'Our children ... they're sacred'

Jul. 12—Wilhelmina Yazzie, a mother of three who's lived most of her life in the Navajo Nation, said she's waited four years for New Mexico to make good on its duty to serve kids like hers.

She was the original Yazzie plaintiff in the Yazzie-Martinez consolidated lawsuit, which in 2018 yielded a landmark decision from a judge finding the state had violated the rights of at-risk students to a sufficient education.

"We've been patient this long," she said. "It's been four years now since the ruling, and I think that's been enough time for our state to really start making these changes."

After promising to release a draft action plan last December, the Public Education Department released one for New Mexicans to review and comment on last month.

That feedback period closed June 17. The PED got a wide range of responses — at least 87 emails overall, according to spokeswoman Judy Robinson.

She said many centered on special education issues, including missing performance targets for teacher vacancies, as well as other general areas, like literacy, data collection, educator licensure, community schools, reducing classroom sizes and extended learning time.

Next steps for the plan, Robinson said, will be for the PED's Identity, Equity and Transformation Division to review all the written input the department received, and then address it in a public question-and-answer document.

Still, some people had their own thoughts and hopes for the plan — like Yazzie, who said many parents didn't even know it had been released.

"As a parent, I'm hoping that they keep our children a priority," Yazzie said. "And when I say our children, I mean our indigenous children, our English-language learners, and also our children with disabilities and those that come from low-income families."

Together, those four groups represent 70% of New Mexico students, according to the PED.

"Those are mostly the children that are always put on the bottom pedestal of our education system, and are not equally provided or equally looked upon," Yazzie said. "Our children ... they're sacred, and we have a sacred trust to prepare and protect them."

Plan for future

In the draft plan, which is more than 50 pages, education officials lay out a dizzying array of goals for the future, along with current and planned efforts aimed at making them happen.

For example, by the 2025-2026 school year, officials are shooting for English language arts and math achievement for students in all four groups discussed in the lawsuit to go up by 50%.

The draft aims to increase graduation rates for these students by 15 percentage points by 2025, with the exception of students with disabilities, who are expected to get there a year later.

Melissa Candelaria, who's on the legal team for the Yazzie group in the lawsuit, said the draft was a good first step but needs more work on certain critical elements to ensure the state can provide a sufficient education for students.

"Since the court ruling in 2018 ... we've been calling for the state to develop a comprehensive plan, with timelines, with staffing needs, measurable goals, short- and long-term action plans that are aligned to achieve those goals, and multi-year financial investments," said Candelaria, who is also the education director for the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.

Candelaria wasn't the only attorney to zero in on the draft plan's — well, plan — for the future.

"We have a hard time seeing any sort of cohesive threads in the plan that would indicate a real vision for change," said Laurel Nesbitt, senior attorney with Disability Rights New Mexico. "Those of us who are looking at the plan are just a little disappointed by the disconnected, scattershot approach."

And how will the draft action plan look on the ground?

That was on the minds of several education advocates, including American Federation of Teachers New Mexico President Whitney Holland.

"By the time it goes from the PED to the district to my classroom — what does this look like? And what are the ongoing supports that are going to make this successful?" she asked. "I don't want it to be one of those things that's rolled out and for six months looks really good, but then in two years, we're having a conversation about how it's kind of fizzled."

Indigenous voices

After the 2018 decision, sovereign nations and leaders of pueblos in New Mexico joined to develop the Tribal Remedy Framework, a set of priorities to address the unmet needs of Native American children.

That framework, which former Cochiti Pueblo governor and longtime education advocate Regis Pecos said produced tangible solutions that closely followed the decision in the lawsuit, would use collaboration between governments and agencies to accomplish its goals.

But in its current iteration, New Mexico's action plan isn't aligned with the framework, which by extension means the voices and needs of children and their families — as well as the aspirations of tribal leaders — are being left out, Pecos said.

"I don't know how in good conscience we can look back (and say) that we maximized fully the effective investment of resources if they're not fundamentally aligned with those people who know what is in their best interest," he said.

Critical components of the framework, Pecos said, include a need to invest in people who can help legitimize the essential ingredients to a child's education on the reservation, like native language educators.

Another crucial area, he said, is investment in physical infrastructure at a tribal level where there otherwise may not be any. Those buildings may include libraries, education resource centers and early childhood development centers.

"If there's not a tribal library in your community, then for the most part school has totally ended," he said. "We don't necessarily have the luxury ... that is available to the majority of children in public schools."

Lawmakers have recently questioned school districts near reservations for earmarking impact aid dollars for buildings and improvements. Some argued those funds have historically been intended to go into classrooms.

At the same time, the draft action plan lays out over $10.5 million in capital outlay investments from the state Indian Affairs Department, which include brick-and-mortar projects.

The draft also references backing for several projects aimed at increasing the number of Native language educators, like the Bilingual, Indigenous Educator Pipeline Project, which has seen participation from over 130 Native language teachers over the last three years.

Pecos acknowledges that the plan is "replete (with) investment in many of the areas that are part of the Tribal Remedy Framework," but said those funds are "not in the hands of people ... in the best positions" to make sure they're spent effectively.

English learners

English language learners, many of whom are first-generation citizens, have a tremendous hurdle to overcome in public schools, Polk Middle School teacher Abby Morehead said.

And because bilingual learning can be an important tool, one that can have a ripple effect that reaches all the way into their homes, Morehead said bilingual programs should be expanded.

"That serves the English language learners really well, because they're building that competency in both languages, and also it empowers their parents to be able to help them," she said. "Keeping kids in touch with their culture and their heritage is so crucial for both academics as well as social-emotional growth."

At some point in the future, the draft plan states, the PED will formalize required English learner programs into state law, in order to provide language development and sheltered instruction for English learners.

The idea, according to the draft plan, is to make sure all New Mexico students who need English learner programs get them. That will be the case even when they don't have access to bilingual programs, according to the draft.

Building capacity

But bilingual teachers aren't the only kinds of educators the state needs.

Holland and Nesbitt each touched on a need to replenish the state's faltering numbers of instructional support providers, like social workers, occupational therapists and counselors.

Those educators — or the lack thereof — embody how equipped the state is to meet the needs of students with disabilities, Nesbitt said.

"Often, students don't receive those services ... because the district can't find a speech therapist, the district can't find an occupational therapist," she said. "There's really a need for the state to ... provide much more leadership and (do) whatever it needs to do to develop that workforce."

In the draft plan, officials say they aim to ensure each high school has at least one fully-certified school counselor along with other social-emotional supports. To bolster their ranks, officials also plan to fund licensure and certification programs for social workers and counselors.

The draft also says the state will lower New Mexico's average counselor-to-student ratio, which was 426 to one in the 2021-2022 school year, to 250 to one by 2026-2027.

Better support for behavioral needs of students with disabilities is another important area Nesbitt said the state needs to work on. That means more and better training for educators on how to handle behavioral issues, including for when students physically lash out in class.

"The behavioral needs of students with disabilities ... is a very critical part of (their) success," she said.

Seeing themselves in the teachers at the front of the classroom is important for students to have meaningful learning experiences, Holland said. One way education leaders seem poised to address that is by closing the state's teacher-to-student diversity gaps.

By the 2025-2026 school year, according to the draft, Hispanic teacher representation will increase by 20 percentage points, Native American teacher representation by 7 percentage points, and African American teacher representation by 3 percentage points.

Holland said she also hopes that other things, like structured literacy — an umbrella term for approaches for helping students learn to read and write proficiently, according to the PED — can be made more culturally relevant. The draft plan discusses a partnership with Dual Language Education of New Mexico on providing guidance for teachers to integrate features of good instruction into literacy programs in English and Spanish.

District thoughts

Albuquerque Public Schools officials pointed out several areas they believe still need work in the draft — many of which centered around giving district voices a bigger seat at the table.

"The draft plan is currently a collection of initiatives created by the New Mexico Legislature and NMPED," district officials wrote in their response. "In its current form it reads like a prescriptive list, rather than a visionary roadmap for districts."

Some districts and their communities have resisted implementing remedies the state has held up to address the court's ruling, particularly when it comes to extended learning time programs. Those programs were listed in the decision as one of the reasonable programs the state has a duty to provide.

In early April, APS turned down a proposal to keep kids in school longer districtwide. In its response to the draft plan, the district asked lawmakers for more flexibility in extended learning time program funding for districts to add hours and more resources to school days.

Still, APS officials acknowledged the draft is a "huge step forward for our state." Now, the state needs to work to gather more input from its districts, they said.

"APS urges NMPED to consider this draft plan as a step in an ongoing conversation that integrates the voice of schools and districts," officials said.

Though the general Yazzie-Martinez conversation won't be over anytime soon, many are champing at the bit for New Mexico to turn its educational system around — or in Secretary of Education Kurt Steinhaus' words, move the needle.

Yazzie, who's been in this fight longer than many, said she hopes things will change in time for her 6-year-old daughter, who will soon begin the first grade.

"I still have yet another 12 years to advocate for my little one," she said. "We're such a diverse state, we're such a beautiful state, we have such beautiful cultures and backgrounds ... and we could actually climb back up to the top, if we really work together."