Bosque Farms Elementary principal absent amid social media controversy

A Los Lunas Schools elementary principal has not been on campus this week and her absence appears to be due to a social media post last week.

The incident was started by a post Bosque Farms Elementary School Principal Regina Lucero shared on her personal Facebook page on Thursday, Sept. 11, the day after political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah. Kirk was a polarizing figure in right-wing politics, who had gained the enmity of people in his time as a conservative internet celebrity and leader of Turning Point USA, a group for college-age conservatives.

The Valencia County News-Bulletin called BFE this week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday asking to speak to Principal Lucero. Each day, a school administrative assistant said Lucero was not in the office. The News-Bulletin also left a voicemail for Los Lunas Schools Superintendent Susan B. Chavez on Monday morning asking about the situation.

At about 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 15, the district issued a statement to the News-Bulletin and other news outlets. The message was also sent in an email to Bosque Farms Elementary families on Monday, as well, and surfaced on social media Tuesday morning.

Download PDF

The statement did not mention Lucero by name and in part stated, “Until further notice, Assistant Principal (Charlotte) Dosumu will be serving as the lead administrator on the Bosque Farms Elementary Campus.”

Lucero’s status with Los Lunas Schools

The News-Bulletin has been unable to confirm Lucero’s employment status with the district or whether anyone with the district had spoken to her.

Attempts to contact Lucero for comment, via Instagram and through associates on Monday and Tuesday, were unsuccessful.

During a break in the regularly-scheduled Los Lunas Board of Education meeting on Tuesday night, the News-Bulletin asked Chavez several follow-up questions to the district’s statement about the changes at Bosque Farms Elementary and the district's actions to reassure BFE parents and students.

Asked whether the district’s statement was about Lucero and about her employment status, Chavez replied, “I cannot comment on personnel matters” to both questions.

Asked what exact LLS Board of Education and New Mexico Administrative Code policies the district was looking at in regard to Lucero’s social media post, she answered “Again, I cannot comment on personnel matters. It’s a personnel matter.”

The superintendent also repeated, “I cannot comment on personnel matters,” to the question of whether the change of leadership at BFE was in response to Lucero’s comment about Kirk’s assassination.

The News-Bulletin has learned Albuquerque Journal education reporter Noah Alcala Bach contacted Los Lunas Schools to inquire whether the statements issued by LLS on Monday were related to Lucero’s post about the Kirk assassination last week.

Los Lunas Schools marketing and media design specialist Sidney Olivas replied affirmatively to Alcala Bach, writing: “Yes, it raised concerns among some of our families and the community.”

Alcala Bach also asked if Lucero had been placed on paid administrative leave, and Olivas responded by sending him the same statement the district issued on Monday.

The Facebook post

A screenshot of Lucero’s post appeared on a locally-run Facebook group early Saturday afternoon, posted by an anonymous member.

Lucero, who went by Regina Lucero-Jones on her personal Facebook page, shared a post by "Occupy Democrats, a left-wing media outlet."

The post included the message “Live by the sword, die by the sword” and above a meme that included a partial quote of Kirk’s with the words, “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year” highlighted in yellow.

Lucero commented, “Well this is what he said. We must be careful what we say.”

An anonymous poster criticized Lucero in a post, writing “She is not a good principal at all for posting this.” The poster went on to say they were “disgusted by her post."

The News-Bulletin visited Lucero’s Facebook page on Saturday, Sept. 13, but did not find the post. The page only had old posts from 2023 and 2024 visible at the time. Within an hour, the page appeared to have been deleted or made completely private.

The News-Bulletin did verify that the "Occupy Democrats" post had indeed been posted to their Facebook page and was not a fake. Lucero also has an Instagram account but it did not include the post.

Community concerns

Community reaction to Lucero’s Facebook post grew over the weekend and on Monday a call went out for BFE parents and community members to go to Los Lunas School Central Office at 10 a.m., Tuesday, Sept. 16, to attempt to speak to Superintendent Chavez.

Roughly a dozen people showed up and were met by Olivas and the superintendent’s executive assistant Karen Wolfe. The duo explained Chavez was attending a two-day training and was not in the office. The group aired their concerns about the Facebook post as well as other complaints about Lucero.

Tammy Robinson, a parent who said she has sent her children to Bosque Farms Elementary for 15 years and has one child attending the school currently, said BFE is “an amazing community to be a part of, but it’s just not what it used to be.”

She went on to say enrollment is down in some grade levels and there has been higher staff turnover than usual.

“We’ve had new leadership with Mrs. Lucero and over the last year, things just haven’t gone the way that they need to go,” Robinson said. “I think this incident with Facebook was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Two parents showed up at Tuesday’s board meeting with the intention to speak to the Bosque Farms Elementary situation. Ultimately both declined to speak after hearing LLS Board of Education President Dr. Michelle Osowski’s preamble statement before the public comment portion of the meeting began.

In the statement, Osowski informed the audience, “The board may be required to serve authority on an employee's appeal, and must remain neutral and objective. As a result, the board must remain uninformed about the specifics of personnel matters until these matters are fully resolved."

On Monday morning, the News-Bulletin received an email from Bosque Farms Elementary parent Andrew Garcia, who also shared Lucero’s Facebook post and his thoughts on social media.

The email, which was addressed to Superintendent Chavez and copied to the entire Los Lunas Board of Education, N.M. Public Education Department secretary Marianna Sanchez and five media outlets, including the News-Bulletin, contained his thoughts about the Facebook incident as well as other concerns about the school.

“As a public school principal and a leader in our community, her decision to make such a comment was deeply concerning,” Garcia wrote. “The insensitivity of the statement, particularly given Mr. Kirk's status as a conservative Christian, is shocking to many of us.”