New Mexico AG Calls for Reform After Report Finds “Substantial Racial Disparities” in One School District

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