Española School District Vice President Ruben Archuleta threatening board member Jeremy Maestas after the Oct 21 school Board meeting is inexcusable. Short and simple: Archuleta should publicly apologize to Maestas and change his behavior.
Maestas has a recording of Archuleta threating to punch Maestas’ (expletive) teeth out if he talks about Archuleta’s children again. Not mature, not responsible and not parent-like. It’s also perfectly legal to record any public meeting.
There’s plenty of blame to share in this situation. You have to start with Board President Gilbert Serrano. It is the president’s primary duty to control the meeting, ensure Robert’s Rules of Order is followed and decorum is maintained. This rarely happens in an Española School Board meeting.
Meetings recently have devolved into Board members and staff yelling over each other to the point Board member Matthew Casados has handled the president’s duty more than once, asking participants to address the president and wait to be recognized.
Staff members do it and at times, the public has burst in, via Zoom, to address someone directly.
When meetings are controlled and parliamentary procedure is maintained, there is much less opportunity for Board members to act out and behave irresponsibly. This is what happened in this case. Maestas said Archuleta was only concerned about his children and Archuleta took that as an verbal battery on his children. While it’s far from that, not allowing Board members to address each other curtails such perceived threats.
While Maestas is the victim here, he brought this on himself by addressing Archuleta directly and accusing him of not being a good Board member. Don’t insult a parent and expect they’re not going to react in some protective fashion.
Archuleta should have thicker skin. Maestas didn’t call out his children or mention them specifically, nor disparage them in any way. He simply said Archuleta cares about his own children, not all the children in the District.
Archuleta routinely claims his children get run through the ringer by everyone from teachers and coaches to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
He knew when running for school board his children would catch some of the brunt of his actions or inactions. Try being the child of the weekly newspaper editor.
This election is over and we didn’t get a slew of great candidates, much less several challenging each other. Española isn’t alone in its dearth of viable candidates. School boards throughout the state are stumbling to maintain our 51st place national ranking in education. Two school boards in the state were suspended in the past year by the Attorney General’s Office because of their incompetence.
If we’re ever going to claw our way up to 49th or maybe 47th place, dare we dream, it will require honest politicians (don’t laugh) and educated board members with morals, values and the desire to do the hard work. They’re like hen’s teeth right now.