New board members question White about travel, Baldrige Plan

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — There is a revolution going on within the Gallup-McKinley County Public School District.

This was made evident at Monday night's meeting of the Gallup-McKinley County Public School Board when a number of firsts occurred:

• For the first time, school board members began questioning items on the consent agenda, including questioning why more Native American teachers and staff aren't going on trips.
  
  
• For the first time, school board members questioned why there seems to be an adversarial relationship between the school district and the local teacher's union.
  
  
• And, for the first time, one school member questioned the district's use of the Baldrige system, wondering if the district's use of the system was the reason a lot of young teachers moved out of the district.

Since the swearing-in of new members Annie Descheney and Genevieve Jackson two weeks ago, trying to determine what's going to happen at a school board meeting has become fruitless because the agenda doesn't give a clue as to what kinds of subjects will be brought up and what kind of directives the board will give to School Superintendent Karen White.

Descheney was the one who brought up the question of trips during a discussion of the Johnson O'Malley Program.

JOM officials told school board members that Congress may be phasing out the program this year, thus depriving the district of some $1 million a year it uses to provide bilingual education.

Travel time
The decision on how to use the JOM funds is made by the district's Indian Education Committee and during the discussion, it was brought up that the Navajo Nation had turned over some $900,000 in unexpended funds this past year to the committee and members of the committee decided to use half of the 15 percent administrative fee to send committee members to New York City for the annual convention.

This drew Descheney's ire, and she brought up a couple of times Monday night that the committee would have been better off using the money to help the students and not catering to their personal needs.

Later in the evening, when it came time to approve the consent agenda, she asked that the trip approval be brought up for discussion and she questioned White as to why the district was spending so much money sending people all over the country for conferences and training. She also questioned why there were only a couple of Native Americans going on trips.

"Is it because Native Americans know it all and don't need to go on the trips or are they not allowed to go?" she asked.

White pointed out that at least two of the people up for approval on Monday were Native American. She stressed that there is no attempt to limit the trips to non-Natives.

"It all depends who applies," she said.

As for the trips being a waste of time, she said funding for the trips comes usually from federal grants, like Title II, which is for staff development and can't be used for classroom needs.

Other programs, like Title 1, require that a certain amount of the grant be used for staff development, which includes trips and training.

Pattern?
Jackson asked if the same people were going on trip after trip, pointing out that this was only her second school board meeting and she recognized names on Monday's list that were on the list two weeks ago. She urged that the money for the trips be spread around and all employees be given an opportunity to go.

When school board member Johnny R. Thompson questioned why people were going and what they got out of the trips, White agreed that in the future she would supply the school board members with the forms that are submitted giving the reason for the trip and estimated cost.

On the union issue, Jackson said she didn't like the articles she has been seeing in the paper in recent weeks where it appeared that the school district and the McKinley Federation of United School Employees were fighting each other.

"This is not complimentary to the district," she said, adding that the district should treat the union "with respect."

Descheney was the one who brought up her dissatisfaction with the district's use of the Baldridge system.

The system, which has now been is use for the past several years, is used by a number of school districts in the state, but union officials, along with many teachers, have claimed that the district has tried to implement the system too quickly.

Descheney said she talked to one teacher who said that each day she spends about five hours doing the paperwork required for the system and only one hour teaching. This has been a long-time complaint of teachers who earlier this year showed their dislike of the system by wearing buttons saying "Just Let Us Teach."

That's what Descheney said she wanted teachers to do. "We need to put a stop to this," she said, "and get the teachers back to teaching. Instead, we seem to keep on loading them up with more and more paperwork."