Chapter wants RR principal, CEO removed

ROUGH ROCK, Ariz.

Rough Rock Community School is earning its name this year. The institution’s 50th anniversary school year is off to a rough and rocky start.

Last month, the school lost its accreditation from AdvancEd, but it was allowed to operate until the end of January with a promise to correct its three remaining findings and re-apply for accreditation, said AdvancEd’s public relations officer, Maryama Jenkins.

The Navajo Nation’s first contract school opened as scheduled on Aug. 1, although observers said the enrollment appeared to be about half what it was last year.

Then Sunday, Rough Rock Chapter passed a resolution asking the school board and the Department of Diné Education to remove the school’s CEO and K-8 principal, stating the atmosphere at the school “is in total disarray and unstable.”

The resolution came too late for CEO Leon Ben. He resigned last week, according to sources within the school. (None of the current administrators, reached at the school, would go on record.)

As for K-8 Principal Sharon Toadecheenie, the school board promoted her to acting CEO at its regular meeting Tuesday night.

The chapter passed the removal resolution 19-3-3 Sunday after parent and former school CEO Jeannie Lewis recounted a litany of complaints.

Lewis said parents had demanded a meeting with administrators the first day of school, Aug. 1, after learning when they dropped their children off that the 7th- and 8th-graders would be attending school at the high school because of a lack of teachers at the K-8 school. (The administration later backed down from that decree after parents expressed fear the smaller children would be bullied.)

Lewis said she visited the school and found most of the classes being taught by long-term substitutes. When she asked for the lesson plans, she said, she was given lesson plans from last year.
Lewis said she also found classrooms with no textbooks, and learned the library was closed.

Chapter Vice President Jay R. Nez objected to the resolution, saying that, for one thing, the chapter has no control over the school, and for another, it wasn’t even a resolution.

The document presented by Lewis and her faction was a petition they had been circulating at the school and in the community. But Council Delegate Nelson BeGaye (Lukachukai/Rock Point/Round Rock/Tsaile/Wheatfields/Tsé Ch’izhi) said that the chapter could adopt it and, with a few tweaks, it could easily be made into a resolution.

He also said that, although the chapter cannot remove school personnel, it is within its rights to ask the school board and the Department of Diné Education to do so, which is how the petition reads.

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