Pulling a 180

In March, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed House Bill 130 into law to improve academic outcomes for students in New Mexico through increased classroom time. The law requires all students to receive at least 1,140 instructional hours per year—a dramatic increase from previous requirements of at least 990 hours for elementary school students and 1,040 hours for secondary school students.

Though the law only went into effect starting this school year, Public Education Secretary Arsenio Romero says it’s not working as intended. Now, the department has proposed an administrative rule change to call for even more time for the next school year—and to measure the time in days.

Jennifer Warren, who teaches first grade at Nina Otero Community School, says she’s infuriated.

“I’m very angry about it, and have talked to a lot of people who are very angry about it,” Warren tells SFR, noting Santa Fe Public Schools added instructional time on Fridays in response to the new state law. “We got additional hours and days. Now, the PED is wanting to add to that without seeing if what we presently have is making a difference.”

The schedule change for the current school year already means teachers have “less time to meet with colleagues and do deeper preparation,” she says.

The 45 minutes added to each Friday also affects a teacher’s ability to complete training sessions for the district’s new literacy curriculum.

“If we could, our literacy rates would go up,” Warren says. “But we don’t have time to do that.”

Romero tells SFR the rule aims to accomplish HB 130′s intent of increasing face-to-face learning time between teachers and students. As written, the law didn’t result in that outcome for each district.

“When we got the calendars in, we realized about one third of the districts had a slight increase in instructional time, one third were about the same, and one third had less instructional time,” Romero says.

He cites Albuquerque Public Schools as an example of a district that decreased instructional time this year. The district added four professional development days for teachers while decreasing the number of days students have classes from 176 to 172.

The proposed rule would require all public school calendars to include at least 180 instructional days per year, exclusive of teacher professional work hours. Romero says he believes the change would benefit teachers, as it solves the issue of educators “not having enough time” to teach standard curriculum to students. It would also add New Mexico to 31 states requiring 180 days of school.

“We look at where we’re at as a state—we’re in last place, 38% proficient in reading, and 24% in math,” Romero says. “If we want to be able to have some of the same outcomes as these [higher achieving] states, we’re going to need to be looking at what they’re doing, and we are. This is one thing we’re looking at.”

The department has already heard from hundreds of teachers across the state who have submitted formal comments about the idea and others say they will be in attendance at a public hearing Dec. 18.

Romero says he’s aware of their concerns.

“The debate I get back is, ‘Well, we should be focusing more on lower class size, chronic absenteeism, getting more teachers into the classroom.’ I agree with all of those things,” he says. “We need to do all of those things, and we need to increase instructional time for students.”

The state’s chronic absenteeism rate of 39% for the 2022-23 school year is a critical statistic, according to teachers like Cody Fielder, a high school science/medical teacher at Capital High School and a parent with children enrolled in the district, who wrote the department to oppose the rule change.

“I have students who are absent dozens of days every quarter, and it is those students who are most likely to need our help. Increasing academic time for everyone while not providing a solution for chronic absenteeism in the state is the definition of missing the point,” Fielder wrote. “Students who are missing class, and their families, need to be held accountable for not coming. Requiring that everyone come more often will not fix the issue...Moreover, this fix will burden our schools even further because it will exacerbate the shortage of real teachers in the classroom.”

New Mexico National Education Association President Mary Parr-Sánchez argues that the PED needs to give the newest law time to work.

“HB 130 was not easily passed. It took a lot of compromise, conversation, discussion. The education community at large, we never did support it,” Parr-Sánchez tells SFR. “Increased hours is not solving the problem, because the problem is not understood. No one wants to listen to the people that are doing the work.”

Claire Love, Nina Otero’s other first-grade teacher, says solutions for low reading and math proficiency rates lie in addressing class sizes, among other areas.

“This [year] is the smallest class I’ve had in nine years, and I have 19 in my class,” Love tells SFR. “Expecting a teacher to effectively reach each and every individual child exactly where they’re at so they can build their academic skills when there’s 19 6-year-olds with one adult is unreasonable.”

Love adds that at schools like Nina Otero, many students enter kindergarten not knowing English, coming from families where parents work multiple jobs—thus requiring more 1:1 learning. Increasing days without requiring this support, she says, would weaken morale.

“It would make our already tired teachers even more tired, so the quality of instruction will go down,” Love says. “There will be more recess time, more movies being played. You won’t get 10 extra days of high-quality, well-planned instruction. Teachers are already experiencing burnout.”

Parr-Sánchez says the 180-day requirement would affect smaller, rural schools currently operating on four-day weeks the most. In addition to the 180-day requirement, the rule change says all public schools will be required to operate on five-day school weeks.

“Thirty-nine of 89 districts have a four-day school week. They have used it as a [hiring] incentive, and it has worked,” Parr-Sánchez says. “A four-day week is something the communities support, and this rule would strip the local control that their school board has to enact that number of days.”

Romero, however, argues that school districts operating on four-day weeks have the highest need for improvement.

“Those districts have multiple issues when it comes to student performance. Not only reading and math proficiencies, but also chronic absenteeism and graduation rates,” Romero says. “The outcomes aren’t there for many districts.”

PUBLIC EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

Rules Hearing: 1:30 pm, Dec. 18. Jerry Apodaca Education Building, 300 Don Gaspar Ave.