‘Forgotten’ high school remembered at meeting

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — The search for a new county school superintendent has begun.

Officials for the Gallup-McKinley Public School Board at Monday’s meeting said advertisements have been put in national publications informing prospective applicants that the school board is looking for a new superintendent.

School board members also discussed problems at the district’s “forgotten” high school in the extreme northeastern part of the county and discussed the possibility of renaming Tohatchi Elementary School after a wife of an early Navajo leader.

In the search for a superintendent, district officials also announced a series of public hearings being held this month throughout the county to get input from parents about what they would like to see in the next superintendent.

These public hearings are as follows:

• Wednesday at David Skeet elementary School Cafeteria in Vanderwagen, 5 p.m.;
• Thursday at Tohatchi Mid School Cafeteria, 6:30 p.m.;
• Nov. 12 at Turpen Elementary School Cafeteria in Gallup, 6:30 p.m.;
• Nov. 26 at Red Rock Elementary, Gallup, 6:30 p.m.

The district hopes to have a new superintendent selected by next March.

The primary discussion at last night’s meeting was about problems at Tse Yi Gai High School some 70 miles northeast of Grants, which began operation just three years ago.

A number of people, including the school’s principal, Chris Spade, brought forth a number of problems at the school caused by inadequate funding.

For example, the school was not able to participate in football this year because no money was made available for uniforms for the players. It is fielding teams in other sports such as basketball and track that are not as expensive.

Last year, school officials had asked for some $76,000 to fund the football program but the request was dropped to $12,000 this year and district officials promised to try and find the money to outfit the team at somewhere between $500 and $670 per player.

It turned out that the extra funds asked for last year was for weight equipment and other football needs that would allow them to field a team that was prepared both mentally and physically, Spade said.

Former state Sen. Leonard Tsosie, who is now on the Navajo Nation Council representing that area, said he was extremely upset at the fact that the school also did not have an activity bus which meant that after a late-night away game students were just dropped off at the school late at night and had to find alternative ways home.

Some walked, said Tsosie, including members of the girls’ basketball team and this meant the school district was risking serious liability problems if something happened to any of them because the district did not have an activity bus.

Although these problems had been brought up several times in the past by Johnny R. Thompson, who represents that area on the school board, they have been ignored until last night when school board members told district officials to meet and find the money somewhere in the district’s budget to address these problems. The district officials were to report back to the board in December.

On the subject of renaming Tohatchi Elementary after Waunita Manuelito, wife of one of the Navajo Tribe’s early chiefs, Manuelito, there was some support on the school board to go ahead and approve this even though a survey of students and staff at the school voted against the idea 75-14.

The Tohatchi Chapter, however, voted 35-1 in favor of the idea, in part because of the lobbying of the chapter’s vice president, Edwin Begay, who is the grandson of Waunita Manuelito. He said at Monday’s meeting he felt she deserved the credit because of her support of her husband during the time he led the tribe in the late 1800s.

The board, after pointing out that this should be a community decision and not one by the students and the staff, urged Begay to continue getting support from the chapters surrounding Tohatchi and come back to the board again in January.