Even though U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been unwilling to say where in New Mexico he will visit this week during a Southwest tour, a conservative charter school in Gallup announced Monday that a “special guest” in the “national spotlight” who appreciates the school’s approach to nutrition and physical fitness will be visiting Wednesday.
Juliane Hillock, principal at Hózhó Academy in Gallup, sent a letter Monday to staff and students that explains how the visit came about and expresses her hope that “this level of exposure will generate good will and support the work we are doing to benefit our students.” The letter obtained by Source New Mexico also notes that the school has been asked not to reveal the visitor’s identity.
The academy is a publicly funded charter school with 667 students in grades K-11, affiliated with the Hillsdale network of charter schools and flagship university, Hillsdale College, in southern Michigan. The schools’ curricula emphasize the “centrality of the Western tradition in the study of history, literature, philosophy and the fine arts.” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called Hillsdale College a “shining city on a hill.”
According to Hillock’s letter, a woman with local ties who works in President Donald Trump’s orbit made the connection between the “special guest” and her hometown. That woman, Heidi Overton, was born and raised in the Gallup area, graduated from the University of New Mexico medical school and now serves as the deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
Overton knows some Hózhó parents and is familiar with the school’s approach to nutrition and physical fitness, Hillock wrote.
Overton “heard about the work we are doing in our (physical education) program modeled after the John F. Kennedy President’s Council on Physical Fitness,” Hillock wrote, “as well as how we have strived to offer the most nutritious meals for students, so she graciously offered to make this connection for us.”
Robert F. Kennedy’s visit to Gallup comes as at least one Indian Health Service building in the Navajo Nation border town is on a list of lease terminations proposed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
It also comes as prominent Indigenous leaders, including New Mexico gubernatorial candidate Deb Haaland, criticize Kennedy for deep cuts to services Indigenous patients rely on and for reassigning doctors to Indian Country who don’t have any background working with Native populations.
It’s not clear whether Kennedy will visit any Indian Health Service locations in New Mexico or elsewhere. A spokesperson told Source New Mexico on Tuesday all his events here would be closed to the press, though his announced schedule includes visits to health centers, discussions with tribal leaders and a noon visit on Wednesday to a “Pre-K to 11th grade charter school that integrates healthy eating and physical fitness into its daily student life.”
Kennedy’s visit seemed inappropriate to Eirena Begay, the parent of two children who attend or have attended Hózhó. In an interview Monday evening with Source New Mexico, she noted how important the COVID-19 vaccines were to stemming the tide of virus-related deaths among Navajo people.
The Navajo Nation was, at one point, the national epicenter for the virus, where it caused at least 1,800 deaths. So Begay deeply disagrees with Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism.
“I definitely am not supportive of his views. I know that the vaccine is what saved us during a pandemic,” she said.
Her son, Colin Campbell, 16, said he ultimately left Hózhó because it felt like the teachers were trying to push him to go to Hillsdale College and because he thought he had more coursework options at another school.
He took classes like Latin and history at Hózhó, he said. He recalls that his history teacher wore a Make America Great Again hat all day once at school, but said he really liked his math teacher.
He said the PE class, which is modeled after RFK Jr.’s uncle’s program and is a reason for his visit, was more intense than those at public schools. In the early 1960s, a council John F. Kennedy convened created nationwide curriculum to encourage physical fitness, and later became the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.
The academy lays out its philosophy on physical fitness in a program manual on its website, suggesting that high rates of obesity and diabetes made Native Americans more susceptible to the COVID-19 virus.
The other thing that made PE at Hózhó different, Campbell said, was the shorts.
“It was kind of like a more active PE, I guess, more harder,” he said. “The only thing that I thought about it was the little, like, hierarchy of shorts.”
Different physical feats earned points, he said, and the more points a student received, the better the shorts got. The best colors are gold, he said, and the worst is gray.
As for the food, he said the school took efforts to make it both tasty and nutritious, with mixed results. The pizza, for example, had carrots under the tomato sauce and cheese.
“The food’s bad, because I guess they try to make it healthy,” he said.
Hillock did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning about Kennedy’s visit or to respond to Campbell’s opinion on the food, among other questions. A spokesperson for RFK also did not respond to a request for comment.
Source NM is an independent, nonprofit news organization that shines a light on governments, policies and public officials.
