There's apparently a bullying problem within the Las Cruces Public School District: many employees say Superintendent Stan Rounds shows extreme favoritism toward folks he likes but has many others “very scared.”
This column is based on extensive conversations with people who will go mostly unnamed because they fear retribution from Rounds. I've found many folks convincing. I've noticed consistency among accounts from different people in different schools and in different positions.
I've also heard the fear in people's voices, a fear that has no place in a well-run organization. One person, declining to comment, said that the walls had ears, adding that someone could be listening outside the door. “I can't afford to lose my job for answering your question.”
Many allege that Rounds's favoritism torpedoes morale. They complain of his favoritism toward his fiancée Kathy Adams and her family.
The JUMP (Joint Ungraded Multi-age Program) story is a beautiful one that turns sad. Teachers from JUMP (and LEAP) speak with true excitement about the teaching they did. The idea was to work with kids who might otherwise be held back because they couldn't read, using a creative combination of new technology and ideas as old as the one-room schoolhouse to improve kids' academic performance.
It seems to have worked. Teachers describe a very non-traditional classroom where a second-grader would be helping a kindergarten kid make her letters and another student would be reading to a row of stuffed toys along the wall. “They thought they were playing. They didn't even know they were learning.”
But they did learn. Not by rote, either, but by good old-fashioned creative teaching. My understanding is that by year's end these kids – from the most difficult socio-economic backgrounds and with the poorest histories of reading and study – had gone from “They'll have to be left back” to above-average among their peers.
But Mr. Rounds's personal motives got in the way. He made Ms. Adams the instruction specialist, although she was not particularly qualified. There was an interviewing process in name only.
Barbara Hammond, an experienced teacher who interviewed for the position, says there were applicants far more qualified than she or Ms. Adams; but she says it was clear that the administration had someone in mind. Ms. Adams, whom she likes, even tried to warn her, urging her (before the selection was made) not to be disappointed. An early teacher in the JUMP Program stated that Ms. Adams was by far the least qualified candidate for the position.
Once installed as instruction specialist, and later principal (though she'd never been an assistant principal, so far as I know), Ms. Adams pressed her ideas on the teachers and invoked Mr. Rounds's name to up the pressure when she didn't get what she wanted. According to some teachers, she forced the group to use methods that didn't fit what they were trying to accomplish. Teachers who'd gone to work joyfully began having a very different experience.
I'm told that most or all of the teachers in JUMP (and LEAP) filed extensive grievances this past year about Adams; but since the grievances go only to her supervisor, Mr. Rounds, getting a fair hearing has been difficult.
There have also been extensive complaints about JUMP (and LEAP) getting goodies other schools and departments don't procure so easily.
Regardless of whether there's serious bullying and favoritism, I'm wondering about the ethics of Rounds making decisions to spend significant chunks of public money on his girlfriend. How can he be expected to make those decisions in an unbiased way, purely in the school district's interest, as the law requires? We all know love makes things awfully complicated.
Peter Goodman is a local writer, photographer, and sometime lawyer. He initially moved to Las Cruces in 1969, holds two degrees from NMSU, and moved back here in 2011 with his wonderful wife. This is his most recent Sunday column in the Las Cruces Sun-News. His blog Views from Soledad Canyon contains further information on this subject, as well as other comments and photographs, and past newspaper columns.