Native and Hispanic students are suspended more often and for longer periods than their white peers who commit similar infractions in Gallup-McKinley County schools — a pattern of “substantial racial disparities.” an investigation by the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office found.
Native students lose eight to 10 times more school days to suspensions than white students, while Hispanic students lose three to four times more, according to the 47-page report released last week by the state Department of Justice.
Gallup-McKinley, a sprawling district twice the size of Delaware, straddles part of the Navajo Nation and has the largest Native American student population of any public school district in the country.
The investigation was ordered by the State Attorney General, Raúl Torrez, in 2023, after reporting from New Mexico in-depth and ProPublica revealed the district’s high rates of harsh punishment for Native and Hispanic children. News organizations have found that Native students in New Mexico are expelled far more often than any other group. The district has a quarter of New Mexico’s Native students, but it was responsible for at least three-quarters of Native student expulsions in the four school years ending in 2020.
This disparity was evident even in kindergarten and elementary grades, often for ambiguous offenses such as “disorderly conduct.”
At the time, the district’s former superintendent, Mike Hyatt, called the news organizations’ reporting “completely false” and suggested the findings were the result of the district’s own data entry errors and its broad definition of eviction.
But state Department of Justice investigators said in last week’s report that neither explanation explains the racial disparities. Hyatt has retired and could not be reached for comment.
Their report calls on Gallup-McKinley officials to “acknowledge the facts” and work with the community “to address its overreliance on exclusionary and discriminatory discipline.”
Among the report’s recommendations: District officials should clearly define offenses and penalty ranges, make sanctions proportional and limit suspensions. The report also calls on Gallup-McKinley to adopt restorative justice alternatives such as discussion circlesin which students discuss how their misbehavior impacted others, why they broke a school rule, and what other choices they could have made instead. The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission has called for similar reforms in March 2026. report on discrimination in Gallup-McKinley schools. Wendy Greyeyes, chair of the commission, noted that neighboring districts already use such alternatives, but she said in an interview that the district may have difficulty building trust with its students and their families.
Until the district fixes its disciplinary policies, investigators wrote, “children in and around Gallup, as well as their families and communities, will remain negatively affected by the educational, social and emotional challenges that arise from the district’s current practices.”
This harm goes beyond academics, investigators wrote, saying that out-of-school suspensions also deprive students of access to free meals and participation in extracurricular clubs and volunteer activities.
National research links suspension and expulsion to poor academic performance, higher risk of contact with the criminal justice system, isolation, poor health and lower wages, the report said.
Investigators also called on the district to create a clear and accessible complaint process for students and families, and to publish regular audits of disciplinary data.
In 2023, after New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica released their reports, the district provided disciplinary data to a contract auditor that was “inexplicably different” from what it reported to the state and U.S. departments of Education, with thousands of disciplinary records missing, state Department of Justice investigators said. Press agencies own reporting The audit was unable to verify the district’s claims that it had significantly reduced out-of-school suspensions.
“Instead of taking steps to address these problems, leaders have denied their existence and advanced a misleading and erroneous counteranalysis,” the new AG report says.
In addition to district reforms, the new report also calls on state lawmakers and the New Mexico Department of Public Education to strengthen oversight of student discipline statewide. State-level audits should be conducted at least annually and made public, it says.
Such audits are necessary to prevent disparities from becoming “as extreme and systemic as at Gallup-McKinley,” said Anjana Samant, one of the report’s authors and deputy director of the state Department of Justice.
The state Department of Education should also require that suspended or expelled students receive instruction and other educational services while they are out of school. The department is currently reviewing the report, spokeswoman Janelle Garcia said.
In addition to specific disciplinary policy changes, the new report urges state lawmakers to review legislation that would have given the attorney general’s office stronger investigative tools to “identify and root out” civil rights violations. That legislation passed in 2023, but Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, let the bill die without her signature in what’s known as a pocket veto.
The governor, a spokesperson said in an email Wednesday, stands by her decision, saying it is unclear whether the legislation’s new powers “would have overridden federal student privacy protections and allowed the AG to access confidential student records.”
What matters now is ensuring that the report’s findings are addressed quickly, wrote Michael Coleman, communications director for Lujan Grisham.
The district is currently reviewing the report’s recommendations, Gallup-McKinley Superintendent Jvanna Hanks II told New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica.
“I am leading a transition period that prioritizes community voices and renews our focus on every student,” Hanks wrote in an email provided by a public relations firm the district hired. “The school district will use this report and current student data as part of our review. Our goal is for students to be in school, supported in school, and treated fairly in school.”
