Las Cruces Public Schools Superintendent Sonia Diaz was allowed to lead a meeting of school board members and legislators this morning before the board advised her that she had been placed on administrative leave Tuesday night and asked for her keys and cell phone.<\/p>\n
In an interview, Diaz said she had no idea she had been placed on leave as she led the meeting. Several of the legislators had already heard rumors, and asked to meet with school board members about the situation after their initial meeting to discuss legislative priorities.<\/p>\n Two board members \u2013 John Schwebke and Sharon Wooden \u2013 went with legislators, and told them Diaz had been placed on leave. Two others \u2013 Leonel Brise\u00f1o and Chuck Davis \u2013 met privately with Diaz to inform her, Diaz said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey said that there are allegations against me and they wanted to give me a cooling-off period and they wanted time to investigate,\u201d Diaz told me.<\/p>\n Board members met for hours in closed session Tuesday night. Diaz was with them part of the time, but they sent her home at 9:30 p.m. I\u2019m told they came out of closed session at 10:50 p.m. and did their business in open session.<\/p>\n Diaz said she could not reveal what was discussed in closed session.<\/p>\n Four legislators \u2013 state reps. Joseph Cervantes, Mary Helen Garcia, Joni Gutierrez and Andy Nu\u00f1ez \u2013 all told me they will meet with state Secretary of Education Veronica Garcia tonight to discuss the process of a state takeover of the school district. <\/p>\n All four support such a takeover, they told me during a meeting of the four legislators and Diaz, to which I was invited. The secretary will either fly to Rep. Garcia said she\u2019s concerned about \u201cthe revolving door\u201d of superintendents in the school district, which has been in turmoil since 2001.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not good for families and children in our district,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n All four said Diaz has not been given enough time to implement change, and said placing her on leave is premature, regardless of the circumstances. \u201cHal Mumme inherited a losing team and is being given time to make it better,\u201d Gutierrez said of the In a later interview, State Sen. Leonard \u201cLee\u201d Rawson said it\u2019s premature to say he supports state takeover of LCPS, but said that might become a reality.<\/p>\n He said he is concerned, based on what he was told this morning, that the board\u2019s response to allegations against Diaz \u201cis not comprehensive.\u201d He said the board failed to support former Superintendent Louis Martinez \u2013 regardless of whether he was the right man for the job \u2013 and is currently failing to support Diaz.<\/p>\n He said the school district has not had an effective leader for at least 15 years and, as a result, has many problems. Rawson said the board needs to give a superintendent the support to make necessary changes.<\/p>\n \u201cGive her room, let her do her job, give her a chance to set the direction that the board wants,\u201d Rawson said. He also cautioned that he is \u201cnot taking a side as to whether she is the right person\u201d and acknowledged that he can\u2019t know all the facts about what\u2019s happening because it\u2019s a personnel issue.<\/p>\n \u201cThe (legislative) delegation is unanimously in support of allowing Sonia to do her job,\u201d Rawson said. \u201cThe board is yanking the rug out from under Sonia\u2019s ability to perform.\u201d<\/p>\n Rawson said supporting a state takeover is, in a way, judging the voters who have put the board members in office, and said he is \u201cnot sure I want to go there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not seeing the results we should be getting, and we\u2019re questioning the school board\u2019s decision,\u201d Rawson said.<\/p>\n Nu\u00f1ez said he is concerned that Diaz will leave the district if the board continues down this path.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t want to lose her,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Diaz said she has no immediate plans to do that.<\/p>\n \u201cApparently, they think I need some cooling off,\u201d Diaz said. \u201cApparently, I have some fans here, so I\u2019m going to wait and see.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Las Cruces Public Schools Superintendent Sonia Diaz was allowed to lead a meeting of school board members and legislators this morning before the board advised her that she had been placed on administrative leave Tuesday night and asked for her keys and cell phone. In an interview, Diaz said she had no idea she had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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