In 2024, Think New Mexico is celebrating its first quarter-century! Check out our latest annual report for for a timeline of the results we have achieved through the years as well as updates on our policy reform initiatives. Click here to download the annual report.
During the 2024 legislative session, 54 education-related bills were introduced, just four of which made it through the process and were signed into law. One of those bills was Senate Bill 137, which enacted the reforms proposed in Think New Mexico’s Education Roadmap report to upgrade the training and transparency of the state’s school boards. Read more about this reform.
While we were unsuccessful in getting a one-semester course in financial literacy included in the high school graduation requirements for all students, we are now reaching out to each of New Mexico’s 89 school districts and urging them to adopt financial literacy as one of the two graduation requirements that they have to establish at the local level. We are joined in this effort by a broad-based and growing coalition.
In addition, the 2024 capital outlay bill included an additional $1 million for the Strategic Water Reserve, the water management tool that Think New Mexico successfully championed nearly two decades ago to keep our rives running to prevent conflicts over endangered species and interstate river compacts. The 2024-2025 budget also extended the timeline for the $7,500,000 appropriation to the Strategic Water Reserve from last year, allowing it to be expended through 2028. Read more about this reform.
The 2024 legislative session is underway, and we are working to enact more of the potentially transformative education reforms we proposed in our 2022 policy report, A Roadmap for Rethinking Public Education in New Mexico. Here are brief summaries of the bills we are currently working on, with links to our Action Center so you can easily contact your legislators and the governor about any of them:
On January 1, 2024, Think New Mexico marked 25 years since its founding.
We are proud of the track record of results that Think New Mexico has delivered for New Mexicans in our first quarter century, from repealing the food tax to ending predatory lending to making full-day kindergarten accessible to every child in the state. We have some exciting plans in the works to magnify our impact over the next quarter century, and we look forward to sharing more information about them throughout 2024.
One of Think New Mexico’s priorities during the upcoming legislative session will be to win passage of legislation phasing in a cap of 20 students per class in grades 1-6. We would phase this class size cap in over six years, one grade per year, to allow ample time to plan for funding, space, and staff. Smaller classes improve student performance for at-risk students and also help keep good teachers in the profession longer. Yet in the 2022-23 school year, 27% of New Mexico’s elementary school classes exceeded limits and average targets set in current state law.
Read more about why this reform is so important in a recent guest editorial by our Education Reform Director Mandi Torrez and click here to contact your legislators and the governor about this reform.
Our deep thanks go out to the dozen extremely generous New Mexicans who put together a pool of challenge grants totaling $170,000, and to the 373 New Mexicans who helped us more than match that challenge!
Including both the challenge grants and your matching contributions, during Think New Mexico’s annual online fundraising campaign between October 2-16, 2023, you helped us raise $333,365, which is nearly 44% of Think New Mexico’s annual budget.
The main challenge of $135,000, which was offered by 11 challenge grantors, was more than matched dollar for dollar by $144,089 from 312 donors.
A separate challenge of $35,000 offered a 2:1 match for new donors, new Monthly Amigos, and returning donors who hadn’t given in the last five years (since 2018 or earlier). This challenge was matched by $19,276 from 44 first-time donors, eight donors who had not given since 2018, and nine new Monthly Amigos. With the 2:1 match, those donations leveraged every single dollar of the $35,000 challenge grant!
Since Think New Mexico was founded in 1999, we have always worked hard to keep our fundraising expenses to an absolute minimum. That’s why we have never employed a professional fundraiser or held a physical fundraising event. This strategy has succeeded thanks to all of you who give so generously during our two-week fund drive every year and make it possible for Think New Mexico’s small staff to spend the rest of the year focused on our policy research and advocacy work.
"One strategy implemented in other states has not been tried in New Mexico: smaller class sizes.
Think New Mexico, along with a bipartisan group of legislators, will propose legislation to cap grades K-3 at 20 students. This will help give our youngest students the best chance to read at grade level by the end of third grade, which means they are four times more likely to graduate from high school.
Our proposal would phase in a 20-student maximum over four years, one grade level per year, allowing districts time to plan for spacing and staff, while assuring parents that every proven strategy is being utilized to boost reading success.
New Mexicans know that reducing class size is worth the effort. A 2023 poll of likely voters conducted by University of New Mexico professor Dr. Gabe Sanchez found that 96% of likely voters believe class size is an important or very important factor in student success, and 83% would support a law capping elementary classes at 20 students."
OPINION: Smaller K-3 class sizes are an urgent response to the reading crisis
www.abqjournal.com
OPINION: New Mexicans know that reducing class size is worth the effort.0 CommentsComment on Facebook
"The nonpartisan think tank Think New Mexico has been working toward some of these improvements for 25 years now. Let’s follow its lead, and little by little we can create a society where all are valued." -Mary Ray Cate, Santa Fe
Instead of prisons, build a better social safety net
www.santafenewmexican.com
The exhibit of prison art at the Museum of International Folk Art includes a bar graph comparing the rates of incarceration in the U.S. and other countries.2 CommentsComment on Facebook
25 years and New Mexico is still last in education. Los Alamos county ranks in 10 richest in USA and New Mexico is still last in education This is visible
Mariana Padilla has shown that she will put students first, and we are optimistic about the potential improvements she could make at PED.Mariana Padilla’s deep roots in New Mexico and her lifelong commitment to children and families make her the right leader for this moment.
Her work has been instrumental in shaping our state’s education system, and I am confident that she will continue to bring positive change for New Mexico’s students.
Read more here: www.governor.state.nm.us/2024/09/10/governor-appoints-mariana-padilla-as-secretary-of-the-public-...
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