KRWG Public Media is covering the Gadsden Independent School District 2 race in Doña Ana County. Abigail Salas talks with candidate Arlean Murillo.
Abigail Salas:
I want to start off by asking what in your background has prepared you for this office?
Arlean Murillo:
So, I think coming into the board, my first time I ran in a post, and I started as an advocate for my own family because I saw a lack of transparency and I saw a lack of advocacy for special education. And then as I got in there, I started noticing that it wasn't just my kids. It was, you know, it was across the board. So I think going to professional development myself, educating myself of the needs of my district, I think, and it's sad to say, right, but after four years, I think I finally have what it takes and I feel fully prepared to advocate and to know how much power do we have as board members for that level of advocacy, but I feel myself very prepared now as a board member for this coming election.
Abigail Salas:
What do you see as the top issue facing your district?
Arlean Murillo:
I think right now, currently, right now, we have two major issues, and right now it's a special education department. I think that is across the board, across the whole state, with a Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit, making sure that we're in compliance. I think as a board we have been trained with asking for audits to make sure that our district is in compliance or to make sure that we get there. And the second one, I think it will be the consolidation of schools. We're in the process of, there has been recommendations by our superintendent to consolidate a couple of schools and, those are hard conversations for our community.
Abigail Salas:
How do you propose to best address those issues?
Arlean Murillo:
I think with transparency and a lot of meetings. I have been right now, currently I'm the president of the board. And so, I have been asking for community meetings, different community meetings on different days at different times, just to make sure that we provide that opportunity for our parents, our community, to attend those meetings and ask questions. If it's something that we have to do, it's gonna be a very hard decision, but I think that we need to have that dialogue with our parents. We can't just consolidate schools at board meetings and then be done. Even if that's not something that is in the book yet, it is a conversation, but if we were to consolidate schools, then I'm going to propose that we have follow-up meetings to educate our community and let them know why. Why is it that we took that decision.
Abigail Salas:
What else do you think is important for voters to know?
Arlean Murillo:
I think right now, one thing that I would like to educate our public is to make sure that they know that we're limited. We're limited with the things that we can do. A lot of people think that as board members, we have all this power and we don't. We really don't. We have to stay in our lane. We can get involved into the day-to-day operations. Our main job as board members is the approval of the budget and policy. So, if we want to do any changes, if we want to make any changes, it has to be through the budget and through the policy. So that's a lot of things that, that's a thing that a lot of community members do not know, they think that we can just get up and make decisions and we can't. And I'm one of five, so we do need five votes, or at least the majority, right, three out of five to make that impact.
