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Commentary

Editor’s note: This column originally appeared in the Albuquerque Journal on Aug. 28.

As Albuquerque’s children enter their third school year since the COVID-19 pandemic first shuttered schools across the country, there are two numbers parents and community leaders need to keep in mind: 50 and 137.

What does 137 signify? Most Albuquerque parents are unaware that a single, 137-page document will be the key factor over whether our school board members are able to bring about the dramatic change necessary to pull us from rock bottom. This document is the collective bargaining agreement negotiated between the district and the Albuquerque Teachers Federation, setting the rules for everything from salaries and sick leave to the length of the school day and what’s taught in classrooms.

Albuquerque’s teachers have taken on a heroic venture over the past two years, from 13 months of school closures that forced them to pivot to a virtual environment to helping students re-acclimate to in-person schooling despite issues with socialization and mental health wrought by the pandemic. They deserve the boost of pay they received this year and significant support to ease the burden of these challenges. But the teachers and administrators I speak with regularly are concerned about the lack of learning taking place in our public schools and are frustrated when they learn the specifics of the draconian contract.

What is surprising is just how aggressive the now-approved CBA will be in curtailing necessary change. If 137 pages sounds like a lot, well, that’s because it is. Looking at other major cities across the southwest, Austin’s CBA clocks in at 60 pages, Fort Worth at 58, Mesa (Phoenix) at 62 and even Rio Rancho at just 31. That’s a whole bunch of extra pages, which should lead us to ask: “What’s going on in Albuquerque?”

The answer is that, contrary to nearly every other CBA across the country, the one for the Albuquerque Federation of Teachers departs the familiar territory of salary scales, lunch duty and preparation periods, instead devoting copious ink to instruction and the ability for schools and classrooms to ignore instructional policy set by the board, in extreme ways that go far beyond empowering teachers to be the leaders of their classrooms.

Rigorous state standards set to give New Mexico’s kids an even playing field when competing against their peers across the country for college and job opportunities? Those can be augmented by any teacher that feels their kids aren’t up for it. District-selected curriculum? No need to follow it. The ability of the school board to make the instructional policy changes we elected them to make? That’s gone, too.

Fifty is the number we know all too well. It’s New Mexico’s rank in public education, according to US World & News Report, Forbes and Education Week. And while the embarrassment that comes from ranking at the very bottom of the country is considerable, the true shame is that it’s representative of thousands of children unable to realize their potential due to the substandard education they’ve received from their public schools. Only one in three APS students are proficient in math and only one in five are proficient in reading – and that was pre COVID-19.

We’re in a crisis. One that we’re responding to not with the aggressive and innovative mandate wielded by our school board when they were swept into office on a tide of frustration at the lack of change, but instead with business as usual.

Albuquerque should look to Mississippi for insight into what’s possible. In 2019, community and elected leaders came together, angry and frustrated at their continued place at the bottom of national rankings. They identified literacy instruction as a primary barrier and worked diligently to support teachers in implementing a phonics-based method often called the “science of reading.”

It worked, in what’s now being referred to as the Mississippi Miracle. The results speak for themselves: once the bottom of the nation, Mississippi has climbed past 15 states and leaders there point to the reading curriculum as the primary reason. We should be replicating this success instead of banning it, given that the approved CBA will curtail any capacity for the board to implement district-wide curriculum changes.

The time for a New Mexico miracle is now, and it starts here in Albuquerque. Anyone standing in the way of progress should take note and we, as a community, should hold our educational leaders accountable for a lack of progress. Our children deserve that much.

the teachers and administrators I speak with

News

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated with quotes from school board member Courtney Jackson

Six days after tabling a proposed new collective bargaining agreement between Albuquerque Public Schools and the Albuquerque Teachers Federation, the APS board Wednesday ratified the agreement on a 6-1 vote.

The vote came after a two-hour executive session, meaning it was legally closed to the public.

Shortly after a vote on the agreement was tabled last week, the ATF declared an impasse in negotiations. Whether and how that led to the school board’s about face was unclear Wednesday night.

Board President Yolanda Montoya-Cordova read a statement before the vote, which was the board’s only collective public comment on the matter.

“Board members requested additional time to help us clarify concerns regarding the policies and resolutions guiding the agreement, the negotiation process, and the role and responsibilities of the board,” Montoya-Cordova read. 

“Moving forward, the board will be working closely with the chief negotiator to set clear priorities. The board agrees with the collaborative process, knowing it will not always be easy and at times messy. The Board of Education is charged with setting educational strategy for the district in order to bring about the progress we all want and need. The board of education supports our educators and staff who are the foundation of our school community and always fully supported the historical wage increases. As elected officials we are willing to put in the hard work for the district.” 

Only board member Peggy Muller-Aragón spoke for herself. She said she was voting no because “I won’t be threatened, intimidated, lied to or coerced to force my vote and I’m not going to let the voters voice be silenced by one entity (presumably the ATF). We are a democratic republic.”

After the meeting, board member Danielle Gonzales tweeted: “Tonight I voted to approve the @ABQschools negotiated agreement. I have always supported raises for teachers & other staff & at no point were they at risk. I look forward to continuing to ask tough questions & work together to build an education system that enables all to thrive.”

Last week, board members said that a host of memoranda of understanding attached to the contract dictated policy to an unprecedented degree, stripping the board of its authority to set and approve district policy.

MOUs attached to the contract – taking it to 170 densely packed pages – include school start times, student loan repayment assistance, snow closures of the district’s three mountain campuses, and several more.

Gonzales said last week that the purpose of the agreement is to address hours, salaries, wages, and working conditions. She said she could support an agreement that “touches on those issues and those issues only.”

The ratified agreement, however, was unchanged from what the board tabled last week.

Update: In an interview Thursday morning, board member Courtney Jackson said she and her colleagues learned from a statutory legal review she requested last week that they had no choice but to ratify the agreement. That’s because a December 2020 resolution passed by the previous board superseded an old district policy that limited the bargaining agreement to issues of hours, salaries, wages, and working conditions.

Jackson said she had no idea that resolution existed, and had she known what she knows now, she would have voted last week, reluctantly to ratify the agreement. She said communication from the administration of Superintendent Scott Elder to the current board has been poor. And after eight months, the district leadership operates differently than previous boards, she said.

“The cynical part of me would say, why didn’t you give us all of this information? Did you really expect that this board was just going say, ‘Okay, sounds good?’ Because we haven’t done that at any point, leading up to this. They bring stuff to us expecting a rubber stamp, and it has not once happened. So why in the world that they think it was going to happen this time?”

Moving forward, Jackson said, the board will demand detailed monthly updates on negotiations with the teachers union.

Six days after tabling a proposed new

News

Albuquerque Public Schools staff and leadership of the local teachers union are accustomed to the district’s school board annually rubber-stamping proposed revisions to the collective bargaining agreement.

That is decidedly not what happened Wednesday night. Instead, with four of seven board members poised to reject the agreement between APS and the Albuquerque Teachers Federation after almost four hours of discussion, the proposal was tabled on a 4-3 vote while all sides figure out what to do next.

Next steps were unclear after the meeting. But for the time being at least, the tabling avoids the two parties declaring an impasse, which, staff and some board members said, would create a cascading series of challenges.

“I seriously don’t believe that an impasse is where we want to be because an impasse is really hard on a district, and it’s hard on the employees and it really will not fare well for us (as a board),” board President Yolanda Montoya-Cordova, who wanted to approve the agreement, said late in the meeting.

Danielle Gonzales, whose election last November helped tip the board away from a union-backed majority, said while she appreciated the challenges of an impasse. “I don’t want to make things more difficult for the district. I do want to make things better for our students,” she said.

APS attorney Nathan Nieman said an impasse would probably take the dispute to the state Public Employee Labor Relations Board, which would rule in favor of either the district or the union on each disputed portion of the agreement.

The delay in approval does not affect teacher pay, because hefty raises approved during the winter legislative session take effect regardless. 

The four board members opposed to elements of the agreement cited several reasons they could not support it. Gonzales said it gave individual teachers too much control over what is taught which, she said, flies in the face of credible research on closing achievement gaps.

No board members, however, opposed salary increases.

Aligned, standards-based instruction is essential in a district struggling with student learning as APS historically has, she said. 

“I do have very significant concerns around the academic provisions in this contract,” Gonzales said. “This is the top thing that I heard about in my community. That is the reason I ran. I’ve shared my experience as a parent and having below grade level not aligned to standards instruction for my own children.”

Related to Gonzales’ concern, other board members said that a host of memoranda of understanding attached to the contract dictate policy to an unprecedented degree, stripping the board of its authority to set and approve district policy.

MOUs attached to the contract – taking it to 170 densely packed pages – include school start times, student loan repayment assistance, snow closures of the district’s three mountain campuses, and several more.

Gonzales said the purpose of the agreement is to address hours, salaries, wages, and working conditions. She said she could support an agreement that “touches on those issues and those issues only.”

Board member Courtney Jackson, also elected last fall, objected to receiving the lengthy and complex document with just five days to review it before being asked to vote. She said the contract continues to grow in length and complexity, and yet New Mexico remains mired at the bottom nationally in terms of academic achievement. “And nothing has changed,” she said.

“We will work through this and come to agreements,” she said. “This is a challenging discussion and a challenging issue. But this is why we are here, why we were elected…to ask challenging, tough questions.”

The four members voting to table the discussion were Gonzales, Jackson, Peggy Muller-Aragon, and Crystal Tapia-Romero. Montoya-Cordova, Barbara Petersen, and Josefina Domínguez favored approving the agreement and voted against tabling.

Albuquerque Public Schools staff and leadership of

News

This feature is part of the National Alliance’ for Public Charter Schools’ 2022 Back to School Month Campaign. 

Rio Grande Academy of Fine Arts (RioGAFA) is a new public charter school opening in Albuquerque, New Mexico this fall. It will start by opening to students in K, 1st, and 6th grades, and plans to add new grade levels on an interest-basis each year until ultimately becoming a fully K-12 school. The school is located at 1401 Old Coors Dr SW.

RioGAFA’s mission is to offer an arts education—the only public arts school in their side of town—along with high-achieving academics. It’s the type of school that Jordan Franco and Michele Platis, the school’s co-founders and co-directors, wished they had the opportunity to attend.

“That is really something in my core that drives me to create this space – a high performing school that incorporates the arts but that is free for families. Because my family needed that so desperately.” – Jordan Franco, co-founder and co-director of Rio Grande Academy of Fine Arts.

At RioGAFA, arts education will be integrated in the curriculum to improve student engagement in the content being taught. By approaching traditional school subjects differently, Jordan and Michele will cater to a wide array of learning styles and ultimately improve academic outcomes. Students will graduate from RioGAFA as strong creative problem solvers, ready to apply their out-of-the-box thinking to any career path they choose.

“Students get to learn their math through music or dance, and they’ll learn science through dance or theatre. Students are engaged in that learning, and I think that’s really missing from a lot of classrooms right now.” – Michele Platis, co-founder and co-director of Rio Grande Academy of Fine Arts

Beyond benefiting students through innovative programming, Jordan and Michele are set on cultivating a community-based school culture. They hope to frequently bring parents in to teach classes, so that students are taught by individuals directly connected to them and their peers. They also plan on taking a “learning together” approach to professional development, where they will sit down with teachers and collaborate on problem solving strategies. 

“The first day of school is going to be fun. And I think that’s something that Michele and I have really strived to build, for this culture, is fun. So many students are missing that fun piece of school.” – Jordan Franco 

RioGAFA will be a place where students empower one another, learn about their community, and approach life through a creative lens. Jordan and Michele can’t wait to welcome the founding class of students, teachers, and parents, and are excited to see all that they accomplish.  

“A learning environment that brings all those pieces together is what guides us, what inspires us, and what motivates us to change education. We believe deeply that this is an answer. I say an answer because there are probably multiple answers and that’s what school choice is all about.” – Michele Platis  

Best of luck to RioGAFA and the leaders, educators, families, and students in their community! 

Rio Grande Academy of Fine Arts (RioGAFA)

News

Editor’s note: Robbi Berry, a fifth-grade teacher at Monte Vista Elementary School in Las Cruces, was recently honored as an “innovator teacher” by Teach Plus New Mexico. Teach Plus cited Berry’s use of project (or problem)-based learning – “ using student-identified, real-world challenges to guide learning and mastery of standards.” Berry, who has been in the district for a decade, was also Las Cruces’ 2021 teacher of the Year. Her students demonstrate academic growth of well over a year during their time in her classroom. Education New Mexico recently interviewed Berry about her background, philosophy, approach, and the keys to her consistent success as a teacher.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Education New Mexico: Please tell us a bit about where you’re from and how you got into teaching.

Robbi Berry: I grew up in Freeport New York, on the Queens-Nassau County border on Long Island. That’s where I started teaching. My husband was career military so I’ve taught in New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Mexico.

ENM: And how did you come to adopt problem-based learning as your approach?

Robbi: Freeport was a very rough district, very rough kids. I taught fifth and sixth grade there. I had a lot of kids who had parole officers, ran with gangs. I knew that I had to really engage them. If I didn’t, I would have complete chaos and bedlam in my classroom. I learned real quick that if I didn’t make it relevant to their lives, their attitude would be, ‘why am I learning this?’ So that’s where my interest in PBL comes from.

I had some pretty hardened kids, and I would tell them, ‘Look, I know we wear different hats, depending on where we are in our lives.’ And I’d say that when 8 a.m. comes you can check your ‘I gotta be the tough guy’ hat at the door. I know you have to do that to survive when you go home and I totally respect that. But here you’re safe and I just want you to do your best learning. A lot of those kids would run the drugs for the gangs because if they got caught, they were so young they’d only get a slap on the wrist but they also needed to do it for protection for where they lived.

ENM: Las Cruces must be quite a contrast to that life.

Robbi: (Laughs). These kids here, they try to be all tough and I’m like, ‘sit down you have no idea. You can try it but listen, you don’t even know what you’re doing.’

ENM: Did you realize that what you were doing with your students in Freeport was PBL?

Robbi: I had no idea. I was just trying to figure out how I could reach these kids and make them want to come to school. That taught me so much about how it’s not just ‘here’s a textbook, teach what’s in it.’ It has to mean something to those kids, otherwise they don’t care. That early teaching experience really taught me about relevancy.

ENM: How did you end up in southern New Mexico?

Robbi: My mom had moved out here, and so had some other relatives. And then she got sick with pancreatic cancer. I left my husband and our life in New Hampshire and came here to care for her. I did a phone interview with the principal at Monte Vista and she hired me, thank goodness.

Within a year my husband came out to help me because my mother deteriorated quickly in the end. And we came to love it here. My husband and I are runners. We love to be able to go out in the desert and run the trails. The winter is not below zero and I don’t have to worry about ice and snow. We were both like, this is a no-brainer. It’s just beautiful to be here and run 12 months a year. So we decided to stay.

ENM: How has your use of PBL evolved over the years?

Robbi: I talk to my kids a lot about problems they see in their community and what are some solutions. They start out by saying ‘we’re only 10, 11 years old.’ And I tell them ‘That’s OK, you still can have great ideas. So what are your solutions?’

I always start with problems because they can relate to it, it impacts them. And then we talk about ways to advocate for that change, the positive change.”

ENM: I know you’ve had your students lobby at the Roundhouse. Can you talk a bit about that?

Robbi: We had been reading a few years back in my class about how pollinators were endangered, and if we didn’t have pollinators, it would affect the whole lifecycle for everyone in the food chain. We helped write one of the legislative bills for pollinator license plates. This was before Covid, so we actually took that group up to Santa Fe and they met and lobbied with legislators in support of that bill. 

They did all that and the bill passed. So that’s why New Mexico has the pollinator license plate.

Then, last year and this year, during Covid, some of my students testified before the legislature and the local school board in favor of outdoor education and the outdoor classroom bill (Senate Bill 32) that passed during this year’s session.

Editor’s note: The legislation will result in the creation of two new positions at the NM Public Education Department (PED) to support outdoor learning statewide, more professional development focused on outdoor education for NM’s teachers, and microgrants for the construction of outdoor classrooms on school grounds throughout the state.

ENM: Teach Plus also cited you for creating a safe community in your classroom. You told us about how you did that back in Freeport. How have you continued to do that work?

Robbi: We’re the Berry Bunch. In all four states where I’ve taught there are Berry Bunches. I’ve always worked hard to create a family culture. Kids know that it’s OK to be wrong. It’s OK to make mistakes. If kids can’t do that, then they’re not going to do their best learning.We really build each other up, we don’t tear each other down. I spend a lot of time on empathy. 

I want them to feel safe, physically, socially, and emotionally. I want them to know that they can totally be themselves. That we’re all going to have rough days. We all have things that happen outside of school, and we all come in with that. But we have empathy. We work through it. We talk to each other, and there’s some days where I’m going to have to lift them up and then they know that there are days when they’re going to have to lift me up because that’s what a family does.

It’s a legacy now. Parents ask ‘what do we do to get into the Berry Bunch?’

Robbi Berry, a fifth-grade teacher at Monte

Quick Hits

New Mexico’s Public Education Department is missing a deadline to ease “administrative burdens” on educators before the start of the current school year, as ordered in May by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.

According to a story in the Santa Fe New Mexican, a PED spokeswoman said the department is still awaiting a report from an external consultant about which burdens should be eased, and how.

Lujan Grisham’s executive order was vague, mandating only that burdens be eased by 25 percent effective at the start of the school year that is about to begin.

The New Mexican reported that PED has yet to receive a report from New York-based education management consulting firm Improve LLC. 

“All PED departments have been working aggressively to meet the goal, but I don’t know yet when a report on that work will be finalized,” spokeswoman Carolyn Graham wrote in an email to the New Mexican August 2..

“When the report is ready, Graham added, the Public Education Department will brief the governor and release it to the public,” the New Mexican reported.

New Mexico’s Public Education Department is missing

Commentary

Editor’s note: This article was written by Abenicio Baldonado. He is Education Reform Director of the statewide, results-oriented think tank Think New Mexico. Baldonado is a graduate of Robertson High School in Las Vegas, and a former civics and government teacher at Tierra Encantada and legislative liaison for the Public Education Department.

The Public Education Department (PED) recently unveiled a proposed redesign of New Mexico’s high school curriculum. That plan rejected the ideas of including personal finance and civics as high school graduation requirements, and it proposed to shift courses in government, economics, and New Mexico History from requirements to optional electives.

While students should have space to explore different topics, this proposal raises the question: How does a high school student develop interest in a subject without being exposed to it?

According to an article in the Albuquerque Journal (“New Graduation Conditions Mulled,” 6/16/22), the proposed changes were “developed with the help of working groups made up of around a quarter of PED staff across different bureaus.”

While expert input is helpful, the PED should also involve students, parents, and teachers prior to rolling out recommendations.

These stakeholders might note the value that these courses provide to students, which is reflected in the fact that a large majority of states have made them graduation requirements.

For example, 29 states have made personal finance a graduation requirement, with 21 of them adding it in the last decade. This month, Michigan became the 14th state to guarantee a personal finance course to all high school students prior to graduation. Fifteen other states require personal finance to be taught within another course, such as economics.

Here in New Mexico, personal finance has been offered as an elective for many years, yet only about 11% of students actually take the course. A recent poll conducted by the National Endowment for Financial Education found that 88% of U.S. adults think their state should require a semester or year-long course focused on personal finance education for high school graduation.

Furthermore, 80% of U.S. adults say they wish they had been required to complete a course focused on personal finance education during high school.

Similarly, the PED proposal to move economics from a required course to an optional elective means that many students will not learn the analytical tools they need to understand events in the economy that directly affect them. Twenty-five states require students to take a course in economics to graduate and four integrate economics into another course.

By making civics an optional course, the PED risks failing to teach students about the rights and obligations of citizens, the role of government, and the origins of our democracy. According to the Center for American Progress, public trust in government is at only 18%. Voter participation in June’s primary election was 25%.

Clearly, teaching civics to every student is more important than ever. Civics education is required through some sort of coursework in 41 states.

New Mexico History provides an opportunity to address the findings in the Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit by offering instruction that is culturally relevant to Hispanic and Native American students. New Mexico History provides students with a better understanding of the origins and complexity of New Mexico’s contemporary challenges.

Yet the PED is proposing to make this course optional as well.

The value of a New Mexico high school diploma relative to other states has been a longstanding concern, with many graduates finding that they must take remedial courses in college and are behind students from other states. Watering down New Mexico’s high school graduation requirements would take our public schools in the opposite direction from the majority of states, and the wrong direction for student success.

Readers who believe that personal finance, economics, civics, government, and New Mexico History belong in New Mexico’s high school curriculum can go to Think New Mexico’s website at www.thinknewmexico.org and contact legislators and the governor to get their voices heard.

The value of a New Mexico high

Quick Hits

Despite ample evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in devastating levels of learning loss for large numbers of students, fewer schools are participating in two state-funded programs that lengthen the school year, and as a result many fewer students are benefitting from more instructional days.

That’s the conclusion of a ‘hearing brief’ released last week by the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee.

“Since FY21, participation in K-5 Plus and (Extended Learning Time) programs has decreased, and schools have forgone nearly $400 million of available state funding for these interventions,” the brief reports.

The K-5 Plus program, which adds 25 days to the academic year for participating schools, saw the number of students taking part drop from 14,242 in the 2020-21 school year to 8,334 in the year that ended in June. Projections show that just 4,394 students will be enrolled in schools that feature the K-5 Plus program during the upcoming school year.

The Extended Learning Time Program, which adds 10 days to the school year, has seen a more modest drop-off. But the LFC estimates that by next year, the number of students enrolled in ELTP schools will have dropped from a high of 141,622 two years ago to 125,870 next year.   

Despite ample evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic

News

Teach Plus, a teacher-focused education advocacy organization, has named three New Mexico innovator schools and two educators as innovator teachers.

The innovator schools, all public charter schools, are Albuquerque Collegiate, Altura Preparatory School, and Mission Achievement and Success (MAS). The innovator teachers are Shari Hicks, of El Capitan Elementary School in Roswell, and Robbi Berry, of Monte Vista Elementary in Las Cruces.

To identify the innovators, Teach Plus leveraged its network of educators and educational leaders in the state to learn more about innovative ideas and practices happening in schools across New Mexico. The schools and teachers highlighted are moving away from traditional educational models and are approaching teaching and learning differently. Teach Plus’s selections were based on the following criteria:

  • Implementing effective innovative strategies to improve student growth and achievement, supported by data.
  • Addressing social and emotional learning needs of students and staff through these innovations.
  • Delivering targeted professional development to staff on how to best use these innovative strategies in their work and teaching.

New Mexico Education will profile the schools and teachers in the coming months. Until then, here are brief descriptions of them all, as provided by Teach Plus New Mexico.

Albuquerque Collegiate

Albuquerque Collegiate is a Title I, K-5 public charter school serving 200 students in the South Valley of Albuquerque. More than 70% of students come from low socio-economic households. Students at the school receive extended learning time daily, lengthening their school year by 30 days beyond the 180 day required by the state of New Mexico.

The innovation for which the school is being singled out is a co-teaching model in grades K-2, with each student being taught by two certified teachers for intensive intervention and differentiation in instruction. In grades 3-5, students are taught by high-quality, subject-level, content specialist teachers. Teachers at Albuquerque Collegiate receive frequent and intensive professional development and one-on-one coaching to ensure best classroom and instructional practices are used effectively.

Albuquerque Collegiate has achieved twice the state’s score in reading, with 73% of all students scoring proficient in iStations Reading Assessment in the 2021-2022 school year.

Altura Preparatory School

Altura Prep is a Title I, K-5 school serving 190 students from across the Albuquerque area. 55% percent of Altura Prep’s student body are from low socio-economic households. Fifteen percent of the student population are English Language Learners (ELL).

Altura Prep’s innovation centers on assigning content specialist teachers for all grades K-5, giving each student access to subject-focused instruction, differentiation, and intervention. Teachers are given more time to thoroughly teach their subject area, providing students with a learning environment where each subject is taught with fidelity and dedication to student mastery.

During the 2018-19 academic year, when Altura first opened its doors, just 32% of students reached grade-level proficiency in reading and 38% of students in math. In the 2021-22 academic year, 74% of students in the same cohort were proficient in reading and 70% of students in math.

Mission Achievement and Success (MAS)

MAS Charter is a Title I school that serves 2,200 preK-12th grade students in two locations in Albuquerque. The school serves the metropolitan areas surrounding both site locations. MAS’s student population is 86% Hispanic and 93% of students are from low socio-economic households.

MAS engages its students in a rigorous college preparatory program focused on getting them ready for success in college and in life. Students receive explicit, data-driven instruction in both foundational skills and personal success skills, goal-setting, planning, and decision-making.

In the 2019-20 academic year, MAS boasted proficiency rates in early literacy as follows: 66% proficient in kindergarten, 90% in 1st grade, and 78% in second grade compared to New Mexico’s statewide proficiency rates of 38%, 34%, and 44% respectively. Additionally, MAS has a 49% proficiency rate in 8th grade math compared to New Mexico’s statewide 8th grade math proficiency level of 13%.

Shari Hicks

Shari Hicks is an Intensive Teaching to Academic Potential (ITAP) teacher at El Capitan Elementary. El Capitan Elementary is a TItle 1, K-5 school serving 438 students in the Roswell Independent School District. Shari is a 2022 Change Agent in the social-emotional learning (SEL) Change Agent Network Fellowship, a Teach Plus initiative where teacher leaders, in collaboration with their peers and principals, identify the social and emotional learning needs of their schools and students and chart a path forward to solve the SEL problems-of-practice through continuous improvement.

Led by Shari, teachers at El Capitan Elementary are participating in a schoolwide effort to teach students mindfulness practices to help identify, self-reflect, and react to their emotions responsibly and respectfully. Shari is also helping teachers support students on a social-emotional level. She has coached teachers at her school on how to use active listening, create safe spaces for students to share their feelings, and recognize a student’s need for open communication with their teachers.

Robbi Berry

Robbi Berry is a 5th grade teacher at Monte Vista Elementary, a Title I school serving 616 K-5 students in the Las Cruces Public Schools. Robbi is the 2021 Las Cruces Public Schools Teacher of the Year. 

Robbi implements project-based learning (PBL) in her classroom, using student-identified, real- world challenges to guide learning and mastery of standards. During the 2022 Legislative Session, Robbi and her students gave testimony advocating for outdoor learning spaces with legislators.

You can read the full Teach Plus innovators report here. 

Teach Plus, a teacher-focused education advocacy organization,

News

Editor’s note: Rathi Casey is one of 20 graduates from the inaugural class of Changemakers, a nine-month fellowship that equips New Mexico community leaders with the knowledge and skills necessary to have a positive impact on the state’s K-12 public education system.

Rathi grew up in Hong Kong and has lived and worked in several of the world’s great cities, including Paris, New York, and San Francisco. She moved to Albuquerque in 2014. She is CEO of UKUU Creative, a design studio.

New Mexico Education spoke recently with Rathi about her interest in education that led her to Changemakers, and how the fellowship has changed her perceptions and motivated her to keep volunteering her time working on improving education in New Mexico. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Changemakers is currently accepting applications for its 2022-23 class. There are five monthly, half-day sessions as well as a two-day out-of-state trip, an opening reception, and a graduation ceremony. The 2022-23 program begins on Sept. 13 and concludes on May 9. 

The program is free for those selected to participate. You can apply here. 

New Mexico Education: Please tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved in education issues.

Rathi Casey: I’m originally from Hong Kong, and we have such a great education system there. I came to the States and got an architecture degree from Rice University in Houston. I’ve traveled and lived quite a bit around the world, and my husband’s job brought us here to New Mexico. When we got to Albuquerque I noticed pretty quickly that everyone was troubled by the education system here. Rather than just going off of what everyone was saying, I really wanted to experience the education system firsthand. And so I joined the Governing Council of Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School (a charter school authorized by Albuquerque Public Schools)..

I’m so fortunate that Cottonwood Classical was my window to public education in Albuquerque. I’ve been on the board for three years and am currently its president. It has been a great stepping stone into how things can be done well, and I’ve become very passionate about what else I can do, now that I understand how it can be done right.

NME: How did you get connected to the Changemakers program?

Rathi: Through Amanda Aragon (who co-directs the program). We’ve gone for coffee so I can learn more about her organization and she can learn more about Cottonwood Classical. When she launched Changemakers she contacted me and asked if I’d be interested and I did not hesitate.

NME: Can you describe the experience of being in the first cohort of the Changemakers fellowship?

Rathi: I really appreciated the open conversation, open dialogue. People were able to ask questions. It wasn’t just sitting in a seminar getting information thrown at you. It was a great two-way dialogue. They would present information to us, but we had so much opportunity to ask questions and challenge things and I loved the way all of the sessions were facilitated.

Before Changemakers, I had never been to an APS school. So actually walking through the buildings of schools that are doing things well, schools that have struggled and are working to overcome those struggles, it was so educational. You walk the building, you meet the leadership team, you meet teachers, kids in the classrooms. You look at the facilities, the conditions that everybody’s working in. There’s no substitute for absorbing everything firsthand.

A major highlight was when we took a trip to San Antonio. It’s a school district that actually has fewer dollars per student than Albuquerque, and has more English language learners, yet is having more success. It was such a great comparison for us to go and see how they’re doing things. They were in a similar situation to APS a few years ago and to hear their story and learn about their trajectory of how they got to where they are today was just amazing.

You know, here in Albuquerque I kept hearing these excuses about resources, excuses about not having enough money. And I think those myths were busted by the trip to San Antonio.They aren’t excuses.

NME: How do you see yourself using what you learned in Changemakers going forward?

Rathi: As the program came to an end, I talked to (co-director) Scott Hindman and Amanda about that. I’m nearing the end of my service to Cottonwood. I will have spent four years learning about how charter schools operate and learning about the Public Education Department and the public school system here. Now that I’ve taken the Changemakers program, what is the next step? 

I’ve spent quite a lot of hours each week on the charter school board work. And so when that’s gone away, I still want to keep those hours dedicated to this kind of work. We’ve talked about a slew of things. Potentially joining another board, how I could be more engaged in policy work. That’s what I’m exploring.

NME: What pitch would you tell someone who is thinking about applying for this next cohort of Changemakers?

Rathi: I think everybody should take this program. People say they’re too busy, but I run a business and I serve on five boards. I have two children. Saying you don’t have time to make a difference in the education system is not a good excuse. You have time and if all of us don’t do our part the system isn’t going to work. 

The Changemakers program is so valuable for learning about what the problems are, and possible solutions. You can read articles, you can talk to friends and neighbors. There’s all this information floating around. But going through a program like Changemakers helps you truly understand where the challenges lie.

NME: As more cohorts go through this program, how do you see the graduates affecting public education in New Mexico?

Rathi: It’s going to be very helpful. First of all, I think 90 percent of the people in my class were parents, so this made them even more passionate advocates. As we build a database of people who have gone through this program, we will have a growing group of people who are connected to one another and have become committed and passionate about making a change. 

New Mexico Education spoke recently with Rathi