‘He needs to be in school’
District stands by long-term suspension of Santa Fe High student involved in threatening-letter incident; sophomore blocked from attending most public schools
Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Veronica García is upholding the school district’s decision to place a Santa Fe High School sophomore on long-term suspension based on his ties to a letter threatening a mass shooting at the school in November.
But the student, 15-year-old Julian Carter, said he never saw the full letter, reportedly written by student Aaron Encinias, and what Carter saw and heard about the threat, he simply considered a bad joke.
Carter contends that as long as the district keeps him on long-term suspension, he cannot attend other traditional public schools around the nation that honor the district’s mandate.
“This has brought my life to a standstill pretty much,” Carter said by phone from Midwest City, Okla., last week, where he was living with his grandmother — a schoolteacher who works in the local school district there. He has since relocated to Prairie Village, Kan., to stay with family friends.
Carter said he does not want to come back to Santa Fe to attend school. But he also does not want to attend an online school, which is his only option under the rules of longterm suspension.
His mother, Jill Rael of Santa Fe, wrote a letter to García in early January — past the deadline the district set for her to respond to its decision to place Carter on suspension in early December — asking the superintendent to end the suspension so her son could attend school elsewhere.
“I request you drop Julian’s long term suspension immediately so he may proceed with his life and education elsewhere, recovering from the trauma inflicted upon him by false charges, allegations and imprisonment by the shameful hands of those who are paid by taxpaying citizens to educate, serve and protect,” Rael wrote in a Jan. 4 letter to García.
Otherwise, she said, Carter, “will be forced to enroll in an exclusively
online program, an extreme detriment to a child so engaged and active in school and social activities such as theatre, track and field, etc.’ ”
But García, in a Jan. 11 response to Rael, said that because Carter had violated a number of Santa Fe Public Schools code of conduct guidelines, she would not reverse course. But she also added Carter is eligible to register in Santa Fe next year. That point rankles Rael. “It’s ridiculous,” she said. “He is seen as a threat to all students. However, he is welcome back next year. It makes absolutely no sense.”
García declined comment on the matter Thursday, other than to say the district, as a matter of policy, does not discuss suspensions.
Rael said her son — whom she described as an outgoing, vibrant, high-achieving student with interests in theater and athletics — needs to be in a traditional setting to benefit from face-to-face interactions with teachers and other students.
“He needs to be in school,” she said. “It could set him off track if he does not get focused.”
As it is, he has missed over two months of learning, she said.
Carter’s troubles began Nov. 7, when a half-dozen Santa Fe High students brought a handwritten letter they found near the campus library to school Principal Carl Marano. The letter included a list of first names of students — including Julian — and the phrase “List of people to kill.” The note was dated Oct. 28, 2017.
School officials contacted the Santa Fe Police Department that day. Two detectives later went to Carter’s house to interview him, telling his mother they were concerned for his safety because his name was on the list. But Rael said once detectives arrived, they asked Carter if he knew about the letter. When he said he did, they placed him under arrest.
Rael said she feels police entered the house under false pretenses. At the time of the incident, police department spokesman Greg Gurulé said detectives acted “properly” in the investigation.
Police also arrested Encinias, accused of writing the letter, and Santa Fe High School student Santiago Trujillo, who was initially implicated in the incident as another witness to the letter. Efforts to reach Trujillo and his family were unsuccessful.
Carter, who said he shared just one class with Encinias and Trujillo, said he barely knew the other two students, and when they began talking about a list, he thought it was nothing more than a joke.
“Since I was new to class and wanted to make friends, I said, ‘Do the same with me,’ ” Carter said. “And that was it. I just thought it was some kid with a bad sense of humor.”
Nor did he see any references to a shooting spree, he said — just a list of names.
He said once he was booked into the Juvenile Detention Center, Encinias told him and Trujillo that the letter “was half meant to be a joke and half meant to vent. He said he was never actually going to do anything, but who knows?”
On Nov. 13, all three students appeared in District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer’s courtroom on charges of engaging in a terrorist action. Sommer dismissed the charges against Carter and Trujillo without prejudice, meaning charges could still be refiled. Encinias is still being held pending a trial.
A few days later, the school district held a hearing for Carter, where he said he apologized for his actions and asked not to be suspended on a long-term basis. Several district officials, including Marano, were present at that hearing, he said.
“I could tell from the moment we were introduced that they had made up their mind to suspend me,” Carter said. “It was obvious to me.”
District leaders say Carter violated the district’s code of conduct mandates, including classroom disruption and knowledge of other criminal activity. Under the safety and well-being category of the policy, school officials say Carter also ran afoul of threat, intimidation and disorderly conduct regulations.
Though Rael wanted to immediately appeal the decision following the hearing, her son told her he wanted to leave Santa Fe and return to Oklahoma, where he had spent several years as a child. Once he got there, he discovered that the Mid Del School District would not enroll him because of the suspension.
A representative of the Oklahoma State Education Department said each district’s school board sets its own policy regarding long-term suspensions. Stacey Boyer, a spokeswoman for the Mid-Del School District, said she would look into the issue last Thursday, but did not respond over the weekend. Carter said he wants to return to school. “I want a good future for myself,” he said. He plans to go to college to study biology and or architecture.
Carter said he will attend an online school in Kansas but is waiting for his mother to get his school transcripts for transfer credit. He said he’s spent a lot of time watching television and doing nothing since he left Santa Fe.
He said he has not been in touch with either Trujillo or Encinias since that day in court. “I don’t want to,” he said. He’s aware of the seemingly constant fear of school violence, particularly in light of the shooting at Aztec High School that took the lives of two students in early December, just a month after he was accused of participating in the threatening-letter crime.
“It’s awful that we have come to this point [about school security and fear],” he said. “But I don’t think that many kids nowadays fear a mass school shooting. I’ve only heard it talked about through joking; students making bad jokes like that list was. I’m still assuming it was just a joke.” He said he’s trying to remain upbeat. But Rael said her son has lost at least 15 pounds and has a hard time sleeping.
“It’s been a nightmare,” she said. “And we’re still in the middle of it — sleepless nights, anxiety, depression, unable to concentrate.”
Carter said he remains hopeful that things will work out. Of the incident, he said: “Anybody who knows me, who would sit down and talk with me, would know that I would never get involved with anything like that.”
Contact Robert Nott at 505-986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.