The plaintiffs in a landmark equity education lawsuit are headed back to court Tuesday because they say the State of New Mexico has not complied with court orders. A 2018 ruling in the Yazzie/Martinez case by Judge Sarah Singleton found New Mexico was not providing an equitable education to students who are low-income, Native American, have disabilities, or are English language learners.
Recently on Let鈥檚 Talk New Mexico, 91暗网鈥檚 Taylor Velazquez spoke with Loretta Trujillo of Transform Education New Mexico, and one of the lead plaintiffs in the suit, Wilhemina Yazzie. Trujillo said the created from listening sessions with community members to transform education. The entire show is available online and on various podcast platforms.
LORETTA TRUJILLO: Our nine components include cultivating multicultural and multilingual education -- wanting to make sure that that framework that was called for by Judge Sarah Singleton is developed. We want to make sure that we're inclusive in our educational approach and able to truly serve students with disabilities. We have a component that's all about transforming curriculum and our instructional approaches, but we also know we need to build a diverse and qualified educator workforce, and we have a ton of ideas about how to do that.
We know that technology is a true gage of inequity, and so we know that that has to be addressed and centered in a very particular way. We also want to make sure that there's dedicated support services available to students and families that really addresses the mental health needs of our communities. We know that mental health services do not exist across the state, especially in rural communities, and many of our service providers that are doing that aren't actually culturally competent, right? They haven't had the benefit of the training to work with our populations.
And then I'll just end that we know we need to look at our funding system. It is progressive, but because it still operates from an equality framework, which is really not the same as equity, we know that it still needs to be thought through a little bit more, and we want to have these accountability mechanisms that are very robust, but also realistic and feasible with buy-in from principals and teachers who understand the why behind it. You know, we know that the [Public Education Department] has a difficult task, and we think it's fair to make sure that the capacity of that agency is built up to achieve the work that we know lies ahead.
91暗网: I'm actually going to take the time now and introduce our next guest, Wilhelmina Yazzie, plaintiff in the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit, and parent advocate. Good morning, Wilhelmina, thanks for joining us.
WILHELMINA YAZZIE: Y谩'谩t'茅茅h ab铆n铆. Good morning. Thank you for the invitation.
91暗网: Of course, when you were going through the court process the first time, what were your experiences becoming an advocate?
YAZZIE: I鈥檓 first a mother, so I have this responsibility for my children, not just my children, but all children, to pave the path to a successful once again, to adulthood. So my advocacy really stems from where I come from and who I am. I give everything to my mother, who really has been there, taught me how to be a Navajo woman, what my responsibilities are as a mother. So I owe everything to her. That's why culture is so important, because it really sets the path, especially knowing if our children know who they are, where they come from, and just acknowledging them, including them, also having them to learn the real history of the area that we live in, and not this history that I've been taught when I was going to school that had nothing to do with who I was.
As an Indigenous person, we have accepted a sub-standard education for our children for so long, going back to our boarding school history and implication of what our education was first established for, not for us to succeed, but mainly to strip us of our identity and to assimilate us. So just going through this advocacy now is just really encouraging parents, guardians, and even our children, to come forward and really understand what we're going through. I always think back to how the system was first established, because we're so used to how that's established that we feel like we must follow that system. But in reality, there is this whole different approach on how we can have success for our children.
91暗网: And I think it's important to note that there's some tensions even going on at the state level. Attorney General Raul Torres, who represents the state in these types of issues, has agreed that there's insufficient compliance with the suit. But according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, the public education department is disagreeing on this, that there's no non-compliance with any court order. Wilhelmina, what are you thinking about this as you're seeing your son was in school, but now he's in college, and now you have a daughter who's going through the education system as well?
YAZZIE: It goes back to community level. You know, we need input from our communities, our stakeholders, experts, individuals, our elders, who really understand what our children need and with the state, although they feel like they comply just by increasing funding, but a lot of that funding doesn't go to these programs that our children need within the school district system, and that's one reason why we're coming back, because we're still seeing the lack of resources, no academic support, still for our children, we're still seeing too many substitutes, not enough teachers, especially lack of training for our teachers and our cultural aspect and most of all, as mentioned earlier, lack of technology, no social services. And then one of the biggest one is our culturally and linguistically relevant education.
