How MCFUSE is Fighting to Improve GMCS for Students and
The Gallup McKinley County School District is currently suffering from a severe teacher and staff turnover crisis. For far too long GMCS employees have been pushed around and disrespected by a District administration, whose top-down micromanagement and excessive paperwork demands have resulted in a yearly exodus of hundreds of teachers and other school personnel. While the District likes to justify its actions by claiming that it’s only trying to do what’s best for the students, everyone knows that retaining highquality teachers is an essential ingredient for student success. I have met countless numbers of teachers who have told me how much they love the community here, but who ultimately concluded that they could no longer remain in GMCS because they were so burnt out from the unnecessary paperwork and fed up with the District’s relentless micromanagement.
Even though I share these frustrations, I have decided to stick around because I know there is great potential here to create the kinds of schools that our students truly deserve. However, this will only happen if we can drastically improve the working environment for GMCS staff. To accomplish this task, I have been an active member of MCFUSE (McKinley County Federation of United School Employees) during the past couple of years. In my first few years with GMCS, the Union did not have much of a presence at schools and seemed unwilling to take strong actions to support staff. Last January, an upsurge of rank and file activity resulted in a change to the MCFUSE Union leadership, and since then we have begun to rebuild our organization and finally begin to fight back.
One of the worst things about working for GMCS is the terrifying culture of fear and retaliation that exists in our schools. Teachers who raise questions about misguided District policies suddenly find themselves becoming targets for arbitrary discipline, fishing expeditions, and unjust firings. The District administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not want capable independent thinkers with their own ideas working in its schools, but that it only wants pliable yesmen and -women. In our schools, ideas that have never been tested out in actual classrooms are simply imposed from on high by out of touch District administrators. Teachers with years of experience, who are experts at their crafts, are told to just drop everything and adopt questionable instructional practices at the drop of a hat in order to appease allpowerful District “experts”. It’s no surprise that year after year many of the best teachers simply find it impossible to work in this kind of environment, and instead choose to pack up and leave McKinley County for greener teaching pastures somewhere else.
MCFUSE has itself been a victim of unjust District tactics. For example, our current Union president, Sawyer Masonjones, was placed on administrative leave the day after the District learned that he would be the new Union president back in January. Mr. Masonjones was later fired, but he is currently challenging that decision through arbitration and via a potential future hearing with the New Mexico Public Employee Labor Relations Board. This is just the latest episode of District union busting, as there have been multiple cases of past Union leaders being subjected to questionable investigations and retaliation during Mike Hyatt’s tenure. Despite the many challenges we have faced since the beginning of this year, MCFUSE is not backing down.
Another one of the major sources of teacher discontent is the absurd amount of unnecessary paperwork that GMCS educators are expected to keep up with. Often teachers are being forced to choose between doing what’s best for their students and completing all of the mindless paperwork they’ve been assigned in order to avoid disciplinary actions from their administrators. As part of our effort to enforce the contract, MCFUSE filed a grievance to put a stop to some of the District’s paperwork demands that were never negotiated with the Union in violation of our CBA. We also have a petition signed by over 120 GMCS teachers to end this unbargained- for paperwork. MCFUSE is taking further actions, including filing other grievances, to enforce a Union contract that was too often ignored by the District in prior years.
MCFUSE is also reaching out to parents and other members of our community who also want to hold the School District leadership accountable. Thanks to his own selfserving and irresponsible actions, our current superintendent has managed to waste huge amounts of taxpayer dollars just to fight lawsuit after lawsuit. Yet, despite these glaring issues with the District administration, our current School Board only seems interested in protecting Mr. Hyatt and insulating itself from any criticism. For example, the District has not been allowing members of the community to make public comments at its meetings and is holding its meetings at 1pm on Mondays when most people are at work.
MCFUSE is seeking a future where GMCS allows our school staff, parents, students, and other members of the community to have a real voice in local educational matters, and where it no longer spends the majority of its time shielding an unpopular superintendent from public scrutiny.