Sunland Park may have elected a guy who could not step foot in City Hall because he was facing exortion charges over a secret videotape showing his opponent getting a lapdance from a topless woman.

It may have once had another mayor who admitted to being drunk while signing city contracts.

It may have a city employee who has pled guilty to voter fraud (with six more awaiting charges). The list of political dysfunction seems endless in the border town in southern New Mexico.

But up in the far northern part of New Mexico, the school board of Questa has its own problems.

Such as accusations of:

*fistfights

*the son of a board member getting struck by his father in a school parking lot

*harrassment

*chaotic board meetings where members would accuse each other of immorality and instances where upset members would simply walk out, thus denying the body a quorum to get any work done

It’s all led to an unprecedented move: The head of the Public Education Department (PED) has essentially dismantled the board and has been forced to appoint the PED’s deputy secretary, Paul Aguilar, to take over.

Milan Simonich of the Texas-New Mexico Newspapers Partnership has the story:

Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera found that a faction of the bickering board meddled in daily operations that should have been the purview of the superintendent.

She also said a bitter 3-3 split among board members made it impossible to accomplish school business during board meetings.

Skandera cited certain board members’ failings as engaging in fistfights at public meetings, harassing school staff members and mismanagement leading to no management at all.

Click here to read the entire story.

Some 510 students are in the Questa Indpendent School District.

You can read the decision by Skandera here: