Zuni want answers from school board

Vivianne Joe, 5, sits on the ground holding up a sign in front of her mom Ophelia Barber and her Uncle David Barber while protesting on the corner of Highway 53 and Mid School Road on Tuesday evening trying to reach out to the public before the School Board Meeting in Zuni. [Photo by Matt Hinshaw/Independent]

By Karen Francis
Diné Bureau

ZUNI — Parents and community members resorted to protesting actions by Zuni Public School District Superintendent Dr. Kaye Peery prior to a school board meeting Tuesday.

About 20 people held up home-made signs and yelled “Textbooks not SUVs” for almost two hours before the meeting started.

Some of the parents spoke to the Independent prior to the protest and meeting because they said they have not been able to meet with the superintendent herself.

“We get no official word from the government or the school about what is going on,” Dan Simplicio, a parent, said. “The community is literally left in the dark here.”

However, in an interview just before the school board meeting, Peery said, “No one has been in to see me about those issues.”

Other parents, though, had the same complaint that Peery has not met with them to discuss their concerns despite several attempts.

“She’s never been at any of our meetings. She doesn’t want to meet with us,” Natalie Gasper said. “This is the first time we have come across a superintendent who will not attend any type of meeting,” she added.

Straddie Edaakie agreed. He said, “There’s so many things that have come up, yet when we ask for more information, no information is available. Our children should be number one, not themselves.”

Edaakie said that he was not aware of the problems in the school district until he went in to speak to a teacher about his concern with the lack of progress that students are making. He discovered that some classes did not have textbooks and many classes were being taught by temporary substitutes.

“Looking further into it, I was shocked to find out what was going on,” Edaakie said. “It’s pretty hard to talk to the superintendent right now. She’s too busy for everybody. Period.”

Edaakie wondered how the school could meet adequate yearly progress without the resources available to teach the children.

Gasper had the same question as Edaakie.

“How can our children learn when they don’t even have certified teachers in the classroom?” she asked.

She said substitute teachers have been in the classrooms since the beginning of the year, and that when children ask questions, “teachers just yell at them.”

“All their work is just Xeroxed and copied from what the teachers have,” Gasper said. “How are they expected to learn without books, teachers?”

The superintendent said that no formal requests have been made by the parents regarding educational assistants and textbooks, which were the subjects of several of the signs held during the protest.

“Nothing has been denied,” Peery said. “I don’t know where all this is coming from.”

Still, the parents are concerned that school funds are not being used to benefit the students.

“There seems to be a lot of free spending but in the wrong places. They have redecorated offices and provided new furniture for incoming staff,” Edaakie said.

Simplicio had concerns that Peery created the position of assistant superintendent, which he said uses more of the school’s important resources on administrative staff rather than on teachers or classroom resources.

Gloria Aguilar, who has a child in Zuni schools, said that “an enormous amount of money has been spent to renovate and create spacious offices at central offices for the superintendent and her assistants, i.e., new wood furniture, soundproofing the superintendent’s offices, three new Toyota Hybrid SUVs which are only used by the three and a combined salary of $348,000.”

Aguilar said that while the superintendent spends lavishly on herself and her assistants “our students at Zuni High School have had to use discarded desks and work stations that came from an elementary school.”

Peery admitted that she had renovated and expanded her office, which she said had previously been in an old storage closet.

“There was no confidentiality. The superintendent needs a place to have meetings,” Peery said. “The desk was held together with Scotch tape.”

She also said that no new administrative positions have been created since she came on board as superintendent a year and a half ago. Instead, the positions of director of curriculum and director of human resources were restructured and renamed.

The parents had even more concerns with her leadership. The employee with the school district said that, “the morale in the district is at an all time low. Parents, students and staff are made to feel that they do not have a voice because when they do try to speak up, there is fear of repercussion, reprisal and retaliation.”

Simplicio said that one of his former students, who now attends Twin Buttes High School, was admonished by the principal for an interview he did with the Zuni governor for the school newspaper.

“Consequently the superintendent and the assistant superintendent made inquiries into who the student was and told him not to do those types of interviews for the school newspaper,” he said.

To Peery, the problem is that there is a lot of misinformation getting to the community.

“I think there’s been a lot of misinformation and we are requiring a lot more accountability. The state and federal government are requiring more accountability,” she said.

The lack of information made available to the public was also mentioned by Simplicio.

Without communication from the school district, “we have a tendency to get word from the rumor mill,” he said. “The leadership is so lax in this area.”