Española School District Superintendent Fred Trujillo got a giant pass from the school Board Dec. 18 when it voted 3-2 to extend his contract a year, despite the fact his contract wasn’t up until June 2022.
Trujillo’s contract originally ran from June 2020 to June 2022. That’s standard in the education world. His contract now runs through June 2023.
It’s hard to get a superintendent to take a job for a one year contract. School boards don’t want to be saddled with two year contracts, because board composition changes with elections and a new board could be supervising a superintendent the majority doesn’t want.
And want is the right word. Often it isn’t about skills, performance or ability. Actually more often it’s about politics, parents and God help us, sports.
But to give Trujillo another year when he has yet to prove most of his abilities was a bad move on the part of the Board. We don’t doubt Trujillo’s experience and abilities, but when it comes to running a school district, you’d like to see some solid accomplishments, a couple of wins, a change in test scores, graduation rates, attendance. He can’t demonstrate that right now. Actually no one outside of his administration knows where any of those metrics are.
The state is content to change an F that represents zero into one that represents 50 so that a student’s average can drag him or her along and push them along to the next grade and say, good riddance. That’s not helping anyone but runs in line with our current system of refusing to hold back students not performing at grade level.
Everyone would like to see bullying addressed, fewer calls from security for cops, fewer fights, less vandalism. We don’t know how Trujillo will handle those issues. As Mesa Vista Superintendent Albert Martinez said, the fights and bullying have stopped at his school. Clearly they’ve stopped at every school practicing virtual lessons.
The Board members in favor of giving Trujillo another year were perhaps hoping for stability, something the District got a taste of with former superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez. The instability problem isn’t solved by a three-year contract. Trujillo can quit any time he gets a better offer or is tired of working for the Board.
He can also be fired and taxpayers would have to buy out the remainder of his contract. That’s happened many times.
The next school board election is in November. Board President Yolanda Salazar will be up for re-election and Brandon Bustos, who is finishing Matthew Paña’s term, must run for election. We don’t know if either or both will run but the remaining three Board members are also split on renewing Trujillo’s contract, so he didn’t really need protecting from this Board.
Superintendents come and go and few are devoted to a school District so much as they are a compensation package and the ability to do a job with minimal interference from people who know little to nothing about running a district.
When students return to school along with the mountain of issues that will accompany their return, we’ll find out what kind of superintendent Trujillo is. After he amazes us with a year of accomplishments, then we’ll support a contract extension and maybe a raise.