New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is using a new state report on school discipline in Gallup-McKinley County Schools to push a broader left-wing reform agenda, calling for changes to how schools punish students and urging lawmakers to give his office more power to investigate alleged civil rights violations.
The report, released by the New Mexico Department of Justice, claims Gallup-McKinley schools have “substantial racial disparities” in suspensions and other discipline practices affecting Native American and Hispanic students.
According to reporting from New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica, the investigation found that Indigenous students lose eight to 10 times more classroom days to suspension than white students, while Hispanic students lose three to four times as many.
Gallup-McKinley County Schools is one of the largest geographically sprawling school districts in the state and serves part of the Navajo Nation. It also has the largest Native American student population of any public school district in the country.
Torrez ordered the investigation in 2023 after earlier reporting by the same outlets claimed Native students in New Mexico were expelled at higher rates than other students. The reporting said Gallup-McKinley had about a quarter of New Mexico’s Native students but accounted for at least three-quarters of Native student expulsions during the four school years ending in 2020.
Former Gallup-McKinley Superintendent Mike Hyatt previously dismissed those claims as “completely false,” arguing the findings were tied to data-entry errors and the district’s broad definition of expulsion.
But Torrez’s investigators rejected that explanation, writing that neither the data issues nor the definition of expulsion accounted for the racial disparities found in the district.
Now, the attorney general’s office is calling on the district to “acknowledge the facts” and work with the community on what the report described as “excessive reliance on exclusionary and discriminatory discipline.”
The recommendations read like a wish list for progressive education reformers.
The report urges Gallup-McKinley to more clearly define infractions, narrow discipline ranges, make punishments more “proportional,” limit suspensions, and adopt alternatives such as “restorative justice.”
One example cited was “talking circles,” where students discuss how their behavior affected others, why they broke a rule, and what different choices they could have made.
The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission made similar recommendations in a March 2026 report accusing the district of discrimination. Commission Chair Wendy Greyeyes said neighboring districts already use some alternatives, though she acknowledged Gallup-McKinley may face challenges rebuilding trust with students and families.
The attorney general’s report warned that unless the district changes course, “children in and around Gallup, along with their families and communities, will remain negatively affected by educational, social, and emotional challenges that stem from the District’s current practices.”
Investigators also argued that suspensions do harm beyond academics, saying students removed from school can lose access to free meals, extracurriculars, clubs, and volunteer opportunities.
The report pointed to national research linking suspensions and expulsions to lower academic achievement, greater contact with the criminal justice system, isolation, poor health, and lower wages.
The findings come as schools across New Mexico continue struggling with classroom behavior, academic failure, truancy, and safety concerns. But instead of focusing primarily on restoring order and helping teachers maintain discipline, Torrez’s office is leaning into the increasingly common left-wing argument that discipline disparities are proof of systemic discrimination.
The report also accused district leadership of denying problems and relying on flawed counter-analysis.
“Instead of taking steps to rectify these problems, leadership denied that they exist and pushed a misleading and flawed counter-analysis,” the report said.
Investigators further claimed the district provided a contract auditor with discipline data that was “inexplicably different” from what it had reported to state and federal education officials, with thousands of records allegedly missing.
Gallup-McKinley Superintendent Jvanna Hanks II said the district is reviewing the report.
“I am leading a period of transition that prioritizes community voices and renews our focus on every student,” Hanks wrote in a statement. “The School District will be using this report and current student data as part of our review. Our focus is that students should be in school, supported in school, and treated fairly in school.”
But Torrez’s ambitions appear to go beyond one district.
The report calls on state lawmakers and the New Mexico Public Education Department to strengthen statewide oversight of student discipline. It also recommends annual public audits of school discipline data.
Anjana Samant, one of the report’s authors and a deputy director at the New Mexico Department of Justice, said such audits are needed to prevent disparities from becoming as “extreme and systemic as in Gallup-McKinley.”
The report also urges lawmakers to revive legislation that would have given the attorney general’s office more authority to investigate and “identify and root out” civil rights violations. That bill passed in 2023, but Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham allowed it to die without her signature through a pocket veto.
A spokesperson for the governor said she stands by that decision, citing concerns about whether the legislation “would have trumped federal student privacy protections and allowed the AG to access confidential student records.”
For Torrez, the Gallup-McKinley report gives him a new platform to push for more power, more oversight, and more race-focused intervention in New Mexico schools.
For parents and teachers, the question is whether these reforms will actually make classrooms safer and more functional — or simply make school discipline even harder in the name of woke ideology.
Any thing the Democrats do, is bad for New Mexico .
Hispanic Democrat AG’s are 100 times more likely to be dumber than a box of rocks than white Republican AG’s.
there are racial disparities in behavior. thats why there are disparities in punishment. dems have the same answer every time. let the trouble makers off the hook, do not hold them accountable. its just another form of entitlement. this is exactly why crime is flourishing and society is disintegrating. anything goes. the law of the jungle not the law of the land. are you sick of it yet NM ? no, you are not. you will vote for more of it.
The fact that indigenous and Hispanic kids lose more time in class due to suspensions than do white kids is not because of their race, but rather because they cause more problems than white kids. Just like more blacks than whites are in prison because they commit more crimes than whites. They are not in prison because society is racist; they are there because their actions put them there. Same as kids suspended at schools.
Yes you are right Todd. Parents are failing their children by teaching them its acceptable to be a criminal. The whining of the perpetual victim is a disgusting perversion of what the human species is actually capable of attaining.
It is a discipline issue, it originates in the family regardless of color..until we go back to basic family values and hold parents responsible/accountable for their children actions it will continue to be a big problem.
We don’t need more government, we need to see where the real root of the problem is. I think it was the state of Louisiana that had the same issue and they are now 16th in place..where once they were 49th.
Headlines in today’s Journal reads “NM spent $2.6 B as in Billions on school time with little results.” Do we really want Raúl or MLG involved? It reminds me of the battered wife syndrome…the democrats go back for more with worse results.
“substantial racial disparities” in suspensions and other discipline practices affecting Native American and Hispanic students exist because Native American and Hispanic students require more discipline. Imagine that.
HIspanics in NM are 49% of the population, while Native American are around 13%. Given the location I’d bet about 75% – 90% of McKinley Gallup schools are made up of Hispanic and NA students so that does not equate to an unequal balance. Dicipline begins in the HOME and should be followed in SCHOOL. This Restoritive Practice BS is just that.
Raul Torrez is nothing more than a race baiting POS. He and his staff should be forced to go teach there for a year. His views might change. Oh, I forgot he wears blinders!
You would think that his office would have more important things to investigate, like drug trafficking and the cartels association with government officials.instead they are going after kids, parents and teachers.
TORREZ IS A TACO BENDER AND AN ILLEGLEA
Wow. Even the Governor wouldn’t support this nonsense, and gave cogent reasons why. Thanks MLG.
Still, all the more reason to back and vote for Sam Kane for NM Attorney General in November. Check him out.