Legislative Education Study Committee announces director finalists
May 4—The Legislative Education Study Committee announced Tuesday it has selected three finalists for its director position, a job that has remained vacant for about eight months after former director Rachel Gudgel stepped down amid allegations of workplace misconduct.
In the running are Daniel Benavidez, the former superintendent of Central Consolidated School District, and two New Mexico Public Education Department employees: Deputy Secretary Gwen Perea Warniment and Mayra Valtierrez, Hispanic education liaison and director of the Culture and Language Bureau. Gudgel held the committee's director job for five years before her resignation in September.
A few months earlier, staff complaints about her — including allegations she had made disparaging remarks about Native Americans — became public. Legislative leaders had met in secret to discuss the grievances in 2020 and had hired a private attorney to investigate her workplace conduct. As a result, she received a two-week suspension. Many members of the committee had not seen the investigator's report on Gudgel and were not involved in the decision to suspend her.
In July 2021, lawmakers on the committee cast a split vote on whether to fire her, which meant she was able to retain her job. However, there were growing calls for her removal, and she eventually resigned and received roughly $60,000 in accrued leave.
A job description states the director's duties include assigning research to policy analysts, overseeing the creation of proposed legislation and preparing budgets.
The new director also will be expected to attend budget hearings and other public meetings, and will sit on the Public School Capital Outlay Council. A salary will be determined by experience. Gudgel earned about $130,000 a year.
Benavidez, who also served as superintendent of Zuni Public Schools and director of the Tierra Encantada Charter School in Santa Fe, was placed on administrative leave from the superintendent's job at Central Consolidated in early 2022 after the school board chose not to renew his contract, the Farmington Daily Times reported.
Benavidez stepped into the position in 2020. A spokesman for the district declined to provide details on the school board's decision not to renew his contract.
"The board listened to constituents and made the decision to not approve his contract," Jerrod Noble said. Prior to taking on administrative roles, Benavidez was a classroom teacher in Pecos who also served with the U.S. Army Military Police. He has a master's degree in educational leadership from the University of New Mexico.
Valtierrez has worked for the state education department for seven years, the Legislative Education Study Committee said in a news release. She holds a master's degree in anthropology and linguistics from New Mexico State University.
Before joining the state agency, she worked in Las Cruces Public Schools as a parent engagement specialist and also as an adjunct professor of language and linguistics at NMSU.
Warniment is deputy secretary of teaching, learning and assessment. Before that, she was a program director for the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation. She has also taught at New Mexico Highlands University and NMSU and previously worked in Los Alamos and Santa Fe Public Schools as an instructional coach and teacher.
She has a master's degree in education with a specialty in reading from Highlands and a doctorate in curriculum and instruction with a specialty in STEM education from NMSU.
The committee will publicly interview finalists May 10. A livestream will be available at sg001-harmony.sliq.net/00293/harmony.
