Testy exchange telling for troubled Santa Fe schools
Amid low scores, grades, board president takes super to task in public display, creating ‘discord’
Santa Fe Board of Education President Steven Carrillo wants the school board and the public to hold Superintendent Veronica García “accountable” for improving student proficiency rates in the next year. And he wants it done in public.
García wants the board and the community to share that responsibility with her. And she doesn’t want the board to clutter board
meeting agendas with “controversial” issues that distract her from doing her job.
It’s the kind of back-and-forth
dialogue you’d expect in an executive — closed-door — session. But the sometimes testy discussion between the board president and the superintendent played out in the open late Tuesday night during a board meeting that included talk about how to improve the district’s scores.
And it brought up questions as to whether, just two months after approving an extension of García’s contract for another year, friction is developing between the superintendent and the board — or at least its president.
Carrillo denied any such tension in a follow-up interview last week, saying he and Garcia “have a good working relationship.”
Later, he added: “I don’t want people to think that I am not 100 percent in support of her work.”
Carrillo said his intent was to make it clear that it’s acceptable for the board members and the superintendent to disagree about issues in public.
“It’s OK to have conflict and to discuss it and for us to work through it and for the public to witness it,” he said.
And, he added, “I would like to see more accountability measures on a more frequent basis,” perhaps quarterly, from García.
For her part, García said a recent “high-marks” evaluation from the five-member board led her to be “taken aback” with the “level of unhappiness” expressed by Carrillo at the meeting.
“It created a discord publicly between the president and I, which I do not feel existed before, which is unfortunate,” she said.
Tuesday’s open conversation followed a lengthy presentation and discussion of the district’s proficiency scores, released last month, and its school grades, released earlier this month. The grades had initiated a bout of verbal sparring between García and state Public Education Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski.
Referring to the fact that 56 percent of the district’s schools received D’s or F’s, Ruszkowski called Santa Fe “a district in crisis,” adding that when a district is in such trouble, it is time to “look at the superintendent.”
García and others who spoke at Tuesday’s board meeting said Ruszkowski was engaging in political warfare because the Public Education Department disapproves of García serving as a key witness for the plaintiffs in a landmark lawsuit against the state questioning whether New Mexico provides enough resources to offer a “sufficient” public education for its students.
She and others said that as recently as July, the department said the district was on an upward trajectory and would succeed if given constant support.
Much of Tuesday’s meeting involved García and members of her administrative team highlighting the small but steady gains the district’s 13,000 students have made on the annual PARCC reading and math tests and the efforts the district, under García’s guidance, has taken to improve matters.
García said those district programs should pay off in the next year. And, she said, a new Teamwork Santa Fe initiative designed to get her leadership staff members into the schools more often to lessen the burden for principals also should yield positive results within a year.
But about four hours into Tuesday’s meeting, Carrillo began expressing his frustration with the district’s progress and suggested the administration is making excuses — including high poverty rates among students, a high percentage of English-language learners and the learning challenges of special education children — for the schools’ struggles.
Based on recent test scores, Santa Fe students saw slight improvements in both reading and math, but only 29 percent of them are proficient in reading and just 17.6 percent are proficient in math. Statewide, those numbers are slightly better: 31.1 percent for reading and 21.6 percent for math.
District students made a 0.7 percentage point gain in reading scores this year and a 1.1 percentage point gain in math.
Carrillo primed his Tuesday remarks before an assembly of at least 50 district employees, including principals, this way: “We do so much behind closed doors, and I don’t like it. We have to hold the superintendent accountable … next year has to be the year of accountability … for the things you said you are going to do relative to what incremental progress we are making.”
García, in response, said, “So here’s the deal — you’re going to hold me accountable and we’re going to have this ‘nice’ discourse? I’m going to do the same thing [to you].” “Absolutely,” Carrillo said. In the past four or five months, the board has spent considerable time in meetings debating and voting on nonacademic items, such as to whether to accept National Rifle Association money for the district’s Junior ROTC program, limiting visits by Fiesta Court members because of concerns that they could offend some students and contemplating whether to hold student athletes accountable if their parents act up at sports games.
García said in an interview Thursday she feels the board sometimes “gets embroiled in controversies over time that distract us from the work we need to do. I would prefer less bells and whistles, less distraction by shiny objects … and more focus on improving educational outcomes for children. I need the board’s help with that.”
Board members Rudy Garcia and Kate Noble, who were in attendance at Tuesday’s meeting, said nothing during or after the exchange. Board member Maureen Cashmon was traveling out of state and did not attend the meeting, while board member Lorraine Price left shortly before Carrillo’s discourse. Before she departed, Price read a short statement saying she fully supports the superintendent.
On Thursday, Noble said she also supports Veronica García and her improvement plans. “I have a huge amount of faith in our superintendent,” she said. “We are lucky to have her. … She’s not perfect. Nobody is. But she is an excellent talent for Santa Fe at this time.”
On Saturday, Cashmon also expressed her support of the superintendent, saying she believes García “will get it turned around this year.” But, she said, “To evaluate the superintendent in public is wrong as a school board. That’s a personnel issue. That was probably not appropriate.”
Efforts to reach Rudy Garcia for comment were unsuccessful.
For the most part, the board has shown support for Veronica García since hiring her in the summer of 2016 on a one-year interim basis. García, 66, succeeded Joel Boyd, who resigned after four years. Shortly thereafter, the board voted to give García a two-year deal. In February 2017, the board unanimously voted to extend that contract, at $180,000 a year, through June 30, 2019.
In June, the board voted to extend the contract by another year, into 2020, meaning García’s four-year tenure as superintendent will be at least as long as her two immediate predecessors — Boyd and Bobbie Gutierrez.
“I want results. They want results,” García said. “I can’t do it if we don’t stay focused.”
Carrillo said he understands that.
But, he said, “If we move [proficiency rates] at 1.5 or 2 percent a year, that’s great, but I’m gonna be dead by the time we’re at 40 percent. And that’s not OK with me.”