MLG Discusses Education at Oil and Gas Industry Conference

MLG speaks about education during oil, gas industry meeting – Nicole Maxwell, New Mexico Political Report 

New Mexico produces the second highest amount of oil and gas in the country. The taxes from oil and gas production provide funding for state programs like education.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham spoke at the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association 2024 annual meeting Monday where she was part of a panel discussion about education funding with the Permian Strategic Partnership.

“(The) reality is right now: New Mexico is the lead state in the country for the kind of investments and shifts in education,” Lujan Grisham said. “Now what we want is we want the Mississippi response took them well more than a decade, but then they started to see really quick shots in literacy, math, STEM, all of the performance measures and outcomes, including attendance and graduation rates, and that’s where we are headed.”

Lujan Grisham mentioned the Mississippi Department of Education’s Response to Intervention which was implemented to help struggling students to prevent them from falling behind.

The Response to Intervention program was adopted in 2005 and was updated in 2018.

Lujan Grisham then described what the status of public education was when the Lujan GRisham administration began in 2019.

“Without picking sides, we inherited a situation where educators felt like they were in a battle with the executive branch, and so everything was at a complete standstill,” Lujan Grisham said. “That doesn’t mean that we’re always getting along… but that we’re always on the same page.”

Lujan Grisham spoke about the changes her administration would like to implement such as a highly paid, motivated, well-qualified and supported education workforce.

“So that means cradle to career educators, and then the end of that philosophy is no wrong door: career training, free college, free childcare, home visiting, retraining most of our educators in literacy, and now literacy coaching and training by the state, so creating a wraparound set of services that sort of create longitudinally, partnerships that focus on kids and their parents,” she said.

PERMIAN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

If the state’s education system is doing well by the students it graduates out, then the economy does well, Lujan Grisham said.

“They are intrinsically… linked together. So if you don’t do one well, you don’t have the other,” she said. “Right now, our economy, including oil and gas— so thank you very much—is in nearly every sector, including renewables, more than double the national average. So depending upon the quarter that we do the analysis, New Mexico is between third and seventh nationally for both employment and economic growth. So all of our investments are creating an environment where we can continue to do these investments.”

The first thing Lujan Grisham wants to do is raise educator salaries as a means of both recruitment and retention.

“There is not a state, including this one, that has enough educators in the classroom, and right now… we’re balancing that with pre-K, and it’s been tough to get pre-K folks recruited and trained, and that’s going to require more investments in a salary,” Lujan Grisham said. “We’re just going to have to right size these economic shifts into education. So we want to spend more. We want that to be strategic, and I hope we’re going to talk about this, and we want it more directly linked to performance measures and outcomes.”

Also on the panel was Permian Strategic Partnership CEO Tracee Bentley who spoke about what Permain Strategic Partnership is doing to promote education, healthcare, workforce development and road safety.

“We think there is nothing more important than all New Mexican students and families and Permian Basin families having access to the highest quality education possible,” Bentley said.

The Permian Strategic Partnership began in 2018 and, “so far, thanks to our member companies… We’ve spent about $150 million of our own dollars in each of these areas, but we’ve leveraged that into $1.5 billion, and that’s through public private partnerships, much like we have with the governor here today.”

Bentley said that Lujan Grisham called her and told her to “get in my office” so that they could talk about education.

“She is— and the state is— pouring a lot of resources, actually, more than many other states, if you look at it and compare,” Bentley said. “So why isn’t performance improving? If so, that’s what we’re here to do with our partnership with the governor and the state, is to really see that translate into the classroom and see our academic performance go up.”

The Permian Strategic Partnership traditionally only runs programs in the Permian Basin in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

This is the first time a statewide program in either New Mexico or Texas has been done by the group.

“And here’s primary number one, the governor asked us to. But secondly, we know that the world and this country are heavily reliant on New Mexicans succeeding,” Bentley said. “We know that without a strong education background and access to the highest quality of education, and by education, I mean Career Technical Education. I mean early childhood. I mean literacy programs, it will have an impact on the world, and so for our industry, having a strong education system and families having access regardless of background or socioeconomic, yes, it’s the right thing to do, but it’s also in the name of national security and energy security.”

Career Technical Education, or CTE, are the courses that used to be under the Vocational-Technical name. These courses allow students to get a certification in technical skills.

STRUCTURED LITERACY

One of Lujan Grisham’s programs to help New Mexicans succeed is the structured literacy program which seeks to find struggling readers before they fail while supporting teachers through the science of reading and structured literacy, according to the New Mexico Department of Education.

“Our intention is to increase the number of students achieving reading proficiency and reducing the number of students requiring special education services,” the NMDOH website states.

Lujan Grisham said that no one will be satisfied until children are safe, in stable households and “(New Mexico is) number one in the country for child and family wellbeing and our educational outcomes are in the top five.”

“We’re not satisfied, but we’re also not angry, and I’m not giving up on the investments that we’ve made. We think they are effective,” Lujan Grisham said. “We’re seeing shifts, right? We’re seeing some reduction in the ways that we want in mid school and absenteeism, we are seeing literacy rates go up.”

The largest jump with regard to literacy was for Native American students, she said.

One of the changes Lujan Grisham noticed came originally from her own outrage that New Mexico’s teaching schools were not instructing future educators how to teach reading to students.

“New Mexico, forever, never trained any of our educators to teach reading. So no college anywhere, university in the state of New Mexico taught the science of reading. That’s outrageous,’ she said. “I did not know that until I started to check on why our literacy rates were not moving. It stalled when we were investing so much money inside the classroom… So we’ve been re-educating, retraining educators, and that’s working. We’re seeing that bump, but losing kids during the summer.”

To help prevent the summer slips that happen to most students, Lujan Grisham spoke about the tutoring that students can receive during school, after school and on summer break.

“We (tutored) 10,000 students this summer, and we’re seeing those jumps,” she said.
“You can read, you can do math, you can do math, you can do science, you can do science, you can do social studies, including with your money and support, we’re reinvesting right in the classroom, in STEM so I just want to lay that foundation, because without that, none of it makes sense. So the strategy now is to educate New Mexicans so that we get support to start to see jumps in the rest of it.”

The main way to do this is to have students spend more time learning which means the 180-day school year which proved to be controversial during the 2024 legislative session.

The 2024 state budget included an amendment that removed a requirement for the public school year to last 180 days.

The school year length was not mentioned in the bill by name.

“(Students) need to be in an educational environment. They need strong support before and after school. That means 180 days, and that means more quality time in a classroom,” Lujan Grisham said. “So we need help there.”

She praised the legislature for voluntary efforts such as Extended Learning Time, educator training and before and after school programs.

But they’re not mandatory. The state has almost zero accountability efforts at schools,” Lujan Grisham said. “We have local control, which I believe in, because you want parents empowered. We need parents to be more engaged.”

Poll: Vasquez holds 9 point lead in swing district race – By Matthew Reichbach, New Mexico Political Report

A new poll finds that the Democratic incumbent has a significant lead in the race for New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District. The southern New Mexico district is considered a swing seat key to which party will control the U.S. House next year.

New Mexico Political Report’s Matthew Reichbach reports the KOB-TV poll found Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez leads Republican challenger Yvette Herrell 51 percent to 42 percent among likely voters. The rest said they were undecided.

The race has been in many ways a mirror of national elections, with Vasquez focusing on reproductive rights and Herrell focusing on immigration and crime.

According to KOB, 28 percent of likely voters said immigration and the border would have the most impact on their vote, while 17 percent said abortion would be a predominant driver.

SurveyUSA polled 582 likely voters in the 2nd Congressional District between Sept. 26 and 30 for KOB. The results include a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4-and-half percent. 

Moves toward citywide AI policy on hold – By Elizabeth McCall, City Desk ABQ

A proposal to create a group of experts from city departments that would develop an artificial intelligence policy is on pause after city councilors deferred the bill Monday night.

Councilors Tammy Fiebelkorn and Dan Champine — sponsors of the resolution — said they want the city to have an AI policy after seeing the continuous growth of the technology.

According to Fiebelkorn and Champine, outlining a city policy for AI use will ensure the technology is used correctly.

“We are not saying all AI is bad, we are saying there are a lot of types of AI,” Fiebelkorn said during the meeting. “Some can be used for good, some can be used for bad. We want to make sure that we get the experts in the room together to have that conversation.”

The group would include staff from multiple city departments and would have nine months to develop a policy once the resolution is enacted.

Champine said while discussing the bill with the city’s Department of Technology and Innovation director, some issues were raised that Champine and Fiebelkorn did not think of. One of them being the funding appropriated for the resolution.

“It was pointed out that we might need a little more for some outreach,” Fiebelkorn said. “We did bump it up a tiny bit so that we could be sure that this is handled in the correct manner by a consultant that can do all the parts for us.”

The appropriation would come from the city’s general fund and be used to “support the development and implementation of the policy and identification of best practices with all AI uses.”

After councilors passed an amendment to increase the funding from $40,000 to $50,000, Champine called for the bill to be deferred until the council’s Oct. 21 meeting without specifying why. The council passed the deferral on an 8-1 vote.

Read more about the resolution here.

Debate on campaign finance changes continues – By Elizabeth McCall, City Desk ABQ

A debate about how much public campaign money certain council candidates should get continued at the Albuquerque City Council’s Monday meeting but was quickly deferred for a second time.

During the council’s Sept. 16 meeting, Councilor Joaquín Baca — at the request of the City Clerk’s Office — introduced a proposal to “clean up” campaign finance sections of the city’s charter.

The debate on Monday surrounded an amendment Councilor Klarissa Peña proposed at the last meeting. Peña suggested council candidates receive a set amount of public money, rather than an amount that varies based on the number of registered voters in their district.

Council candidates currently receive $1 per registered voter in the district they’re running in. Mayoral candidates receive $1.75 per registered voter in the entire city. The proposal would raise the amounts by $0.25.

Council President Dan Lewis said Monday the current public financing system is logical because it is based on registered voters and that he is “not convinced there is an inequity in that regard.”

“For me to be comfortable with replacing this, I think we need to have some logical reasons instead of just throwing out a number,” Lewis said.

After failing to decide on the best campaign financing policy, Councilor Brook Bassan called for a deferral and councilors unanimously voted to defer the bill for two weeks.

“I absolutely don’t think on the fly, out of the hat, with our tax paying dollars, at the last minute with all of us just now reading it while arguing and not understanding it is the best way to do it,” Bassan said.

The proposal would also set a new contribution limit for privately financed candidates. Read more about the proposal here.

The City Council will convene again on Oct. 21.

Hot days and methamphetamine are now a deadlier mix – By Anita Snow and Mary Katherine Wildeman, Associated Press

On just one sweltering day during the hottest June on record in Phoenix, a 38-year-old man collapsed under a freeway bridge and a 41-year-old woman was found slumped outside a business. Both had used methamphetamine before dying from an increasingly dangerous mix of soaring temperatures and stimulants.

Meth is showing up more often as a factor in the deaths of people who died from heat-related causes in the U.S., according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Death certificates show about one in five heat-related deaths in recent years involved methamphetamine. In Arizona, Texas, Nevada and California, officials found the drug in nearly a third of heat deaths in 2023.

Meth is more common in heat-related deaths than the deadly opioid fentanyl. As a stimulant, it increases body temperature, impairs the brain’s ability to regulate body heat and makes it harder for the heart to compensate for extreme heat.

If hot weather has already raised someone’s body temperature, consuming alcohol or opioids can exacerbate the physical effects, “but meth would be the one that you would be most concerned about,” said Bob Anderson, chief of statistical analysis at the National Center for Health Statistics.

The trend has emerged as a synthetic drug manufactured south of the border by Mexican drug cartels has largely replaced the domestic version of meth fictionalized in the TV series “Breaking Bad.” Typically smoked in a glass pipe, a single dose can cost as little as a few dollars.

At the same time, human-caused climate change has made it much easier to die from heat-related causes in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas and California’s southeastern desert. This has been Earth’s hottest summer on record.

Phoenix baked in triple-digit heat for 113 straight days and hit 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2 Celsius) in late September — uncharacteristic even for a city synonymous with heat. The triple digits have carried into October — this week, the National Weather Service again warned of excessive heat.

“Putting on a jacket can increase body temperature in a cold room. If it’s hot outside, we can take off the jacket,” explained Rae Matsumoto, dean of the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy at the University of Hawaii in Hilo. But people using the stimulant in the outdoor heat “can’t take off the meth jacket.”

These fatalities are particularly prevalent in the Southwest, where meth overdoses overall have risen since the mid-2000s.

In Maricopa County, America’s hottest major metropolitan area, substances including street drugs, alcohol and certain prescription medicines for psychiatric conditions and blood pressure control were involved in about two-thirds, or 419 of the 645 heat-related deaths documented last year. Meth was detected in about three-quarters of these drug cases and was often the primary cause of death, public health data show. Fentanyl was found in just under half of them.

In Pima County, home to Tucson, Arizona’s second most populous city, methamphetamine was a factor in one-quarter of the 84 heat-related deaths reported so far this year, the medical examiner’s office said.

In metro Las Vegas, heat was a factor in 294 deaths investigated last year by the Clark County coroner’s office, and 39% involved illicit and prescription drugs and alcohol. Of those, meth was detected in three-fourths.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration notes in its 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment that 31% of all drug-related deaths in the U.S. are now caused by stimulants that speed up the nervous system, primarily meth. More than 17,000 people in the U.S. died from fatal overdoses and poisonings related to stimulants in the first half of 2023, according to preliminary CDC data.

Although overdoses have been more associated with opiates like fentanyl, medical professionals say overdosing on meth is possible if a large amount is ingested. Higher blood pressure and a quickened heart rate can then provoke a heart attack or stroke.

“All of your normal physiological ways of coping with heat are compromised with the use of methamphetamines,” said Dr. Aneesh Narang, an emergency medicine physician at Banner University Medical Center in downtown Phoenix.

Narang, who sits on a board that reviews overdose fatalities, said the “vast majority” of the heat stroke patients seen in his hospital’s emergency department this summer had used street drugs, most commonly methamphetamine.

Because of its proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, Phoenix is considered a “source city” where large amounts of newly smuggled meth are stored and packaged into relatively tiny doses for distribution, said Det. Matt Shay, a seasoned narcotics investigator with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s an amazing amount that comes in constantly every day,” Shay said. “It’s also very cheap.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized about 164,000 pounds (about 74,000 kilograms) of meth at the U.S.-Mexico border this last fiscal year ending Sept. 30, up from the 140,000 pounds (about 63,500 kilograms) captured in the previous 12 months.

And sellers often target homeless people, Shay said.

“It’s a customer base that is easy to find and exploit,” Shay said. “If you’re an enterprising young drug dealer, all you need is some type of transportation and you just cruise around and they swarm your car.”

Jason Elliott, a 51-year-old unemployed machinist, said he’s heard of several heat-related deaths involving meth during his three years on the streets in Phoenix.

“It’s pretty typical,” said Elliot, noting that stimulants enable people to stay awake and alert to prevent being robbed in shelters or outdoors. “What else can you do? You have stuff; you go to sleep, you wake up and your stuff is gone.”

Dr. Nick Staab, assistant medical director of the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, said brochures were printed this summer and distributed in cooling centers to spread the word about the risk of using stimulants and certain prescription medicines in extreme heat.

But it’s unclear how many are being reached. People who use drugs may not be welcomed at some cooling centers. A better solution, according to Stacey Cope, capacity building and education director for the harm reduction nonprofit Sonoran Prevention Works, is to lower barriers to entry so that people most at risk “are not expected to be absent from drugs, or they’re not expected to leave during the hottest part of the day.”