SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION Race to fill open seat; Carrillo faces challenge
Winners will face many challenges in coming term, including bond vote in 2021
The longest-tenured Santa Fe school board member faces in the November elections a challenger with a career’s worth of experience in higher education.
Meanwhile, a retired superintendent who spent nearly four decades in public schools, and a working nurse who is a mother of four, are competing for an open board seat.
Voters will decide on contested races in District 1 and District 2, while school board member Rudy Garcia walks to reelection unopposed in District 4.
Two key issues await newly elected and sitting board members: Addressing a general obligation bond in 2021, and an ongoing response to the Yazzie-Martinez v. state of New Mexico lawsuit, in which a district judge ruled the state denied many groups of students an adequate education by underfunding schools.
In District 1, Steven Carrillo, who has been on the board since 2011, is touting his institutional experience in a race against challenger Carmen Gonzales.
“Successful districts have longevity on their board,” Carrillo said. “I’m talking about 12 to 24 years. That gives the superintendent a sense of stability and allows us to dig our feet in the ground and work on our strategic plan.
“I have experience to keep moving us forward in the same way we have moved forward over the last eight years.”
Carrillo cited several initiatives by the board during his tenure that he considers successes: implementing safety and facility improvements, adding arts and music as core subjects, launching a parent academy to improve family engagement and pushing for an anti-vaping measure in the upcoming legislative session.
At a candidate forum Thursday night hosted by the League of Women Voters of Santa Fe County, Gonzales, a former vice president of Santa Fe Community College and an administrator at New Mexico State University, highlighted her relationships with educators and lawmakers around the state.
“I have the knowledge, skills and connections to the education community and Legislature to make the right decisions for all students,” Gonzales said. “We can our make improvements for our students, but it’s going to take the whole community.”
This is her first bid for public office. In an interview in May when she announced her candidacy, Gonzales said she has deep ties to the school district. Her late father, Albert Gonzales, was a school board member and is the namesake of Gonzales Community School.
She graduated from Santa Fe High and began her 40-year education career as an elementary school teacher in Albuquerque, she said.
Gonzales said she would support early childhood education and prekindergarten, technological upgrades and fiscal responsibility if she were elected.
On Wednesday, the National Education Association-Santa Fe endorsed Gonzales in the District 1 race.
In recent weeks, NEA-Santa Fe President Grace Mayer has told the school board the union believes the district has too many schools and should consider closing some of its small, aging facilities so it can focus more resources on growing south-side schools.
Gonzales spoke during a public comment period at a board meeting, saying she is against closing schools.
“I think there are some creative ways we can solve this inequality without shutting down schools,” she said.
Carrillo said he wasn’t concerned about the effect of the union’s endorsement on his campaign. “I wouldn’t want the endorsement of an organization that supports closing our schools,” he said.
Candidates for the District 2 seat — which is being vacated by Maureen Cashmon after one term — are 39-year-old Sarah Boses and 72-yearold John Triolo.
Boses, a Santa Fe High grad who works as a registered oncology nurse, has two children at El Dorado Community School and has participated on the school’s Parent Teacher Association. Like Gonzales, she received an NEA-Santa Fe endorsement.
“Representation is important. It is incredibly challenging. I won’t pretend that it’s easy,” Boses said at Thursday night’s candidate forum. “I work full time as an oncology nurse. I have three small children at home. I help my husband with his business, and I don’t sleep very much.
“But I care,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about.”
Boses cited board President Kate Noble, another working mother of a Santa Fe Public Schools student, as her inspiration to run. She also said she was in favor of “creative solutions” rather than closing schools.
Triolo, who spent nearly 40 years in public school districts in California, working his way up from classroom teacher to superintendent, said he understood it could become necessary to close schools if districtwide enrollment, which has decreased by over 1,000 students in the past five years, continues to drop.
In New Mexico, state funding for public school districts is directly tied to enrollment numbers — and therefore also declines when student numbers drop.
“Let’s say we lost 100 kids over the next year, and that’s $600,000 per year,” said Triolo, who serves on the board of The MASTERS Program, a state charter school. “You’d have to show me how we can make up that revenue.
“I have lots of experience working with school boards as a superintendent, and sometimes I know you just can’t make up that revenue,” he added. “Based on what I’ve seen of the school board, school closure should not be off the table.”