan.

“A lot of my job is teaching political education to young people, and we use examples like Roe v. Wade, Brown v. the Board of Education,” Amanda Gallegos, youth organizer for the Southwest Organizing Project said at the meeting. “I do really think that one day, Yazzie-Martinez will be a case that folks use to better their states.”

During the panel portion of the event, speakers voiced their desire to see more from the plan, including education around Native languages, a broader inclusion of the needs of New Mexico’s Black and special needs students and more resources allocated to students’ mental health.

Following that, attendees broke off into groups to discuss different portions of the 70-page remedial plan, score them on a rubric, and offer recommendations.

Dignitaries in attendance included Janelle Astorga, an Albuquerque Public Schools board member and development coordinator for the Southwest Organizing Project, Richelle Montoya, vice president of the Navajo Nation, and Regis Pecos, former governor of Cochiti Pueblo — who was an expert witness in the initial Yazzie-Martinez case.

“Native people have a long history of being subjected to Western forms of education, using education as a deliberate process of assimilating us using education,” Pecos said in an interview last week. “There is not a very clearly delineated set of approaches with regard to addressing something as critical and the highest priority for tribal leaders on behalf of their children, there just isn’t.”

He added that while he was disappointed with the PED’s lack of improvement over the years and with the remedial plan, he remains optimistic that the state could turn its education system around.

“As Wilhelmina (Yazzie) always states, our responsibility is a sacred responsibility to those sacred beings that are our children,” Pecos said. “We have to hold strong, to try to influence the change of this draft plan to be more significant, to be more explicit in the response that we’ve been offering for nearly eight years as remedies to this landmark decision.”