The New Mexico Department of Justice recently published the results of a yearslong investigation into Gallup-McKinley County Schools and found that the district disproportionately disciplines Native American and Hispanic students, causing them to miss exponentially more instructional time than other students across the state.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez’s report, published Thursday, found that the district’s students lose “at least twice as many” instructional days as those in other New Mexico districts to out-of-school suspensions. It’s even higher for Native American and Hispanic students, who lose “roughly eight to 10 times” and three to four times as many school days as their white peers, according to the report.
Teachers in the district impose harsher penalties on Native and Hispanic students than on white students, the report says.
Torrez’s office launched this investigation in 2023 following news reports that the district drove New Mexico’s outsized rates of expelling Native students.
In the agency’s new report, titled “Forced Out: How Exclusionary and Disparate Disciplinary Practices at Gallup-McKinley County Schools Rob Students of Instructional Time,” NMDOJ officials wrote that the district “appears to have made progress” in some areas, including reducing its number of expulsions and referrals to law enforcement agencies.
The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission in March also issued a report that called on district leaders to adopt a new, culturally appropriate disciplinary system in light of these longstanding allegations.
A district spokesperson in a statement to Source NM wrote that under Superintendent Jvanna Hanks’ leadership, district leaders created an Equity Council, which will include positions “designated for members of the Native American community.”
“Gallup-McKinley County Schools is aware of and has been reviewing the New Mexico Department of Justice report and appreciates NMDOJ’s work to help ensure all students are treated fairly, supported appropriately and able to remain engaged in learning,” the statement said.
Broadly, the issue of lost instructional time has been a focus for state lawmakers in recent months. A June Legislative Finance Committee report found that a $2.6 billion investment aimed in large part at complying with the state’s landmark Yazzie/Martinez educational equity lawsuit had done little to rectify the issue of kids missing out on learning time.
Students across the state are required to annually attend a minimum of 1,140 instruction hours. The average absentee student in New Mexico missed about 215 hours in the 2024-25 school year — nearly one-fifth of the total required learning time, according to that report.
However, Kevin Mitchell, president of the Gallup-McKinley County Schools Board of Education, pushed back on the NMDOJ findings. Native American students will comprise the majority of the district’s disciplinary actions because the majority of its students are Native, he said.
The sprawling district sits in the Four Corners region and includes portions of the Navajo Nation. In fact, nearly 54% of Gallup’s population is Indigenous, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest data.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out we’re talking about 89% Native American population throughout the whole district…it could be a little higher,” Mitchell told Source NM. “‘You guys are disciplining Native Americans more than other students.’ Well, of course — it’s all we have.”
Mitchell added that many of his district’s schools serve small, rural communities, meaning a handful of chronic offenders in the classroom can skew overall disciplinary rates.
In a follow-up statement to Source NM, Mitchell wrote that he and his elected colleagues on the Board of Education have “consistently fought for quality education for all students,” citing the new Equity Council and the re-establishment of an Indian Education Committee.
“This work does not end with one report or meeting,” Mitchell wrote.
