Española School District Superintendent Eric Martinez wants parents and other community members to participate in sensitivity training to reduce the occurrences of bullying and intimidation at the District’s scheduled public meetings.
The corrective action was one of many that Martinez proposed in the March 8 document he submitted to New Mexico Public Education Department officials, as part of his required Corrective Action Plan.
He submitted the plan, two days after he was placed on administrative leave, in response to the ultimatum New Mexico Department of Education Secretary Hanna Skandera gave him. He remains on leave.
Skandera’s Feb. 6 correspondence instructed him to devise a Corrective Action Plan to address safety, staffing and financial issues that continue to plague the District, or risk losing his administrator’s license.
“Training will be provided to establish meeting norms that require the modeling of positive, productive students, centered on school community meetings free of bullying and intimidation,” Martinez wrote. “Scheduled public Board meetings often have resulted in threatening and intimidating situations for employees and public officials of the EPS District.”
His plan to have all parents and guardians sit through sensitivity training, alongside District staff, originated from the Department’s instruction to have him address the District’s “culture of intimidation.”
The demand to address the reported intimidation surfaced after several students complained about an interaction they had with former coach Richard Martinez’s brother, Fredrick Martinez and assistant coach Ernest Salazar.
The students said the two adults told them their parents were “liars” and “cowards” for providing statements to Department investigators regarding Richard Martinez’s on-the-clock behavior.
In the instance where a student believes he or she is being bullied by an adult, as in the aforementioned scenario, Martinez wrote that he would come up with a plan that eliminates the adult’s interaction with the complaining student.
Board member Patrick Herrera said he can’t comment on the action plan because contrary to the Board’s instructions that the superintendent supply the five Board members with a copy of the plan before he submitted it to state regulators, he never got a chance to review the submitted document.
“That has been his big problem,” Herrera said. “He thinks the only Board member he has to listen to is Pablo Lujan.”
Department Public Information Officer Emily Cantrell said her office is reviewing the document to determine the next course of action.
“PED (Public Education Department) takes this situation very seriously and is still reviewing the letter to determine appropriate action,” she said.
Improved security
The superintendent is also in the process of issuing a Request for Proposals in hopes of finding a qualified vendor to provide security at Española Middle and Española Valley High schools.
The plan to, once again, outsource the District’s security services surfaced after Skandera and her Deputy, Paul Aguilar, criticized Eric Martinez for terminating the security contract the District had with former Española School Board member and County commissioner, Elias Coriz’s company, ProSec.
They complained that eliminating the contract placed students at risk.
When District officials terminated the security contract, they hired an in-house security team, which translated into four fewer officers patrolling the high school.
Former Board president Pablo Lujan maintained the reduced force kept the District in compliance with the New Mexico Public Insurance Authority.
However, Aguilar maintained the reduced force wasn’t ideal.
“It is not against the law,” he said. “But it puts kids in bad situations and you should never be putting kids in bad situations or in contact with adults that make them feel unsafe.”
Hiring a security company isn’t the only step the superintendent plans on taking to make sure students are safe. He also hopes to gain Board approval to replace the defunct surveillance equipment at both schools.
If his plan comes to fruition, the District will buy new cameras using the remaining money, approximately $600,000, from a 2012 General Obligation Bond.
To help ward off the type of criticism the District received, once word got out that an unlicensed and an unvetted person was teaching the High School’s physical education class, the superintendent would like for all volunteers to pass a background check and drug test.
“Target group: Every person employed with the EPS District, every school site that requires the employee to access children; coaches; contractor working in school sites; programs providers working at school sites and volunteers without the appropriate background clearance,” the Corrective Action Plan states.
While District parent Reba Sanchez supports measures designed to keep children safe, such as background checks and drug tests, she believes Eric Martinez’s proposal would burden community members and dissuade parents from getting involved in their child’s education.
“Although the safety of the students is a priority, it is concerning that Eric V. Martinez is suggesting to make all volunteers and parents responsible for background checks and drug testing,” she said. “This will only deter parents and volunteers from getting involved at the school level. This could also become quite costly to the District if EPS is paying for the background checks and drug testing.”
Sanchez said the proposed policy could limit or interfere with programs the community has come to rely on to keep children safe outside of the classroom setting.
“It is also concerning that he mentions after school, non-academic activity volunteers,” she said. “Is he suggesting that outside individuals, such as community sports coaches, must also follow this protocol? How would the District even be accountable for that?”
Hiring and
maintaining staff
Like most of the state’s 89 school districts, the Española School District has its hands full trying to hire enough teachers to teach the nearly 4,000 students.
However, the superintendent hopes he can somewhat reduce the District’s needs for qualified teachers by actively recruit would-be instructors from college and university teaching programs.
Additionally, he believes by implementing undisclosed professional development training, he can reduce the number of deficient instructors who get fired each year.
“Instructional staff members have been terminated at the end of the school year,” the letter states. “The EPSD terminated 12 teachers at the end of school year 2012-2016. The EPSD will develop a training schedule to assist the instructional staff with deficient performances. The intent is to improve teacher performance and retain all teachers.”
Aguilar, in a November 2016 correspondence, rebuked Eric Martinez for not notifying parents that staffing shortages created a situation where some of the core classes, such as math and English, were being taught by substitutes.
The superintendent believes this phenomenon could be solved, or at least mitigated, by promoting and establishing dual credit programs with higher education institutions throughout Northern New Mexico.
Finances
While most of the District’s financial concerns are being addressed through the Department’s takeover of the Española School Board’s finances, Martinez vowed to ensure the District’s vendors are paid on time and the financial records are up-to-date.
He also said he will continue his weekly meetings with contractor Maria Fildalgo to discuss various corrective actions the Finance Department is working on implementing.