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With just 17 days left in the 2024 Legislative Session, the stakes are high, and your advocacy is essential. Our team is working diligently on our priority bills while opposing those that could negatively impact New Mexico students.
With just 17 days left in the 2024 Legislative Session, the stakes are high, and your advocacy is essential. Our team is working diligently on our priority bills while opposing those that could negatively impact New Mexico students.
Your advocacy is the driving force behind our progress, and we are counting on your continued support to successfully navigate the final weeks and reach the finish line. Today, we need your action on two items:
SENATE BILL 193 – READING MATERIALS FUND
Today our literacy bill, SB 193, sponsored by Senate Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, passed out of the Senate Education Committee! The bill now heads to Senate Finance. Senate Bill 193 appropriates $12.5 million to the Reading Materials Fund. This appropriation is a critical step in ensuring that New Mexico students have access to high-quality literacy materials.
We continue to need your support! Use the link below to email members of the House and Senate finance committees and ask them to FUND SENATE BILL 193 to ensure students across the Land of Enchantment have access to the tools they need to become skilled readers.
SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION 9 – STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
SJR 9 would establish a statewide school board while eliminating the role of Secretary of Public Education—a model New Mexicans voted to change in 2003. Adopting this outdated model will not address the current challenges in our education system. The resolution lacks thorough vetting and discussion, with particular concern over the potential loss of the Public Education Commission (PEC), the sole statewide charter school authorizer. Dissolving the PEC would have severe consequences for our charter school system and its oversight.
It feels like the Twilight Zone here in Santa Fe. Just look at what the Legislative Council Service wrote when the legislature was debating switching from a state school board to our current system back in 2003.
“New Mexico’s public school system is in dire need of improvement. No one is happy with the results of the status quo, and the state has continued to throw money at the old system for years with few, if any, positive results. The state department of public education has ranked 126 of New Mexico’s public schools as “probationary”… These dismal numbers alone provide a powerful reason to dramatically change the governance structure of the state’s public school system.” – Section 5 of the New Mexico Legislative Council Service 2003 Constitutional Amendment Analysis
Solutions for education will not be found in the failures of our past. We cannot and should not return to a system that didn’t work. We should however, focus on what matters most: improving the instruction in classrooms across the state.
Adopting this resolution would introduce heightened politicization into our education system, reflecting the divisive effects seen in partisan school board races nationwide. Please contact your Senator and urge them to keep politics out of education and vote NO on Senate Joint Resolution 9.
We will continue to keep you updated as we head towards the end of session and work to get our policies across the finish line. Thank you for your continued support. We can’t do it without you.
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