Education

The Early College High School Program, a joint venture between the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos and Los Alamos High School, still has a few openings for its June 9-13 session, according to a news release.
The program allows students to explore a variety of career options in science, technology, engineering, math and health sciences through hands-on learning activities.
The topics to be covered include biofuels/biological sciences, digital media, emergency medicine/fire science, engineering, environmental science, health sciences, immunology, public safety, robotics and welding.
A fun, unifying theme in each session is the threat of a zombie apocalypse, and how each of these disciplines might be used to thwart the impending invasion.
“The events we have this summer are just an introduction to the Early College High School program,” said Grace Willerton, an Accelerate Career and technical advisor at UNM-LA. “We are hoping to get students interested in a career, so when they get to high school, they consider the Early College High School program.

As one of its last official acts of this year, the Los Alamos Public Schools passed a $37.9 million operational school budget for 2014-15. That’s a $1.3 million increase from last year’s budget, which was about $36 million. According to district officials, the extra income comes directly from the state.
“That was through the additional funding that the legislature provided to all school districts. That $1.3 million was our share of that state distribution,” said the school district’s chief financial officer, John Wolfe.
The board has also honored the state’s request that all teachers in the system recieve a 3 percent raise.
If this year’s operational budget had a financial priority, it was to cut down on class size, especially in the elementary school levels. In addition to passing the budget, the board also voted to add three elementary school teachers to the elementary schools most impacted by a “bubble” that had swelled some classes, mainly in Aspen, Mountain and Barranca Mesa, to 25 students or more. That will cost $240,000. With salary and benefits, that comes out to about $80,000 each, according to Wolfe, who also added that’s more than an entry level teacher’s salary, but less than a “Level 3” teacher.

A letter addressed to the Los Alamos Public School System from the New Mexico Public Education Department caused some excitement and, likely, some relief.
The letter comes right in the middle of a special committee’s efforts to formulate an alternative proposal to NMPED’s teacher evaluation plan.
The letter, which was from Matt Montano, the department’s Director of Educator Quality Division, seemed to suggest that NMPED is willing to streamline its evaluation process.
The department apparently came to this conclusion after obtaining data from this year’s teacher evaluation process, the first full year the process has been implemented.
“These updates are based on your feedback and lessons learned from year one of implementation,” Montano said in the letter. “They are data-driven revisions designed to streamline administrative efforts as well as to improve the NMTEACH process.”
The letter then went on to list the revised guidelines, which include:
• Districts and charters may conduct one observation for Highly Effective and Exemplary Teachers.

“Keep the Promise,” a statewide affiliation of parent groups, businesses, and unions concerned with reversing the some of recent changes being made to the New Mexico public education by the New Mexico Public Education Department, held a public forum in Santa Fe this week.
The topic was about the privatization and corporatization of certain facets of New Mexico’s public education system, and whether or not that is a good or bad thing.
“We’d thought we’d start this conversation with a small group of people, talk about what’s happening here in Santa Fe, figure out what the facts are, talk about where this is going on a national level down to the state and into the classroom,” said Pat Brady, a moderator for many of the Keep the Promise events.
Brady then introduced Charles Goodmacher, an official from the National Education Association New Mexico, who proceeded to frame the debate for the audience.
Goodmacher started off saying that not all privatization in public schools is bad, in fact privatization he said plays a necessary part in the system through supplying vital services to less populated areas of the state. He also mentioned textbook companies as a necessary privatization.
However, this new wave of privatization is different, he said.