New Mexico School Board House of Cards

Couldn't help but notice that there hasn't been anything on this story here on ATS. Apparently, there has been a huge to-do about the Albuquerque Public Schools Deputy Superintendent and the Secretary of State. The Deputy Superintendent has recently been extradited to Colorado court systems for six counts of Child Sexual Assault against two children. Now, one would think this is something that would be noticed long before his employment started, and yet, they failed to do a background check before hiring him... to be the overseer of a system of ~86,000 kids. Now, it is coming to light that there is further corruption in the system, it stems back to these people:


Most won't recognize a single person there, the one that is clearly a mugshot is, you guessed it, Jason Martinez, the deputy superintendent who was just arrested for child sex abuse charges in Colorado. In the upper left, we have Susana Martinez, the Governor and the bottom right we have Dianna Duran the Secretary of State, who is accused of money laundering and embezzling from her campaign funds and depositing the ill gotten gains into her private bank account. The story goes deeper than that for anyone who wants to read the story and it has a link to the 44 page complaint here:

NM Secretary of State Accused of Crimes

As for the Deputy Superintendent, they(the school board president Don Duran, pictured upper right as well as Luis Valentino, third from the left on top, Superintendent) can't seem to decide what to do with him, after two meetings, despite his arrest, and he is still currently on payroll. His (Don Duran's) daughter is now the associate super for middle schools and that may be in violation of the nepotism laws as seen in this story.
Board Presidents Daughter

Ultimately it's a huge mess, including the Governor and the Mayor (pictured second from the left on top). Peggy Muller-Aragon, a board member hand picked and endorsed by the Governor received $15,000 as an off books campaign contribution to get her seat on the board and has conflict of interest issues regarding all of this despite being part of the decision process and is insisting that until a judge says otherwise the charges are only charges.

Additionally, Albuquerque Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Don Moya was recently suspended after being a whistleblower on Deputy Superintendent Jason Martinez who was hired, with the support of Governor Martinez, by Superintendent Luis Valentino, for improperly handling APS Contracts. He claims his suspension was retaliation for bringing this information to light, and says he was sent a text message by Valentino that he was going to "go after" him for getting involved in contracts Gov Martinez was trying to negotiate, also alleging that the New Mexico Public Education Department Secretary Hanna Skandera was involved with Gov Martinez on hiring the Deputy Superintendent Jason Martinez and that the text was meant to go to her. The rest of the story on that is here:

Whistleblower story
Text message story

Also, the majority of the people in the picture are using the NM Children Youth and Families Department (CYFD) to harass members of a local group Stands4KidsNM for trying to report on the issues. The rest of the story is in a smaller publication, partially opinion based, called the Duke City Fix and the story is here:

House of Cards

Like I said, haven't seen anything on this here so go forth and educate thy selves on the inherent corruption in the system even at a state level. And Mods, if this is in the wrong forum, please move it to the appropriate place.

originally posted by: Jekka

Now, one would think this is something that would be noticed long before his employment started, and yet, they failed to do a background check before hiring him

Or somebody got paid off not to check

Massive government failure on multiple levels here.

Bureaucratic breakdown.

Now this is the NM I remember. The entire state is basically run off corruption. I truly mean that...top to bottom...left to right. The law enforcement there is a total joke and full of family members of cartel folks. Man some of the stories I could tell... I have a feeling that it will eventually crumble and the entire state will be exposed. Could be the very reason it isn't making many headlines or receiving much attention.

The issue with new mexico as a whole is the number of under educated people live here. I say under educated because our schools suck. The teachers are grasping onto whats left. And the test scores have always been altered.

An education reform needs to take place here in more than just public schools. We need a police academy, higher standards for our office personnel, and the whole state needs to wake up.

a reply to: GiulXainx

RickyD and GiulXainx, you are both correct. The corruption goes farther than this, this is just one of the more intricate webs I have seen and reform would be nice but you can't build a mansion on a cracked foundation. Ultimately, it will have to fail completely before any real progress towards reform can be made.