SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Middle and high school students will learn remotely indefinitely in New Mexico while the freeze on limited K-3 and special education programs will end sooner in January than education officials previously said.
“We’re all very hopeful across the administration that we can bring our middle school and high school students back for in-person learning this year. It all depends on our ability to beat back the surge in the virus that we’re seeing,” said Education Secretary Ryan Stewart.
The minority of elementary schools that have opened hybrid learning programs can resume on Jan. 18, while K-3 and special education students can return to a 5:1 student-teacher ratio earlier that month.
In back-to-back presentations to the Legislature and members of the media Friday, the Public Education Department outlined the work it’s doing to document declining enrollment and engage students who are absent from remote learning.
Officials with the Public Education Department told legislators that around 36,000 students have been referred to the academic coaching service created to tackle falling engagement and attendance during remote learning.
Education officials are trying to quell the economic fallout from the pandemic by connecting families to social services.
Many child care facilities have shut down or reduced capacity, while child care subsidies have been erratic. Falling household incomes have pushed some children to leave school to make money.
Among those who are struggling and have been reached, 19% in grades 6-12 report having to take care of their sibling, according to the department. Another 16% say no adult is checking on their progress.
Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton of Albuquerque, said some high school students in her district are working so much they aren’t engaging with school.
“A lot of these people are hurting and their teenage children are working and working full time in the middle of the day,” Williams Stapleton said.
One parent responded to a call about her child working and not doing school saying “we have to eat,” Williams Stapleton said.
She wants businesses to limit the hours they hire school-aged children.
Children aged 16 and up are allowed to work up to 10 hours per day under state law.
Education officials also presented responses to a mailer to students who have disappeared from public schools without explanation during the pandemic, in which nearly all teaching has been conducted online.
One issue vexing school leaders is a significant drop in enrollment this fall, estimated at roughly 4%. More than 12,000 students did not inform schools about why they left, with no indication of a transfer or pivot to homeschool.
An initial collection of 738 responses to letters to those students was presented to the Legislature on Friday. While not a scientific sample of the group, the self-reported responses give an initial look at what happened to the missing students across New Mexico during the pandemic.
About 114 students, or 18%, moved out of state, according to the state Public Education Department. Just 21 students said they are not attending school at all.
Months of data processing and cross-referencing by department officials have accounted for around 5,000 of the students, education officials told legislators. The vast majority had switched to private schools, Bureau of Indian Education schools, or moved out of state.
“This has been an all-hands-on-deck effort. Locating these students, supporting all their needs the best we can and getting them re-engaged ASAP is a top priority,” education secretary Ryan Stewart said.
Statewide public school enrollment was on the decline before the pandemic. Population decreases and other factors have shaved roughly 1.5% from the public school rolls annually in recent years.
The fewer students a school has, the less funding it gets under the state’s funding formula that supplies the majority public school budgets.
School superintendents are begging the Legislature to cushion the blow of the anticipated 4% disenrollment.
They argue that the funding, which is pegged to enrollment from the previous year, won’t account for the anticipated wave of students returning to school next fall after the pandemic has subsided.
Legislators are considering several approaches to adjust enrollment numbers to account for the pandemic and sustain spending at schools with plunging enrollments.
In the responses collected by the education department, 155 students were reported to plan to return to public school in 2021. Another 144 students will take a “wait and see” approach, meaning between a quarter and half of respondents students could reenroll next fall.
There’s nothing to indicate that any sizable portion of middle and high school students will see the inside of a classroom for the foreseeable future.
“We’re still exploring options for how we can bring our middle school and high school students back. And at this time we haven’t made any changes to the current guidelines,” Stewart said.
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Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.
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