“Traditional Hispanics in New Mexico: You better take note. There is an ideology coming that will render your perspectives and contributions irrelevant. Nay, it is already here,” Rep. Ryan Lane, regarding the proposed NM Social Studies Standards.
Down here in Las Cruces, we agree. I am among the grassroots coalition of parents and concerned citizens who fought against the eventual passage of Policy JBC at Las Cruces Public Schools on May 18, 2021. We researched the Policy and the already implemented Cultural and Linguistically Responsive (CLR) learning. We bought the teacher training texts that LCPS purchased and analyzed the pedagogy’s worldview. It is racially discriminatory, divisive and unacceptable. It is especially inappropriate for Las Cruces and the Mesilla Valley, with our proud multi-cultural heritage, exquisite history, and mixed race population. By the way, this pedagogy is fed to the students via the Teachers at this time, it is not yet in the curriculum. The Teachers, trained in CLR, are allowed to inject this undesirable material at any time, during any lesson. That’s how they’re doing it here.
Traditional Hispanics and all Las Crucens have taken a cultural beating down here lately: The LC City Council despicably rejected the Dona Ana Historical Society's request to change the inaptly named Motel Blvd (with one motel) to Pat Garrett Blvd in 2019. The request came on the heels of a very successful Pat Garrett festival, the required County Commission approval, only to be belittled racially, from the Dais, at the City Council for daring to name a street thusly. The ignorance of the LC Council’s position is unimaginable, for Pat Garrett’s wife was Apolonia Gutierrez-Garrett of Roswell and Las Cruces, and their daughter was Elizabeth Garrett, who wrote our State song. If this is not authentic New Mexico history, then nothing is. Who are these equity arbiters?
In August 2020, the Las Cruces School Board overruled the Public’s overwhelming support (75% from the District’s own survey) for NO on the Onate High School name change. The High School is now named Organ Mountain High School, but nobody tell the Board that the Organs were first documented by none other than…Don Juan de Onate! Organ Mt. High now stands as testament to the ignorance and folly of the cancel crowd. This spring, I’m going to propose changing the name back to Onate High. If it takes a million dollars by the time the ordeal is through, it will be money well spent for a badly needed lesson. And now the City is pushing to rename a LC street, and Baylor Peak. Perhaps the Council should google “the Taliban” and learn how to really quickly destroy monuments, there’s no difference.
Dear NM PED, respectfully – no thank you on the CLR pedagogy, because it is an affront to the dignity of the people and history of Las Cruces, and to the life achievement of Martin Luther King. It is a non-starter here.
We will be back at the School Board until their mission is Education.
Rick Reynaud, Parent, P.E.
Coalition of Conservatives in Action, CCIA
Las Cruces
