It sure looks like winning is everything
What’s going on at Española Valley Public Schools?
The school district last week reinstated Richard Martinez as the Sundevils’ basketball coach, although the state Public Education Department continues to investigate Martinez for what the PED calls “troubling allegations” and “serious potential ethical and criminal misconduct.”
Martinez was fired by former Española Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez in April. Gutierrez quit hours after the firing, apparently because of a lack of support from the school board in a town for which Martinez has brought home two state championships. The football coach stepped down in solidarity with Gutierrez.
Documents released by PED indicate Martinez is accused of bullying players, including by telling one athlete whose father committed suicide, “You suck, just like your dad did.” And there are questions about $1,000 in money missing from a fundraiser account.
Gutierrez — who’s earned respect through a long career as an educator, including service as superintendent in Santa Fe — wrote in her letter firing Martinez that he had refused to meet with her three times after he was placed on administrative leave, symptomatic “of a pattern in which you do not believe that the rules or directives of your supervisors apply to you.”
In February 2014, Martinez was placed on leave by a prior superintendent amid an earlier investigation of allegations of demeaning players and slapping a female student during a physical education class. But that probe is said to have failed to find sufficient proof to verify misconduct.
Sam Bregman, Martinez’s lawyer, has denied the most recent allegations. And Martinez has said he was really fired for a video that surfaced after this year’s championship season showing him leading his team in a prayer.
The controversy has split a city for which the Sundevils’ on-court success is a major source of community pride. The school board also apparently is divided — one board member said the reinstatement deal sold out the “poor kids who went up and actually stood up for themselves” by raising allegations against Martnez. One has to wonder if a coach with a less sparkling win-loss record could survive such turmoil and accusations.
A big problem is that the new superintendent, Eric Martinez, has stopped talking about the controversy with much of the news media, including the Española, Santa Fe and Albuquerque newspapers. In the case of the Journal’s correspondent, Martinez hasn’t even bothered to return calls, much less make an effort to defend rehiring Martinez, even in broad terms.
School board president Pablo Lujan says it was administrators who struck the rehiring deal, speculating that they “must have felt that the punishment did not fit the crime. So they decided to negotiate a deal rather than cost the district thousands of dollars in litigation.” No one has explained how keeping Martinez around is a good thing for an educational institution.
Is Martinez a serial bully and abuser, or a tough coach who’s made some players and parents upset with his decisions on playing time? Did he blow off a superintendent, as Gutierrez says, essentially placing himself as basketball coach above the district’s chief educator?
The PED is trying to answer those questions right now and a negative finding by the state agency could cost Martinez his educator’s license. At the very least, the leaders of Española’s school system should have waited for the PED to finish its investigation before bringing Martinez back.
No lawyer is scary enough for the district’s leaders to abdicate their responsibilities as educators and caretakers of Española’s students.