A lawsuit filed in New Mexico’s Thirteenth Judicial District Court alleges a 5th-grade teacher at Bernalillo Elementary School subjected a 10-year-old student to months of physical abuse and racist verbal attacks while school officials ignored a history of prior complaints against her.
The complaint, filed under the New Mexico Civil Rights Act and the Tort Claims Act, alleges the teacher regularly dug her nails into the student’s neck and arms, pulled her hair and threw books at her during the 2022–2023 school year.
Our publication does not name alleged victims or persons accused of wrongdoing until the case has been adjudicated in court.
According to the complaint, the teacher also directed a stream of verbal abuse at the girl, calling her an “idiot,” “ugly,” “nasty” and other slurs, and told her she came from a “failure family” because her mother was born in Mexico.
The lawsuit contends the district had been warned about the teacher’s conduct as far back as 2021, when the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department contacted the school over allegations she had threatened to “string students up from the window.” A district investigation that year included a student interview in which the child confirmed the threats, saying the teacher “gets mad, bangs her hand on the desks when she gets mad at someone a lot.” That same year, a principal requested another student be removed from the teacher’s class “due to bullying” by the teacher.
By March 2022, the teacher herself reportedly acknowledged the problem in a message to district officials, writing, “I need to be clear that I am asking for support in the area of ‘Communicating with students positively!'”
Despite those warnings, Bernalillo Public Schools renewed the teacher’s contract for the 2022–2023 school year, according to the complaint, which the district does not dispute.
The lawsuit further alleges the district retaliated against the family after the student reported the abuse, first moving the girl’s mother — a district employee — farther from her daughter’s classroom, then requiring her to transfer to a different school altogether.
The case has also drawn scrutiny over the district’s handling of court filings. Although the plaintiff’s attorney sought to protect the child’s identity using a pseudonym, attorneys for the school district identified the student by name in court documents and later asked the court to seal those records.
The administrators who oversaw the early complaints against the teacher have since been promoted to higher-level positions within the district, according to court documents.
Bernalillo Public Schools Communications Coordinator JoAnn Beuerle told the Sandoval Signpost that the district “does not comment on pending litigation.”