Anson Stevens-Bollen
Plaintiffs in the Yazzie-Martinez consolidated lawsuit filed a new motion stating the state has failed to comply with its 2018 court order to address inequity in New Mexico's schools.
When Wilhelmina Yazzie first became a plaintiff in a 2014 lawsuit against the State of New Mexico alleging inequity in the state’s education system, her son was a third-grade student at Gallup-McKinley County Schools.
Now, her son is entering his second year in college, and in her perspective, not much has changed in education since. In Yazzie’s childrens’ school district, she notes a lack of social services offered to students still reeling from losing family members in the pandemic. Transportation to school is difficult in rural and tribal areas. She adds the district has “not fully implemented” broadband and Internet access for all students.
“I think the urgency of this motion is very important, because it all comes down to our children’s future right now. My son…he wasn’t given those opportunities,” Yazzie tells SFR. “But now, I have an eight-year-old daughter who just started third grade, and I want her to have these opportunities, along with all of our other children in our school district right now. From the beginning, we had this hope and trust in our state to really make these changes. Now that we’re going on six years, we’re getting frustrated.”
On Wednesday morning, plaintiffs from the consolidated Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit filed a new motion stating New Mexico failed to comply with its 2018 court ruling, which ordered the state to provide at-risk students—including low-income, Native American, English language-learning and disabled students—with an “equitable and culturally relevant” education.
“Defendants’ failure to develop and implement a comprehensive remedial plan has had catastrophic consequences for at-risk students across the state,” the joint motion reads. “Student outcomes (proficiency in reading, math and science) today are as bad or worse than they were in 2017 at the trial in this case.”
The joint motion filed in First Judicial District Court also asks the court to order the state to “develop a comprehensive remedial plan” with the input and collaboration of the plaintiffs, educational leaders and experts, state and tribal government officials, the Public Education Department (PED) and advocates to address the “continuing violation of at-risk students’ constitutional rights.”
Notably, this motion is unopposed by the State of New Mexico. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who represents the state as a defendant, “agrees with plaintiffs that there has been insufficient compliance” with the 2018 ruling, New Mexico Department of Justice Communications Director Lauren Rodriguez confirms to SFR.
While the motion states the PED opposed the motion, PED Communications Director Janelle García tells SFR via email that this “is not accurate,” and that “rather, counsel properly noted she could not take a position until reviewing the lengthy pleading.”
Additionally, the PED learned of the pleading through a plaintiff’s website and has not yet been served, she writes.
“The PED would vehemently disagree that there is non-compliance with any Court order,” García writes. “The agency remains open to discussing the structure that can collaboratively move this matter forward, and along with its partners, has implemented numerous policy initiatives and interventions for the benefit of our students.”
In a press release from the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, Education Director and attorney for the Yazzie plaintiffs Melissa Candelaria (San Felipe Pueblo) described the state’s response to the 2018 ruling as “lackadaisical” and “disappointing.”
“Our motion rectifies this by demanding a concrete, remedial plan that would put the state on the right path to providing Native American students, English learners, students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged children the education, resources and opportunities they have been denied for too long,” Candelaria says in the release. “It’s beyond time for the state to step up and meet its obligations. The State of New Mexico must do better.”
James Martinez, another plaintiff in the case who currently has four kids in Albuquerque Public Schools, tells SFR “not much” has changed in his district since the 2018 ruling either, with “dwindling resources” for students in growing classrooms and issues with school facilities standing out most to him this year.
“We see art classes get whittled down, any type of extracurricular activities are few and far between, special programs like science programs, math programs—they’re limited in where they’re being offered, and definitely limited in lower-income areas like the South Valley compared to even schools in the [Northeast] Heights,” Martinez says. “There’s still that income disparity, and our students here in the South Valley are still struggling…the current administration, they’re not moving in the right direction, and they have no sense of urgency.”
Regis Pecos, chair of the Tribal Education Alliance, former Governor of the Cochiti Pueblo and expert witness in the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit, tells SFR he feels instability within the PED has contributed to the lack of a comprehensive plan to address the findings of the 2018 ruling.
“There have been multiple efforts since 2018 to develop [a plan], but with each effort, the turnover of the leadership in the [PED] has resulted in that total failure in the development of the comprehensive plan,” Pecos says. “I think the root cause of their inability is that there has been such a high turnover of secretaries in that department, as well as other levels of senior leaders in that department.”
Changes in leadership at the PED have continued into this year: last week, PED Secretary Arsenio Romero resigned from his position to pursue New Mexico State University’s open president position after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told him to either resign from his role at the PED or not pursue the NMSU job. Romero was the fourth PED secretary in four years.
Pecos notes that, in his view, the Legislature has made efforts toward addressing inequity in New Mexico’s schools, but that without a comprehensive plan, “All we really have done is invest huge amounts of money into the same system that created this crisis, that is at the heart of the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit.”
A few months ago, the Legislative Education Study Committee released an update on the state’s efforts to comply with the Yazzie-Martinez ruling on July 16.
The report found that while funding for education in New Mexico skyrocketed between fiscal years 2019 and 2025 (from $2.8 billion to $4.4 billion) and funding designed to aid at-risk students increased across the board, achievement gaps remained and the amount of funds spent on services for at-risk students significantly decreased from 75.4% to 23% between fiscal years 2020 and 2023.
Pecos says outcomes like these are why a more collaborative effort to create a plan, as the motion asks for, is needed to fully address the ruling’s findings. In the immediate aftermath of the 2018 ruling, he says, there was “an unprecedented collaborative effort” among school boards, superintendents, teachers’ unions, tribal leaders, teachers, advocates, parents and students to dissect the lawsuit’s findings and figure out where investments should be made in New Mexico’s schools, proposing solutions including the Tribal Remedy Framework and the Platform for Transformation.
“None of these have been incorporated, and what this has left the plaintiffs—specifically Native children—is that we have had to go independently to the Legislature to try and advocate for policy changes, for legislative initiatives and seeking appropriations,” Pecos says. “But, it has never been done in a collaborative manner with the PED or higher education along with the plaintiffs. The lack of that plan has resulted in a very fragmented and piecemeal approach to a crisis that continues to result in low academic achievement.”
Within the motion, plaintiffs say the PED issued an action plan to respond to the Yazzie-Martinez ruling in May 2022 that “did not consult the plaintiffs, the Legislature or tribal governments” to develop. The motion describes the 55-page plan as “woefully insufficient,” and also says the PED promised to release a second draft of the action plan by Sept. 30 in 2022, which it has still not done.
Pecos says he hopes the new motion will compel the state to engage with the plaintiffs.
“The plaintiffs have expended tremendous time and energy in developing remedies. After all, these are the bodies that represent district leaders, teachers in the classroom, people in the community, tribal leaders, their applicants,” Pecos says. “The hope is that this move forces all of us to be in the same room, so that we are collaborating…in a way that addresses the magnitude of our crisis. [New Mexico has] gone through several years of revenue surplus. The ultimate devastation would be to finally have a comprehensive plan and a comprehensive blueprint, and the response be that we don’t have the revenue with which to address these issues”
Yazzie expressed a similar sentiment, adding that her traditional Navajo upbringing taught her to see children as sacred and her mother’s work as a teacher inspires her to continue advocating for students.
“We can’t just be going generation through generation with our children suffering and make it seem like it’s OK. It’s not OK. We can’t afford to wait another five, six years for the state to fulfill its promise and obligation in the court ruling, to ensure that our students receive an equitable, quality education,” Yazzie tells SFR. “For six years, there has been just this piecemeal approach. That’s not working, and the state is not getting the job done. We still have hope, and we want to see these changes. So right now, we’re going back to court, and we really just want for them to call on experts and our community to work together, to collaborate.”
