Anyone given a chance to make an investment that is guaranteed to give a positive return year after year would do it. Even when we’re not talking about the stock market, investments with a high rate of return make sense. Public higher education is one such investment because it improves the workforce and helps families get out of poverty, both of which grow the state’s economy.

Economists say it again and again: investments in higher education pay off. Unfortunately, Governor Susana Martinez’s decision to veto all funding for higher education—every penny—sent the wrong message to current and future college students worried about college costs as well as to businesses...

Our hats are off to Gallup-McKinley County Schools Interim Superintendent Mike Hyatt and the members of the entire Gallup-McKinley County Board of Education.

The school district pulled off a major logistical feat with the recent announcement that kids attending McKinley County schools won’t be required to pay for school supplies starting the fall of 2017.

The school supplies decision is final and won’t change in the near or distant future. That means free pens, pencils, notebooks and lab fees forever!

“It’s a cost-savings measure and there are no strings attached to it,” Hyatt told the Gallup Sun. “This takes the cost-factor of parents having to buy school supplies and...

There may be no event more exciting, yet terrifying, than college or high school graduation. After spending countless hours staying awake in lecture halls, surrounded by peers with shared ambitions of one day being successful in all aspects of life, graduation day should be the epitome of joy.

The days of imbibing unhealthy amounts of NoDoz and Red Bull before a final exam are done. Everything will be worth the struggles and sacrifice after receiving that piece of paper, right?

That’s the question that a lot of college and high school graduates have right now. The job market, no matter the job, is still tough and not everybody is cut out for college. It is a hard task to get a foot...

PART 2 of 2

Last week part one of an editorial on Racial Reconciliation was printed in the Gallup Sun.

At the end of Part One, I talked about my first experience with blatant racial stereotyping when I was 7 years old. When the little girl in the playground called me a “dirty rotten redskin” I don’t think she was born with that thought.  It was a learned way of thinking.  It is what children may see in the home when they grow up, what their peer groups practice, what they hear in music or see on other forums of life.

When my wife and I first moved to Gallup years ago we set about attending different Churches to see which one best suited our needs. In one Church one of the...