Lujan Grisham ouster of Trujillo raises questions

Karen Trujillo, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s pick for secretary of public education, speaks during a news conference Thursday, Jan. 24, 2019, in Santa Fe. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s decision to fire Education Secretary Karen Trujillo on Monday took a lot of people in New Mexico by surprise, including Trujillo, who said she was blindsided. 

It’s been three days, and some New Mexicans suspect they haven’t been given the real reason Trujillo was fired and why now. 

The administration has said it was about her ability to communicate, manage and meet the governor’s expectations for transforming public education in New Mexico. 

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham

A spokesman initially pointed to the shaky rollout of a signature education program called K-5 Plus across the state, but the administration is beginning to walk back an effort to pin the firing on implementation of that program. Trujillo had pushed back, saying she didn’t get much direction from the governor and that she had raised alarm early on about how difficult K-5 Plus would be to implement immediately, as designed by the Legislature. 

And Trujillo said if communication was deficient, it was on the part of the governor. 

“It would have been nice to have a conversation with the governor where she said what her concerns were so that I could have done something about them, but that conversation never took place,” Trujillo said. Tripp Stelnicki, Lujan Grisham’s director of communications, said Trujillo heard from top administration officials from the governor’s office, including Lujan Grisham herself, about the governor’s frustration with her communications skills and leadership at the Public Education Department — and that Trujillo’s pushback comes from someone “with an axe to grind.”

 “This was not infrequent communication.

Mission control: Governor announces education leadership team

New Mexico’s moonshot for education finally has someone permanent at Mission Control. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Thursday named Karen Trujillo as her secretary of education, along with a diverse leadership team that has as its mission transforming the state’s beleaguered public school system to educate children better — and finally erase the achievement gap for at-risk students. The New Mexico State University education researcher and newly elected Doña Ana County commissioner has two credentials whose lack dogged Martinez appointee Hanna Skandera — she’s a native New Mexican and spent years at the front of a classroom. And she and her husband, Ben Trujillo, sent their three children to public schools. She also struck a different tone than former governor Susana Martinez’s education secretaries.