State Demographics
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Total Enrollment 334,345
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Schools 884
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Economically Disadvantaged Students 73.1%
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Students with Disabilities 15.8%
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English Language Learners 15.8%
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Students Attending Urban Schools 45%
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Students Attending Rural Schools 18%
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Graduation Rate 71.1%
Data source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Common Core of Data (CCD). Graduation Rate data are from 2016/17; all other data are from 2017/18.
State Story : March 2020 – April 2021
March 2020
School Closures
Dr. Ryan Stewart had served only 7 months in his appointed position as the Secretary of Education before the Governor announced all K-12 public schools would close the following Monday to mitigate the risks of COVID-19 community spread.
Initial Decisions and Approach
Summary
- Decisions should be based on keeping students, educators and families safe and be informed by the best available science and data.
- Students should return to school as soon as it is safe, as remote learning is not optimal for all students.
SEA and LEA Role Delineation
Summary
- Based on a state-wide approach.
- State decisions and guidance informed by LEA input.
- Baseline mandated requirements were co-created with health and science experts.
Supportive Partners or Resources
Summary
- State leaders, districts, CCSSO, and other professional agencies provided external support.
- State-level support was well-organized through the Governor’s office, with an emphasis on cross-agency collaboration.
- Being part of the Governor’s cabinet greatly helped the Secretary connect to departments like Homeland Security and the Department of Health.
July 2020
School Re-Opening
New Mexico convened a School Reentry Taskforce made up of 32 diverse stakeholders to devise guidelines and protocols for students and staff to safety reenter school buildings. Resources and guidelines can be found online from the New Mexico Public Education Department.
Re-opening Approach
Summary
- The NM Department of Health and the Governor initiated reentry decisions.
- SEA focused on creating a “new stability” and moving forward to serve schools, students, and families.
- SEA referenced previously established “strategic pillars” and considered if its management philosophy needed to change.
What Comes Next
Next Steps
Summary
- Make sure what was put in place is working by using data systems to track progress.
- Address broadband infrastructure issues.
- Build a library of resources that can help educators through the crisis.
August 2020 – December 2020
Re-Opening Plan Implementation
In early August 2020, Secretary Ryan Stewart advised LEAs that school reentry guidelines would lean on data across key indicators for safe in-person schooling. This was made possible by data-sharing and benchmarking from New Mexico’s Public Health officials.
Status of School Models
Summary
- Elementary schools were open for face-to-face instruction when health metrics were favorable, and hybrid when not.
- Secondary schools remained primarily remote.
- Students with special needs were served in person to the extent possible in small groups of five to one.
- Schools in hard-hit tribal communities remained remote and received numerous supports from the state.
January 2021
Recover and Rebuild
January 2021 found Secretary Stewart prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable students and families. This required focusing on the academic and social-emotional needs of students, rethinking how to address those needs, and investing recovery funds to create equitable instructional access for all students.
Recover and Rebuild Section Two
Priorities (January 2021)
Summary
- Assessing what was learned during the first semester of educating during a pandemic.
- Preparing for the 60-day legislative session.
- Obtaining more refined income data to better identify the needs of low-income students and families.
Recover and Rebuild Section Three
Planning Learning Recovery
Summary
- Navigating opposing views about learning recovery needs.
- Providing professional development on both academic and social-emotional learning.
- Acknowledging the technology skills acquired by students and teachers during the pandemic.
Recover and Rebuild Section Four
Rethinking Assessment and Accountability
Summary
- Emphasized the need for assessment to:
- Be implemented in a safe environment,
- Inform instruction and interventions, and
- Allow for local flexibility and decisionmaking.
Recover and Rebuild Section Five
Funding Strategies and Priorities
Summary
- Advocating for family income tax relief.
- Addressing the "digital divide."
- Offsetting air quality upgrade costs.
Recover and Rebuild Section Six
Lesson Learned: Managing Communication
Summary
- Help agency partners understand the moving parts behind certain decisions.
- Carefully consider what is urgent and what can wait.
April 2021
Planning for Summer and Next Year
Reflecting on In-Person Learning
Summary
- The state engaged in a gradual process of reviewing health metrics to slowly and methodically open up schools and keep them open.
- Data shows that the state’s mitigation and containment measures worked.
- Schools began to open more fully, and by the end of April 2021, all schools were fully open.
Planning for Summer and Next Year Two
Gaining Trust for School Reentry
Summary
- Examining data and listening to stakeholder concerns has been an important part of gaining trust to increase in-person learning.
- The teacher’s unions have been an important partner in building trust among educators.
- Creating a sense of hope around safely returning to school was a critical communication piece to combat COVID-19 fatigue.
- Coordinating returning to in-person schooling across critical organizations created a pressure point around the timing of communication for stakeholders.
Planning for Summer and Next Year Three
Addressing SEA Capacity
Summary
- The life-or-death nature of the pandemic created the need for the state to take state-wide coordinated action.
- The roles of SEA department leaders greatly expanded during the pandemic, creating the need for additional supports for many departments, particularly in the area of communications.
- ARP funds will allow the SEA to hire additional personnel to manage the Federal programs holistically.
Planning for Summer and Next Year Four
Investing Relief Funds
Summary
- The many health and education needs across the states outweigh the amount of relief funds going to the state.
- Districts need to invest funds thoughtfully to cover their needs.
- The SEA will need to ensure they have the capacity to support LEA planned investment of relief funds.
Planning for Summer and Next Year Five
Addressing Learning Recovery
Summary
- Focusing on moving forward rather than simply remediation.
- Investing in professional development on accelerated learning, high-dosage tutoring, and expanding instructional time.
- Creating summer, work-based learning programs for high school students.
District Stories : March 2020 – July 2021
In New Mexico, we spoke with educators in two districts, including two teachers and an education specialist. Interviewees were asked to speak candidly about their own experiences and views, which are not necessarily shared by or representative of the schools and districts in which they serve.
March 2020
Schools Close Suddenly
Educators and students were looking forward to spring break when the pandemic forced New Mexico schools to close in early 2020. At the state level, then-newly appointed Secretary of Education Ryan Stewart faced his first test of leadership: ensuring that all of New Mexico’s districts would have the resources they needed to quickly adapt. Some of the educators we spoke with reflected on their school district’s rush to get devices to students and ensure that they had Internet access, and the fast pace at which they needed to move in response to a swiftly developing crisis.
Priorities
The New Mexico Public Education Department, led by Dr. Stewart, moved quickly in their immediate pandemic response with two “guiding principles” in mind: mitigating the risks of community spread of the coronavirus and maximizing in-person instructional opportunities where it was safe to do so. At the ground level, educators’ primary concerns were even more fundamental: Some teachers we interviewed reported difficulty locating all of their students after schools closed. And in the early days of the pandemic, schools were unable to provide the kinds of supports via remote instruction that they had provided in-person. Schools formed "wellness teams" to keep tabs on students they believed were most in need, checking in on their well-being and delivering interventions where they could.
Teaching and Learning
State leaders like Dr. Stewart acknowledged that student circumstances like access to technology, broadband infrastructure, and individual learning needs made remote learning more difficult for many students, and vowed to dedicate resources toward restoring some kind of in-person learning where possible and safe. One educator said that he thought his children’s district, like others, was caught off-guard in the transition to teaching and learning online. Another shared that while their early response to the pandemic wasn’t perfect, their district was doing the best they could.
Challenges
Given worldwide supply line disruptions and massive demand, several districts reported challenges with sourcing hundreds or even thousands of Chromebooks, iPads, and other devices in spring 2020. The educators we spoke with shared that even when devices were available to students, they were only half of the equation: to participate in remote instruction, students also needed a stable Internet connection, something that Dr. Stewart cited as a particular challenge in a state with a large geographic size and a low population density.
Internet access generally requires a fixed address and an adult to maintain an account, or the ability to access community-based networks. Educators noted that this tended to surface inequities that went deeper than simple access to devices. In several states, including New Mexico, we spoke with district administrators that tried to solve this problem by issuing hotspot Internet devices. But hotspots aren’t a perfect substitute for wired Internet or Wi-Fi, especially when multiple students were conducting high-bandwidth activities, like participating in class via videoconference or streaming recorded lessons.
July 2020
What Comes Next for Districts?
As part of the state’s School Reentry Taskforce, educators and stakeholders across New Mexico met in late spring and early summer 2020 to discuss guidelines for safely reopening schools, in the hopes of a return to limited in-person instruction in fall 2020. State officials and district leaders worked through the summer as the pandemic unfolded.
As COVID-19 cases continued to mount, the educators we spoke with mentioned the mental health toll of the pandemic on teachers, students, and families as the spring wore on. They noted that it was difficult to separate school-level decision making from the broader public health context.
August 2020
Teaching and Learning in a Pandemic
At the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, community COVID-19 transmission rates in New Mexico and nationwide meant that in-person instruction in New Mexico remained out of reach. With updated guidance from the New Mexico Public Education Department, educators began the new 2020-21 school year with remote learning still in place.
Teaching and Learning
Teachers we spoke with reported that while some of their students fared well during virtual or hybrid instruction, overall engagement with virtual learning in their classrooms gradually waned over time. As school districts began to develop plans to address interrupted instruction, some educators shared that they hope to incorporate more time for students and teachers to build relationships.
At both the state and local levels, leaders grappled with the realities of an uncertain and unique school year. Even if they believed that in-person learning generally worked better for more students, many students would likely remain remote for the foreseeable future.
Successes
With the 2020-21 school year under way, several teachers we spoke with said they continued to work with families to boost their students’ engagement and participation. Some teachers, and New Mexico Secretary of Education Ryan Stewart, pointed to the ability to learn and adapt to all-new platforms and the virtual environment as a success in and of itself.
Challenges
The pandemic’s effects on students and families extended beyond school closure—for some people, it also meant a loss of access to a sense of community and belonging outside of school. In New Mexico, Native American reservation closures meant visitors were not permitted to travel to the reservation and that cultural activities were cancelled. In an interview, Dr. Stewart noted that the Navajo Nation had been acutely affected by the pandemic, not only in terms of transmission and case rates, but also in terms of student disconnection from school.
December 2020
What Comes Next for Districts?
As districts begin to consider how to move into the second half of the school year, many of the educators we interviewed spoke about opportunities to celebrate students’ and families’ resilience and to focus on well-being and self-discovery. They also expressed concern about the systemic inequity issues that they said had been exacerbated by the pandemic.
January 2021
The Path to Recovery
In New Mexico, some districts were able to provide in-person instruction, at least for elementary grades, throughout the 2020-21 school year. In January 2021, in an effort to mitigate a potential surge in COVID-19 cases, Cabinet Secretary Ryan Stewart announced a delay to in-person learning in the new year for all districts, extending winter break through January 18.
For many districts that were not open at this time, it wasn’t until May—amid the arrival of effective COVID-19 vaccines—that many students were first able to return to school. Reopening, even if only in a hybrid model, brought relief for many students and teachers alike. But after so much time away, there was a considerable amount of transition and adjustment required, and many students were "burned out" after a long pandemic year.
Many educators we spoke with described immediately beginning to work on planning an "unusual" summer filled with expanded activities, but others said they were looking to use the summer to recharge and regroup after the past year and a half.
Reopening and Reemerging
By the summer months, districts turned their focus to reengaging students who had stopped attending classes in the district: one New Mexico superintendent said that as many as 900 students in their district had left to attend school in neighboring states, enrolled in smaller charter schools, or begun homeschooling activities. Some New Mexico school districts saw an enrollment increase for their summer activities, while other districts planned to go a different route, building in additional time by adding ten instructional days to the beginning of the next school year.
Multiple educators said that for them, a key component of the recovery would be addressing knowledge gaps for students that had experienced obstacles to virtual learning over the past year and a half. At the state level, Secretary Stewart described plans to support districts with a “road map” for accelerated learning, including professional development and new tutoring programs.
Educators highlighted the importance of social and emotional supports and said they felt that the strength of the interpersonal relationships they had built would go a long way toward helping to bridge those gaps.
The American Rescue Plan
With New Mexico due to receive nearly $1 billion in ARP funding, educators we interviewed hoped their schools would be able to avoid cutbacks and add staff supports for students where appropriate. Secretary Stewart described a nascent “teaching fellows” program that aimed to bring in new staff that would do just that, bringing adults from the community to directly support students and classroom teachers.
Teachers and superintendents noted that their districts were interested in purchasing newer learning management systems and online platforms for students and teachers to use in hybrid learning or in the event of another emergency.
The American Rescue Plan Two
One superintendent said that their district was thinking about how to use the funds to create long-term impact beyond the initial recovery process. Educators in other districts worried that the ARP funds would not be used to their full potential in their districts if they did not have an effective plan in place to use them.
July 2021
Lessons for the Future
Rather than working to return their schools to a "new normal," educators expressed in interviews that they thought there would be some things that would permanently change for the better. They said that pandemic challenged them to reevaluate their personal views of education institutions, to recognize long standing systemic inequalities, and to work toward a vision of education systems that promote resilience, equity, and inclusion.
Missouri
Read more to find out how an appointed Commissioner of Education supports LEAs during the pandemic in a local-control state.
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Read MorePennsylvania
Read more to find out how two Secretaries of Education—one outgoing and the other stepping in to the role—supported schools during the pandemic in a decentralized state.
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Read more to find out how an elected State Superintendent led within a highly decentralized state to support education during a global pandemic.
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