Indigenous and Hispanic students are suspended more often and for longer periods than their white classmates who commit similar infractions at Gallup-McKinley County Schools — a pattern of “substantial racial disparities,” an investigation by the New Mexico attorney general’s office found.
Indigenous students lose eight to 10 times more classroom days to suspensions than white students, while Hispanic students lose three to four times as many, according to the 47-page report released by the state’s Department of Justice last week.
Gallup-McKinley, a sprawling district twice the size of Delaware, straddles part of the Navajo Nation and has the largest Native American student population of any public school district in the country.
The investigation was ordered by state Attorney General Raúl Torrez in 2023, after reporting by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica exposed the district’s high rates of harsh punishment for Native and Hispanic children. The news organizations found Native students in New Mexico are expelled far more often than any other group. The district has a quarter of New Mexico’s Native students, but it accounted for at least three-quarters of Native student expulsions during the four school years ending in 2020.
That disparity was evident even in kindergarten and elementary grades, often for ambiguous infractions such as “disorderly conduct.”
At the time, former district Superintendent Mike Hyatt called the news organizations’ reporting “completely false” and suggested the findings were a result of the district’s own data entry errors and its broad definition of expulsion.
But, state Department of Justice investigators said in last week’s report that neither explanation accounted for the racial disparities. Hyatt has retired and could not be reached for comment.
Their report calls on Gallup-McKinley officials to “acknowledge the facts” and work with the community “in remedying its excessive reliance on exclusionary and discriminatory discipline.”
Among the report’s recommendations: District officials should clearly define infractions and penalty ranges, make punishments proportional and limit suspensions. The report also called for Gallup-McKinley to adopt restorative justice alternatives such as talking circles, in which students discuss how their misbehavior impacted others, why they broke a school rule and other choices they could have made instead. The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission called for similar reforms in its own March 2026 report on discrimination at Gallup-McKinley schools. Wendy Greyeyes, the commission chair, noted that neighboring districts already use such alternatives, but she said in an interview that the district might have difficulty building trust with its students and their families.
Until the district fixes its discipline policies, investigators wrote, “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.”
That harm goes beyond the academic, investigators wrote, saying that out-of-school suspensions also deny students access to free meals and participation in extracurricular clubs and volunteer activities.
National research links suspension and expulsion to lower academic achievement, a higher risk of contact with the criminal justice system, isolation, poor health and lower wages, the report said.
Investigators also called on the district to create a clear and accessible complaint process for students and families, and to publish regular audits of discipline data.
In 2023, after New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica published their reporting, the district provided a contract auditor with discipline data that was “inexplicably different” from what it reported to state and U.S. departments of Education, with thousands of disciplinary records missing, the state Department of Justice investigators said. The news organizations’ own reporting on the audit could not verify the district’s assertions that it had dramatically reduced out-of-school suspensions.
“Instead of taking steps to rectify these problems, leadership denied that they exist and pushed a misleading and flawed counter-analysis,” the new AG report said.
In addition to district reforms, the new report also called on state lawmakers and the New Mexico Public Education Department to strengthen oversight of student discipline statewide. Audits at the state level should be conducted at least once a year and be made public, it said.
Such audits are needed to prevent disparities from becoming as “extreme and systemic as in Gallup-McKinley,” said Anjana Samant, one of the report’s authors and a deputy director in the state Department of Justice.
The state Department of Education should also require that students who are suspended or expelled receive instruction and other educational services while they are out of school. The department is reviewing the report, spokesperson Janelle Garcia said.
In addition to specific disciplinary policy changes, the new report urged state lawmakers to revisit legislation that would have given the AG’s office stronger investigative tools to “identify and root out” civil rights violations. That legislation passed in 2023, but Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, let the bill die without her signature in what’s called a pocket veto.
The governor, a spokesperson said in an email on Wednesday, stands by her decision, saying it’s unclear whether the new powers in the legislation “would have trumped federal student privacy protections and allowed the AG to access confidential student records.”
What matters now is ensuring the report’s findings are addressed quickly, wrote Michael Coleman, Lujan Grisham’s communications director.
The district is reviewing the report’s recommendations, Gallup-McKinley Superintendent Jvanna Hanks II told New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica.
“I am leading a period of transition that prioritizes community voices and renews our focus on every student,” Hanks wrote in an email provided by a public relations firm the district has hired. “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.”
