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MON: Behavioral Health Institute evacuated and residents prepare to flee as wildfire closes in on Las Vegas, + More

State Behavioral Health Hospital
Cedar Attanasio/AP
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AP
A New Mexico State Police vehicle drives by the New Mexico State Hospital in Las Vegas, N.M., a mental care facility, which was evacuated, Monday, May 2, 2022. Wind-whipped flames are marching across more of New Mexico's tinder-dry mountainsides, forcing the evacuation of area residents and dozens of patients from the state's psychiatric hospital as firefighters scramble to keep new wildfires from growing. (AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio)

As wildfire closes in, New Mexico residents prepare to flee - By Cedar Attanasio and Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press

Wind-whipped flames raced across more of New Mexico's pine-covered mountainsides on Monday, closing in on a town of 13,000 people where residents hurried to pack their cars with belongings, others raced to clear brush from around their homes, and police were called in to help evacuate the state's psychiatric hospital.

Firefighting crews were battling to keep the fire, the largest burning in the U.S., from making another run across the state's drought-parched landscape. The blaze in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near the small northeastern New Mexico city of Las Vegas already has charred more than 188 square miles.

Fire officials said they expect the blaze to keep growing, putting it on track to be one of the largest and most destructive in the state's recorded history.

The sky above the city's historic plaza, made famous as a backdrop in several movies and television series, was a sickly tinge of yellow and gray as thick smoke blotted out the sun. As ash fell around them, Chris Castillo and his cousins were cutting down trees and moving logs away from a family member's home.

"We're all family here. We're trying to make a fire line," he said

Other family members were driving around with cattle trailers, waiting to help anyone who calls to move livestock.

Wildfires have become a year-round threat in the drought-stricken West and they are moving faster and burning hotter than ever due to climate change, scientists and fire experts say. In the last five years, California for example has experienced the eight largest wildfires in state history, while Colorado saw a destructive blaze tear through suburban neighborhoods last December.

Fire officials warned Monday that the fire in northern New Mexico would keep spreading at dangerous speeds and in different directions due to shifting winds, low humidity and high temperatures. They said the majority of the coming days feature more high winds and that would continue to make suppression efforts difficult.

The fire has been fanned by an extended period of hot, dry and windy conditions and ballooned in size Sunday, prompting authorities to issue new evacuation orders for the small town of Mora and other villages.

Residents in some outlying neighborhoods of the town of Las Vegas were put on notice to be ready to leave their homes as the smoke choked the economic hub for the farming and ranching families who have lived for generations in the rural region. It's also home to New Mexico Highlands University and is one of the most populated stops along Interstate 25 before the Colorado state line.

Operations Section Chief Todd Abel said Monday that crews were busy using bulldozers to build fire lines to keep the flames from pushing into neighborhoods.

The county jail, the state's psychiatric hospital and about 200 students from the United World College have evacuated and what businesses remained open were having a hard time finding workers as more people evacuated.

"We're trying to house and feed people with skeleton crews. Hundreds of people have lost their homes. It's an extraordinary tragedy," said Allan Affeldt, who owns a hotel in Las Vegas. He said most of his staff were evacuated from their homes and he canceled guest reservations to accommodate firefighters and emergency crews.

The 197 patients at the Behavioral Health Institute were being sent to other facilities around the state, with some being transported in secured units and others escorted by police.

Across New Mexico, officials and groups were collecting food, water and other supplies for the thousands of people displaced by the fires. Offers of prayers and hope flooded social media as residents posted photos of the flames torching the tops of towering ponderosa pines near their homes. Some of those living close to the fires described the week that the fire has raged nearby as gut wrenching.

On the northern flank of the fire, evacuees streamed uphill Monday out of the Mora River valley over passes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. State Rep. Roger Montoya, from the mountain hamlet of Chacon, said neighbors were putting what they couldn't carry with them into metal containers that they left in green irrigated fields, hoping the moisture would offer some protection.

Officials have said the northeastern New Mexico fire has damaged or destroyed 172 homes and at least 116 structures.

It merged last week with another blaze that was sparked in early April when a prescribed fire escaped containment after being set by land managers to clear brush and small trees in hopes of reducing the fire danger. The cause of the other fire is still under investigation.

Jesus Romero, the deputy manager of San Miguel County, on Monday was helping family monitor their home amid smoky ash-laden air. He cut down trees around his garage to reduce potential fuel for the fire, and he has spent a lot of time talking with residents who are on the fence about whether to leave their homes. He called the situation serious.

Another New Mexico wildfire burning in the mountains near Los Alamos National Laboratory also prompted more evacuations over the weekend. It has reached the burn scars of wildfires that blackened the region a decade ago when New Mexico had one of its worst and most destructive seasons.

One of the state's most destructive fires in 2000 forced the closure of the laboratory and left about 400 people homeless. The community was threatened again in 2011 when another blaze caused by a downed power line blackened more of the surrounding forest.

In the southern New Mexico community of Ruidoso, two people were killed in a wildfire that destroyed more than 200 homes in April. That mountain community saw similar destruction from a 2012 fire.

And new wildfires were reported over the weekend — three in Texas, two in New Mexico and one each in Oklahoma and Tennessee, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 3,100 wildland firefighters and support personnel are fighting fires across the country, with about one-third of them trying to prevent the big blaze in New Mexico from spreading.

More than 4,400 square miles have burned across the U.S. so far this year.

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Associated Press writers Terry Tang in Phoenix, Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, contributed to this report.

Albuquerque sees 3 different homicides over the weekend - Associated Press

Authorities in Albuquerque are dealing with three difference homicide scenes that occurred over the weekend.

Albuquerque police say on Sunday officers responded to a single-vehicle car crash. One person was taken to the hospital and later died. But the victim had a gunshot wound. So the cause of death remains under investigation.

Earlier in the day around 4 a.m., a woman asked a neighbor to call police after she claimed to have stabbed her boyfriend. Officers found a man dead inside the woman's home with wounds consistent with a stabbing.

The woman told investigators her boyfriend had tried to stab her first. She was taken to the hospital for injuries. She has not been arrested.

On Saturday, police were called at 11 p.m. about a shooting. They found two people shot to death inside a home. There have been no arrests.

New Mexico's largest city has faced persistent crime problems. Albuquerque shattered its homicide record last year.

Firefighters battling New Mexico blaze brace for wind - By Paul Davenport Associated Press

Over 1,000 firefighters backed by bulldozers and aircraft battled the largest active wildfire in the U.S., after strong winds had pushed it across some containment lines and closer to a small city in northern New Mexico.

Calmer winds on Saturday aided the firefighting effort after gusts accelerated the fire's advance to a point on Friday when "we were watching the fire march about a mile every hour," said Jayson Coil, a fire operations official.

Ash carried 7 miles through the air had fallen on Las Vegas, population about 13,000, and firefighters were trying to prevent the fire from getting closer, said Mike Johnson, a spokesperson with the fire management team.

But fire managers warned of windy conditions expected in the coming days, as well as impacts from smoke, and officials urged residents to remain vigilant for further possible evacuation orders.

Stewart Turner, a fire behavior analyst with the fire management team, warned Saturday of a "very serious week" ahead with the forecasted winds.

More extreme fire danger was forecast for Sunday for parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado, according to the National Weather Service.

Mapping imagery indicated the fire that has burned at least 166 homes grew in size from 103 square miles on Friday to 152 square miles by early Saturday, officials said. The fire was described as 30% contained during a briefing Saturday evening.

Winds in northern New Mexico gusted up to 65 mph Friday before subsiding as nightfall approached. By Saturday, aircraft that dump fire retardant and water could resume flights to aid ground crews and bulldozers.

The fire's rapid growth Friday forced crews to repeatedly change positions because of threatening conditions but they managed to immediately re-engage without being forced to retreat, Coil said. No injuries were reported.

The fire started April 6 when a prescribed burn set by firefighters to clear out small trees and brush that can fuel fires was declared out of control. That fire then merged with another wildfire a week ago.

With the fire's recent growth, estimates of people forced to evacuate largely rural areas plus a subdivision near Las Vegas doubled from 1,500 to 2,000 people to between 3,000 and 4,000, said Jesus Romero, the assistant manager for San Miguel County.

Officials have said the fire has destroyed 277 structures, including at least 166 homes. No updated damage assessments were available on Saturday, Romero said.

Wildfires were also burning elsewhere in New Mexico and in Arizona. The fires are burning unusually hot and fast for this time of year, especially in the Southwest, where experts said some timber in the region is drier than kiln-dried wood.

Wildfires have become a year-round threat in the West given changing conditions that include earlier snowmelt and rain coming later in the fall, scientists have said. The problems have been exacerbated by decades of fire suppression and poor management along with a more than 20-year megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

In northern Arizona, firefighters neared full containment of a 30 square-mile blaze that destroyed at least 30 homes near Flagstaff and forced hundreds to evacuate. A top-level national wildfire management team turned oversight of fighting the blaze back to local fire fighting forces on Friday.

National forests across Arizona announced they would impose fire restrictions starting next Thursday that limit campfires to developed recreation sites and restrict smoking to inside vehicles, other enclosed spaces and to the recreation sites.

COVID-19 in the air remains elusive disability rights issue, experts say - Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico 

The coronavirus that hangs in the air inside New Mexico’s schools isn’t tracked at any level by state officials, and hasn’t gotten the same attention in New Mexico courts as school mask mandates.

But interviews with health and legal experts show that it could still be a disability rights issue because without clean air in school buildings, anyone who gets infected can develop debilitating symptoms of Long COVID, and higher risk students are more likely to have severe symptoms or die from contracting COVID-19 — especially after state officials lifted universal masking requirements.

The Americans with Disabilities Act applies to public schools and says someone with a disability cannot be excluded from participation or be denied the benefits, services or programs. Jason Gordon, litigation manager at Disability Rights New Mexico, said an argument could hypothetically be made about equal access to education, indoor air quality and COVID-19.

“If you can’t go to school because you’re immunocompromised and no one has to wear a mask, and there’s no air quality, then that could be seen as exclusion,” Gordon said.

The same goes for another landmark piece of disability rights legislation known as Section 504. This section of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits discrimination against students with disabilities by entities that receive federal funds. That includes public schools.

“If you have someone who has a disability and is being excluded from activities because of air quality or lack of a mask mandate that’s being enforced, then you could make that argument,” Gordon said.

In Texas, parents and their children — students with disabilities who are immune compromised or otherwise medically vulnerable — alleged that an executive order by Gov. Greg Abbott to ban mask mandates violated federal anti-discrimination law. They said it excluded them from public educational programs and activities. A federal judge struck down the order as a violation of the ADA.

They argued that Texas’ executive order unlawfully prevented school districts from complying with the ADA and Section 504’s requirement to provide students with disabilities access to a public school education.

Federal law specifically authorizes school districts to implement safety measures under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The law allows funding to be used for putting public health measures in place that are in line with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While that case was about universal indoor masking in schools — and New Mexico does not prohibit schools from requiring masks — the same principles could still apply to indoor air quality and COVID-19 in schools.

Katie Gordon is a senior advocate at Disability Rights New Mexico. She said since New Mexico schools returned to in-person classes in 2021, the organization has not handled a case related to air quality.

“We haven’t really seen the air quality issue come to light,” Katie Gordon said.

Only in the last few months has air quality become a question for them, said Jesse Clifton, a staff attorney at Disability Rights New Mexico. But he believes air quality feasibly does impact another part of federal law that entitles every special education student to a free and appropriate public education, he said.

During remote learning, Clifton said, a lot of New Mexico children were receiving ancillary services like physical, occupational and speech therapy through a computer at home, which was not an adequate model for a lot of students.

“I think it would have an impact because students who would get the education benefit they need in person aren’t necessarily getting that benefit in a remote learning model,” he said. “Without air quality assurances, those kids would never go back to school.”

If they can’t keep a mask on, and the virus continues to be a threat, he added, they’ll have to receive that education at home or not at all.

Elizabeth Jacobs agrees. She’s a professor of epidemiology at the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona. Schools that have children who are immunosuppressed and who do not clean the indoor air of the virus could be violating federal anti-discrimination law, she said.

“What is that child supposed to do to access the education?” Jacobs asked. “Do they stay there and gamble? Or are the parents then forced to find an alternative educational opportunity for them? How does that work?”

That doesn’t even account for spread at home, she pointed out, where instead of the student having an immunosuppressed condition, a parent or other relatives do.

“The kid’s just gonna go and get COVID and then come home and give it to the vulnerable family member,” Jacobs said. “It’s particularly nefarious in families with multiple generations living in the same household.”

LACK OF FOLLOW-THROUGH UNSURPRISING

Source New Mexico’s reporting shows that the state’s Public Education Department does not collect any information about COVID-safe ventilation and filtration practices in New Mexico schools.

It doesn’t come as a shock to the staff at Disability Rights New Mexico that PED has not been keeping great records, or doing any kind of investigation about how its rules on air quality are being implemented by local districts, Katie Gordon said.

Data tracking is just not PED’s strongest suit, she said, and so over the years, Disability Rights New Mexico has done a lot of records requests themselves.

“I really don’t find it shocking at all that they’re not sending folks out to do inspections,” she said.

No one at Disability Rights New Mexico was aware that PED has an anonymous tip line to report COVID violations at schools, Katie Gordon said.

The Gordons are parents of children with disabilities whom they send to school every day with their masks on. Clifton’s late daughter was immune compromised before the pandemic and took courses in a self-contained special education classroom.

Within the disability community, parents, students and teachers do a good job of looking out for each other, Katie Gordon said.

“I don’t think that — at the general population level — you’re gonna see that kind of concern or thinking about these issues, unfortunately,” she said.

Man accused of impersonating Albuquerque policeman faces DWI - KOB-TV, Associated Press

A man accused of impersonating an Albuquerque police officer last month also is facing a DWI charge, according to authorities.

Raul Martinez had his initial court appearance Saturday.

Albuquerque TV station KOB reports that two different videos show Martinez announcing himself as a city police officer at a gas station and a neighborhood.

Police said that according to a criminal complaint, three women at the gas station said Martinez appeared to be drunk and was slurring his words.

A judge decided Martinez could be released from jail on his own recognizance on the impersonation case, but he was held for a March 20 DWI charge that violated conditions of his release.

It was unclear Sunday if Martinez has a lawyer who can speak on his behalf about the two cases.

Killing of New Mexico woman raises transparency questions - By Justin Garcia, Las Cruces Sun-News

A Las Cruces police officer shot and killed 75-year-old Amelia Baca on the evening of April 16. But it wasn't until two days later that the city confirmed a killing occurred via a news release after multiple news media outlets published the family's account.

The news release left out several details, such as Baca's name and age, and raised several questions that have, so far, gone unanswered by city and police officials, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.

"The Officer-involved Incident Task Force is still in the preliminary stages of its investigation into Saturday's death of 75-year-old Amelia Baca of Las Cruces," City of Las Cruces spokesperson Dan Trujillo said on April 19 in a response to the Sun-News regarding the timeline of the investigation and whether a specialized mental health team was deployed to the scene.

Trujillo added, "the Las Cruces Police Department cannot provide details of the investigation at this time. The name of the officer will not be released at this time. The Officer-involved Incident Task Force will release findings from the investigation at an appropriate time."

Six days after the shooting at about 6:30 p.m., LCPD released a produced video that featured selected screenshots from the responding officer's body camera and snippets from the 911 call made before the shooting.

The produced video confirmed the family's account that Baca was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time of the shooting. In the portions of the 911 call shared, Baca's daughter asked for emergency personnel to assist her since her mother was wielding a knife and threatening her life.

Body camera screenshots in the video showed the responding officer pointing his gun at Baca who was holding two kitchen knives and standing in her doorway. The video tells watchers that the officer told Baca to drop the knives, although that portion of the officer's body camera was not made available in the released video.

While the video shed some light on the incident, it did not reveal what happened. The Sun-News requests for the full-body camera video and full 911 call have been denied.

The delay in information has raised questions about how and when police decide to inform the public about what they're up to. It also highlighted an internal personnel shift within the city's communication office that, for a time, drastically limited how much information came out of the police department.

When asked, City of Las Cruces Director of Communication Mandy Guss said her communications team delayed putting out information regarding Baca's death because they were trying to confirm the accuracy of the information.

"I think the most important thing for me that we want to explain in any of these incidents, is that we want to provide accurate information," Guss said. "And, it can take time to get the details together."

Police Chief Miguel Dominguez said a news release had been given to him well before it was released April 18.

"There was a (news) release that was actually ready to go," Dominguez told the Sun-News. "For whatever reason, I'm not sure why I didn't get it."

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WHERE DID ALL THE LCPD NEWS GO?

News involving LCPD is filtered through the city's communication department before being released to the public, Guss said.

Under Guss, the city utilizes eight communications staff each with different responsibilities corresponding to different departments in the city. That includes departments like Parks and Recreation and LCPD, the city's largest and best-funded department.

LCPD's news releases cover a range of topics.

Some releases include notices of active police situations or informing the public that an LCPD officer has just killed someone. Other releases focus on prominent arrests, community events, or even corrections to incorrect information in previous releases.

Many of the releases are posted on Facebook and shared among Las Cruces' web of community watch pages. They're also digested and repackaged in newspaper articles and television news programs.

Over the last 10 months, the flood of nearly daily news releases became a trickle. An analysis of news releases sent out by the LCPD and the City of Las Cruces since June 2021 shows an abrupt decline in the release of public information.

LCPD went from producing an average of 24 news releases per month down to an average of 11 a month. In December 2021, LCPD put out just seven news releases.

Guss attributed the decline in police news releases to a staff shortage. Trujillo had been the city's longtime dedicated public safety spokesperson, but in October 2021 Guss moved him to another city department on an interim assignment.

That forced the remaining eight communications staff to pick up the slack of the city's largest department, Guss said. She said that the situation also meant that her staff had to spend more time reacting to information requests from the media instead of creating news releases.

The public information team, without Trujillo there, didn't respond as quickly — and in some cases as thoroughly — to Sun-News questions about police incidents.

Trujillo returned to the public information team this month but with a different title. He's now a spokesperson for the city rather than the police department. Trujillo is the team's dedicated public safety spokesperson, however, it's not clear how this role will affect what, and how quickly, police news is disseminated to the public.

"I would definitely like to take a much more proactive approach in the items that we send out from the police," Guss said. "And that's why I'm really excited to have (Trujillo) back on the team."

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REPETITION AND AGENDA-SETTING

It's unclear what, if any, damage the decision to leave Las Cruces police without a dedicated public information officer had.

Sangwon Lee, a professor of communications and expert in political communications at New Mexico State University, said that the public comes to expect information about certain topics when they see that those topics are being heavily covered.

When that source of information dries up, Lee said that it can lead to mistrust, especially if other sources of information are covering the topic.

The situation relates back to something called agenda-setting theory, Lee said. Agenda-setting theory is the idea that when information is heavily covered by the media (which includes traditional media like newspapers and television news, state-sponsored media like news releases, and social media) people tend to think that it's more important.

"So, how the media sets up the agenda (of what to cover and what not to cover) can definitely influence how people think," Lee said.

Vegas water intake now visible at drought-stricken Lake Mead - Associated Press

A massive drought-starved reservoir on the Colorado River has become so depleted that Las Vegas now is pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead where other states downstream don't have access.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority announced this week that its Low Lake Level Pumping Station is operational, and released photos of the uppermost intake visible at 1,050 feet above sea level at the lake behind Hoover Dam.

"While this emphasizes the seriousness of the drought conditions, we have been preparing for this for more than a decade," said Bronson Mack, water authority spokesman. The low-level intake allows Las Vegas "to maintain access to its primary water supply in Lake Mead, even if water levels continue to decline due to ongoing drought and climate change conditions," he said.

The move to begin using what had been seen as an in-case-we-need-it hedge against taps running dry comes as water managers in several states that rely on the Colorado River take new steps to conserve water amid what has become perpetual drought.

"We don't have enough water supplies right now to meet normal demand. The water is not there," Metropolitan Water District of Southern California spokesperson Rebecca Kimitch said this week. The agency told some 6 million people in sprawling Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties to cut their outdoor watering to one day a week, effective June 1, or face stiff fines.

The surface level of another massive Colorado River reservoir, Lake Powell, dipped below a critical threshold in March — raising concerns about whether Glen Canyon Dam can continue generating power for some 5 million customers across the U.S. West.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream are the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S., part of a system that provides water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and across the southern border in Mexico.

In Arizona, falling Colorado River levels have prompted an emphasis on conservation and raised fears of reduced water deliveries to desert areas that include metro Phoenix, Tucson, tribal lands and farms.

At Lake Mead, the new pumps are fed by an intake drilled nearer to the bottom of the lake and completed in 2020 to ensure the ability to continue to draw water for Las Vegas, its casinos, suburbs and 2.4 million residents and 40 million tourists per year.

The "third straw" draws drinking water at 895 feet above sea level — below a point at which water would not be released downstream from Hoover Dam.

Together, the pipeline and pump projects cost more than $1.3 billion. Drilling began in 2014, amid projections that the lake level would continue to fall due to drought. Increasingly dry conditions in the region are now attributed to long-term climate change.

Lake Mead, between Nevada and Arizona, reached its high-water mark in July 1983, at 1,225 feet above sea level. On Friday, the level was 1,055 feet — about 30% full. Some of the steepest cliffs bordering the lake show 170 feet of white mineral "bathtub ring."

"Without the third intake, Southern Nevada would be shutting its doors," said Pat Mulroy, former longtime chief of the Las Vegas-based water authority, who is now a consultant. "That's pretty obvious, since the first straw is out of the water."

A mid-level pipeline also can draw water from 1,000 feet.

The authority maintains that the Las Vegas water supply is not immediately threatened. It points to water conservation efforts that it says since 2002 have cut regional consumption of Colorado River water by 26% while the area population has increased 49%.

Headcounts are down at public schools. Now budgets are too. - By Heather Hollingsworth And Annie Ma Associated Press

A school system in suburban Kansas City is eliminating over 100 jobs, including kindergarten aides and library clerks. Oakland, California, is closing seven schools. Other districts around the country are merging classrooms, selling buildings and leaving teaching positions unfilled in order to close budget gaps.

Public school systems are beginning to feel the pinch from enrollment losses tied to the coronavirus pandemic.

Money for schools is driven partly by student headcounts, and emergency provisions in many states allowed schools to maintain funding at pre-pandemic levels. But like the billions of dollars of federal relief money that have helped schools weather the crisis, those measures were not meant to last forever.

In Olathe, Kansas, where the school system is cutting 140 jobs, Deputy Superintendent John Hutchison said the extra federal money merely put off the inevitable.

Now it is trimming millions of dollars from its budgets because enrollment, having peaked at more than 30,000 students in fall 2019, fell by around 900 in the first full school year of the pandemic. Less than 100 of those students have returned.

"Where did those kids go?" Hutchison asked during a recent public meeting. "Where are they? They didn't come back this year. That's what's laying on that additional reduction in our funding."

Families opting for homeschooling, private schools and other options sent enrollment down sharply in the first full school year of the pandemic, and generally it has been slow to recover.

In Houston, the largest district in Texas, enrollment tumbled by more than 22,000 to around 183,000 in fall 2021 and only about half of those students have returned. The district was shielded from making cuts in the first two years of the pandemic by what are known as "hold harmless" provisions, but those protections are expected to end. Superintendent Millard House has asked departments to cut $60 million from next year's budget.

Among other states that took steps to protect school budgets, Delaware provided $9.3 million in one-time funding in the fiscal year that ended in summer 2021 to school districts and charter schools to prevent layoffs over enrollment declines, and North Carolina lawmakers decided to allow schools to use pre-pandemic attendance levels.

More districts will be making cuts in coming years, said Alex Spurrier, an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a think tank. The last of the federal aid must be spent by 2024.

"Once the federal funding dries up, it will put a lot more districts in a lot more difficult position if they're kind of kicking the can down the road of making the adjustments that they'll need if they are going to be serving smaller student populations in the years to come," he said.

Some districts have struggled to explain the need for cuts. Albuquerque Public Schools announced this spring that it anticipates a budget shortfall of about $25 million.

"That might sound crazy," the district wrote in a blog post, acknowledging the influx of federal aid. But it explained that enrollment declines have accelerated amid the pandemic, with the student population falling to 73,000 from 85,000 in just six years. The district hasn't released a cost-cutting plan but legislative analysts say it will require layoffs and school closures.

Amid the upheaval, some states have gained students. Florida was among the leaders, according to the data-tracking site Burbio. And some districts' headcounts benefited from new families, including some who moved to less costly areas as work went virtual.

In California, which announced this month that enrollment had fallen by an additional 110,283 students, Oakland's planned school closures are leading to protests. The ACLU filed a complaint this month alleging that they disproportionately affect Black students and families.

Further complicating the situation is a tight labor market and demands for teacher and staff raises.

In Minneapolis Public Schools, where a nearly three-week long teacher strike ended with a new contract, the district said it needed to make $27.1 million in budget cuts in the upcoming school year to pay for it. Federal relief money helped cover the $53.5 million price tag for the more lucrative contract for teachers and support staff for the current school year. Since the pandemic began, the district also has lost more than 4,000 students, along with the state funding they generate.

School officials in the city of Lawrence — home to the main University of Kansas campus — are creating multi-grade level elementary classrooms, which will allow the district to get by with fewer teachers. It is part of an effort to close a budget shortfall brought on by declining enrollment and to free up money for raises.

"You can't cut close to $7 million and not change how you do business," Lawrence Superintendent Anthony Lewis acknowledged at a meeting this month.

In Iowa, the Des Moines district canceled a conference, sold a building and isn't replacing some retiring teachers as it cuts $9.4 million in spending for the upcoming school year. The cuts were needed partially because the district's enrollment has fallen by 1,600 students since the pandemic began.

The district, which is the state's largest with 31,000 students, anticipates that it will need to make even deeper cuts next year.

"I think it's fair to say, the federal aid helped offset some of the financial challenges," said Phil Roeder, a spokesman for the district. "It did help to get us through what's been a historically bad moment in history. But it was a temporary, stopgap, not a long-term solution for school districts."

New Mexico's Gathering of Nations powwow back after pandemic - Associated Press

What is billed by organizers as the world's largest powwow is being held in person in Albuquerque for the first time since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Gathering of Nations returned Friday following an all-virtual platform the last two years.

The festivities included a grand entrance, with hundreds of dancers moving to the beat of traditional drums as participants filled an arena at the New Mexico state fairgrounds. Dancing and singing competitions followed. The event wrapped up late Saturday with the crowning of Miss Indian World.

Hundreds of Native American artisans, craftsmen and traders also are displaying and selling their work during the event.

In 2019, the Gathering of Nations drew more than 80,000 people from across the U.S., Canada and Mexico and had an economic impact of more than $24 million, said event founder and director Derek Mathews.

Like other powwows, the annual event is an opportunity for tribal members to gather and to honor and showcase their cultures through dancing and singing competitions.