Indigenous and Hispanic students are suspended more often and for longer periods than their white classmates who commit similar infractions at Gallup-McKinley County Schools — a pattern of “substantial racial disparities,” an investigation by the New Mexico attorney general’s office found.

Indigenous students lose eight to 10 times more classroom days to suspensions than white students, while Hispanic students lose three to four times as many, according to the 47-page report released by the state’s Department of Justice last week.

Gallup-McKinley, a sprawling district twice the size of Delaware, straddles part of the Navajo Nation and has the largest Native American student population of any public school district in the country.

The investigation was ordered by state Attorney General Raúl Torrez in 2023, after reporting by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica exposed the district’s high rates of harsh punishment for Native and Hispanic children. The news organizations found Native students in New Mexico are expelled far more often than any other group. The district has a quarter of New Mexico’s Native students, but it accounted for at least three-quarters of Native student expulsions during the four school years ending in 2020.

That disparity was evident even in kindergarten and elementary grades, often for ambiguous infractions such as “disorderly conduct.”

At the time, former district Superintendent Mike Hyatt called the news organizations’ reporting “completely false” and........

© ProPublica