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.
58 percent of New Mexico teachers are white, despite minorities constituting an overwhelming majority of the state’s student body.
The findings come out of a set of reports published by a Washington, D.C. think tank that examined the dearth…
A public hearing to take place tomorrow in the Alamogordo Public Schools Board of Education Meeting Room will give residents another chance to learn more about the state’s newly formed school letter-grading system.
Beginning Nov. 30, all schools in New…
A new study from a Colorado-based educational research group takes a comprehensive look at the disparity in punishments handed to minority and disabled students by school administrators.
A new government study paints a grim picture for young adults. Hospitalizations for alcohol and drug overdoses, alone or in combination, increased dramatically among 18- to 24-year-olds between 1999 and 2008.
Senate Majority Whip Mary Jane Garcia unexpectedly withdrew her support for Gov. Susana Martinez’ effort to end social promotion during the special session Monday. The Governor had asked the Doña Ana County Democrat to appear at a press conference Monday…
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.
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.
Gov. Susana Martinez outlined some of her goals for the 2011 legislative session Tuesday in her first State of the State address at the state Legislature. Martinez also said that she would veto any tax increases that pass the legislature.
Governor-elect Susana Martinez indicated that she may not keep key campaign promises to not cut education or Medicaid to balance the state’s budget. Martinez’s transition team told NMPolitics.net that cuts in the two areas are “certainly a possibility.”
Gov.-elect Susana Martinez promised not to cut education or Medicaid funding in her campaign, but given that New Mexico’s budget deficit has grown from $260 million in July to $450 million, she is changing her language.
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.
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…
New Mexico’s first gubernatorial debate has been scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 19 at Eldorado High School in Albuquerque, and the topic will be education. Albuquerque Public Schools is hosting the debate, which will be moderated by Superintendent Winston Brooks.
The…
Democrat Diane Denish and Republican Susana Martinez have agreed to the first gubernatorial debate and it will tackle education.
The debate will occur Aug. 19 at Eldorado High School in Albuquerque, according to a news release sent out…
Despite bucking a national trend of increasing child poverty and a reduction in school drop-out rates, New Mexico ranks last or near-last in seven of 10 measures of child welfare, from teen deaths to proportion of children living in poverty, according to a report released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Overall, the 2010 Kids Count Data Book shows that New Mexico lost ground, slipping to 46th place from 43rd in last year’s report.
Only for infant mortality did the state rank better than the national average, at 13th place, with 6.3 babies dying per 1,000 live births, compared to a U.S. average of 6.7 deaths per 1,000 births. Here are some of the other major findings:
NM teen birth rate is highest in the nation
New Mexico continues to rank worst in the nation for teen birth rates, with 2007 numbers (the most recent available data) showing no change from 2000 in New Mexico; 66 girls aged 15 to 19 gave birth for every 1,000 girls in New Mexico, compared to 43 per 1,000 nationwide.
Teen death rate also high
The state continues to have one of the worst teen death rates in the U.S. Although New Mexico’s teen death rate dropped slightly — 3 percent — between 2000 and 2007, at 96 deaths per 100,000 teens, the state’s rates are markedly higher than the national average of 62 per 100,000.
Single-parent families growing faster than average
The percentage of children in single-parent families grew seven times as much from 2000 to 2008 in New Mexico as the rest of the U.S., the report states. The percent of New Mexico children living in single-parent families grew from 33 percent in 2000 to 40 percent by 2008, compared to 32 percent nationwide in 2008.
The Kids Count report includes single-parent households as an indicator of child welfare because children in households with one adult do not have access to the same economic or human resources as children in two-parent families, the report states. In 2008, nearly a third of single-parent families lived in poverty, compared to just 7 percent of children in households run by married couples, according to the report.
Poverty affects one-fourth of NM kids
Nearly a quarter of New Mexico children, 24 percent, live in poverty (defined in 2008 as a four-member household income below $21,834). The situation is much worse for the state’s Native American (39 percent) and Hispanic children (30 percent), according to the report.
Nationwide, 18 percent of children live in poverty, according to the study.
Drop-out rate dips, but NM still ranks 47th
The percent of 16 to 19 year-old New Mexicans who were not in school dropped from 16 to 10 percent between 2000 and 2008, but that still placed the state in 47th place nationwide.
The U.S. average drop-out rate was 6 percent in 2008, the report states.
Child death rates rise while national rate drops
New Mexico’s number of deaths per 100,000 children under age 15 increased between 2000 and 2007, while the U.S. average child death rate declined. For 2007, New Mexico’s child mortality rate was 24 deaths per 100,000 children, compared to a U.S. average of 19 deaths per 100,000 according to the report.
The new report comes on the heels of a report in May that New Mexico children rank low on reading ability and school performance.
Federal, state and tribal officials met Wednesday morning to launch a three-month long White House-sponsored television ad campaign aimed at methamphetamine abuse among Native Americans. The campaign will last through July and cost the federal government approximately $750,000.
“It’s not a hugely expensive campaign,” U.S. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske acknowledged. But the ads are tailored to Native American audiences, emphasizing cultural pride and strength, he said.
State and tribal officials urged that more federal resources be devoted to confronting Indian Country’s meth epidemic, while others said the government is ignoring the underlying problems driving the crisis.
“A decade ago, it seemed that meth use was very rare in Indian Country,” U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk told an audience of 50 Wednesday at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque. “That’s certainly not the case anymore. It’s reaching what can be described as epidemic proportions now.”
Methamphetamine abuse rates among American Indians and Alaska Natives are the highest for any ethnicity in the nation, nearly twice that of any other ethnic group in the U.S. based on emergency room data and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, White House Drug Control Policy Director (U.S. “Drug Czar”) Gil Kerlikowske said.
The Navajo Nation, where 15 percent of high school students reported meth use in 2003, is particularly hard-hit, New Mexico Secretary of Indian Affairs Alvin Warren noted.
“The FBI estimates that 40 percent of violent crimes on the Navajo reservation are meth-related,” Warren said. “To succeed, this campaign must be a part of a comprehensive, collaborative effort with the federal government. It has to include sufficient resources for treatment, prevention and law enforcement.”
The true scope of the meth problem in Indian Country is unclear, Kerlikowske acknowledged — partly because of the number of urban Indians involved.
“It’s very difficult to get your head around just how many people (are involved),” Kerlikowske said. “A lot of Native people don’t live on tribal lands.”
Part of the problem for those who do live on Indian reservations, is the allure of vast, under-policed and remote spaces to meth manufacturers and traffickers, officials said.
Reservation land “is very remote,” Isleta Pueblo Governor Robert Benevides, a retired BIA police officer, told The Independent. “Drug traffickers know that.”
As Mexico has clamped down on the importation of meth precursor chemicals and the U.S. has tightened control of the U.S./Mexico border, myriad small-scale “shake and bake” meth labs are popping up in Indian Country, Drug Czar assistant director Mark Krawczyk said.
“Mexico as a key source of meth has sort of evaporated,” Krawczyk said. “Now we get small-scale shake and bake labs using pseudoephedrine bought over the counter. The effects are magnified because there are all these tiny meth labs on the sides of roads.”
Over the past two years, federal agencies have assigned 30 new drug enforcement officers to help police the land of more than 500 U.S. tribes, Echo Hawk said.
“Six or seven” more will be added nationwide this year, he told The Independent.
But that’s not enough to confront the problem, others said.
“We need more law enforcement in the field,” Benevides said. “The money is not adequate.”
Isleta is surrounded by centers of meth abuse, and federal support for law enforcement on the Pueblo is inadequate, Benevides told The Independent. The tribe has enough money from its casino to fund two police officers, he said.
There needs to be increased collaboration between tribal, state and federal law enforcement, emphasized Joe Garcia, Southwest Area Vice President for the National Congress of American Indians.
Underlying problems unaddressed?
Some tribal members, while supportive of the ad campaign, told The Independent the underlying problems driving meth and heroin drug abuse on Indian reservations are not being addressed by government anti-drug efforts.
“Mental health, that is where it comes from — depression,” said Adrienne Mauskemo, a member of the Meskwaki Nation in Iowa.
Mauskemo emphasized that she was speaking as a mother, not a representative of her tribe.
“Maybe children are neglected and they are trying to find some ways to get away from their pain,” Mauskemo said. “They have suicidal ideas. When they’re trying to treat the drug problem, first they need to deal with the mental health.”
The television ads emphasized key words, Mauskemo noticed: support, nurturing, strength.
”But what does it mean to be strong,” she asked. “Do the youth know? To me, it’s inner strength, to speak to yourself. I will not do this. I was able to speak to myself that way. It kept me out of trouble. That is how I see things.”
In an effort to provide safe recreation venues for children and teens, the Isleta Pueblo has built soccer, baseball and T-ball fields, a recreation center and swimming pool, Benevides said.
”If you don’t give our kids a place to go, they will get into trouble,” Benevides said.
Acoma Tribal Councilman Derek Valdo also cited underfunding of the U.S. Indian Health Service’s mental health programs as part of the problem.
“It’s bad enough just trying to get medical services for basic needs,” Valdo told The Independent. “They’re emphasizing law enforcement and prevention, but what’s lacking is the other part: how do we fix it afterward?”
Tribes face a major challenge with cleaning up houses that have been used as meth labs, Valdo said.
There exist no national standards for what residual level of meth lab chemicals is safe, as there are for radiation exposure or radon, Valdo pointed out.
Expansion to include public health
The ad campaign represents a shift for the federal government, toward a public health model of confronting the meth problem, officials suggested.
Acknowledging widespread mistrust for the federal government in Indian Country, Kerlikowske emphasized the state and local government backgrounds of the federal officials at the meeting, and said that talking of a “war on drugs” was not “the best way to talk about what is a public health problem.”
“We’re not going to arrest ourselves out of something like this,” Echo Hawk said. “We’ve got to challenge our young people to make good decisions.”
Older adults abusing meth too
The ads, which emphasize the themes “pride” and “we don’t need meth,” were produced by Alternative Marketing Solutions, a Native American-owned advertising agency, according to a press release distributed at the meeting.
The ads were test marketed in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona and Washington, Kerlikowske said.
“In the past, ads have been generic. I don’t think an anti-drug ad made in Brooklyn will resonate (in Indian Country),” Kerlikowske said. “These ads are directed both at young people but also adults, elders, parents—about how to…provide help.”
But many Native Americans struggling with meth addiction are themselves middle-aged and older adults, others said.
“It’s not just youth,” Garcia said, whose hair is graying. “A lot of people as old as I am, and older, are using meth.”
“We are seeing it in the older group, the 40 to 50 age group,” Mauskemo told The Independent after the meeting. “I’m speaking as a mother, not for the tribe. I see huffing (of solvents or gasoline) in 10 and 11 year-olds. That’s how you see the pattern start.”
The three-month campaign has a $1.5 million “media value,” Kerlikowske said, though only about $750,000 of government money was actually invested in the ads and paid advertising slots, Krawczyk later told The Independent.
“These are paid ads,” Krawczyk said. “After the campaign ends, we’re making them available as public service announcements to tribal and local governments.”
New Mexico is struggling to improve public education and the state was not chosen for the first round of Race to the Top education funding. With an eye on innovative programs that might help the state qualify for federal Race to the Top money, our panelists write about what New Mexico should do to improve public education.
The state budget deal legislative leaders reach may generate $233 million in new revenue, in part by taking back $70-$100 million it has been sending each year to New Mexico cities to help compensate for the lack of a food tax. In return, cities would get the authority to tax food up to 2 percent. Also in the works: education cuts, a gross receipts tax hike and two versions of a cigarette tax hike.
A bill that could result in larger school classes and shorter school days, passed the House by a vote of 34-30 Wednesday afternoon. The bill now goes to the governor.
A fiscal impact report on the bill warned of potential “negative…
