Teachers returning to classrooms in New Mexico this fall will see the first significant pay increase in several years.
Starting July 1, all public school teachers, regardless of grade, will receive a raise of at least $10,000.
Whitney Holland, president of the American Federation of New Mexico Teachers, was elected after teaching for nearly a decade. She has advocated for what she calls a “living wage” because she remembers how hard it was to make ends meet when she started teaching in 2012.
“So when I started, I made $32,000, and it was tough,” Holland said. “Now our entry-level teachers will make $50,000, and that’s pretty significant. It’s competitive for the regions around us, and it’s competitive for other professions.”
The annual salary for tier “two” teachers will now be $60,000 per year, while “tier three” teachers will see their salaries climb to $70,000. According to the governor’s office, the increases make New Mexico the highest paid education system in the region, higher than Arizona, Colorado and Utah.
In addition to salary increases, Holland pointed out that recently passed legislation would lay the foundation for rebuilding the educational profession in New Mexico, investing in the educator workforce to retain veteran educators and attract new ones. new educators in the state.
“We wholeheartedly believe that having fully staffed schools is exactly what our students deserve,” Holland said. “All of this legislation is a step towards that and rebuilding those schools and staffing them.”
According to Holland, the pandemic has not only decimated teaching positions in schools, but also created nearly 2,000 vacancies for positions such as bus drivers, caretakers, secretaries and others who help run schools. New Mexico was the only state to bring in members of the National Guard, Army and Air Force troops to fill in for teaching due to pandemic-related absences.
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Despite the legislative backlash, South Dakota is moving forward with plans seen as limiting some teaching about race in public schools.
Governor Kristi Noem issued an executive order, renewing the concerns of opponents and also raising questions. On Tuesday, Noem announced the banning of Critical Race Theory, an academic concept for universities that explores the influence of racism in American institutions. Conservative states have used it as a symbol to propose bans in K-12 schools.
Janna Farley, director of communications for the ACLU of South Dakota, said she views Noem’s actions as going against academic freedom.
“Instead of encouraging learning,” she said, “it appears this executive order will have a chilling effect on academic freedom.”
The order directs the Department of Education to review documents and standards and ensure they do not include “dividing concepts” about race. Noem likened the problem to political indoctrination, but other opponents of his plan noted that it was confined to the education department and that school boards still had leeway to develop curricula. A bill proposed by Noem for this effort was recently defeated by a state Senate panel.
No matter how far-reaching the order, Farley said these actions will always cause teachers to look over their shoulders, asking, “Is a parent or someone in the community going to get upset at about a discussion he had in his class, (and) report a teacher?”
She said the move adds more political fire to the delayed process of updating social studies standards. Indigenous residents of South Dakota condemned the proposed removal of some Native American references, which led to the delay. And though the Legislature rejected Noem’s “divisive concepts” bill, it approved a separate measure that prohibits public colleges and universities from participating in orientations and training that the state describes as ” which divide”.
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Blacks and Latinos in Arizona have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, including their plans to go to college.
In 2020, according to the Latino Politics and Policy Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles, nearly one-third of black and Latino students dropped out of their post-secondary plans at a higher rate than white students.
Stephanie Parra, executive director of ALL In Education, an equal opportunity and justice nonprofit, said minority students in Arizona likely face more barriers than in other parts of the world. country.
“We already had work to do to get our students to college because we were below the national average,” she said. “But we’ve seen a decline after the pandemic, and I think that’s disproportionately affecting black and Latino students here in Arizona.”
The UCLA study said more federal and academic support is needed to ease the additional economic and social hardships students of color currently face.
In an online discussion hosted by the nonprofit Lumina Foundation, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona noted that the effects of the pandemic on minority communities will be felt in the future.
“Enrollment has fallen by nearly one million students nationwide, with the steepest declines at our community colleges and among men of color,” he said. “The impact of that ‘missing million’ could be felt for decades. It can mean fewer opportunities, lower incomes and even poor health outcomes.”
For new college students, the pandemic has made finishing high school a bigger challenge. Parra said some parents in Arizona hadn’t even heard from their children’s schools for weeks, prompting her group to start a “Parent Educator Academy.”
“There has been a real breakdown in communication between schools and families,” she said, “and so the Parent Educator Academy is designed to build bridges and partnerships between schools and parents, so parents can understand the role they play in advocating for their students.”
Support for this report was provided by Lumina Foundation.
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As Virginia and the rest of the country have tracked declining college enrollment for years, higher education leaders are weighing the best ways to maintain enrollment.
The Virginia-based National Student Clearinghouse found college enrollment across the country fell nearly 3% last fall, capping a two-year overall decline of more than 930,000 students nationwide. .
Speaking at a virtual higher education conference this week, Doug Shapiro, vice president and executive director of the clearinghouse, noted that community colleges were hit the hardest by declining first-year enrollment. the pandemic.
“Community colleges essentially suffered 85% of the total losses in the first year,” he said, “but they were almost evenly distributed in the second year, with four-year institutions responsible for ‘a little less than half of the total drop in students, about 47% .
According to the Virginia State Council on Higher Education, undergraduate enrollment in the state’s four-year public schools was nearly 172,000 in the fall 2021 semester, the lowest number ever. enrollment since 2016. Higher education advocates argue that more financial support for students from state and federal governments could stabilize and increase enrollment.
A new report from the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative found that before vaccines became widely available, about 11% of Latino students planned to cancel their college plans for fall 2021, nearly double the national average. . While enrollment among all racial student demographics has fallen sharply since 2019, Shapiro noted that students of color have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
“So Hispanic freshmen were actually growing in 2019 before the pandemic,” he said, “while white freshmen were already shrinking pre-pandemic, and at the fastest rate.”
Kim Cook, chief executive of the National College Attainment Network, said the federal government could help prospective students by doubling the Pell Grant, available to students with financial need. Cook said it would make more than 80% of two- and four-year public higher education affordable for the average Pell Grant recipient.
“Today, even with a celebrated and historic increase of $400 recently enacted,” she said, “that’s only worth 30% of the average cost of participation.”
At the state level, Cook said lawmakers can boost college enrollment by requiring students to complete a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, as a prerequisite for graduation. .
Support for this report was provided by Lumina Foundation.
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