Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Up until recently, it’s been pretty much a seamless takeover.
Worn out by Susana Martinez’s can’t-do/won’t do policies as governor toward issues like clean energy, full marijuana legalization and public education, voters made their voices heard in New Mexico with the resounding election of Michelle Lujan Grisham last year.
Since then she’s been pushing the state in a far more progressive direction — touting education reform as her top priority.
Last month, however, Lujan Grisham took an unexpected turn when she fired her Public Education Department secretary, Karen Trujillo, after just six months on the job.
The reasons given for her dismissal were general and vague: in a statement, Lujan Grisham said her expectations “were not met in a number of areas” and that she needs a “vibrant and ambitious new leader” for PED.
In the interim, until she names a permanent secretary to the position, Deputy Secretary Kara Bobroff will head up the department as the state moves into the 2019-20 school year.
How much this shakeup will trickle down to the state’s 89 public school districts remains to be seen, but there are already big changes in place for the coming school year. The A through F grading system for schools is being scrapped, as is PARCC testing — two of the less popular assessments the previous administration hung its hat on.
Plus, there is now a whole new cabinet-level department created for early childhood education, which will give new emphasis to preparing children, especially “at-risk” children, for success in school and in life.
All these structural changes will eventually be assessed using hard data; if successful, we’ll see reading proficiency levels, graduation rates and the number of successive college students all going up statewide.
But there’s another less quantitative measure that I think will make an even greater difference in pulling up PED: teacher morale.
It’s no secret that public school teaching is an endangered profession, as is evident in the national teacher shortage we’re facing these days. Our schools have become a dumping ground for most if not all of our societal problems.
Troubled kids and parents, chemical use and abuse, reckless sexual activity and irresponsible behavior are just some of the problems that will walk into our schools on the first day of the new school year — as well as the reality that someone might actually walk in one day and kill as many of the teachers and students as he can, because of some unchecked mental / emotional issues coupled with access to firearms.
Let’s not forget that, while our nation seems to be under siege these days by all the mass shootings, our modern-day epidemic of mass murders started in our schools.
Our teachers aren’t just educators. Some days, they’re everything but teachers. They serve on the front lines of our nation’s ills; they’re there for the most vulnerable among us, our children. And yet you can still make more money in just about every other bachelor-degree-required profession that’s out there.
Schools shouldn’t be a dumping ground for our societal problems. They should be a retreat from those problems, where young people should feel free to explore, experiment, question and seek answers in a safe and responsible environment.
There’s no overnight fix for New Mexico’s less-than-adequate public schools system, but if a more progressive approach is what’s needed we should see some improvements soon.
Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:
