The governing board of the Shiprock Associated Schools Inc. – located in the northern region of the Navajo Nation – voted to place the school district’s executive director and human resources coordinator on administrative leave during its May 14 meeting.

The move came months after the board voted to drastically restructure the school district by replacing the entire staff. Since then, staff have made numerous complaints about both Executive Director Leo Johnson and Human Resources Coordinator Endora Sisco, board members said.

Johnson’s and Sisco’s administrative leaves began immediately.

The board made the decision during the public portion of its meeting Monday afternoon. The board also discussed possibly rescinding a drastic restructuring resolution that is set to dismiss the entire SASI current staff, making way for new personnel.

The board had approved the restructuring idea in February.

The decision to place Johnson, who holds a doctorate, and Sisco on administrative leave came after a 3-2-0 vote with board president Dorothy Begaye and vice-president Eva B. Stokely in opposition and members Frank Smith, Gervana Begaye-Johns and secretary Charley Joe in favor.

Smith said the board received anonymous letters from the school district faculty and staff.

“They jotted down a lot of concerns about how they were being treated and how all this was affecting them including the restructure, a lot of the misconduct that Leo and Endora were doing,” Smith said.

The board held copies of the letters and added them to the agenda as items of discussion during executive session.

Board president Begaye was quick to negate adding the letters to the agenda in the executive session saying the deadline to amend the agenda had passed.

But Joe argued that the item was of high concern for the school district.

“The concern, I guess is that for the school,” Joe said. “I think that’s allow.”

Smith said he wanted the board to discuss rescinding the restructuring resolution after he found that the district still had not drafted a plan for the major district governance restructure. He felt it needed to be addressed further.

“We (as a board) don’t even know how he (Executive Director Johnson) came to this conclusion, he didn’t have a plan,” Smith said.

Smith said the letters were obtained the day of the meeting.

The meeting began at 9 a.m. in the administration building on SASI’s campus in Shiprock, N.M. The audience consisted of parents, concerned citizens and a handful of coordinators and officials throughout SASI, a 560-student district created in the mid-1970s by the Navajo Nation as an alternative to the public schools in the area.

SASI is both home to an elementary and high school.

During its meeting, the board did visit potential restructuring plans as presented by Bureau of Indian Education Line Officer Rena Yazzie.

Yazzie, accompanied by Delphina Shunkamolah, education program specialist for the New Mexico Northern Education Line Office, presented the options for reconstructing a school if that school was not making Adequate Yearly Progress, a federal mandate that shows academic progress made within schools and districts.

In February, Johnson proposed an option from a BIE handbook on school restructuring under the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. The option he chose: “Replace all or most of the staff who are relevant to the school failure”.

Smith said this would have been plausible had Johnson come up with a plan to implement the drastic measures, but he didn’t.

“You have to have a plan,” Smith said. “If you’re going to do this next year, letting everyone go, we would start a plan now. We never discussed that. The main part of it was he never had a plan.”

During the presentation Shunkamolah addressed a plan that SASI did have and said it seemed unfinished. She said the plan should also consider the Native Star tool, which is a web-based improvement tool for planning, monitor and reporting of a school, according to the BIE web site.

“Unfortunately I only see two pages of the plan, of how this whole thing is going to go,” Shunkamolah said. “Looking at your restructuring plan it doesn’t say that you’re going to replace the staff so that needs to be updated to date, simple because you’re receiving federal funds, you need to be accountable to that federal funds.”

She also addressed the district’s plan to create an immersion program, in which SASI had set out to create a Navajo language-based curriculum to teach students the tribal language.

“What you’re saying or doing currently, it’s going to be an immersion program,” Shunkamolah said. “In my understanding is this is the second year that your school is an immersion program. However, I don’t see that happening.”

Johnson responded by acknowledging there might not have been much in the two-page plan but there’s an idea in place.

“Essentially it states that we’re going to open back up as a Navajo culture, language type of school,” Johnson said. “There’s a structuring plan in progress and that should be submitted to the bureau but the board would probably have to approve that, that’s where it’s at.”

Smith said the plan is not solid and because of that there really isn’t a plan, which brings great concern as the next school year approaches.

“We didn’t even talk about it,” Smith said after the meeting. “We asked him if he had a plan he said ‘I’m working on it right now,’ how can you work on something and let everybody go?”

Shortly after the presentation a parent in the meeting asked for time to speak, but Begaye was quick to deny the request saying the public already had time to comment at the beginning of the meeting.

Two of the board members including Begaye-Johns chimed in on the parent’s behalf saying she should be allowed to speak, but Begaye wouldn’t allow it.

“This seems like a one-board decision, can you allow the board to have their own comment including Charley,” said Begaye-Johns.

But Begaye didn’t budge.

“No, I’m the president, I’m sorry, we’re on the agenda right here and I’m the president of the board,” she said. “Keep that in mind. If we have one person speak. it’s just going to go on. We’re going to keep on the agenda right here.”

Although a matter dealing with placing administrators on leave is a personnel issue and discussed behind closed doors, the SASI board could not come to agreement while in executive session and ended up voting on the matter in public.

Smith said some members of the board refused to discuss the letters written by the staff and to act on it in executive session.

“When that item came up they didn’t want to talk about it, so we didn’t talk about it, we didn’t discuss much, just the beginning, it was going nowhere,” he said.

So the board took the item out of executive session and put it on the table.

Smith said a decision needed to be made.

“We said ‘Hey, you know this is a major concern here, I think it’s best for us to investigate these allegations.’ ” he said. “This in the best interest that we put them on administrative leave for now.”

The board voted 3-2-0 on the matter with both Johnson and Sisco present.

Smith said Johnson attempted to resign during the vote to but it was too late.

The board also tried to address the second item, the resending of resolution 10-0-12, during the executive session but again the board disagreed, and it too was brought to the table outside of executive session.

“We went round in circles arguing over it, finally we went ahead and agreed the three of us (Smith, Begaye-Johns and Joe),” Smith said.

A decision was made to discontinue Option 2 and instead, use a recommended plan of restructuring proposed by the high school principal.

Begaye was reached by telephone for comment but had none.

Johnson oversees the operation of the elementary and high school, as well as all the other programs under SASI. He became executive director in November 2010. Sisco was given the human resources coordinator position in 2011, under the condition that she had to earn her bachelor’s degree for the position, which she never did.