Native students are expelled in New Mexico far more than any other group. This school district is ground zero for the disparity. - By Bryant Furlow, New Mexico In Depth, with additional reporting by Asia Fields, Maya Miller and Joel Jacobs, ProPublica
One chilly March afternoon, dozens of Navajo children spilled out of their middle school to play in the snow before heading home. Students in jackets and parkas can be seen on grainy security camera footage chasing and pushing one another to the ground.
The next day, the principal called one of the children into her office. “She said I was expelled,” the child said in an interview, looking at his feet as he sat with his grandmother on their living room couch. “We were just playing around.”
His offense, according to school records, was “assault and battery” for pushing another student down. The seventh grader, whose middle name is Matthew, said that was the culmination of months of being written up for “everything” – from being off-task in class to playing on the school elevator.
In New Mexico, Native American students are expelled far more often than any other group and at least four times as often as white students.
Matthew’s school district, Gallup-McKinley County Schools, is responsible for most of that disparity, according to an analysis of state records by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica. The district has a quarter of New Mexico’s Native students, but it accounted for at least three-quarters of Native student expulsions in the state during the four school years ending in 2020.
Gallup-McKinley is one of the largest school districts in the state by enrollment and geography, but even so, it has just 4% of the state’s students.
About three-quarters of Gallup-McKinley’s roughly 12,000 students are Native American, most of them Navajo. It has the largest Native enrollment of any public school district in the U.S., according to federal figures.
In addition to analyzing statewide discipline data, New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica interviewed 80 people, including 47 parents, grandparents and current and former students, to understand discipline practices in Gallup-McKinley schools. District officials, including Superintendent Mike Hyatt and school board President Christopher Mortenson, did not respond to repeated interview requests.
The state education department requires school districts to report all disciplinary incidents. Those reports track the type of discipline, such as suspensions and expulsions, and note whether police were involved. Gallup-McKinley officials sometimes called the police or juvenile probation officers over physical altercations, tobacco or drug possession and disorderly conduct, those records show.
Over the past decade or so, the number of expulsions and incidents involving law enforcement has dropped substantially in New Mexico. While Gallup-McKinley’s discipline rate has fluctuated over the past decade, it has remained far higher than the rest of the state.
That has happened under the nose of the state.
Since 2018, New Mexico has been under a state district court order to remedy its failure to provide a sufficient education to Native Americans, students learning English as a second language and other underserved youth.
The state Public Education Department uses school districts’ annual reports to track racial disparities among special education students, as required by federal law. Unlike some states, it doesn’t otherwise track racial disparities in discipline.
The department declined to address the news outlets’ findings. Kelly Pearce, a PED spokesperson, said the state could discuss only the “big picture” because school districts are in charge of discipline. If families have complaints about school discipline, she said, they should go to the federal Office for Civil Rights. No one has complained to that office regarding school discipline in Gallup-McKinley from the 2015-16 through the 2020-21 school years.
A spokesperson for New Mexico Attorney General-elect Raúl Torrez called the news outlets’ findings “alarming” but said the office doesn’t have authority to investigate civil rights abuses by school districts or other public bodies.
Daniel Losen, who studies racial disparities in school discipline as director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles, said someone needs to investigate discipline rates in Gallup-McKinley.
School districts with higher concentrations of students of color often “have higher use of police and just more draconian discipline practices,” Losen said. “Why is what’s happening to kids in Gallup so much worse than what’s happening to kids in the rest of the state?”
Students in Gallup-McKinley County Schools were disciplined far more frequently and severely than those in the rest of the state in the 2016-17 to 2019-20 school years. The district especially stands out when it comes to expulsions and incidents in which students were referred to police or juvenile probation.
Gallup-McKinley reported at least 211 expulsions over the four school years, an annual rate of 4.6 per 1,000 students. That’s at least 10 times as high as the rest of the state. Students in Gallup-McKinley schools also faced 735 disciplinary incidents involving law enforcement, which amounts to a rate nearly four times as high as the rest of the state. The disparities persisted from elementary through high school.
Native students within the district are subjected to these punishments at roughly twice the rate of their white peers. The district’s Hispanic students face similarly high rates, but because Gallup-McKinley’s Hispanic student population is relatively small, these numbers don’t significantly drive up the state’s discipline rates for Hispanics overall.
About a dozen students and parents told New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica they supported the district’s strict discipline measures. About twice as many said some students are singled out while others are handled lightly, and punishments can be arbitrary and counterproductive.
Gallup-McKinley’s student behavior handbook states that the rules will be “enforced fairly in an age-appropriate manner” and that the district is committed to providing all students safe school environments “free of discrimination, violence, and bullying.”
The school district’s three-year strategic plan, completed in February, says one desired outcome is a reduction in the number of disciplinary referrals that result in charges against students, but district officials did not answer questions about how that would be achieved. The plan was removed from the district’s website after New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica asked about it.
Ben Chavez, who directed discipline in the district until earlier this year, told New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica he was not given permission to speak about the issue.
Rachel A. Rodriguez, a former Gallup-McKinley County Schools discipline administrator, attributed Native students’ higher disciplinary rates to problems among rural families, like poverty, trauma and substance abuse.
The belief that alcohol abuse is more frequent among Native Americans is widespread, but not borne out by the facts. And neighboring districts with large numbers of Native students and similarly high rates of unemployment and poverty don’t dispense as much harsh discipline as Gallup-McKinley.
For example, Gallup-McKinley reported significantly higher rates of expulsions and incidents involving law enforcement than the Central Consolidated district in neighboring San Juan County. Central Consolidated has an even higher proportion of Native students than Gallup-McKinley and a similar “at-risk index,” which is used by the state to identify school districts that need additional money to educate high-needs kids.
Rodriguez said school officials sometimes can’t avoid calling the police. She described one such incident involving a fifth grade boy.
“He was so angry,” she said. “We called the police and three officers had to put him down and put him in handcuffs. When I came home that night, I cried. I said, ‘I never want to see a fifth grade student put in handcuffs again.’ It was traumatizing to me. But we had to.”
McKinley County Sheriff-elect James Maiorano III said his office has been contacted a few times over the years for missing students. The Gallup Police Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Maiorano, who has been with the sheriff’s office for 18 years, said the agency is increasing its presence in Gallup-McKinley schools to deal with fights and drug possession.
One of the main drivers of Gallup-McKinley’s discipline rates is disorderly conduct – an infraction that until the current school year wasn’t even defined in its or state education department policies, rulebooks, parent handbooks or regulations.
Disorderly conduct, said former Gallup-McKinley Assistant Principal Ron Triplehorn, is “a generic term for general misbehavior.”
Statewide, Native students were expelled for disorderly conduct at least 76 times and law enforcement was involved in 193 such incidents from 2016-17 to 2019-20. About 90% of these incidents occurred in Gallup-McKinley schools.
Across the U.S., students of color tend to be disciplined at higher rates for vaguely defined, minor infractions like disorderly conduct, Losen said. “That’s where the largest racial disparities are usually found,” he said.
For 13-year-old Matthew, inattentiveness, playing on an elevator, not following instructions and pouring glue on a desk were all classified as disorderly conduct.
He said his discipline problems started after the principal caught him making fun of her in the hallway. Over the next two months, she suspended him four times and wrote him up four other times.
Matthew’s grandmother allowed the news outlets to review his school disciplinary records. The principal did not respond to interview requests.
His infractions included wearing a blue shirt to school, which the principal called “gang-related activity,” and banging on the principal’s window, called “bullying.” He was written up for “weapons possession” for having a miniature toy butterfly knife. He was accused of vandalism for cutting the back of a chair with the elastic band of his face mask, which he denied.
Last December, the principal ordered a disciplinary hearing. Matthew and his grandmother signed a behavior contract, agreeing he would stay out of trouble.
“It would have been nice if she had asked why he was acting like this,” Matthew’s grandmother said. She said she would’ve told the principal that Matthew has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Though Matthew once took medication at school, he doesn’t have an individualized education plan, which would afford him protections for discipline related to his diagnosis.
Matthew had reason to be distracted at school: His grandmother, who is raising him, was undergoing radiation treatment for breast cancer. A judge awarded her custody of Matthew when he was little, after his father died. He sees his mother only occasionally.
Then came the incident in March. In a letter to his grandmother, the principal wrote that security video showed Matthew “chasing and shoving” a “female student into the snow multiple times” and when the girl was questioned the next morning, she reported back pain.
New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica reviewed the video, which had no audio. It shows groups of children talking and roughhousing. The student identified in the report as Matthew pushed another student down, possibly twice. Earlier, another student had pushed the same student down but apparently was not disciplined, according to the district’s response to a public records request for other disciplinary reports from that afternoon. All three students appeared to interact afterward.
Normally the school district must hold a hearing before expelling or suspending a student for more than 10 days. But the behavior contract Matthew and his grandmother had signed said if he broke the rules again, he would be disciplined without a hearing.
Although Matthew said the principal told him he was expelled, her letter to the grandmother called it a long-term suspension. Under district rules at the time, that meant Matthew could have returned to school after 90 days. But when Matthew’s grandmother tried to enroll him in summer school, outside that time, the principal refused, the grandmother said.
Over the following weeks, Matthew became increasingly withdrawn, his grandmother said. “He stopped talking to me very much,” she said. “I worry.”
By the end of the school year, Matthew had missed close to 100 days of class. In August, he learned he would have to repeat seventh grade.
“Before, he used to talk to me about class and what they did, but since he started getting in trouble there, he’s just not interested in school anymore,” his grandmother said.
“If we can just get him through high school and into college,” she sighed, “I can die content.”
New Mexico allocates grants from $32M mine spill settlement — Associated Press
Six entities impacted by the 2015 Gold King Mine spill will share roughly $4 million in grants from a settlement, according to the New Mexico Attorney General's office.
Outgoing Attorney General Hector Balderas announced earlier this month that nearly $4.3 million will be divided among multiple municipalities and agencies.
The cities of Aztec and Farmington in San Juan County, the San Juan Soil and Water Conservation District, the state tourism department and the New Mexico State University Extension Service will all receive six-figure grants.
To be recipients of the grant program, they submitted a proposal to the New Mexico Attorney General's office.
"Out of tragedy comes hope, and I am honored to award these amazing applicants and their ideas to invest in their own communities," Balderas said in a statement.
The grant funds come from the overall $32 million settlement reached in June between New Mexico and the U.S. government over the spill that polluted rivers in three western states. The spill released 3 million gallons (11 million liters) of wastewater from the inactive Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado, sending a bright-yellow plume of arsenic, lead and other heavy metals south to New Mexico, through the Navajo Nation and into Utah through the San Juan and Animas rivers.
Water utilities were forced to scramble and shut down intake valves — and farmers stopped drawing from the rivers as the contaminants moved downstream.
Under the New Mexico agreement, the federal government will make cash payments for response costs, environmental restoration and efforts to mitigate negative perceptions about the area's rivers following the spill. Money also will go toward monitoring water quality and other cleanup activities.
In 2021, the state also received $11 million in damages from the mining companies.
Under that agreement, $10 million will be paid to New Mexico for environmental response costs and lost tax revenue and $1 million will go to Office of the Natural Resources Trustee for injuries to New Mexico's natural resources.
Many of the over 26,000 speed camera citations mailed to ABQ drivers go unpaid - Albuquerque Journal
10 speed cameras spread throughout Albuquerque’s metro area have been snapping photos of license plates for over six months now –– resulting in over 26,000 traffic citations.
But, as the Albuquerque Journal reports, while the cameras are catching traffic violations, 48% of those are going unpaid, according to a city spokesperson.
Drivers have two options when a citation comes in the mail. They can either pay the $100 fine, or they can perform four hours of community service. The city says only 330 people cited have chosen the community service option to date.
Each month, the cameras logged an average of around 4300 citations. November was the worst month since the cameras went up in May, with over 6200 violations.
Some of the top speeds recorded by the cameras are astonishing –– with one instance on Eastbound Gibson between Carlisle and San Mateo logging a vehicle going 150.5 MPH and 131.1 MPH on Westbound Montgomery between Eubank and Wyoming.
Proposal would professionalize only unsalaried legislature - Associated Press
Lawmakers in New Mexico — the nation's only unsalaried legislature — are looking for ways instill greater professionalism in their work that could result in a steady paycheck and lengthier legislative calendar.
Democratic state State Rep. Joy Garratt of Albuquerque told the Santa Fe New Mexican that she plans to co-sponsor a ballot initiative to create a commission with the authority to set salaries for legislators. Legislative approval is required to schedule the vote.
Members of the New Mexico House and Senate receive a daily stipend and reimbursement for travel that can add add up to more than $20,000 in some instances, with an optional pension plan for long-serving lawmakers.
New Mexico's Legislature meets for as few as 30 days a year, with 60-day sessions in odd-numbered years. There are more extensive duties and travel for members of year-round budget and policy committees.
This unsalaried status has been a source of public pride in the "citizens' legislature." Critics of the system say legislative salaries would help younger candidates who hail from working households serve as lawmakers and alleviate conflicts between legislative advocacy and private careers.
A new study by University of New Mexico professors Timothy Krebs and Michael Rocca ranks the state near the bottom of legislatures in its capacity to perform a wide range of government oversight duties and acquire broad expertise.
Legislators from Connecticut to Oregon recently cited meager financial compensation in their decisions to resign or leave office without seeking reelection.
In several states, bills that would increase pay for legislators faltered in 2022 amid fears that lawmakers might anger voters by approving their own pay raises.
In New Mexico, money is currently no obstacle to expanding pay for legislators. State government is forecasting a multibillion-dollar windfall from surging oil production and robust energy prices.
Economists estimate state government income of nearly $12 billion for the fiscal year running from July 2023 to June 2024. That revenue would exceed current annual general fund spending obligations by 43% or $3.6 billion.
Law protects export of sacred Native American items from US - By Felicia Fonseca Associated Press
Federal penalties have increased under a newly signed law intended to protect the cultural patrimony of Native American tribes, immediately making some crimes a felony and doubling the prison time for anyone convicted of multiple offenses.
President Joe Biden signed the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act on Dec. 21, a bill that had been introduced since 2016. Along with stiffer penalties, it prohibits the export of sacred Native American items from the U.S. and creates a certification process to distinguish art from sacred items.
The effort largely was inspired by pueblo tribes in New Mexico and Arizona who repeatedly saw sacred objects up for auction in France. Tribal leaders issued passionate pleas for the return of the items but were met with resistance and the reality that the U.S. had no mechanism to prevent the items from leaving the country.
"The STOP Act is really born out of that problem and hearing it over and over," said attorney Katie Klass, who represents Acoma Pueblo on the matter and is a citizen of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma. "It's really designed to link existing domestic laws that protect tribal cultural heritage with an existing international mechanism."
The law creates an export certification system that would help clarify whether items were created as art and provides a path for the voluntary return of items that are part of a tribe's cultural heritage. Federal agencies would work with Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians to outline what items should not leave the U.S. and to seek items back.
Information provided by tribes about those items would be shielded from public records laws.
While dealers and collectors often see the items as art to be displayed and preserved, tribes view the objects as living beings held in community, said Brian Vallo, a consultant on repatriation.
"These items remain sacred, they will never lose their significance," said Vallo, a former governor of Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. "They will never lose their power and place as a cultural item. And it is for this reason that we are so concerned."
Tribes have seen some wins over the years:
— In 2019, Finland agreed to return ancestral remains of Native American tribes that once called the cliffs of Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado home. The remains and artifacts were unearthed by a Swedish researcher in 1891 and held in the collection of the national Museum of Finland.
— That same year, a ceremonial shield that vanished from Acoma Pueblo in the 1970s was returned to the tribe after a nearly four-year campaign involving U.S. senators, diplomats and prosecutors. The circular, colorful shield featuring the face of a Kachina, or ancestral spirit, had been held at a Paris auction house.
— In 2014, the Navajo Nation sent its vice president to Paris to bid on items believed to be used in wintertime healing ceremonies after diplomacy and a plea to return the items failed. The tribe secured several items, spending $9,000.
—In 2013, the Annenberg Foundation quietly bought nearly two dozen ceremonial items at an auction in Paris and later returned them to the Hopi, the San Carlos Apache and the White Mountain Apache tribes in Arizona. The tribes said the items invoke the spirit of their ancestors and were taken in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
The STOP Act ties in with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that requires museums and universities that receive federal funds to disclose Native American items in their possession, inventory them, and notify and transfer those items to affiliated tribes and Native Hawaiians or descendants.
The Interior Department has proposed a number of changes to strengthen NAGPRA and is taking public comment on them until mid-January.
The STOP Act increases penalties for illegally trafficking Native American human remains from one year to a year and a day, thus making it a felony on the first offense. Trafficking cultural items as outlined in NAGPRA remains a misdemeanor on the first offense. Penalties for subsequent offenses for both increase from five years to 10 years.
New Mexico U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, who introduced the House bill, said time will tell whether the penalties are adequate.
"We should always look at the laws we pass as not static but as living laws, so we are able to determine improvements that can be made," she said.
Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, the former cultural preservation director for the Hopi Tribe, said the enhanced penalties are helpful. But he wants to see countries embrace a principle of mutual respect and deference to the laws of sovereign Native American nations when it comes to what's rightfully theirs. For Hopi, he said, the items are held by the community and no one person has a right to sell or give them away.
The items can be hard to track but often surface in underground markets, in museums, shows, and auction house catalogs, Vallo said.
He said Finland, Germany and the U.K. shared intentions recently to work with U.S. tribes to understand what's in their collections and talk about ways to return items of great cultural significance.
"I think if we can make some progress, even with these three countries, it sends a strong message that there is a way to go about this work, there is a mutual reward at the end," he said. "And it's the most responsible thing to be engaged in."
Felled city trees could grow a new lumber economy - Alex Brown, Stateline via Source New Mexico
SEATTLE — When a tree falls in the city, does it make a table? Or a guitar or a cabinet?
It’s a question that’s increasingly being asked by state and city leaders, arborists, tree care companies and woodworkers. A growing coalition aims to turn urban wood into a valuable resource, rather than a waste product that is chipped up and sent to landfills.
“Ten to 15 years ago, nobody knew what urban wood was,” said Paul Hickman, founder and CEO of Urban Ashes, a Michigan-based consulting company that helps cities create wood recycling programs. “Cities are starting to understand and accept the value in this.”
Hickman also heads the Michigan chapter of the Urban Wood Network, a group of industry leaders and local officials who work to coordinate recycling efforts. Advocates say sustainability is the primary driver of promoting trees’ reuse, but cities and tree companies can save money by avoiding disposal fees at landfills. Some cities have cut costs by using salvaged wood in municipal construction projects. And local businesses have sprung up all over the country to make use of urban lumber.
One such company is Urban Hardwoods, a Seattle-based, high-end furniture maker that sources all its wood from salvaged trees within 15 miles of its shop.
“They’re all trees that were being cut down anyway, mostly due to disease, storm damage and development,” said Dave Hunzicker, the company’s operations manager. “It’s not our goal to cut trees down and turn them into furniture. It’s our goal to salvage trees that are already being cut down and turn them into furniture.”
Urban Hardwoods acquires logs from tree service companies and employs 11 workers who operate its sawmill, warehouse, kiln and workshop. On a recent Monday visit, piles of large logs sat at the company’s sawmill, waiting to be cut. Its massive warehouse was stacked high with slabs of lumber, which dry for three years before they’re processed. And its shop was full of workers turning those slabs into uniquely shaped tables, desks and benches.
While most city wood businesses are small artisans, backers believe the industry has vast untapped potential. A 2019 study found that urban tree removals could produce about 7 billion board feet of wood each year, roughly half of which has the potential to be turned into lumber. That’s roughly 10% of the quantity produced in traditional timber harvests.
“There’s a huge volume of urban wood out there to be recycled, and historically, there haven’t been processes in place to use that wood efficiently and economically,” said Kari Divine, the Urban Wood Network’s executive director. “Why would you put a valuable resource in a landfill?”
Joe Lehnen, Urban Wood Program coordinator with the Virginia Department of Forestry, said local businesses see a huge benefit when cities decide to recycle their wood.
“Local entrepreneurs are growing and creating new businesses through the availability of this wood,” he said. “Every time I go to an urban wood business, they are slammed with orders.”
Still, many challenges remain. Urban trees come in a wide variety of species and sizes, and tree removals don’t take place on a predictable schedule. Without well-established supply chains, would-be producers are left to navigate a confusing patchwork to get the wood they need. In many cases, it’s still more cost-effective to buy traditionally harvested lumber than to procure and process “free” urban trees on a piecemeal basis.
Backers hope that growing coordination through programs like the Urban Wood Network will help increase both supply and demand.
“We’re slowly but surely gaining recognition,” said Scott Altenhoff, who heads the Urban and Community Forestry Assistance Program at the Oregon Department of Forestry.
Some of the earliest efforts to use urban wood systemically started in the Midwest in the early 2000s, as the invasive emerald ash borer killed millions of ash trees. Hickman and others began to organize a network of mills to use the doomed trees as they were taken down.
Similar efforts have popped up across the country, and several of them have joined to form the Urban Wood Network. As climate change and other pests threaten many more tree species, backers say their early success stories show the model can scale up.
In Harrisonburg, Virginia, city leaders started an urban wood utilization program in 2018 with support from Lehnen’s agency. Lumber has been used for conference tables in city buildings, as well as for park benches and planter boxes. Local companies and woodworkers also have bought wood from the city.
“We had a dump site on city property and burned the brush pile every year, and it just drove me crazy,” said Jeremy Harold, the city’s green space manager. “Now, we’re getting the wood back into our community.”
Baltimore’s Recreation and Parks Department salvages wood from city trees and redirects it to Camp Small, a city-run processing facility, where it’s used in city construction or sold to residents.
“They’re bringing that material in; the city owns it, sells it and is getting revenue,” said Mike Galvin, commercial consulting arborist with the tree care company SavATree. Galvin also served as a consultant on the Baltimore Wood Project, a U.S. Forest Service-led effort to promote urban wood reclamation that highlighted the city’s work.
Shaun Preston, Camp Small’s recycling coordinator, said the project has provided 65,000 board-feet of lumber for city construction, including wellness centers, fishing piers and pedestrian bridges. With plans to scale up its workforce and equipment, it’s targeting $350,000 in annual revenue from sales of its products to the public, which will be reinvested into the city’s forestry efforts.
“The money that comes out of the end use of the trees goes into planting new trees,” he said. “There’s great potential for growth, and we could easily double what we’re doing.
Many tree care companies are finding that they’re better off working with urban wood partners than dumping chips at a landfill.
“When I started my career, everything went to the landfill,” said Andy Trotter, vice president of field operations with West Coast Arborists, which serves roughly 350 cities in California and Arizona. “We have about 800 tons of material that’s coming out every day, and we’re seeing more and more companies come to play.”
One of those companies is Taylor Guitars, which recently began using Shamel ash and red ironbark eucalyptus supplied by West Coast Arborists in some of its guitars.
“Buying wood internationally from traditional suppliers is going to be increasingly complicated in the years to come,” said Scott Paul, the company’s director of natural resource sustainability. “If urban wood can provide the quality that meets our standards, that is a resource that’s not being chipped and mulched and burned.”
West Coast Arborists also has successfully pushed several cities to adopt ordinances requiring that city trees be recycled for their “highest use.” The recycling policies encourage cities to use urban wood when possible for a city project, and to plant replacement trees that have valuable “end-of-life uses.”
Not all urban trees can be turned into finished wood products. Some species, as well as small-diameter trees and limbs, can’t be made into lumber. Industry leaders are working to find uses for those trees. Some trees, such as cottonwoods, can be made into pallets. Others may fuel the growing biochar industry. Biochar, a charcoal-like substance, is made by heating organic material without oxygen. It sequesters carbon and can be used to improve soils.
“There’s a lot of limbs and non-merchantable sized wood that still needs to have an end use,” said Margaret Miller, air quality planner and forester with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. “We’re finding ways to put a value on some of those things that maybe historically didn’t have the same market value.”
Miller is researching emissions with the goal of changing regulations, which currently make it easier to burn slash piles out in the open than to process it into biochar. Meanwhile, many cities have begun turning less-marketable wood into firewood or compost. While those uses don’t have the same economic or carbon-storage benefits as lumber, they’re still a better option than the landfill.
This story was originally published by Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts. It is republished here with permission.
Kathy Whitworth, winningest golfer in history, dies at 83 - By Doug Ferguson Ap Golf Writer
Kathy Whitworth set a benchmark in golf no one has ever touched, whether it was Sam Snead or Tiger Woods, Mickey Wright or Annika Sorenstam. Her 88 victories are the most by any player on a single professional tour.
Whitworth, whose LPGA Tour victories spanned nearly a quarter-century and who became the first woman to earn $1 million for her career on the LPGA, died on Christmas Eve, her longtime partner said. She was 83.
Bettye Odle did not disclose a cause of death, saying only that Whitworth died suddenly Saturday night while celebrating with family and friends.
"Kathy left this world the way she lived her life — loving, laugh and creating memories," Odle said in a statement released by the LPGA Tour.
Whitworth won the first of her 88 titles in the Kelly Girls Opens in July 1962. She won six majors during her career and broke Mickey Wright's record of 82 career wins when Whitworth captured the Lady Michelob in the summer of 1982.
Her final victory came in 1985 at the United Virginia Bank Classic.
"Winning never got old," Whitworth once said.
All that was missing from her career was the U.S. Women's Open, the biggest of the women's majors. Upon being the first woman to surpass $1 million in career earnings in 1981, she said, "I would have swapped being the first to make a million for winning the Open, but it was a consolation which took some of the sting out of not winning."
Sorenstam referred to her on Twitter as the LPGA's all-time victory leader and a "total class act" who will be dearly missed.
"Thanks for setting the bar so high, Kathy," she wrote.
Whitworth was the AP Female Athlete of the Year in 1965 and in 1967, when she easily beat out Wimbledon singles champion Billie Jean King. Whitworth was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1982.
She was the LPGA player of the year seven times in an eight-year span (1966 through 1973). She won the Vare Trophy for the lowest scoring average seven times and she was the leading money winner in eight seasons.
But she was identified by one number — 88.
Snead was credited with a record 82 wins on the PGA Tour, a total Woods has since matched. Wright won 82 times on the LPGA Tour, while Sorenstam had 72 wins when she retired after the 2006 season at age 36.
"I think Mickey had the best swing, and was probably the greatest golfer," Betsy Rawls once told Golf Digest. "But Kathy was the best player of the game that I have ever seen."
Whitworth was born in Monahans, a small West Texas town, and learned to play golf in New Mexico. She started at age 15 in Jal, New Mexico, on the nine-hole course built for the El Paso Natural Gas employees.
She soon was a two-time winner of the New Mexico State Amateur. After briefly attending Odessa (Texas) College, she turned pro at age 19 and joined the LPGA Tour in December 1958.
"I was really fortunate in that I knew what I wanted to do," Whitworth once told Golf Digest. "Golf just grabbed me by the throat. I can't tell you how much I loved it. I used to think everyone knew what they wanted to do when they were 15 years old."
Wright had the more aesthetically pleasing swing. Whitworth was all about grinding, and about winning.
Whitworth won eight times in 1963 and 1965, and she had 11 victories in 1968. In none of those years did she earn more than $50,000. All these years later, the LPGA Tour total prize fund for 2023 will top $100 million.
Whitworth continued to conduct junior clinics and stay active in the game.
"I don't think about the legacy of 88 tournaments," she once said. "I did it because I wanted to win, not to set a record or a goal that no one else could surpass. I'm not some great oddity. I was just fortunate to be so successful. What I did in being a better player does not make me a better person.
"When I'm asked how I would like to be remembered, I feel that if people remember me at all, it will be good enough."
Pitino's No. 22 Lobos push their way onto AP Top 25 slate - By Aaron Beard Ap Basketball Writer
Richard Pitino took less than a day after his firing from Minnesota to jump at the chance to coach New Mexico. And like their second-year coach, the 22nd-ranked Lobos are moving fast.
New Mexico is one of three unbeaten teams left in Division I — the others being No. 1 Purdue and No. 2 Connecticut. And the Lobos (12-0) will play their first games in more than eight years with a national ranking as part of this week's AP Top 25 schedule, starting Wednesday against Colorado State to open Mountain West Conference play followed by Saturday's trip to Wyoming.
The program was last ranked during the 2013-14 season.
"You want to get to the stage, to the big stage where people know who you are individually as well as your program," Pitino said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's no different than an upstart band, a young rapper, that's trying to go on tour to sell tickets by the show that he puts on, so he gets more recognition and opens more doors for them individually as well as the program.
"But if you go and lay an egg when it's time for the concert, then the attention, the fan support, the all-eyes-on-you goes away."
Pitino inherited a six-win team and his first squad went 13-19. But a win Wednesday would give the Lobos their second 13-0 start in program history (the other came in a school-record 17-0 start in 1967-68).
Success has come with the return of high-scoring guards Jamal Mashburn Jr. (16.8 points per game) and Jaelen House (16.4), and the addition of transfer big men Morris Udeze (17.5 points, 7.3 rebounds) from Wichita State and Josiah Allick (9.3, 8.2) from Missouri-Kansas City.
New Mexico has won by getting the ball inside. Only 10 Division I teams average fewer attempted 3-pointers per game than the Lobos (15.9), who are taking 74% of their shots inside the arc.
That has also helped New Mexico get to the foul line — a lot. The Lobos are second nationally by averaging 27.8 free throws, and they're No. 1 by making 20.4 of those per game.
"We've done a really good job of being mature about, let's just go where our bread is buttered and not fight it, not try to prove to people, 'I can do this,'" Pitino said. "No, let's put you in a position to be at the spots you need to be at to shoot the highest percentages."
As a result, New Mexico has climbed from No. 294 in KenPom's Division I rankings when Pitino took over to No. 66 as of Monday. And more progress could be ahead.
BOILERMAKERS' WEEK
Purdue remained No. 1 in Monday's poll, marking the Boilermakers' third straight week at the top. Purdue (12-0, 2-0 Big Ten) hosts Florida A&M on Thursday, its final game before returning to league play next week.
INSTATE RIVALRIES
Fifth-ranked Arizona faces an interesting test with instate rival Arizona State on Saturday, though No. 19 Kentucky's matchup that day with Louisville doesn't look nearly as intriguing.
Arizona (12-1, 1-1 Pac-12) has won six straight and owns KenPom's No. 1-ranked offense (120.2 points per 100 possessions) as of Monday. The Sun Devils were ranked No. 25 last week before a blowout loss at San Francisco, though they still rank in the top 10% of Division I teams in KenPom's adjusted defensive efficiency (92.4 points allowed per 100 possessions).
As for Louisville-Kentucky, the Wildcats (8-3) first face Missouri on Wednesday in their Southeastern Conference opener before hosting the Cardinals (2-11), who are off to a miserable start under first-year coach Kenny Payne.
ACC MOVERS
North Carolina had a rapid fall from preseason No. 1 to unranked by early December after a four-game losing streak. But the 25th-ranked Tar Heels (9-4, 1-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) have regrouped to win four straight entering Friday's trip to Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, No. 14 Miami (12-1, 3-0) is rolling with eight straight wins, including at home against highly ranked Virginia last week. The Hurricanes, up eight spots from last week's poll, host Vermont on Wednesday and then visit Notre Dame on Friday in league play.
WATCH LIST
College of Charleston is the headliner just outside the Top 25.
The Cougars (12-1) host Hampton on Thursday before visiting Towson in Colonial Athletic Association play, and their only loss came at UNC. They're within one spot of moving into the AP Top 25 for the first time since spending a week at No. 25 in December 2003.