A new lawsuit accuses Santa Fe Public Schools of improperly withholding public information about the installation of controversial audio-enabled cameras across the district.
The audio surveillance system, built up over years and likely costing millions, boiled over in September 2025 after a facilities employee reported being told she wouldn’t have access to a new camera because it had audio.
According to a heavily redacted 87-page investigative report commissioned by the district through its outside legal counsel, that worker then spread the word about the audio cameras. It quickly resulted in internal whistleblower complaints alleging the district broke wiretap law; Mario Salbidrez and Mark Lewandowski, the district’s former head of safety and security and his deputy, being put on leave and fired; and what the district’s lawyer said last month is an ongoing criminal probe by police.
Now the men’s attorney says the report on the cameras and their firings was an incomplete telling of the story.
The complaint was filed Friday in First Judicial District Court by Albuquerque law firm Huffman & Monagle, which represents Salbidrez and Lewandowski — and is itself the plaintiff in the suit against the Santa Fe school board.
‘Things … they don’t want people to see’
District spokesperson Tara Melton wrote in an email Tuesday the district “has not yet received any legal filings and therefore cannot comment on the matter.”
The complaint alleges, however, that the district has already defended the redactions as proper.
On Sept. 3, attorney Levi Monagle emailed the district asking it to “cure” what he called improper redactions.
District general counsel Joshua Granata declined, the complaint states, writing the document “was redacted pursuant to the exceptions under the law interpreted through current law. We do not believe that the redactions are contrary to IPRA.”
In redacting the report, the district cited three exceptions under the state Inspection of Public Records Act — matters of opinion in personnel files, confidential health information and federal student privacy law — but did not say which applied to which redaction, the complaint states.
Monagle cites redactions of witness statements, email subject lines, excerpts from source documents and “other objectively verifiable historical facts that do not constitute matters of opinion.” Others, the complaint states, “conceal entire sentences, paragraphs, or blocks of text.”
Though not repeated in the complaint, Monagle alleged in a phone interview last month the district had purposely over-redacted the report to produce “as little of it as it can.”
“Typically when government agencies are redacting things in documents like this, they’re redacting things that they don’t want people to see,” he said.
The firm is asking the court to review an unredacted copy behind closed doors, then order the district to release the report “with only those redactions the Court determines are authorized by law.” It also seeks statutory damages and costs.
The complaint also alleges Granata and other high-ranking officials knew about the cameras’ audio capabilities and relied on recordings in investigations before September 2025 — and that Superintendent Christine Griffin fired Salbidrez and Lewandowski even though the investigation identified no violation of law or district policy.
Griffin placed both men on paid administrative leave Sept. 17, 2025. The district hired Robert Caswell Investigations on Oct. 2, and investigator Christopher Cappon’s report, finalized Jan. 5, set out its aim as to “investigate the installation of audio-equipped surveillance cameras at district facilities.”
New IPRA precedent
The suit leans heavily on a case decided by the New Mexico Supreme Court in May, Albuquerque Journal v. Board of Education of Albuquerque Public Schools.
The Journal and KOB-TV had sought a 12-page investigative report into the abrupt 2014 departure of Superintendent Winston Brooks, who left the state’s largest district with a $350,000 payout and little public explanation.
Like the Santa Fe report, it was prepared at the district’s request by an outside attorney, Agnes Padilla.
Albuquerque Public Schools fought the request for 12 years, arguing the report was protected by attorney-client privilege and IPRA’s exception for matters of opinion in personnel files.
The Supreme Court ruled May 28 that a public body cannot withhold an entire investigative report under the opinion exception. It may redact specific opinions, the court ruled, but the facts must be disclosed unless another exception applies. The decision reversed a state Court of Appeals ruling in the district’s favor.
The case was passed to Second Judicial District Judge Nancy Franchini to determine what, if anything, to redact in the report. She ordered the district last month to release the report, allowing one redaction: the investigator’s conclusion, which is also blacked out in the Santa Fe report.
Albuquerque Public Schools released the report, which examined whether Brooks’ wife, Ann Brooks, had harassed district employees and whether she had accessed his email or texts through his district-issued phone, on Sept. 4.
“The release of this report underscores concerns about the broader implications about the Supreme Court’s decision,” Albuquerque Public Schools spokesperson Johanna King said in a statement to the Journal. “In this case, information from more than a decade ago is now being made public, with the potential to cause real harm to individuals whose private lives are reflected in those records.”
