Chaparral Principal Under Fire

Michael Granado accused of 'naughty box' punishment and dangerous 'principal taxi' activity

The principal of Chaparral Elementary School is coming under fire from the Santa Fe branch of the National Education Association for alleged inappropriate punishment and reward tactics.

In an email sent last Friday to two top Santa Fe Public Schools administrators, NEA-SF President Grace Mayer accuses Chaparral Principal Michael Granado of behaving "in a manner that is unacceptable with students and staff."

"He tied students to a chair and sent them down a steep hallway!" Mayer wrote to James Luján, assistant superintendent for equity and instruction, and Tracie Oliver, executive director of human resources. "He is also directing staff to shame students in an abusive way, thankfully they refused."

Let's start with the "shame" allegations, which are detailed in part in the photo posted above. Mayer says that staffers at Chaparral have been complaining to NEA about Granado's "naughty box," a square of masking tape on the cafeteria floor.

"He has a taped box on the floor in the cafeteria, and when kids misbehave they have to go into the naughty box," Mayer says.

The kids also eat from their tray off of the floor in front of the lunchroom, Mayer says, adding that the practice could damage them psychologically.

"They're going to internalize that that demeaning behavior is acceptable," she adds.

In a statement sent to SFR, Granado denied Mayer's account.

"To my knowledge, no students have ever had to eat on the cafeteria floor for timeout," Granado says. "No student, staff or parent complaints have ever come to me expressing this type of situation. I am happy to listen to students, staff or parents with any school concern they may have."

But Judy Romero, who works in the Chaparral cafeteria, tells SFR that she personally witnessed a child placed in the box last year.

"It was way in the back, and from afar I saw a kid sitting in a little box," Romero says. "He was sitting there eating his lunch on the floor."

She adds that lunchroom supervisors told her that day that the punishment came directly from Granado.

Jean Louise Hill,

who teaches at New Mexico Highlands University, calls such a practice "public humiliation." Timeout, she says, should be enforced privately when children lose control of themselves in certain situations. Kids are placed in timeout for limited periods of time to calm down and regain control of themselves, she says.

"Timeout is for a short period of time," Hill says. "It's not until you finish your lunch."

Michelle Johnson, the clinical director at

, adds that punishing children publicly defeats the purpose of helping them to act better. 

"Think about a time when you felt humiliated," Johnson says. "It probably didn't make you feel like you wanted to cooperate or change your behavior. So what happens in that situation is kids get real defensive."

The other activity Granado is accused of doing involves how he rewards children. It allegedly involves a "principal taxi" activity where he ties kids to wheeled chairs and pushes them down an inclined hallway for fun.

The "principal taxi ride" activity happened last Thursday. Mayer criticizes Granado for "making poor choices about what he sees as fun" because it puts children's safety at risk. "Any one of those kids could have fallen on their head," she says.

In a short voice mail to SFR earlier Monday afternoon, Granado says that any complaints over the activity "must be a miscommunication" and that "we had a blast with the principal taxi." In the statement released since then, Granado says the event was a fundraiser coordinated with parents and adds that no students were put in an unsafe situation. He doesn't deny the specific allegations of tying the kids and pushing them down the hall.

"Several students participated in an activity organized in coordination with several Chaparral parents as a fundraising culminating event," he says. "A parent representative drew the names out of a bag of students that will participate in the 'Principal Taxi Ride.' To qualify for the drawing students had to sell 10 or more catalog items. At no times were students unaccompanied or in an unsafe situation."

SFPS is investigating the complaints surrounding Granado.

"Student safety is a top priority of the district," SFPS Chief of Staff Latifah Phillips says in a statement. "This matter is currently under review and all concerns will be considered, in accordance with the district's standard practice."

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