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.
We are delighted to welcome our final summer 2024 Leadership Intern, Ayvret van Waveren!
Ayvret was born in Santa Fe, NM and has always considered it home. Growing up, he spent 10 years in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and 8 years in Muscat, Oman. He graduated from The American International School of Muscat, where he earned the Political Science Student of the Year Award. Ayvret is now a rising senior at Amherst College, studying Political Science with a concentration in Economics. He is currently writing his thesis, "New Mexico at a Crossroads," which analyzes major issues affecting the state, including the struggling economy, high violent crime rate, and underperforming schools, and explores potential policy solutions to address those issues. Ayvret previously interned at the First Judicial District Attorney's Office in Santa Fe and with New Mexico Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth. After earning his undergraduate degree, Ayvret intends to go to law school and then pursue a career in law and New Mexico politics and policy.
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Oregon high schoolers will have to take and pass stand-alone classes on financial literacy and college and career preparation to graduate, starting with this fall’s sophomores.
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Integrating financial literacy and college and career preparation materials into existing classes would “perpetuate the current practice of rushed or incomplete instruction as teachers are not given enough time or training to provide instruction in the new subject matters,” Senior Deputy Legislative Counsel Hannah Lai wrote in response to lawmakers’ query. Legislators made it clear that they expected semester-long stand-alone courses, she advised, and the state board did not have authority to deviate from that directive.
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“Integrated means lost, and that is the key,” Scheinman said. “If you integrate the topic as a part of other classes, the teacher has no real incentive to be familiar with the material and it won’t matter too much. A student can still get an 80%, based on their knowledge of other things.”
Scheinman framed the issue in economic terms. District can spend the money now to help students learn about how to manage their finances or students can pay the price later, when that lack of knowledge comes back to hurt them, he said.
Some students, too, have backed the concept. Newport High School student Andrea Merino Comejo told lawmakers this year that taking a financial literacy class gave her a practical leg up. She said she learned “how to manage my money, how to build credit with a card [and] it has trained me how to buy a car from a private party. I can already see how it is getting me ready for my future finance decisions as an adult.”
www.oregonlive.com
Oregon high schoolers will have to take and pass stand-alone classes on financial literacy and college and career preparation to graduate, starting with the class of 2027.0 CommentsComment on Facebook
We are delighted to welcome Laurel Nash Jarecki to Think New Mexico as another of our impressive summer 2024 Leadership Interns!
Laurel grew up in Albuquerque and graduated from Albuquerque Academy in 2023. She is now a sophomore at Princeton University, where she plans to major in Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, concentrating in Global Health/Health Policy and Climate Sciences. In high school, Laurel served as a Student Senator and as President of Albuquerque Academy’s Health Occupations Students of America–Future Health Professionals chapter during its second year. In that role, she focused on expanding participation in the chapter and organizing opportunities for CPR training for the school community. In college, she continues to dedicate time towards health policy-oriented activities such as HOSA-FHP and Princeton Public Health Forum, and she also serves as Chair of DEI on the Princeton Art Museum Student Advisory Board. Laurel is interested in pursuing either a JD or PhD program in a health-policy-related field and working to improve health care access and equity.
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