GALLUP — As a Navajo teacher detailed her experiences in Gallup-McKinley County Schools, Superintendent Mike Hyatt, seated behind her, quietly began to record.
He was “very respectful” and stopped recording when reminded about the rules of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission, Chair Wendy Greyeyes said.
She was grateful school administrators had attended the commission’s October hearing at the Red Lake Chapter House, in a small community near the Arizona state line about 40 miles northwest of Gallup. The event was held to gather input on the district’s treatment of Navajo staff and students.
“We want them to hear what the community’s saying,” Greyeyes said. “They’re the ones making the policy decisions for the school.”
After hearing dozens of accounts from Navajo people, the commission concluded in a recent report Gallup-McKinley County Schools for years has perpetuated systemic inequities for Native students and staff through funding measures that shortchange schools on the Navajo Nation, a culture of retaliation against employees who voice concerns and criticism — and an educational environment that commissioners say has never been designed with Navajo people’s futures in mind.
Those findings point to concerns community members and teachers have been raising for years, with limited success, to state authorities.
The school district — which has the highest rate of Navajo enrollment in the country, with half of its 32 schools on tribal land — is simultaneously facing a federal probe into discrimination against Native American job candidates and staff, and a newly finalized, yearslong New Mexico Department of Justice investigation that has found “troubling disciplinary practices” affecting Native students.
Leaders of the sprawling rural district — which also faced a costly legal battle with a private company over virtual learning turmoil that caused a statewide education funding crisis — have for years faced allegations of a broader culture of retaliation against all teachers, and have been accused of a lack of transparency.
The troubled district could be on the brink of something new.
A November school board election swept out three incumbents, including two multiterm board members, amid a surge in voter turnout, bringing in three reform-minded newcomers. Additionally, Hyatt — a longtime district employee at the center of many of the complaints and legal troubles — retired at the end of February.
However, the new board members took their seats earlier this year amid continued friction between the new and old guard, with a new superintendent chosen just weeks earlier. The previous board had named Deputy Superintendent Jvanna L. Hanks II as Hyatt’s successor at a meeting Nov. 17. The decision, which came with no job posting or formal search, no other candidates and no public comment, spurred community outrage. More than 300 people signed a petition to “allow democracy” to choose a new superintendent.
The district announced in late February the school board, with its new members, had taken another vote on Hanks at a special meeting, naming her interim superintendent.
Hanks declined to comment on the petition or the board’s votes.
“Today, GMCS has new leadership and a new school board, and we are working to continue and to further address the kinds of concerns addressed in the [Navajo Nation Human Rights] Commission’s report,” she said.
New board member Georgianna Desiderio, a Navajo employee of McKinley County, urged a crowd at a town hall in January “to have patience with us.”
“We know that things, challenges, hardships, that we face don’t change overnight,” she said. “But as of right now, I can tell you that we are moving in a positive direction.”
‘Years of frustration’
After the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission released its report on Gallup-McKinley County Schools in late February, Greyeyes wrote in a letter to tribal leaders, the findings based on statements were “deeply emotional — compelling us to take meaningful action.”
The commission lists no names in the report of people who testified because they requested anonymity “out of concern for potential retaliation from the school district.”
The report was compiled after four community sessions held in the fall at chapter houses across the Navajo Nation. Thirty-nine people testified — parents, grandparents, current and former district employees and tribal leaders. A few school district administrators and officials from the New Mexico Department of Justice attended as well.
“That emotion sprung out of the years and years of frustration that parents and community members and teachers and staff were feeling,” Greyeyes said. “We were hearing about stories from 10 years ago. There [have] been a lot of systematic issues that have been internalized. They hold onto these memories of how they were treated.”
The report comes as a follow-up to a 2022 commission inquiry into Native students across the region, including reports of disproportionate disciplinary measures against Navajo students in Gallup schools. This time, the commission broadened its scope and found discrimination against Native students and staff.
Among its findings: funding disparities in which schools off Navajo Nation land received more modern facilities, equipment and classroom materials — while some students on tribal land went without water or heat.
Several current and former employees alleged retaliation after raising concerns about unfair hiring and promotion practices, or poor treatment of colleagues. One 20-year veteran teacher was fired, the report states, “after questioning a school policy that did not accommodate her circumstances following the recent loss of her daughter.”
The commission’s recommendations share a common thread: The institutions meant to oversee the district have failed to do so. It urges the state Department of Justice to conclude an investigation it began in 2023 into disciplinary disparities, calls for a financial audit addressing funding gaps for schools on tribal land, and pushes for a formal memorandum between the district and the tribe.
The commission asks that the state “leverage resources” through a ruling in the landmark education lawsuit Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico, which found the state is failing in its constitutional duty to provide an adequate education to Native students.
“Historically, education’s been a tool to civilize, to assimilate, to acculturate Navajo people,” Greyeyes said. “And we’ve always tried to make efforts and strides to make it our own, by pushing and demanding sovereignty in Navajo education. That’s been a major battle.”
She noted advocates initially expected the Department of Justice to follow the commission’s 2022 report into the school district’s treatment of Native students with a report on its own investigation. When such a report never came, the commission opened its second inquiry.
“We recognized that Attorney General Raúl Torres had stated after this report came out that he would actually try to do an investigation. And so we’ve been waiting on that investigation, and we realized a lot of that wasn’t going to happen,” Greyeyes said. “And so this is kind of our own effort … to bring more awareness of some of these concerns.”
According to a spokesperson for the state Department of Justice, the agency’s report is pending.
Chief of Staff Lauren Rodriguez wrote in an email last week the agency “conducted an exhaustive investigation into the disciplinary practices of the Gallup McKinley School District, which included complex statistical analyses, in-depth interviews with individuals, and coordinated outreach to key stakeholders.”
She added, “We are in the process of finalizing a report of our findings for the PED Secretary, highlighting the need for continued oversight of the district, enforcement of data reporting requirements, and meaningful review to better track and baseline student discipline across the state.”
She noted, however, that while the agency “identified troubling disciplinary practices,” state law currently “does not provide a clear statutory pathway to pursue formal legal action against the district for this particular conduct.”
Torrez has been working without success to strengthen civil rights legislation, Rodriguez wrote, and will continue to push for changes under a new governor.
‘A culture of fear’
One Navajo teacher who spoke to The New Mexican said her testimony before the commission was the first time she felt “an implied protection” to speak openly about what she called retaliation by officials at Gallup-McKinley County Schools. She was later “strongly discouraged” by her principal from being named in this story, she said, at the risk of losing her teaching contract. The New Mexican is not naming her due to the job threat.
Graham McNeill, president of the local teachers union MCFUSE — the McKinley County Federation of United School Employees Local 2212, a chapter of the American Federation of Teachers of New Mexico — argued there is no such clause in teacher contracts.
McNeill is not Navajo, but he knows what retaliation looks like firsthand.
After seeing a story in the now-defunct Gallup Independent in 2024 reporting the principal at Miyamura High School had left a previous district after he was accused of child abuse, McNeill, then the union representative at the school, took his concerns to school board member Michael Schaaf — one of the two longtime board members who lost their seats in the November election.
“I was like, ‘This is kind of disturbing. Are you all doing an investigation of this?’ ” McNeill recounted of the June 2024 call.
The next day, he said, he was summoned to the assistant principal’s office, where two district-level administrators accused him of breaking “chain of command” by contacting a board member. That afternoon, he received a letter notifying him he was being transferred to a different school.
“They were trying to paint it like … I was just unhappy with the school — like I had a bad attitude or something,” he said.
“There is this culture of fear and decisions that are made at the top and very little discussion — I mean, there’s just no stakeholder input,” said Whitney Holland, president of AFT New Mexico. She described Gallup schools as “the most closed off to the union” out of all the districts with teachers represented by AFT’s 30 New Mexico chapters.
She cited various battles waged with the Gallup district over allowing union organizers into schools during teacher preparation time as something “we don’t have in other places.”
The union is fighting a separate battle over former union president Sawyer Masonjones, whom the district fired in June, alleging “gross misconduct,” shortly after he became the union president. District administrators cited a union email Masonjones had sent during the workday and later unveiled a barrage of allegations, including accusations that he had allowed students to vape in class or skip his class entirely.
Masonjones, who is not Navajo, sued the school board in September in the 11th Judicial District Court in McKinley County, seeking a court-appointed arbitrator to settle the labor dispute. Arbitration initially was scheduled in February, but the school district’s attorney delayed it until the end of March, Holland said.
“The school district’s lawyer was unavailable suddenly, and I want to believe that’s true, but I worry that this is like another stall and delay tactic to just drag this on as long as possible for him,” she added.
After McNeill’s transfer, his partner, Patti Stewart — a local Spanish interpreter — has spent nearly two years raising concerns at school board meetings about retaliation toward staff and a lack of transparency, alleging she was once physically removed from a board meeting by security “goons” for speaking up when there was no opportunity for public comment.
Contacting every state agency she could reach, she then brought her campaign to a January teachers union town hall at the Gallup Community Service Center, urging the roughly 50 to 60 people gathered there to join a letter-writing campaign.
“They’re probably sick of me,” she told the crowd. “I call the [Public Education Department], I call the DOJ, labor board. I call ethics — everything.”
A spokesperson from the state Public Education Department wrote in an email late last month the agency “does not comment on ongoing investigations.”
But documents obtained through public records requests — including reports Stewart filed — suggest a yearslong pattern of complaints from district staff and community members.
“I have been getting complaints about the school district for months, but the most recent ones are from people who are very scared,” Christine Barber, executive director of the nonprofit New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, wrote in a July email to the New Mexico Department of Justice.
“You are the only one with the power to ease teachers’ fears that they will lose their livelihoods if they say the wrong word,” she added.
Then-special counsel Rose Bryan from the department’s Civil Affairs Division wrote back to Barber that day: “Unfortunately, the experience you describe below is not unique.”
Hanks denied employees have faced retaliation.
“The District does not discriminate or retaliate against staff,” she wrote in an email last week. “We look forward to working together with all members of staff and the community and will continue to support a productive and positive working environment.”
Many complaints single out Hyatt, who joined the district as a math teacher in the early 2000s and became superintendent in 2017. While allegations of retaliation precede his leadership, his name arises repeatedly in public records and in conversations with district staff as fueling the culture of retaliation.
One 2023 complaint to the state Department of Justice states, “He has a reputation for being arrogant and many of his actions as a leader are more akin to being a bully.”
Hyatt did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
‘Fishing expedition’
In a series of cases pending before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the school district has resisted federal efforts to investigate discrimination against Native American employees and job candidates, arguing the federal agency’s probe is unlawful and overly broad.
The initial investigation kicked off shortly after Aug. 21, 2024, when commission Chair Andrea Lucas filed a Commissioner’s Charge, alleging discrimination toward Native job candidates and staff since at least 2020. Attorneys for the commission state in legal filings in U.S District Court the school district was initially cooperative.
However, a day before an agreed-upon meeting in Gallup between federal investigators and administrators including Hyatt, district attorney Andrew Sanchez abruptly canceled, telling the EEOC the district would “no longer voluntarily cooperate” with its investigation or data requests, the agency said in a complaint filed in August, which seeks a federal judge’s enforcement of its subpoenas.
A few days before that planned meeting, the school board filed its own lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the federal agency and Lucas, calling the investigation an illegal “fishing expedition” in which the commission violated its own policies.
The district has maintained that position.
“The District will follow the law and hopes the EEOC does the same,” Hanks wrote in an email last week.
Angie Shaw, an English teacher, spoke about the issue at the union town hall in January. “You heard that right,” she said. “Somebody is trying to do their job to investigate district discriminatory hiring … and the district responds by suing them.”
She added, “These decisions raise concerns about misuse of public funds, about a lack of oversight, resources diverted away from classrooms and student supports.”
Virtual education crisis
The Gallup district came under scrutiny by the state Department of Justice in May for a school board decision that would have school funding consequences statewide.
The agency sent a letter after a May 16 meeting citing “key violations and concerns with the Board’s compliance with [the Open Meetings Act]” — noting problems with virtual access and a lack of public comment — and the way the board had terminated its contract with a virtual education company to run an academy serving 3,000 students across New Mexico.
When the board canceled a contract with Stride K12 to run the New Mexico Destinations Career Academy, the national cyber school giant took its business — and its students — elsewhere.
Before the start of the current school year, the company secured deals with the Chama Valley and Santa Rosa school districts for each to take about 1,500 virtual students.
This caused a crisis for the Public Education Department, which divvies up school funding largely based on student enrollment for the prior year.
The agency was due to pay Gallup schools for the 3,000 students it no longer served. But under another funding rule, it also would have been required to pay the Santa Rosa and Chama Valley districts to serve the same students. That double payment would have cost some $75 million, creating a gap that would have led to cuts at schools across New Mexico.
State Sen. George Muñoz, a Gallup Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, urged the Gallup school district to hand over the $35 million it received for the virtual students it lost. He vowed to wait in the district’s office “until they write a check.”
The district maintained it had no obligation to return the funds.
State lawmakers moved to stop the double payment during the recent legislative session, while also approving broader guardrails for virtual education companies.
Before passing the measure, lawmakers softened the financial hit on Gallup, whose administrators argued they needed the money to settle a lawsuit brought by Stride K12.
The Gallup school board voted last month to settle the suit for an undisclosed sum. District officials declined to disclose the amount, but Muñoz said in a recent interview the payout was $50 million, according to “a little birdie [who] left me a note.”
As part of the settlement, the district reinstated a modified contract with Stride through June 2026, “under which the company will provide certain K12 tutoring services to District resident students,” according to a news release. District officials declined to comment further on the deal.
The district gave several reasons for its dispute with Stride, accusing the company of conspiracy and fraud, alleging it found false enrollment numbers after “a comprehensive review of student outcomes, operational performance, and contractual obligations,” Hanks wrote in a recent email.
Stride gave just one reason: Hyatt.
In an April complaint to the State Ethics Commission, the company alleged Hyatt “tried to leverage his position” to obtain a job with Stride. It was only after he was rejected for the position in February 2025 that Hyatt moved to terminate the contract the following May — a move Stride maintains violated state law.
Hanks denied the company’s account, writing the decision “was not based on any individual employment matter or personal outcome.”
The district has since reopened a virtual school with new contractors, OpenEd and Graduation Alliance, Hanks wrote, both nationwide online education companies hired “through a competitive solicitation process.”
Hanks, who was picked as Hyatt’s successor Nov. 17, was formally appointed as interim superintendent late last month, for a period of a few months before a full superintendent contract kicks in.
The length of that new contract is unclear, with one board member reached over the phone declining to comment on its terms.
“My hope, particularly for this interim period, is that this can be one of listening to understand,” said Dr. Vallory Wangler, a family physician and one of the board’s new members, at the Feb. 26 board meeting.
Hanks will be “starting the hard work of rebuilding trust and rebuilding the relationships with our schools, our educators, our communities. So I’m optimistic,” she said.