One member of the Española School Board believes the most recent failure to approve Superintendent Eric Martinez’s evaluation is part of a larger scheme to discredit the embattled administrator.
Board President Pablo Lujan expressed concern that a couple of his colleagues purposely missed the Feb. 23 meeting so they could influence Martinez’s annual review.
According to District policy, the superintendent’s evaluation should have been completed before Dec. 18 of any given year.
However, for some undisclosed reason, the Board missed that deadline and scheduled a series of special meetings to rush the evaluation, to no avail.
The District held four special meetings, three of which cost about $475 each, to cover stipends for the four Board members to attend, while the fourth meeting cost $180 for two members to attend, bringing the total for the special meetings to $1,605.
The fourth meeting cost the District less because Board members Annabelle Almager, Ruben Archuleta and Yolanda Salazar didn’t attend.
Geno Zamora, the District’s lawyer, attended all four meetings at an approximate across-the-board fee of $200 per hour. With the exception of the Feb. 23 meeting, which ended after about 30 minutes, the special meetings lasted anywhere from one to two hours.
The back-of-the-envelope calculations bring Zamora’s fees to a conservative estimate of $1,500 for the four meetings. When added to the Board’s stipend total, the four meetings cost the District’s taxpayers slightly more than an estimated $3,100.
Archuleta said he believes the special meetings were a waste of taxpayer money.
“The mismanagement of funds fall on the Board president,” he said in a Monday telephone interview. “The evaluation should have been complete by Dec. 18.”
Archuleta said he is frustrated that the evaluation never made it to the Board for final approval.
“I took a lot of time and effort working on that evaluation,” he said. “It was a waste of time.”
Lujan maintained that the lack of a quorum on Feb. 23 was done purposely.
“The minority of the Board is trying to manipulate the evaluation so the incoming Board will have to evaluate the superintendent,” Lujan said in a Monday telephone interview.
A quorum requires three of the five Board members to be present before the governing body can conduct business.
However, Lujan failed to recognize it was Almager, a member of the majority, who missed the last five regular and special Board meetings, during which, the evaluation was slated for approval.
Almager didn’t return phone calls seeking comment regarding her attendance during the last five weeks of her term.
A troubled tenure
Once Martinez was hired, he immediately attracted scrutiny from parents and members of the community who believed he was hand-picked to do Lujan’s bidding, like rehire former basketball coach Richard Martinez.
He is in the first year of a two-year, $130,000 year contract. His salary is $10,000 more than his predecessor, Bobbie Gutierrez.
Eric Martinez also attracted the ire of the state’s education regulators. New Mexico Public Education Department Secretary Hanna Skandera, on Feb. 6, gave him 30 days to address the student safety, Human Resources and fiscal issues that have seemingly grown worse since he started May 31. Should he fail to address those issues, he could lose his license.
This was the second such notice. The first came Nov. 17, 2016, a couple hours after the Department’s School Budget and Finance Analysis Bureau Chief David Craig suspended the Board’s ability to make financial decisions.
Archuleta said during a Feb. 23 telephone conversation, it is too early to tell what the failure to approve the evaluation means for the embattled superintendent.
However, an unfavorable evaluation could establish the basis the Board would need to replace Eric Martinez.
“This contract may be canceled by the Board for cause, including unsatisfactory work performance, incompetence, insubordination, physical or mental inability to perform the required duties or for any other good and just cause,” Martinez’s contract states.
The District will host a swearing-in ceremony for the two new Board members, Gilbert Serrano and Patrick Herrera, at 5:30 p.m., March 2, in the auditorium of Española Middle School.