Embattled Alma d’arte Principal Adam Amador says he’s been in eight school districts in the past 12 years. Is that good or bad?
In Amador’s defense: he rose from a difficult childhood, including some ethnic prejudice, to earn a doctorate in education from NMSU; Alma had experienced years of difficulties before he arrived last year; and he’s improved the art program, I’m told.
However, . . .
Kids, parents, teachers, co-workers, and even a board member say he threatened or tried to bully them. Many claim Amador retaliated against them over even small differences. Amador has banned parents and former teachers from the school grounds. (A coworker in Lordsburg said Amador tried to ban her from his elementary school, before the superintendent told him he couldn’t.) Some workers have filed legal complaints and some families have consulted lawyers. Former board member Cynthia Wise characterized Alma’s environment under Amador as “Dictatorial. And hostile.”
For a year, Michele Trujillo has sought from Alma a special education plan for her diagnosed son. She so testified to the New Mexico Public Education Commission. Recently, Amador removed her son from class to a private area where an unidentified woman asked him whether his parents drank, or hit him, and other intrusive questions. Now he’s more scared to go to school. Amador won’t say why. He won’t even identify the woman. Trujillo has filed a grievance.
Teacher Kayla Myers, now with New America School, taught social studies at Alma d’arte. She worked with students on a state “Innovative Zone” grant that required student input. The students most wanted a social worker or psychologist. Some mental health professional. Students helped her write the grant and present it. They won the entire $200,000 grant, which was to hire a mental health professional, keep Ms. Myers at Alma, and help fund other needs. What a thrill that must have been for the students!
Amador vetoed the plan, for reasons unknown. Because it wasn’t his? Myers kept trying to discuss with him her employment situation. Amador kept ducking her, not returning calls. (Another source describes Amador and his assistant seeing Myers outside, hoping she wouldn’t come in, then Amador going into his office, to which Myers wouldn’t be admitted.) That stalling forced her to take a different job. “He ghosted me out of my job.” Leaving the kids she loved “broke my soul.”
One of her students was Malachi. He wanted the mental health pro, knowing he was often depressed. After Amador’s veto, Malachi told Myers it confirmed that adults just wouldn’t listen. “My voice doesn’t matter.” His mother has publicly blamed Amador for Malachi’s suicide, adding that Amador has bullied Malachi’s brother since. Alma still has no mental health pro. Amador reportedly banned Myers from Malachi’s vigil.
Early in my research, I visited Amador. (Without first advising me, he taped our conversation.) More recently, having learned more, I hoped to ask about parents’ specific complaints. My several messages were ignored.
Many question Amador’s commitment to truth-telling. Carlsbad High paid a $50,000 settlement to a parent who claimed Amador had defamed her. (To save space, I’ve moved details to my Sunday blog post.) I’ve observed or heard of an unusual number of situations where his account of something completely contradicts someone else’s. One recent example was startling.
Bottom line? Sadly, I’d bet on Amador to exacerbate Alma’s difficulties and earn some parents and former Alma teachers some financial compensation.
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[The above column appeared Sunday, 12May, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and will shortly be on the newspaper’s website and on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). It’s the second in a series of two columns offering my opinion on Alma d’arte. I have also posted a copy of an Alma boardmember's letter of resignation.]
[Researching these two columns was saddening.
Alma is a school. A special school. A school for kids who feel drawn to art. I’m talking to kids who go there or went there, and their parents, and folks who teach there or recently did, as well as others who care about the school.
To see it torn apart is no fun. I also met a few parents who are angry at the “Save Alma” group and simply want the noise to stop. They see that the controversy is divisive harming Alma in the public eye. They mostly support Dr. Amador. They didn’t approve of his calling the police after a board meeting, with one noting that calling the cops created another unappetizing headline about Alma and that the offense, use of profanity by a student at the meeting, was exercise of free speech. But they say he’s brought structure and increased resources, and they generally support him.
It was particularly strange one night to hear a student, right after a meeting, tell me that he had used to feel safe at Alma, despite his sexuality, but felt afraid of Amador, then be introduced to a half-dozen students who obviously appreciated Amador, with some saying that although they’d formerly felt bullied because of their sexuality, they felt safer under Amador. They may be the “favored group” of students that others complained about; but they sounded quite sincere to me. (I also wondered at kids’ capacity for bullying each other, which is no news, and about how much more vicious and hurtful that must be in a world where there’s more gender diversity than I could have imagined in those dark ages when I was 12 or 14.)
I also believe Amador would like to do the right thing. He wishes he were the genial, caring but stern principal he purports to be. I hope he grows into that potential version of himself.
However, I need to add the information about the Carlsbad incident I mentioned in the column. In Carlsbad, a parent complained unsuccessfully to Principal Amador, then to the school board, about his treatment of her son. Later, she heard that Amador was claiming she had called him “a dumb Mexican.” She stated she’d said no such thing. As a district judge, she’d have to be not only prejudiced but idiotic. Her son was standing in the kitchen with her during the call. (Sure, a son might perjure himself for Mom.) She passed a lie detector test with an unusually high score. The school board paid mom $50,000 to avoid a trial verdict. Amador still says she said it, “and a whole lot more before.” (He also told me he had offered to his lawyer that he would take a lie-detector test.)
Obviously I wasn’t there, and can’t know who’s telling the truth; but if I’d been on the Governing Council, I’d probably have tried to talk to someone, maybe the person who was head of the Carlsbad School Board during Amador’s year there, during the hiring process. (Ironically, two board members and the Carlsbad judge were all Republican candidates for office in 2022.)]
[To all the mothers of kids at Alma, or dismissed recently from Alma, here's hoping Mother's Day 2025 will feel more peaceful.]
[To wake up and see that it is May 12th always make me smile. I can’t see this date without recalling that on May 12th, 1956, when I was a nine-year-old kid who’d become obsessed with baseball the previous year, passionately rooting the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers to their first-eve World Series victory, my father took me to Ebbets Field for the first time. Carl Erskine pitched a no-hitter.
I had no idea that the Dodgers would abandon us after the 1957 season, breaking our hearts, and that in 1960 the field would be demolished.]
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