Gov. Susana Martinez, in her State of the State address on Tuesday, criticized comments made last year by the new majority whip of the state Senate, Democrat Mimi Stewart of Albuquerque.
Heath Haussamen / NMPolitics.net
Gov. Susana Martinez
Stewart spoke in 2017 during a national conference in New Orleans about the state’s lack of effectiveness in teaching low-income children.
“We don’t know how to teach kids from poverty,” Stewart said at the time. “They come with no skills. Well, they have street-fighting skills. They’ve got a lot of skill. They’re just not academic skills.”
On Tuesday, Martinez referred to Stewart’s comment this way: “I have heard impoverished kids demeaned, that they can’t learn because they only know how to street fight. But they’ve proven doubters wrong time and time again.”
Stewart said afterward that Martinez, in two terms, had done nothing to help teachers in their professional development.
“It seems to me that she took a sentence out of a three-day conference,” Stewart said. “Shame on her for not understanding what that conference was about.”
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