Native American students in a New Mexico school district are receiving harsher punishments and losing more school days for infractions similar to those committed by their white peers, according to a new report from the New Mexico Department of Justice.
The department launched an investigation into the Gallup-McKinley County Schools district in 2023 after news reports — including from the nonprofit outlet ProPublica — examined the district’s high rates of exclusionary discipline against Native American students.
The district enrolls about 12,700 students across 34 schools. Native American students make up 63% of the student body.
According to the department’s findings, Native American students lose eight to 10 times as many school days to out-of-school suspension as their white peers and receive harsher punishments for similar misconduct.
In the 2021-22 school year, Native American students lost 81.7 days of instruction per 100 students to suspension — more than 25 times the rate for white students, who lost 3.2 days per 100 students, according to the report’s analysis of federal data. In 2023-24, Native American students lost more than three times as many days as white students, the federal data showed. State data for 2024-25 found the gap had grown to more than eight times as many days.
For infractions involving violence and disorderly conduct, Native American students were less likely than white students to receive in-school suspension and more likely to receive out-of-school suspension for similar conduct, the report found.
The district’s handbook includes a general nondiscrimination clause but does not specifically prohibit racialized aggression toward students or staff, as required under state law, according to the report.
The report also points to vague definitions of student misconduct — such as “disorderly conduct” and “insubordination” — that it says give administrators broad discretion, which can allow racial bias to affect who is punished and how.
In June 2024, the district submitted an external audit to the department concluding “there is no evidence of student discipline having a disproportionate impact on Native Americans.” The audit compared Native American students’ discipline rates with a combined rate for all other students. The department said that methodology was flawed because it masked disparities between subgroups, and it reran the analysis comparing Native American students directly with white students. That comparison found a disparity, according to the report.
“Every child deserves an equal opportunity to learn in a safe and supportive school environment,” Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement. “Our investigation found that Gallup-McKinley County Schools relies too heavily on exclusionary discipline and that these practices disproportionately affect Native American and Hispanic students. The loss of instructional time has real consequences for academic success and future opportunity. This report is intended to provide a roadmap for reforms that promote accountability, fairness and better outcomes for students.”
The report is the second in recent months to examine discipline practices in the district. In February, the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission released its own report based on public listening sessions held in fall 2025. It found that Native American community members described perceived racism, disparities in resources and a lack of cultural competency among district staff.
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