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Morning Word
PED: NM students’ grades still down
Reading scores remain flat and math proficiency rates have dropped, Public Education Secretary Arsenio Romero told state lawmakers yesterday during a Legislative Finance Council hearing. Legislators questioned Romero about the department’s efforts in improving mathematics education as he presented preliminary test score data from the 2023-2024 school year that show student proficiency in reading remains at 38% and math proficiency rates have dropped to 22%, down from 24% last year. “We are not moving fast enough, and we’re not doing everything we can to be able to ensure we’re getting better proficiency rates and outcomes for students,” Romero told the committee. “We do have some wonderful examples from across New Mexico…how can we learn from those examples at certain schools, certain classrooms…how do we balance out what we know works at a research level and also ensure that we respect local decision-making? Those things don’t always line up perfectly.” State Rep. Brian Baca, R-Los Lunas, zeroed in on middle school math proficiency rates. According to LFC analyst Sunny Liu, slightly less than 30% of seventh grade students were proficient in math in the 2023-2024 year, and less than 20% in eighth. “Have we targeted more funds toward those grades?” Baca asked. “If not, then we should be, because if we’re talking about data-driven decision making—we’re talking about hundreds, millions, billions of dollars—and we’re not allocating them to where the need is, then we’re really just wasting money.”
SFPD arrests robbery suspects
Santa Fe Police yesterday reported the arrest of five people accused in a Sunday incident of robbing at gunpoint a man who told police the suspects had fled in a vehicle. After identifying the suspects’ potential location, SFPD used an Unmanned Aerial System (aka a drone) to assist in finding their vehicle, which they located—occupied—on the 6600 block of Entrada de Milagro. Officers arrived there and conducted what a news release describes as a “high-risk stop” to apprehend them (watch video of the apprehension here). Driver Bernie Nazario Trujillo attempted to flee on foot, but a patrol sergeant and a K9 handler quickly apprehended him, SFPD says, and took the vehicle’s remaining four occupants into custody without further incident. In total, the suspects had 15 active arrest warrants, and also face charges for armed robbery, possession of a controlled substance and possession of a firearm by a felon, among other charges. Trujillo also faces charges for resisting, evading or obstructing an officer. According to statements of probable cause for the suspects, they are accused of robbing the victim when he met them to buy fentanyl.
Lawmakers ponder SCOTUS encampment ruling
Ahead of a special legislative session focused on public safety later this week, local and state lawmakers have their eyes on the impacts of a recent US Supreme Court ruling that allows cities to criminalize sleeping or camping in public areas. In a 6-3 ruling from the court June 28 in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, justices reversed the decision of two lower courts and ruled restricting people’s ability to sleep or camp in public did not violate protections against “cruel and unusual punishment” guaranteed within the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. Mayor Alan Webber tells SFR he disagrees with the US Supreme Court’s ruling. “I see many problems with the decision,” Webber says, some of which “involve negatively affecting the public perception of what it means to be homeless and suggesting the solution is incarceration.” State lawmakers also discussed the ruling July 16 during a Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee meeting. Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque, said though it “sets the floor” to criminalize certain conduct, it doesn’t mean policymakers have to do so. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s special session agenda includes a bill that would prohibit loitering on medians 36 inches or less in width in areas where the speed limit is 30 miles per hour or more. A similar ordinance in the City of Santa Fe—which some have characterized as unconstitutional criminalization of homelessness—is slated for a vote during a special governing body meeting at 5 pm today.
AGs urge FEMA to add wildfire & heat to disaster list
In a letter to Federal Emergency Management administrators, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and more than a dozen other state AGs urge the agency to start the process to add extreme heat and wildfire smoke to its list of major disasters. “Extreme heat and wildfire smoke are in all respects as ‘natural’ as hurricanes, and their impacts are likewise catastrophic for communities across the United States,” the letter reads. “This powerhouse letter from attorneys general is an urgent call for FEMA to help states devastated by fossil fuel-driven extreme heat,” Jean Su, energy justice director and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, says in a statement. The center in June joined a coalition of environmental, labor and health groups petitioning FEMA to include extreme heat and wildfire smoke in the regulatory definition of a “major disaster.” Doing so, the center says, would allow local and state governments to use FEMA funds for investments in items such as “community solar and storage, cooling centers, community resilience hubs, worker protections, air filtration systems and other ways to prepare for and respond to extreme heat and wildfire smoke.” Says Su: “Across the country people are suffering and dying from extreme heat, and this letter makes perfectly clear what’s needed. FEMA can bring a mass mobilization of resources to deploy life-saving cooling centers, air conditioning and community solar. But so far FEMA’s only shown these communities piecemeal efforts and lackluster leadership.”
Listen Up
Need a breath of fresh hope? New Mexico PBS Our Land host, environmental journalist Laura Paskus, delivers with a new special, Loving Our Changing Homelands, which examines the role love should play in adapting to climate change, and includes interviews with hydrologist Phoebe Suina (Pueblo of Cochiti), Pueblo of Acoma farmer Aaron Lowden and sister Joan Brown from New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light, among others, discussing their relationships with the land. In an interview with KUNM about the special, Paskus says, “Even if your landscape, your forest, your river, has changed, find ways to remember how to love and care for those places and connect with them on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, however you can, however they’re accessible to you.”
Kitchen Angels ED announces retirement
Longtime Kitchen Angels Executive Director Tony McCarty will retire at the end of the year after 31 years, the organization announced yesterday. Kitchen Angels’ mission to feed homebound and/or chronically ill Santa Feans who would otherwise struggle to obtain nutritious meals began in 1992 with 30 volunteers and 35 clients. Today, McCarty says, 350 volunteers serve thousands of meals each month. “The organization is in a strong and stable place with programming and financially and its current direction,” McCarty, 70, who has served as ED since 1993, tells SFR. “I’m not getting any younger, so it seems like a great time. The board is strong and supportive of the change, so everything seems to be aligned.” McCarty also helped launch numerous food-forward initiatives in Santa Fe, including the Santa Fe Food Policy Council dedicated to food accessibility and the Kitchenality kitchenware resale store, which helps fund Kitchen Angels. There is perhaps no more popular program, however, than the annual Angels Dine Out event each spring, which finds dozens of local restaurants donating a portion of a day’s sales to Kitchen Angels. That program hit its 25th anniversary in 2024. McCarty says he’s hopeful a new ED will come in and “respond to the needs of the community. We have a tsunami of an aging population in Santa Fe who will need food, and while not all of that population will rely on Kitchen Angles, a portion will—there will come a time for tremendous growth for the organization, and [the new executive director] will have to think in a strategic way to be prepared for the aging population.”
If you build it…
Dwell magazine profiles 85-year-old Rod Rylander’s mission to build 10 affordable off-the-grid homes for an intentional community to help with the country’s housing crisis. He started last year by purchasing “10 acres of mesquite and rocky dirt in a remote corner of New Mexico and got busy trying to solve America’s housing crisis on a bare-bones budget.” Ryder reportedly worked previously as a biologist, builder and real estate agent before turning his life toward social action and volunteerism. He built a “built a solar-powered home out of cob and rammed earth” at Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina and divided his time between there and Belize before turning to his current New Mexico project in Animas (Hidalgo County). He bought the vacant land (with a well for $26,000) and lives alone on the lot in a camper he bought for $2,000. He mostly works alone too, the story notes, and “spent most of last spring and summer pick-axing through the hard dirt to dig out a ground floor for the house living quarters and indoor aquaculture pond, stacking rocks and boulders by hand to build berms and walls. He later bought a small tractor with a box scraper to help.” His friends set up a GoFundMe account for people who want to help him with his project. He’s applying a variety of sustainable techniques in the building process, and envisions the ensuing village to operate somewhat like a homeowners association. Affordability and sunshine landed him on the New Mexico site, he says, plus, “There’s not a lot of codes,” Rylander says. “There’s a lot more freedom and wide-open space.”
Rain check
The National Weather Service forecasts a 70% chance for precipitation today, with showers and thunderstorms starting at noon. That’s also when a flood watch for the area for the area goes into effect. Otherwise, today will be partly sunny, with a high temperature near 88 degrees. Tonight shows an 80% chance for more showers, mostly before midnight.
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