Who will it be?
Four school superintendent candidates answer tough questions

Community members listened to Gallup-McKinley County superintendent candidate Esther Macias expain he approaches to the job Tueday evening at Red Rock Elementary. Those gatheres also heard from three other candidates [Photo by Daniel Zollinger/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — And then there were four.

Four of the five candidates for county public school superintendent were on hand Tuesday night at Red Rock Elementary to talk about what they would do if they ran the Gallup-McKinley County Public School District.

The fifth candidate, Richard Sharpe, a principal at an alternative high school in Farmington, had informed district officials Tuesday morning that he was dropping out of contention.

But the other four candidates were on hand to answer questions about such things having two high schools in Gallup, how to get kids to attend classes and how they would lighten the teacher’s workload.

None of the four candidates — Esther Macias, James Hennings, Gordon Swinney and Raymond Arsenault — came right out and said that if they were made superintendent, the idea of two high schools would be discarded.

Both Macias and Swinney said they viewed it as a done deal. Hennings said one idea may be to split the grades with one school holding ninth and 10th graders and the other 11th and 12th. This way the district wouldn’t have to duplicate staff and Gallup high would be able to remain a District 5A school in athletic competition. Arsenault said he felt that parents and citizens in the district should have had a say but ultimately it was the school board’s decision.

The absenteeism problem
Tim Johnson, a ninth-grade English teacher at Miyamura High School, said one of the most critical problems facing the district is the high absenteeism rate. There’s “no real consequences” for students who decided not to come to school, he said, adding that in a few cases, the schools take the parents to court and a few others re expelled. The rest seem to get away with it.

Swinney, who once worked for years in the Grants and Milan school district as a principal, said he handled this problem when he was an elementary school principal by visiting their homes. Sometimes, he said, he would even pick up students.

When he became a high school principal, they handled it by saying that if you received 10 unexcused absences, you didn’t get credit for the course that semester.

Macias, who is the county’s current interim superintendent, said absences and tardiness have been a major problem in the school district for years. “The procedures we now have in place don’t hold water,” she added.

She said she didn’t think it was fair to punish the students if the problem was caused by the parents, who, for one reason or another, weren’t able to get their children to school on time. The solution, she said, may be to work more with the courts and with state agencies to try and get students to attend school better.

Hennings, who retired last year as superintendent for the school district in Tombstone, Ariz., and once spent a year in that position in the Window Rock school system, said that studies have proven that the more a student misses school, the greater are their chances of dropping out to the point where a student with 27 days of missed school in a year has only a 50-50 chance that he or she will graduate.

Attendance is absolute necessary, he said, because the more one misses school, the further behind one gets. The worst year of school for attendance, he said, is kindergarten, followed by the first and second grades. Attendance starts to pick up in the third grades when students begin having the ability to get to school on their own.

“But by that time, it’s too late for many,” he said.

Arsenault, who deals with this problem as dean of students for grades 10 and 11 at Cibola High School in Albuquerque, said the Albuquerque schools tackle the problem by having set procedures on how to handle it as the number of absences gets greater and greater. This includes no credit for the class after the sixth absence and requiring the parent to attend a hearing after the seventh.

Getting tough on absenteeism seems to work, he said, pointing out that by doing so, the situation in Albuquerque is 25 to 30 percent better now.

Teacher workload
All of the candidates agreed that teachers have to fill out too much paperwork and the more paperwork they are required to do, the less time they have to teach.

Swinney, whose wife is a teacher, said when he was an elementary school teacher, he went out and did recess and lunchroom duty to give teachers more time during the day to do their paperwork. He said that administrators had to spend time thinking of ways they could ease the teacher’s paperwork load.

Macias said the county school system plans to address that problem in the near future by having an early release for students on Monday. That would give teachers more time to do their paperwork. The new early Monday release, she said, will start taking effect after the district has time to inform parents of the plans.

Hennings said the key to lightening the workload of teachers is in the hands of the district’s administrators. “When we make a decision, we have to look at whether this will help or will be a hindrance to teachers,” he said.

Arsenault agreed that the more time teachers have to do their job of teaching, the better students will do and it was for this reason that the Albuquerque district set aside a day a month for staff development.

At Tuesday’s meeting, two of the five school board members were there — Bruce Tempest and Joe DeLaO. The others are planning to attend meet and greets in their area. The one in Crownpoint was on Monday and the one at Tohatchi Mid-School will be tonight at 5:30.

DeLaO admitted that all of the candidates did well and that it’s going to be hard for the school board to make a decision. Tempest agreed, saying that, for him, the decision on who to support for the position will be made after the candidates sit down on Thursday and Friday and have personal interviews with the school board members.

The school board is planning to make a decision by the end of March.