Tucumcari superintendent applicants ID'd

Two applicants for the Tucumcari Public Schools superintendent position were criminally charged years ago but not convicted. Several more have been named in lawsuits against their respective school districts, and two resigned under pressure from their boards.

Eight people have applied for the position to replace Aaron McKinney, who retired on Jan. 1 after 18 years at the helm.

At least two of the applicants have strong links to Tucumcari, including one who is a TPS administrator.

The Quay County Sun examined the applications through an open-records request. Other background information on the applicants came through online news searches and court records.

The applicants are:

— Steve Barron of Elida, who has been a principal at Lovington Municipal Schools since 2018.

Barron and two others were indicted by a grand jury in 2020 on felony charges. Barron was charged with making or permitting false public vouchers when he was superintendent at Dora Consolidated School District. The cases came to light in 2017 after a state auditor identified 13 areas where the three were accused of using public funds to enter into illegal contracts, according to news reports.

The charges against Barron were dismissed in 2022, when a Roosevelt County judge ruled there was no finding of guilt or conviction against him.

On the TPS application that asked whether he’d been involuntarily terminated or asked to resign from a school district, Barron wrote he and the Dora school board in 2017 came to a mutual agreement to terminate his employment there.

“While 2 independent audits from the State Auditor and a PED-recommended contractor were conducted and resulted in no malfeasance or mismanagement discovered, the board and I, under intensive community-driven pressure and misinformation, realized that this was an untenable situation,” he wrote.

Barron added he would “gladly” discuss the final disposition of the case with the TPS board and personnel.

According to court documents, Barron won a $184,000 judgment against Dora schools.

Barron, the Dora school district and two employees also were sued in 2013 after the 13-year-old plaintiff alleged a coach sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions. The suit was settled three years later.

— Lendall J. Borden, who has been Tucumcari’s middle school principal since 2015. Before that, he was a teacher at the middle school starting in 1993.

Borden is a Tucumcari High School graduate who attended West Texas A&M University and Eastern New Mexico University.

— Anthony L. Branch of Albuquerque, who is assistant principal at Explore Academy in Albuquerque. He also was an assistant principal at Los Lunas Public Schools.

— Curtis M. Clough of Artesia, who is interim superintendent of Corona Public Schools. He previously was superintendent at Hagerman Municipal Schools for two years.

According to several news reports, Clough was a candidate last year for the Los Lunas and Las Cruces superintendent positions.

Three former Hagerman employees last year filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Clough and several other school-district defendants for their firings from the school district. That case is ongoing.

A phone message and email to Clough requesting comment were not returned.

— Carl D. Marano of Santa Fe, who has been an assistant superintendent for instruction and school support at Santa Fe Public Schools since 2021. He also was a directing principal there for eight years.

Marano’s father Richard resided in Tucumcari for over 20 years and was known as the voice of Rattler sports before his death in 2021. His mother and brother also reside in Tucumcari.

Marano once was one of several defendants named in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed last year, alleging security failures in a drugging and sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl on the Santa Fe school grounds. The school district, school board and a private security firm are among the defendants. The suit is ongoing.

Marano was removed as a defendant from the lawsuit in January. Marano stated in an email he was removed from the suit because he was not the principal of the school at the time where the incident took place.

— Jeffrey A. Spaletta of Bayard, who previously was superintendent at Cobre Consolidated School District from June 2022 to October 2023.

According to a report in the Silver City Daily Press, the Cobre school board placed Spaletta on administrative leave twice due to internal complaints. He then resigned after the board voted to sever its ties with him.

More than a dozen Cobre employees signed a letter, accusing Spaletta of bullying employees, threatening work status, being verbally abusive, intruding on employee privacy and giving impossible deadlines, the report stated. An Albuquerque firm’s investigation did not substantiate the claims against Spaletta.

Six former Cobre employees have named Spaletta, a board member and the district in lawsuits. Five are ongoing.

A phone message to Spaletta requesting comment was not returned.

— Carla A. Spaniel of Alto, who has been an educational consultant at Cooperative Educational Services based in Albuquerque since 2015. She also was an interim superintendent at Mora Independent School District in 2018-2019.

According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, Spaniel was arrested in 2010 after she was accused of pushing and punching a bouncer when denied entry into a Texas nightclub. A police report stated she wrestled and scratched the cheeks of police officers when they arrived.

She was charged with one count of public intoxication and two felony counts of child endangerment and briefly jailed after investigators said they found she had left her two preschool-age children alone at a Dallas hotel room, according to the report. Officers who checked on the children said they complained of hunger. Police took custody of them and notified Child Protective Services.

Spaniel at the time was principal at a middle school in the Dallas area. She was placed on paid administrative leave after the incident.

Spaniel addressed the incident in her application to TPS.

She said she left her hotel room at 1 a.m. to retrieve her cellphone from her car that was valet-parked. She said she couldn’t find the attendant, and someone grabbed her from behind and slammed her to the ground. She said she didn’t remember what happened after that.

She stated on the application a toxicology report showed no alcohol in her system. Spaniel wrote that a judge found her not guilty of the child-endangerment charges, and the intoxication charge was dismissed. She stated the case was expunged in 2011.

— Nicholas Williams Jr. was hired in March to be a teacher and football and track coach at Aztec Municipal School District. He previously was a junior high and high school interim principal, football coach and athletic director at Booker Independent School District in Texas since 2022 and a principal at the Amarillo Independent School District from 2020 to 2022.

It is unclear whether Williams, after the Aztec hiring, still is a candidate for the TPS job.

TPS interim superintendent Dave Johnson, citing potential personnel matters, declined to comment about the applicants.

Johnson said last week that four of the applicants will be interviewed on April 12.

Johnson previously has said he hopes to seat a new superintendent by later this month or in May.