School Board Weighs Barring Fiesta Court Events

Following hours of contentious testimony over a push by some of its members to ban in-school appearances of the Fiesta Council next month, the Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education plans to reconvene in a special meeting Monday.

Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez will also convene a small team over the weekend to seek compromise.

The board on Thursday heard from dozens of residents on the proposed resolution—most of them objecting to the plan to prohibit Fiesta Court visits during standard instructional time or after-school programming in the public school system.

This resolution, as many protesters said, reopened an “old wound” from a policy passed in 2018 that limited the visits and pageantry to classes that study New Mexico history: fourth, seventh and ninth grades.

But school board member Sascha Anderson said the measure came about after the Fiesta Council and the district failed to come to an agreement after months of discussing ways to make the visits conform to curriculum recommendations from the SFPS Equity, Diversity and Engagement Department.

“It was only very, very recently—in fact, this weekend—that we found out the agreement had not been adopted, and we scrambled to find a solution to ensure a safe education for all of our children,” Anderson said.

She described the timing of the resolution as “terrible” and “kicking the hornet’s nest at the exact wrong time,” given that the start to Fiesta celebrations is just a week away.

The Fiesta Council rallied support on social media ahead of the meeting, and the Santa Fe Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Board released a statement Thursday afternoon as well.

“The visits from the Santa Fe Fiesta Council to local schools have proven to be invaluable opportunities for education, inspiration, and fostering an appreciation for our community’s traditions and contributions,” the statement from the chamber board reads. “We earnestly urge the reconsideration of this proposal and extend an invitation to engage in constructive dialogue.”

A few hours before the meeting was set to begin, the district issued a notice of the new special meeting at 5:30 pm on Monday, but opted to hold the planned public hearing as well. Anderson said part of the reason to delay a vote on the resolution was so District 1 and 4′s representatives, Carmen Gonzales and Roman “Tiger” Abeyta, could be present. Gonzales attended Thursday by phone and Abeyta was absent, reportedly for work travel.

Upwards of 40 people spoke at the meeting’s public forum, in addition to 30 emails read to the board by public information officer Cody Dynarski. The majority of those in attendance spoke against the resolution.

“How many, out of the thousands of students over the decades, had a traumatic experience with the visitations? Let us go ahead and say, maybe a handful in recent years, if any,” former SFPS employee Raelynn Lujan told the board when speaking against the resolution. “The ones objecting to visitations cannot match the immense number of community members, school staff and students that support these cultural visitations.”

Those in support of the board’s resolution shared concerns of Indigenous students’ wellbeing during the Fiesta events during school days, citing the importance of not revising history to glorify conquistadors responsible for Native American deaths.

Mary Ann Maestas, a former field organizer for ACLU New Mexico, shared her opposing experience with the Fiesta Council’s visits during her time as an SFPS student.

“As a Hispanic youth going to these assembly activities every year, I just found that they were very normalized and really only served to normalize a religious and settler-colonial narrative,” Maestas says. “Our public schools are not a place for religious activities and to perpetuate historical myths or distortions.”

The board voted 4-0 to direct the superintendent to meet with the Santa Fe Fiesta Council and an Indigenous representative to collaborate on a compromise of proposed resolution, according to Anderson’s motion, “to work to come up with a policy that represents all cultures and does not harm our children.”

Anderson, a member of the Choctaw Nation, also addressed criticisms she received from many residents for her status as a relative newcomer to Santa Fe from Oklahoma.

“The reason that I am from Oklahoma is that my Indigenous ancestors were removed by the United States government from our ancestral lands to Oklahoma, walking hundreds of miles on the Trail of Tears, where thousands of people died,” Anderson says. “I am not Pueblo, and I am not Diné, but Indigenous people share important connections with one another, even if we are not from the same nation and tribe.”

She said Indigenous children, including her own, have told her that “seeing a celebration of a conquistador, no matter the context, is hard.”

“One thing that I’ve heard via email and on social media and here tonight…something that we need to address, is that we shouldn’t care if it only impacts a small portion of the community, and that Indigenous kids should just stay home. Would we do the same thing to other demographics?” Anderson asked.

Board member Kate Noble, who grew up in Santa Fe and attended Santa Fe Public Schools, wished Chavez luck in his weekend assignment, noting that the meeting felt particularly heated compared to discussions in 2018.

“It’s clear to me that we have more work to do. We probably will for most of our lifetimes,” she said, adding later “the divisions seem more stark and harsh and all of the things that don’t feel good. And I want us to do the work. I heard a lot of people saying that there is a bigger conversation that we need to have.”

This article has been updated to reflect that Mary Ann Maestas no longer works for the ACLU in New Mexico, and was not speaking on behalf of the organization.