Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart

THINK NEW MEXICO News:

Senate Bill 137, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque) and Senate Education Committee Chair William Soules (D-Las Cruces) to upgrade the training and transparency requirements of local school boards, has been signed into law by the governor.

Senate Bill 137 is based on reforms proposed by the nonpartisan statewide think tank Think New Mexico, which recommended these reforms in a 2022 policy report. In that report, titled A Roadmap for Rethinking Public Education in New Mexico, Think New Mexico explained that a growing body of research has found that the decisions and actions of local school boards can positively impact the learning environment when school boards are focused on elevating student achievement. Yet current law fails to require that school board members receive training in essential topics like public school budgeting and finance, and how board members can improve student outcomes.

“Improving the quality of our schools needs to start at the top. School boards play a critically important and often undervalued role in determining the quality of our public schools,” said Think New Mexico Executive Director Fred Nathan. “School boards approve the district’s budget, hire the superintendent, and ultimately set the tone, culture, and expectations for superintendents, schools and students.”

The new law enacts four reforms to improve the quality of New Mexico’s local school boards:

• Upgrades the annual training for school board members and charter school board members by requiring school board members to receive training in key topics including how board members can improve student outcomes; public school budgeting and finance; and effective practices for supporting and supervising the local superintendent (the average tenure of a school district superintendent in New Mexico is around four years). 

New board members would be required to complete at least 10 hours of training, and returning board members would be required to complete at least 5 hours annually.

The Public Education Department would post the number of hours completed by each school board member on online school dashboards:

• Requires that all school board candidates disclose their campaign contributions. Prior to enactment of this new law, only school board members in districts larger than 12,000 students must disclose. That was just five of the state’s 89 districts. New Mexico now becomes the 45th state to require all school board candidates to disclose their donors. 

“The public has a right to know who is funding the election of school board candidates,” Fred Nathan said, Executive Director of Think New Mexico:

• Requires that school board and charter school board meetings be webcast and the recordings archived so that the public can access them. 

Many parents and members of the public are not able to attend regular school board meetings due to work or family obligations.

With the decline of local newspapers that might cover these meetings, especially in the rural parts of New Mexico, this means that fewer members of the public are able to monitor the actions of the school board, which makes it very difficult to effectively provide public oversight or to have the information that they need as voters in order to elect the best possible board members:

• Establishes a cooling off period between a school board election and 60 days following the date new school board members take office, during which the school board cannot fire the superintendent without cause. This provision, which was recommended by the Public Education Department, should help to encourage more stability in school district leadership. 

The new school board governance reforms are strongly supported by New Mexico voters. A November 2023 poll found that 88 percent of New Mexico voters support requiring school board members to receive expanded and enhanced training in topics like how to read school district budgets, how to effectively oversee a school district superintendent, and how school board members can positively impact student achievement of New Mexico.

Similarly, 87 percent support requiring school boards to webcast their meetings, and 79 percent support requiring all school board candidates to disclose their campaign contributions. The poll of 403 registered voters in New Mexico was commissioned by Think New Mexico and overseen by UNM Professor Dr. Gabriel Sanchez, a nationally recognized expert in New Mexico politics and policy.

More information is available on Think New Mexico’s website.