Sanders superintendent reports threatening display near home on school grounds

By Jalen Woody
Special to the Times

WINDOW ROCK

The superintendent of the Sanders Unified School District reported finding what she described as a threatening display at her home on school grounds following Veterans Day.

Superintendent Kay Morris said that the day after the holiday, she returned from a weekend trip to Albuquerque and found what she described as a string fashioned into the shape of a noose hanging from a tree near her residence on district property.

“It was a string type with a round noose at the very top,” Morris said. “It was bigger than yarn, it’s an item that you couldn’t pull apart.”

Morris said she returned home at about 5:30 p.m. after working on campus throughout the day. She said her unit is located far from the rest of employee housing and beyond the reach of the nearest surveillance cameras at the nearby middle school. The area, she said, is enclosed by a chain link fence and accessed by a single entrance and exit road.

“I didn’t put out an official statement,” Morris said. “I did text several leaders, administrators, which included my human resource director and the other principals, (and) I did two board members.”

Morris said the display appeared to have been placed from outside the fence, as the tree limb extended over the chain link. After discovering it, she said she contacted the school security supervisor, the Apache Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“The person who I spoke with advised me to make sure that the string left because they were taking care of a situation right now, at the time I called and they said they would return to collect the evidence and take pictures,” Morris said.

Morris said no one from the Apache Police Department interviewed her that night. She said individuals she identified as FBI agents came to her residence the following day to ask questions. Morris later said she contacted the Apache Police Department directly on Thursday evening to request updates and a police report. The Navajo Times was unable to independently verify the status of any investigation.

“I am a former teacher here at Sanders Unified School and I’m a retiree. It is very disturbing to me. It’s a hate crime. We see this kind of thing across the nation, and it shouldn’t be happening here on the reservation, and kids should be aware of this,” SUSD Board President Daisy Slim said. “This is wrong, and it all leads to whoever is behind this. If it’s a parent, if it’s an ex-teacher, or a person who didn’t like what was going on in the school. It was very disturbing. This is more like a federal felony.”

Morris said there have been ongoing internal conflicts involving individuals within the district and on the school board, though she said she was not allowed to identify anyone by name.

“I think because of statements that have been made during board meetings, open board meetings, it’s a direct result of people getting really out of hand and putting up that symbolism in front of my apartment,” Morris said.

She also said she believes the incident may be connected to her efforts to hold individuals accountable for alleged financial misconduct. Morris said she could not identify the individual involved because of an ongoing inquiry by the Arizona Auditor General’s Office.

“We do have an individual who had and by their own admittance stolen close to $100,000 from student activities,” Morris said. “There was no oversight in the business office.”

Morris said the discrepancy was discovered by someone at the school site rather than by the district’s business office. That person could not be identified.

“My responsibility as a superintendent is to make sure that people are held accountable,” Morris said. “I think that this is all connected with interference of me running the district and certain individuals who were probably given the green thumb to go ahead and engage in this nefarious act.”

Morris also said she has received previous threatening messages from another individual against whom she obtained a restraining order in recent months.

On June 4, she said, that individual allegedly traveled from Sanders to Flagstaff and left what she described as a “nasty” message at the hotel where she was staying while attending a district board meeting. She said she was not allowed to identify that person.

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