Superintendent to start early, hire assistant
Arsenault will begin job May 5, not July 1

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — The county’s new public school superintendent will be reporting to duty early.

The Gallup-McKinley County School Board agreed Monday to allow Ray Arsenault to report to work on May 5 instead of July 1, as they originally proposed.

Arsenault said if he wanted to prepare for the next school year, it made sense that he be in place before the fiscal year began so he could do more planning.

The board also agreed to create a new assistant position, although what the duties of that person would be remain up in the air.

Arsenault requested that the position be established in this fiscal year and that he be allowed to set the person’s duties.

This proposal originally came up at the last school board meeting but was tabled when board member Bruce Tempest pointed out that many of the duties that had been listed for the new position were already being handled by other personnel in the district.

Up until a few years ago, the district had an assistant superintendent position, which was held at the time by Ethel Manuelito, who was not considered to be one of the then superintendent Karen White’s inner circle. But since Manuelito was the highest placed Navajo in the district and would be difficult to remove, White eliminated the position, which resulted in a lawsuit from Manuelito and a settlement whose details were never been made public.

When the position was eliminated, the duties were transferred to other personnel within the Central Office and the school board divided up the salary among the various assistant superintendents and secretaries that would have an extra workload.

The district’s current interim superintendent, Esther Macias, said the Central Office staff will probably be moving at the end of this month to their new offices located just north of Miyamura High School. This means that last night’s meeting may be the last that will be held in the current school board meeting room since the next meeting is scheduled to be held at Chee Dodge Elementary.