SANTA FE, NM — Families across New Mexico are continuing to expose the state’s failing schools through firsthand experiences that reveal how the public education system has undermined transparency, eroded parental rights, and threatened girls’ privacy, safety, and equal opportunities.
Independent Women’s Features (IW Features), the grassroots storytelling and original journalism arm of Independent Women, today released an exclusive education profile of Laura Girdner, a Santa Fe mother who is sounding the alarm on the increasingly disturbing crisis in New Mexico’s schools and urging parents to become more involved in their children’s schools.
The profile, “New Mexico Mother Warns Parents Are Being Shut Out of Their Children’s Education,” follows Girdner’s efforts to challenge school officials in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over explicit instructional materials, explicit sex education content, and barriers to accessing classroom curriculum after her children encountered lessons she says parents should have been informed about in advance.
Girdner details a specific incident in her daughter’s fourth-grade classroom when the teacher showed a video about the “Puberty Fairy,” which depicted a man waving a wand to give a young girl pubic hair. Girdner told IW Features in part:
“What began as isolated concerns quickly became a broader realization that parents cannot assume they know what is happening in their children’s classrooms. Families deserve transparency, and they deserve a meaningful voice in their children’s education.”
Alongside the disturbing sex-education related materials, she also discovered Mandela International Magnet School in Santa Fe, New Mexico had assigned her daughters “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami, a novel containing graphic sexual encounters and the depiction of a 13-year-old’s suicide.
Girdner repeatedly worked to obtain curriculum materials, question classroom content, and advocate for greater parental involvement, but instead received what she describes as dismissive responses from school officials. She argues that parents must remain actively engaged in their local schools, saying, “I think if parents actually saw what was going to be talked about, they might think twice about allowing their kids to go to those classes.”
Read the profile: New Mexico Mother’s Fight for Parental Rights and Transparency
EDUCATION CRISIS IN NEW MEXICO
Laura’s profile is the latest in Independent Women’s ongoing effort to expose the growing education crisis in New Mexico and elevate the voices of parents, teachers, and students demanding accountability.
Recently, IW Features also highlighted the story of Kristy Ojinaga, a Santa Fe mother who challenged district policies after her six-year-old daughter was expected to share private spaces with a boy identifying as a girl.
Last month, Independent Women launched its statewide “Ask Why New Mexico” campaign, which included the launch of television and OTT/CTV ads and a grassroots letter petition, exposing what’s happening inside New Mexico schools and demanding accountability and change from state leaders. In addition to the ads that aired across the Albuquerque-Santa Fe media market—including major local news broadcasts and national cable placements, bringing this message directly into the homes of New Mexicans—billboard trucks and billboards have carried the message: “If Your Candidates Support It, They Should Explain It.”
Last month, IW Features revealed the story of another New Mexico mother who said that gender policy drove her son out of public school. Earlier this year, IW Features released a documentary, “The Hidden Crisis in New Mexico’s Classrooms,” exposing what one veteran educator calls a “full-scale collapse” inside New Mexico’s public school system.
In an effort to foster solutions to address these challenges, Independent Women released the report, “Identity Crisis: The Disjointed Reality in New Mexico,” which examines how existing gender policies in New Mexico go directly against public opinion. The overwhelming majority of New Mexicans believe in safeguarding parental rights from ideologues who seek to “transition” minors behind their parents’ backs and in protecting minors from irreversible elective medicalization in the name of “gender transition.”
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