I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
With federal lawmakers on recess and unlikely to reauthorize No Child Left Behind (NCLB) — the current reiteration of the decades-old Early and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) — the White House has announced it will grant states waivers next year to avoid the punitive sting of schools not meeting performance measures identified by the 2002 law.
The New Mexico Public Education Department released its 2011 Adequate Yearly Progress rankings for 831 public schools Friday, and the results were not good: 87 percent of schools were not making adequate progress under the No Child Left Behind Act.
The state’s largest school district will see a $22 million budget cut in the upcoming fiscal year, and more than 70 percent of the money designated for salaries will go to teachers and educational assistants, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The budget for Albuquerque Public Schools will be $594 million after a 3.3 percent cut from the legislature.
As Republicans and the Obama administration seek cuts to the Pell Grant system, a new federal tracking system shows that student loan defaults are on the rise. For students who began repaying their loans in 2008, 13.8 percent have since defaulted. For-profit institutions had 25 percent of their graduates defaulting after three years, while public four-year colleges had 10.8 percent of their graduates defaulting after three years.
Clovis High School may end all non-curricular clubs rather than allow a gay-straight alliance to form at the eastern New Mexico high school, the American Civil Liberties Union in New Mexico claims. The school superintendent told the Albuquerque Journal that a vote Tuesday night on whether to disband all non-curricular clubs is unrelated to an attempt to form a gay-straight alliance at the school.
New Mexico will join most of the other states in the country in banning corporal punishment in schools. Gov. Susana Martinez announced Wednesday that she signed the legislation that would ban the practice of allowing school personnel to strike students to punish them.
Gov. Susana Martinez signed a bill Tuesday that would grade school performances on an A–F scale, part of her plan to reform education in New Mexico.
Gov. Susana Martinez is currently deciding whether to sign a bill to ban a practice in New Mexico schools that many assume is a thing of the past — corporal punishment. New Mexico is one of 20 states that allow corporal, or physical, punishment in public schools.
Two bills that get a lot of attention and the capital outlay bill failed to pass the state legislature this year as they failed to gain approval from both chambers in the final hours of the state legislative session on Saturday.
The House passed the 2012 budget Wednesday afternoon on a 35-34 vote after the passage of just one amendment and the discussion of just two. Much of the time was spent discussing the second amendment, which eventually failed, and left the Republicans complaining that Democrats had wasted time to prevent amendments.
A bill that would “social promotion” in schools passed the House easily today on a 62-5 vote. The bill is part of Gov. Susana Martinez’s educational reform plan.
Part of the Senate leadership is questioning whether the nominee for public education secretary reaches constitutional muster. The dispute comes on whether the nominee, Hanna Skandera, is a “qualified, experienced educator,” the Associated Press reported Monday.
The state legislature and Gov. Susana Martinez will begin the 2011 session today with some big ticket items — including, most notably, a state budget deficit that’s estimated to be anywhere from $200 and $400 million. Martinez has vowed to fill the gap without raising taxes or making cuts to either classroom education or Medicaid.
Governor-elect Susana Martinez selected Hanna Skandera, deputy commissioner of education in Florida from 2005 to 2007, to head the Public Education Department. Skandera also served as education undersecretary for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., and was an education policy adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during his unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign.
The DREAM Act, a bill that would allow some undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to stay in the country legally, will come up for a vote as a standalone bill sometime before the end of the year, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). This is the last chance to pass the bill before Republicans take control of the House, but even with Democratic majorities, the bill could fail during the lame-duck session.
Governor-elect Susana Martinez is altering how she talks about education and Medicaid, two programs she has repeatedly said would be protected from cuts, Heath Haussamen at NMPolitics.net reports.
Four local residents who contributed big to Martinez’s gubernatorial campaign were named to committees charged with identifying cabinet secretary candidates, according to the Farmington Daily-Times.
Also Martinez will make the final decision on whether the state of New Mexico proceeds with a land sale for a new “supercomplex” government office building south of Santa Fe, the New Mexican reports.
Alcohol is banned from the newly refurbished Pit and University of New Mexico’s stadium it appears, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
Governor-elect Susana Martinez today announced the members of a search committee who will help identify candidates for cabinet positions and other jobs in the Public Education and Higher Education departments. They include Dr. Jose Garcia, a political science professor at…
We thought it was just New Mexico. But it’s also Illinois, California, Nevada.
New Mexico’s next governor faces several challenges once she takes office, but none is bigger than the state budget. But with one day to go in a negative gubernatorial election neither Republican Susana Martinez nor Democrat Diane Denish has presented exactly what can be called a comprehensive, detailed plan to address the challenge. Instead they’ve made vague promises: no raising taxes during the first year, no cuts to K-12 education or Medicaid, programs that represent more than half the state budget.
Turns out, New Mexico isn’t unique. Candidates running for governor in several states, including those mentioned above, are adopting similar strategies, according to the Associated Press. More …
Homeowners in a Santa Fe subdivision are living examples of the debate that sometimes occurs between the relative benefits of solar energy vs. disrupted views of natural vistas when the new technology comes calling, the New Mexican reports.
The…
Republican Susana Martinez‘s new ad criticizing Democrat Diane Denish for having a role in Advent Solar’s shipment of taxpayer-funded equipment to China doesn’t square with the facts, the Albuquerque Journal reports.
Gov. Bill Richardson, the man Susana…
