THINK NEW MEXICO News:

House Bill 325, sponsored by Representatives Natalie Figueroa (D-Albuquerque), Gail Armstrong (R-Magdalena), Patty Lundstrom (D-Gallup), and Susan Herrera (D-Española), has been introduced to upgrade the quality of local school boards with enhanced training, transparency and accountability.

The bill was developed 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 under current law, school board members receive only a brief annual training, focused primarily on the basic legal aspects of the board role.

“While the vast majority of New Mexico’s school board members are accomplishing great work across the state, House Bill 325 takes an important step toward greater transparency and accountability that will serve all of New Mexico’s students,” Rep. Figueroa said.

“The reforms in this bill recognize the needs of New Mexico’s small rural districts while providing better public access and more relevant training for school board members,” said Rep. Armstrong, who formerly served on the Magdalena School Board.

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

The bill proposes four reforms to improve the quality of New Mexico’s local school boards:

To upgrade the performance of school boards, HB 325 would:

• Expand the annual training for school board members and charter school board members
  • To include not only laws and policies affecting public schools, but also public school finance, budgeting and fiduciary responsibilities of local school boards; how local school boards can evaluate the academic achievement of students in their district and use data to set individual school goals for student performance in each of the school district’s public schools; and effective governance practices and strategies for supporting and supervising the local superintendent.

To increase the transparency of school boards, HB 325 would:

• Require that all school board candidates disclose their campaign contributions.
  • Under current law, only school board members in districts larger than 12,000 students must disclose. That is just five of the state’s 89 districts. Considering that even small school districts are responsible for approving numerous high dollar contracts every year, the public has a right to know who is funding the election of school board candidates; and

• Require 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 and participate effectively in the governance of their community’s schools.

To increase the accountability of school boards, HB 325 would:

• Require that school board members who violate the prohibition against nepotism to step down from their seat on the school board.
  • Although New Mexico prohibits close family members of school board members from being employed by the district, this law has frequently been violated, likely because violating the prohibition carries no penalty. While many school board members voluntarily step down if a family member seeks employment with a district, this provision provides a guardrail to ensure compliance with the law. House Bill 325 also includes a provision allowing districts smaller than 500 students could request a waiver of the nepotism prohibition from PED by providing evidence of the qualifications of the potential hire. This allows small communities with a limited pool of employees to hire the best qualified candidate for  a job, even if that candidate is related to a school board member.

House Bill 325 is scheduled to be heard 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18 in the House Government, Elections, and Indian Affairs Committee.

More information is available on Think New Mexico’s website at www.thinknewmexico.org.