WASHINGTON, D.C. – As families across the country prepare for back-to-school, parents in New Mexico are sounding the alarm on a public education system that has undermined transparency, attempted to erode parental rights, and threatened students’ privacy, safety, and equal opportunities. As frustration grows over plummeting literary scores, lack of transparency, and ideological agendas in classrooms—even among children as young as kindergarten—parents across the state are speaking out and taking action.
This summer, Independent Women has worked alongside New Mexico parents to highlight their concerns through investigative reporting, renewing the call for greater transparency in schools, and encouraging families to engage with school leaders and elected officials about the policies shaping their children’s education.
Neeraja Deshpande, policy analyst at Independent Women argues in a new op-ed for Independent Women’s Features (IW Features)—the grassroots storytelling and original journalism arm of Independent Women—that New Mexico should be added to the list of states the Department of Education is putting on notice for allegedly hiding students’ so-called “gender identity” from their parents.
Citing extensive reporting from IW Features in New Mexico, Deshpande argues that policymakers in the state “have pushed this agenda over the objections of the people who actually live there, foreclosing any real debate. And despite a federal crackdown on schools [hiding transitions and promoting ideology] elsewhere, New Mexico’s elites thus far have had the hubris to keep going.”
“At this point,” Deshpande continued, “given New Mexico’s egregious record and its insistence on doubling down on a failed, unpopular ideology, it’s time for the federal government to subject its schools to the same scrutiny it has applied to Maryland, Michigan, California, and Maine.”
FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCES: NEW MEXICO’S EDUCATION CRISIS
Last month, IW Features shared the stories and first-hand experiences of two mothers from Santa Fe who are speaking out about their concerns with New Mexico’s public schools.
Laura Girdner is one Santa Fe mother who is urging parents to become more involved in their children’s schools ahead of the new school year. Girdner’s fourth-grade twin daughters came home from school one day at Mandela International Magnet School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after being shown an inappropriate puberty-related video in class despite their parents having opted them out of the lesson, prompting concerns about schools failing to notify parents properly and honor opt-out requests.
“The people we know who’ve been born and raised here for the most part are not the ones that are kind of trying to impose this agenda––all the transgender stuff and LGBTQ and abortion,” Girdner told IW Features. “All these random ideas don’t seem to be … what the people who are from here really would value, and so I definitely feel passionate about speaking up.”
READ THE FULL PROFILE: How Radical Gender Ideology Pushed One Family Out of New Mexico’s Public Schools
Earlier in July, IW Features revealed the story of another New Mexico mother, Kristy Borrego Ojinaga, who said she first became concerned after learning that a male student identifying as a girl had been using the girls’ restroom and engaging in behavior that made her six-year-old daughter uncomfortable. She hopes that sounding the alarm now will encourage parents to keep a close eye on the classroom as their kids go back to school.
“Especially these little girls, their privacy matters—their ability to feel comfortable in their own spaces, it matters,” Ojinaga told IW Features. “And we shouldn’t be sending them the message that men could—and boys and males can—infiltrate their spaces and that by them feeling uncomfortable is somehow a reflection of them not being accepting or them not being loving, because that is wrong.”
READ THE FULL PROFILE: Santa Fe Mom Says School Chose Gender Ideology Over Her Daughter’s Privacy—But She’s Fighting Back
IW Features has also been sharing the firsthand experiences of what teachers are facing in schools. From Northwest New Mexico, Paula Edwards*—*a pseudonym used to protect the subject’s identity—deliveres a haunting firsthand account of a system she says is failing students at every level, calling it a “full-scale collapse” inside New Mexico’s public school system.
WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY: THE HIDDEN CRISIS IN NEW MEXICO’S CLASSROOMS
Two major problems at the heart of New Mexico’s education crisis, according to Edwards, are chronic absenteeism and harmful gender ideology in schools. Edwards told IW Features, “It is bad that we are teaching pronouns over reading, writing, and math. Get your indoctrination out of the classroom and get us back to the basics.”
“New Mexico officials already draft budgets and decide how many prison beds are needed by looking at third-grade boys’ reading tests. Here in New Mexico, we’re building a lot of prisons. You would think this would alarm our schools officials and prompt them to teach our kids in schools.”
ASK WHY NEW MEXICO
Earlier this summer, Independent Women launched its statewide “ASK WHY New Mexico… If Your Candidates Support It, They Should Explain It” campaign to remind New Mexican voters to ask WHY to candidates seeking their vote.
Billboards are live in Las Cruces and Albuquerque and will have an estimated 40 million impressions by the November election, and mobile billboards were stationed across the state during primaries.
NIGHTMARE IN NEW MEXICO SCHOOLS: STATEWIDE AD + PETITION
In June, Independent Women announced the launch of a statewide television and OTT/CTV ad campaign and grassroots letter petition to expose what’s happening inside New Mexico schools and demand accountability and change from state leaders.
The ads aired across the Albuquerque–Santa Fe media market, including major local news broadcasts and national cable placements, bringing this message directly into homes of New Mexicans.
Watch Independent Women’s New Mexico ad here.
The campaign’s message is simple: New Mexico’s classrooms are in crisis—and our kids are paying the price.
Independent Women’s petition lays out a clear call-to-action for New Mexico leaders:
- Protect parental rights and transparency in schools
- End ideological indoctrination in education
Thousands of New Mexicans have already signed their name to the letter. That number continues to grow.
At the heart of Independent Women’s work are firsthand accounts from those inside of New Mexico. Their stories reflect lived experiences of families navigating an education system that has lost sight of its core mission.
EXPOSING THE DISJOINTED REALITY IN NEW MEXICO
In an effort to foster solutions to address these challenges, Independent Women last year 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 so-called “gender-affirming care.”
READ MORE
- Sante Fe New Mexican: Parental rights in New Mexico
- KWRG Public Media: New Mexico Needs to Stop Treating Children Like Miniature Adults
- The Albuquerque Journal: NM schools are leaving parents out of gender identity conversations
- Rio Rancho Observer: New Mexico is prioritizing ideology over children’s lives
- The Center Square: Little-known New Mexico law should be every parent’s worst nightmare
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