How did the APS school board score its last quarter of work?
During its final April meeting last week, the board performed a quarterly self-evaluation. The evaluation is done using a rubric mandated as part of its framework to improve student outcomes set by the Council of the Great City Schools, a nonprofit organization with which the district has a contract that costs around $60,000 annually.
So how did the board score? By the standards of the district it governs, if the board were a high school student, it would have gotten an F.
The board is tasked with turning around student outcomes for the largest district in a state that in many metrics has consistently ranked last in the nation for education. APS itself has struggled with absenteeism and student academic performance, lagging behind the state in those metrics, according to the latest statewide monitoring report: the New Mexico Vistas report card.
On a scale of 100 possible points among six categories, the board gave itself a 58 for its work from January through March. That marks the lowest score on the evaluation since receiving a 53 for its work from April to June 2024. APS considers grades of 60 or higher — for its students — to be passing.
By that metric, since it began doing quarterly self-evaluations in 2022, the board has only given itself a passing grade twice.
To open, board President Danielle Gonzales recommended that the board award itself all 35 possible points in the values and guardrails category. That was met with pushback from District 6 representative Josefina Domínguez.
"We've lost the community sense of ownership of the goals, feedback from parents, for example," Domínguez said. "That feedback tells me that they don't fully understand our process."
Still, a majority of the members agreed on the 35 score and gave themselves the perfect score in the category.
On the next category of monitoring and accountability, Domínguez also objected and said the rubric itself was flawed. The board ultimately gave itself 10 of 15 points in the category.
So what did the board members agree on the most? Their inability to work together.
"For communication and collaboration, perhaps, there was the most consensus here with the score of a one," Gonzales said.
The single point the board gave itself in the communication and collaboration category was out of 10 possible points. The board also gave itself scores of a single point out of five on both the categories of unity and trust and continuous improvement.
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