BY MAIRE O’NEILL
maire@losalamosreporter.com
It has been 209 days since Luckie Daniels filed a complaint with Los Alamos Public Schools under the district’s Non-Discrimination Policy 5130/5130R alleging discrimination based on race against Daniels and her minor daughter who is a student at Los Alamos High School. Daniels also filed a complaint with the New Mexico Public Education Department, and the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights with the same allegations.
On October 3, 2023, 191 days ago, Karla Schultz, an attorney with Walsh, Gallegos, Trevino, Kyle and Robinson of Albuquerque, executed an at-will contract agreement with Fagen, Friedman & Fulfrost (F3Law), a California law firm, for the investigation of the Daniels’s complaint. Schultz is retained as legal advisor to LAPS. The contract between the two law firms states that neither party anticipates that the investigation will exceed the “small purchases limit of $60,000 for professional services under the New Mexico Procurement Code”.
The investigation contract lists $345 per hour plus GRT for a senior investigator and $220 per hour for a junior investigator.
To support the allegations identified in her complaint, Daniels provided F3 Law investigator Treesineu McDaniel with more than 400 historical LAPS documents, communications, and public records. Daniels communicated openly and frequently with the F3 Law investigator by email and provided some13 hours of interview testimony over a five-month period, not knowing until March 2024, that the investigation was being conducted under a contract between the two law firms. As the investigation dragged on, Daniels has repeatedly inquired as to when it might be concluded.
LAPS Supt. Jennifer Guy told Daniels in a February 6 email that the investigator, Treesineu McDaniel, was wrapping up interviews and that she would notify Daniels when the report was complete. On March 8, Supt. Guy responded that LAPS had not been notified that it had been completed and did not know the anticipated completion date or the format investigation findings would be provided in.
Meanwhile, on December 29, 2023, the Office of Civil Rights notified Daniels that because LAPS had hired a third-party law firm to investigate the same complaint allegations she had filed with the Department of Education, OCR anticipated that the allegations would be investigated through the LAPS internal grievance procedures and the remedy obtained would be the same as the remedy that would be obtained if OCR were to find a violation and that there would be a comparable resolution process under comparable legal standards.
OCR informed Daniels that they were closing her case (Complaint No. 08-23-1728) and that she may re-file it within 60 days of the completion of the LAPS investigation.
On September 18, 2023, Supt. Guy notified Daniels by email that she was working to engage a qualified and available investigator from outside the district to investigate Daniels’s claim. Daniels responded with questions about LAPS’s delay, when she would be notified of the LAPS’s next steps, and where the process for the investigation is defined. She also asked about the process steps and the applicable timeline for the investigation and requested LAPS allow support from the NM ACLU in vetting potential investigators. Daniels’s questions and requests were not responded to by LAPS.
In November 2023, Daniels filed suit in First Judicial District Court against Supt. Guy, Asst. Supt. Carter Payne and the members of Los Alamos Public School Board, representing herself pro se. Another attorney, Carlos Quinones, was retained as LAPS counsel and succeeded in moving the case to U.S. District Court in Albuquerque against Daniels’s wishes. Since then Daniels has been successful in having the case remanded back to state District Court.
Quinones has filed an early Motion for Partial Dismissal of Certain Claims identified in Daniels Amended Complaint, even though there has been no notification to Daniels that the investigation has been completed and there is still no timeline as to when the findings might be released.
Daniels said Tuesday that she received a copy of the contract agreement signed by Karla Schultz and F3Law for the investigation in March from LAPS under an Inspection of Public Records Request she submitted to LAPS and was shocked to read the terms that had been agreed to.
“No discrimination investigation should be open-ended, initiated without expectations established and communicated regarding its execution and delivery format for reporting findings,” she said.
Daniels said she has communicated to LAPS administration that complainants filing discrimination complaints against the district should have every expectation that the process to address complaints of inequity “should be equitable without additional trauma to those already suffering”.
She said the contract also gives Schultz’s law firm access to the complaint, investigation documents, findings, witness interviews, responses and feedback, allowing for questions and issues to be “promptly and thoroughly” considered and investigated so that appropriate action if warranted can be taken by LAPS.
“How can this investigative process be viewed as anything other than advantageous to LAPS,” Daniels said. “The contract with the investigator’s law firm only identifies that findings, observations, and conclusions be reported to LAPS. My daughter and I are not identified as parties in the contract, and there is nothing in the contract that requires any adherence by F3 Law to LAPS’s Non-Discrimination Policy 5130/5130R. LAPS and Karla Schultz have had direct access to the investigation findings for more than 6 months without anyone’s knowledge and have refused to be responsive in addressing obvious concerns about the integrity of the district’s investigation, due process, and fairness to my daughter and me as complainants.”
First Judicial District Court records indicate that Taos attorney Kathryn Hardy on Wednesday entered her appearance in the case on behalf of Daniels and her daughter. The case remains assigned to Judge Jason Lidyard who has scheduled a remand hearing for April 24. It is anticipated that a response to the LAPS Motion for Partial Dismissal is forthcoming.