SANTA FE, NM – Santa Fe parents are no longer staying quiet. Packing the Santa Fe Public School Board meeting on Thursday evening, parents, grandparents, and community members confronted district leaders over policies they say have increasingly shut parents out of consequential decisions involving their own children. 

One after another, speakers demanded answers about gender policies, student privacy, access to curriculum, parental notification, and the authority schools exercise over children without parents necessarily knowing what is happening. 

At the center of the growing controversy is Kristy Borrego Ojinaga, a Santa Fe mother and member of Independent Women’s Network whose own experience with the district has propelled her into a broader fight advocating for parental rights and transparency in New Mexico schools. 

Ojinaga said of the event: “The board had plenty to say about transparency when it came to AI and recording devices in schools. But the majority of the speakers demanded answers about their daughters’ privacy, gender identity policies, and parental transparency, the board blatantly chose to ignore those pleas. Parents deserve the same openness from their schools whether the issue is a recording device or something as personal as their child’s identity and privacy.” Read her story here.

Ojinaga, whose story was first told by Independent Women’s Features (IW Features), the grassroots storytelling and original journalism arm of Independent Women, began raising concerns when her then-six-year-old daughter came home distressed. She told her parents that a male student—whom the school was identifying as a girl—had been using the girls’ restroom and engaging in behavior that made her uncomfortable. 

Ojinaga says that when she and her husband sought answers, school officials repeatedly minimized their daughter’s concerns while citing district policies surrounding gender identity. 

After months of meetings with school and district officials and fighting for answers, Ojinaga ultimately withdrew her children from Santa Fe Public Schools. 

Now she is speaking publicly for parents across New Mexico, whom she says may not know what policies are being implemented inside their children’s classrooms. 

At Thursday’s meeting, Ojinaga told board members: 

“We talk about the importance of supporting students, but what about the students who are affected by these decisions without ever having a voice in them? What about their parents? Parents cannot advocate for their children when they don’t know what is happening. And that is exactly why transparency and meaningful parental involvement matter. Every child deserves to feel safe, every child deserves to be protected, and every parent deserves to know when something happening at school could affect their child. You have a responsibility to all of our children—not just the child at the center of a gender support plan.”

Ojinaga was joined by many others who addressed the board, including: Barbara Borrego, Regina Velazquez, Dana Tapia, Miriah Maestas, Mary Jo Gallegos, Zebulun Evridge, Jenna Ortiz, Kelly Borrego Ojinaga, Beverly Duran, Patricia Stockto, Carolyn Gonzales, Laura Girdner, and Renee Borrego.

Their message repeatedly returned to one question: Why are parents being left in the dark?

Dana Tapia, a local mother put the issue directly before the board:

“A parent’s responsibility does not stop at the schoolhouse door. When we send our children to public school, we do not surrender our right to know what is taught, discussed, assigned, or introduced. Yet we are told, in so many words, that we cannot know everything happening in our kids’ classrooms. What do you mean we cannot know everything happening in our kids’ classroom? Whose children are they? If a lesson involves gender identity, sexuality, race, politics, mental-health screening, or any other sensitive subject, why should only some parents be notified while the rest are expected to stay quiet? Why do we have sex-designated bathrooms—and then say anyone can go in? If the rule exists for a reason, why is that reason suddenly discarded? Shouldn’t parents be trusted with the same information the school already has?”

Mary Jo Gallegos said:

“Parents have the fundamental God-given right to direct their children’s upbringing without secretive interference by our public schools. That secrecy infringes on our 14th Amendment due process and First Amendment religious exercise rights. New Mexico schools are violating those parental rights. Policies in New Mexico are not only denying biological reality—they are harming children in their wake. No teacher or school official knows a child better than their parents, nor should schools take the place of parents raising their children.”

Barbara Borrego, a local Santa Fe resident and grandmother of former SFPS students, said:

“First, under New Mexico’s public‑records law, public information must be provided to any member of the public who requests it. IPRA does not limit access to parents. It does not require a special status. It does not say that grandparents, taxpayers, or community members are excluded. Public records belong to the public. Second, the burden is on YOU, the district and the school board, to establish that the records that have been withheld actually satisfy the trade secret exemption. So the district’s position—that the curriculum is both a trade secret and only available to parents—is not grounded in statute, and it undermines public trust. What, in this curriculum, is so top secret? Is there something that the district is trying to hide?”

Regina Velazquez, a local Santa Fe resident and aunt of former SFPS students said:

“I am asking for caution, transparency, and appropriate boundaries. Specifically, I ask this board to ensure that elementary-school instruction concerning gender and sexuality is developmentally appropriate, and gender ideology is not presented in a misleading manner to young children. Parents receive clear information about district policies and practices concerning gender identity and transition. Parents or legal guardians are meaningfully involved in significant decisions concerning their child’s welfare, including any type of social transition and change in pronouns. Schools and/or school counselors do not assume the role of medical providers or parents. The district recognizes the uncertainty surrounding the long-term evidence for gender-transition interventions in young people. Parents have meaningful opportunities to review and comment on policies affecting their children, including sexual education material being presented.”

Miriah Maestas urged the district to return its focus to academics:

“New Mexico continues to face some of the most serious educational challenges in the country. Our focus should be on strengthening academics and giving our children the education they deserve. School should be a place of education, not indoctrination. Parents should guide their children’s values and beliefs. Let parents parent. Let teachers teach. And most importantly, let children be children.”

The public confrontation comes after Santa Fe Public Schools quietly amended its gender-support rules in August. 

The revised policy requires parental involvement when a student seeks a formal Gender Support Plan connected to adding a preferred name or gender marker to the district’s student information system. 

But the change did not resolve the broader dispute. Parents say the policy could still allow secret gender transitions.

District guidance still directs employees to use a student’s requested name and pronouns in everyday interactions regardless of whether those changes have been entered into the student information system. The policy also maintains confidentiality surrounding students’ gender identity and does not establish a general notification process for parents of other students affected by accommodations involving shared facilities or activities. 

Those distinctions have fueled continued criticism from parents who argue that meaningful parental involvement should begin before a formal plan is created. 

Zebulun Evridge, a local Santa Fe resident and father of a former SFPS student told the board:

“Why should parents be left in the dark about something this significant in their child’s life? Parents should be involved from the beginning—not only once a formal Gender Support Plan is created. Schools should be partners with parents, not substitutes for them.”

NEW MEXICO PARENTS & TEACHERS SPEAK OUT

Thursday’s meeting comes after years of work by Independent Women alongside Santa Fe parents and educators raising concerns about transparency and parental rights.

Among those speaking Thursday was Laura Girdner, a Santa Fe mother recently profiled by IW Features after her fourth-grade twin daughters were shown a puberty-related video at their elementary school despite opting them out of the lesson and after her seventh-grade son attended a sex education class at Mandela International Magnet School and returned home describing instructional materials about ‘gender identity.’ Girdner has since urged other parents to get more involved and demand greater transparency in schools.

IW Features has also documented concerns from inside the classroom. From Northwest New Mexico, Paula Edwards—a pseudonym used to protect the subject’s identity—described what she called a “full-scale collapse” in the state’s public schools, offering a firsthand account of the challenges facing teachers and students.

In June, Independent Women launched a statewide grassroots campaign and petition calling on New Mexico leaders to protect parental rights and transparency in schools and end ideological indoctrination in education. So far, thousands of New Mexicans have signed the letter.

The campaign’s message is simple: New Mexico’s classrooms are in crisis—and our kids are paying the price.

The effort builds on Independent Women’s 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.”

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