Latest news with #DanielleGonzales
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Divided APS board vacates coaching, governance contract. New provider to be selected in fall.
Jun. 5—After pushback from some board members, Albuquerque Public Schools won't renew its contract with the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), which cost the district around $50,000 over nearly three years. CGCS is a Washington, D.C.-based organization that partners with urban districts to improve students' academic performance and assist school boards' governance strategies. The district will instead put out a request for proposals allowing vendors to apply to provide coaching services and student outcomes-focused governance as APS attempts to turn around academic performance as the largest district in a state that often ranks last in the nation for education. The district's contract with CGCS will expire June 30 and applications to fill the vacancy are due by Aug. 1. The board will likely vote on a new vendor at its Sept. 17 meeting. CGCS didn't answer questions or respond to interview requests sent over several weeks but stated Wednesday that it had "no involvement in the school board's decision not to renew its contract." APS' Board of Education met Wednesday and was initially expected to vote on renewing the contract. However, it was announced May 30 in a memo from APS Board President Danielle Gonzales that the district would seek a different provider for coaching services. "This effort to establish community engagement goals was to be transparent, to be clear, and also to hold ourselves accountable to meeting these specific goals," Gonzales said Wednesday, opening the discussion. "I want to acknowledge that no board had ever done this before, and this was not happening before." She also referred to several meetings in which the board unanimously approved topics related to the contract and student governance strategies, dating back to June 2024. However, one of the contract's critics, board member Josefina Domínguez, outlined longstanding issues she has had with CGSC in an email sent from her personal address to her APS address. The email — which she told the Journal was a draft — was obtained through an Inspection of Public Records Act request. Domínguez states that CGCS, "deliberately inserted themselves into the APS Board's business" and that board leadership interpreted "coaching to suit their needs." "Key decisions within the APS Board are made with the knowledge of only four members, leaving the other three members in the dark," she wrote. "This lack of collaborative governance is evident in our board meetings." The split to which she refers concerns the three board members endorsed by the Albuquerque Teachers Federation union and the four backed by business community entities, such as the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and the local chapter of NAIOP, a commercial real estate organization. That divide was on display Wednesday as the three union-backed board members present — Domínguez, Heather Benavidez and Ronalda Tome-Warito — discussed the issues they had with CGCS. Domínguez and Tome-Warito stated that CGCS didn't offer enough to help students who are minorities, specifically Native students, and Benavidez took issue with the divisiveness caused by coaching. "I would like a coach that is not going to pit board members against each other; that's going to foster cohesion," Benavidez said. "I think that needs to start with the board, the board members. We cannot be productive as a board if we don't get along." The discussion over the contract dominated the meeting, which took place among the five board members present. Crystal Tapia-Romero, who has now missed the past three meetings, was not in attendance, nor was Janelle Astorga, who is on maternity leave. The trio of union-backed members successfully pushed for discussions on a few items, including revising the timeline for student-focused outcomes, reflecting on the contract with CGCS and establishing criteria for a new vendor to be presented to the board at its July meeting, but in doing so, earned the ire of the board's vice president, Courtney Jackson. "I haven't slept for two stinking days because of the headspace and the time and the energy," Jackson said. "I am trying so hard to focus on effective governance, and this has spun so far out of control because of narratives, because of misunderstandings, because of hurt feelings." She also called CGCS one of "the leading organizations in the nation" and added that the organization has a "proven" record of turning around student academic performance. "I represent 90,000 roughly constituents. You know what they want me to be focusing on?" Jackson said. "They want to make sure that our kids can read. They want to make sure that our kids can do math. That's what they want me to do."
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Divided APS board vacates coaching, governance contract. New provider to be selected in fall.
Jun. 5—After pushback from some board members, Albuquerque Public Schools won't renew its contract with the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), which cost the district around $50,000 over nearly three years. CGCS is a Washington, D.C.-based organization that partners with urban districts to improve students' academic performance and assist school boards' governance strategies. The district will instead put out a request for proposals allowing vendors to apply to provide coaching services and student outcomes-focused governance as APS attempts to turn around academic performance as the largest district in a state that often ranks last in the nation for education. The district's contract with CGCS will expire June 30 and applications to fill the vacancy are due by Aug. 1. The board will likely vote on a new vendor at its Sept. 17 meeting. CGCS didn't answer questions or respond to interview requests sent over several weeks but stated Wednesday that it had "no involvement in the school board's decision not to renew its contract." APS' Board of Education met Wednesday and was initially expected to vote on renewing the contract. However, it was announced May 30 in a memo from APS Board President Danielle Gonzales that the district would seek a different provider for coaching services. "This effort to establish community engagement goals was to be transparent, to be clear, and also to hold ourselves accountable to meeting these specific goals," Gonzales said Wednesday, opening the discussion. "I want to acknowledge that no board had ever done this before, and this was not happening before." She also referred to several meetings in which the board unanimously approved topics related to the contract and student governance strategies, dating back to June 2024. However, one of the contract's critics, board member Josefina Domínguez, outlined longstanding issues she has had with CGSC in an email sent from her personal address to her APS address. The email — which she told the Journal was a draft — was obtained through an Inspection of Public Records Act request. Domínguez states that CGCS, "deliberately inserted themselves into the APS Board's business" and that board leadership interpreted "coaching to suit their needs." "Key decisions within the APS Board are made with the knowledge of only four members, leaving the other three members in the dark," she wrote. "This lack of collaborative governance is evident in our board meetings." The split to which she refers concerns the three board members endorsed by the Albuquerque Teachers Federation union and the four backed by business community entities, such as the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and the local chapter of NAIOP, a commercial real estate organization. That divide was on display Wednesday as the three union-backed board members present — Domínguez, Heather Benavidez and Ronalda Tome-Warito — discussed the issues they had with CGCS. Domínguez and Tome-Warito stated that CGCS didn't offer enough to help students who are minorities, specifically Native students, and Benavidez took issue with the divisiveness caused by coaching. "I would like a coach that is not going to pit board members against each other; that's going to foster cohesion," Benavidez said. "I think that needs to start with the board, the board members. We cannot be productive as a board if we don't get along." The discussion over the contract dominated the meeting, which took place among the five board members present. Crystal Tapia-Romero, who has now missed the past three meetings, was not in attendance, nor was Janelle Astorga, who is on maternity leave. The trio of union-backed members successfully pushed for discussions on a few items, including revising the timeline for student-focused outcomes, reflecting on the contract with CGCS and establishing criteria for a new vendor to be presented to the board at its July meeting, but in doing so, earned the ire of the board's vice president, Courtney Jackson. "I haven't slept for two stinking days because of the headspace and the time and the energy," Jackson said. "I am trying so hard to focus on effective governance, and this has spun so far out of control because of narratives, because of misunderstandings, because of hurt feelings." She also called CGCS one of "the leading organizations in the nation" and added that the organization has a "proven" record of turning around student academic performance. "I represent 90,000 roughly constituents. You know what they want me to be focusing on?" Jackson said. "They want to make sure that our kids can read. They want to make sure that our kids can do math. That's what they want me to do."
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How did the APS school board score its last quarter of work?
Apr. 21—Albuquerque Public Schools board members might want to hide their latest report card from district parents. 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.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
APS Board of Education defends change in media policy amid criticism
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – A change to the Albuquerque Public School Board of Education's governance manual is drawing scrutiny with some claiming it limits transparency. But the APS board president said it was all a misunderstanding. Story continues below Weather: Hazardous winds leave a trail of destruction in New Mexico Crime: ABQ police take 11-year-old into custody in connection to fatal hit and run Entertainment: These movies were filmed in Santa Fe. Have you seen them? In a February board meeting, the board made changes to its governance manual, which included a tweak to how it handles the press. 'Essentially the APS school board said that the president of the board will act as the sole spokesperson on behalf of the board,' said Danielle Gonzales, president of the APS school board. The manual states, 'board members will support the legitimacy and authority of the final determination of the board on any matter regardless of the member's personal position on the issue.' In the February meeting, the board president said the policy aligns with guidance from the Council of Great City Schools, which also said board members speaking to the media will be interpreted as speaking on behalf of the board even if the member says it is their personal opinion. Gonzales maintains no one is being silenced. 'There's nothing within the policy that limits the board member's or any individual in the public's freedom to speak to the media,' said Gonzales. She said the goal is to limit misinformation and to present a united front to the public. 'The main goal is to maintain our unity to the public and to be really clear that when the board acts, we act as a seven-member board that represents the entire community, not a group of individuals who are representing our own opinions or our own perspectives,' said Gonzales. Still, the new language in the manual is getting scrutiny. 'It's basically saying once the school board has voted on something, every school board member has to fall in line behind that vote even if they voted against it, even if they don't agree with it,' said Christine Barber, executive director of New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. 'That is very anti-transparency. It's also against the First Amendment and free speech.' She said NMFOG got several calls alerting them to the policy change after the board meeting. 'On top of that, the school board members are elected officials. They were elected specifically by the public to represent the interest of the public on the school board,' she said. The ACLU of New Mexico also said it is monitoring the media policy. 'We are concerned that APS's speech policy unconstitutionally limits school board members from discussing board decisions. While board members must respect the democratic process, they also have a fundamental First Amendment right and duty to explain their votes and engage in public discussion about policies that impact the community. Courts have routinely held that while casting a vote is a governmental act, discussing policies and expressing opinions is protected speech. Silencing board members threatens transparency and accountability,' said Leon Howard, ACLU of New Mexico Interim Executive Director. 'It was our practice prior to this vote and prior to this governance manual, and so I'm sorry there's been some misinterpretation of either the intent or the impact of the policy, but it was really meant to be a minor tweak to our governance manual,' said Gonzales. The next APS school board meeting is scheduled for April 2, 2025, at 5 p.m. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Mexico students continue to struggle since pandemic, national test scores show
Jan. 29—New Mexico students, including those in Albuquerque, have not recovered academically from the pandemic, according to newly released test scores often called "The Nation's Report Card." The scores released Wednesday from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show declines in reading and math scores among fourth grade and eighth grade students in the state between 2024 and 2019. NAEP, a congressionally mandated assessment for decades, assesses how students perform over time. The test is administered every two years during the spring semester to a representative sample of students in each state. Students took the NAEP digitally for the first time in 2024, according to Albuquerque Public Schools Board President Danielle Gonzales, who sits on the board for the test. "I think across the board, it's just bad news; it's just sobering and disheartening and should be a wake-up call to everybody," Gonzales said. Eighth graders in the state saw a 13-point decline in their math scores between 2019 and 2024. Fourth graders saw a 7-point decline in math scores during the same time period. Fourth graders and eighth graders in the state saw their reading scores on the assessment decline by 7 points between 2019 and 2024. In Albuquerque, the declines did not reach the double digits, but showed APS students' struggles since the pandemic. Fourth graders saw their NAEP reading scores decline by 7 points between 2019 and 2024, while eighth graders saw a 5-point decline in their reading scores on the assessment over the same time period. APS fourth graders saw their math proficiency decline from 30% to 26% over a five-year period since 2024. Eighth graders declined in math proficiency by three points, from 20% to 17%, over the same time period. Overall, in math, fourth and eighth graders in New Mexico only outperformed Puerto Rico, according to NAEP data. Eighth graders in the state tied for last in reading with Oklahoma, West Virginia and Alaska, the data said. But for APS students, there was some good news when their NAEP scores were compared to 26 large urban districts included in the Trial Urban Districts Assessment, commonly known as TUDA. APS tied for second in eighth-grade reading. While the U.S. Department of Education called the nationwide scores "heartbreaking" and New Mexico activist groups expressed concern for being "dead last once again," Albuquerque Public Schools said in a news release on Wednesday that the school district's NAEP scores have not significantly increased or declined since 2022 or 2019. APS Superintendent Gabriella Blakey called the results "important" to use as "another data point we can use to look at progress." Blakey was unavailable for comment Wednesday, according to APS spokesperson Martin Salazar. Gonzales said the NAEP scores should be "taken seriously," but the declines should not be blamed solely on the pandemic because she saw declines before that time. The data's release comes against the backdrop of low student outcomes despite the state's record funding to education in recent years. The New Mexico Public Education Department is asking lawmakers for more than $5.5 billion this year. Hope Morales, executive director of Teach Plus New Mexico, a nonprofit, took aim at lawmakers on Wednesday following the scores' release. "While our state should be commended for its record-breaking funding of education, these results show that we must do much more," Morales said in a statement.
