Democratic lawmakers in New Mexico take aim at gun violence, panhandling, retail crime and hazing - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
New Mexico's governor presented a broad suite of legislative proposals on gun control and enhanced penalties for violent crime Friday, vowing to forge new pathways through the complex landscape of constitutional law in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision to expand gun rights.
The announcements by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a second-term Democrat, puts public safety at the forefront of a 30-day legislative session that starts Tuesday. The fast-paced session is limited to budget negotiations — and initiatives chosen by the governor.
"The constitutionality questions are beginning to be very complicated in the arena of gun violence," Lujan Grisham said. "We are going to continue this effort, following what is going on around the country. ... There will be others who will follow in our footsteps, creating their own public safety corridors, which in effect also make New Mexicans safer."
Germane proposals will include a ban on guns at public parks and playgrounds with felony penalties for violations — expanding a hallmark of the governor's ongoing declaration of a public health emergency related to gun violence and drug abuse.
The governor's emergency orders, which suspend the right to carry firearms at parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque in response to a string of shootings that have killed children, is being challenged by gun advocates in federal court. Meanwhile the state Supreme Court considers whether the governor overstepped her authority under state law.
Democratic legislators are seeking a 14-day waiting period for background checks on gun purchases and a minimum age set to 21 on purchases of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns.
A proposal from Democratic state Rep. Andrea Romero of Santa Fe would place new limitations on assault-style weapons to reducing a shooter's ability to fire off dozens of rounds a second and attach new magazines to keep firing.
A list of more than 20 public-safety bills, sponsored mostly by Democratic legislators, extend beyond gun safety to a panhandling ban and expanded criminal provisions related to retail theft as local stores have resorted to padlocking clothes. The proposals also include felony penalties for teachers and coaches who ignore hazing incidents in the wake of alleged locker-room assaults involving New Mexico State basketball players.
Republicans in the legislative minority vowed to oppose bills that infringe on Second Amendment rights, and the fate of gun restrictions may hinge on a handful of Democratic lawmakers in regions of the state with a strong culture of gun ownership.
Republican Senate Leader Craig Baca of Belen said deliberations about crime on Friday "took a hyper-partisan turn with the announcement of several anti-Second Amendment measures targeting New Mexico gun owners who only want to protect themselves and their families."
3 teens face charges in Christmas Day youth facility disturbance, Albuquerque sheriff says - Associated Press
Three teens are facing charges including assault following what sheriff's officials termed a "major disturbance" on Christmas Day at a youth detention center in Albuquerque, sheriff's officials said Friday.
The Bernalillo County sheriff's office said in a statement that the three males, ages 16 and 17, were among the detainees involved in the incident that media reports said lasted about five hours Dec. 25 and left three people with minor injuries. Friday's statement put damage to the county Juvenile Detention Center at more than $100,000.
Sheriff John Allen said previously that 13 detainees gained control of a unit of the facility, covered cameras and may have wielded scissors, broomsticks and other makeshift weapons.
Detainees raised complaints about food, bathroom access, clean laundry and strip searches, according to parents, advocates and some lawmakers who rallied this week for better conditions at the juvenile holding facility.
Allen traced problems to staffing shortages and antiquated protocols and said an investigation was continuing. He also noted that some detainees were dangerous and were being held to face serious charges, including murder.
The charges announced Friday against the three teens include damage to property, tampering with evidence and conspiracy to commit unlawful assault. Their names were withheld because of their ages.
New Mexico receives nearly $68 million in federal funding for EV charging - By Hannah Grover, New Mexico Political Report
New Mexico will receive nearly $68 million for electric vehicle charging infrastructure from the federal government from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law . This money comes through the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program.
The $68 million is part of a $623 million nationwide investment in electric vehicle infrastructure and comes as President Joe Biden’s administration works toward a goal of making at least 500,000 electric vehicle chargers publicly available by 2030.
The $623 million investment will fund 47 projects in 22 states as well as Puerto Rico and will result in the creation of about 7,500 charging ports for electric vehicles.
“America led the arrival of the automotive era, and now we have a chance to lead the world in the EV revolution—securing jobs, savings, and benefits for Americans in the process,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a press release announcing the funding. “This funding will help ensure that EV chargers are accessible, reliable, and convenient for American drivers, while creating jobs in charger manufacturing, installation, and maintenance for American workers.”
The largest portion—$63.8 million—will go to building two TeraWatt charging stations for commercial electric trucks along Interstate 10 in Hidalgo and Doña Ana counties. TeraWatt Infrastructure is a company based in California that is working to build the nation’s first network of high-powered charging centers for commercial electric trucks. This corridor will be along I-10 stretching from southern California to the border region in El Paso, Texas.
The two stations in New Mexico will each feature nine pull-through stalls. Each of those will be equipped with both a 350 kilowatt and 1 megawatt direct current fast charger. These sites will be located near Lordsburg and Vado.
“This $63 million investment to Lordsburg and Vado is the largest award in the United States and will go a long way in not just supporting cleaner trucks, but boosting economic development in our rural communities,” U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, a New Mexico Democrat, said in a press release. “These two medium- and heavy-duty commercial truck charging stations along Interstate-10, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, are a big deal. The construction of these new charging centers will provide critical resting places along the I-10 corridor, which facilitates the transportation of millions of dollars in goods from the ports of Los Angeles through New Mexico and to the rest of the country.”
Additionally, Santa Fe County will receive $3.3 million in funding to build a network of 33 fast chargers and level 2 charging stations at 13 sites, including areas in underserved communities near county transportation hubs as well as in places where there is multi-family affordable housing.
Finally, the Town of Taos received $500,000 to install six publicly available fast EV chargers in parking lots at three community buildings, including the Taos Visitor Center.
“I am thrilled that New Mexico is receiving such a substantial share of the investment from the first round of competitive EV charging grants in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, the founder and co-chair of the Electrification Caucus and a Democrat representing New Mexico, said in a press release. “From passenger sedans to school buses and delivery trucks, today’s EVs are market ready right now. If we want to meet our ambitious climate goals and deploy these clean and zero-emission vehicles at scale, we need to build much more EV charging infrastructure in our communities and along our major highways. This grant is a crucial step to get that done.”
In other EV charging news, earlier this week the Public Service Company of New Mexico and Bernalillo County Assessor Damian Lara announced an agreement that will increase availability of charging stations. Under that agreement, the utility will install charging stations on the eighth floor of the PNM parking structure in downtown Albuquerque near Alvarado Square.
“We want to cut down our carbon footprint in our community with an eventual changeover to a fully electric fleet,” Lara said in a statement. “This is the next step in this effort.”
EPA sets out rules for proposed 'methane fee' for waste generated by oil and natural gas companies - By Matthew Daly Associated Press
Oil and natural gas companies for the first time would have to pay a fee for methane emissions that exceed certain levels under a rule proposed Friday by the Biden administration.
The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule follows through on a directive from Congress included in the 2022 climate law. The new fee is intended to encourage industry to adopt best practices that reduce emissions of methane and thereby avoid paying.
Methane is a climate "super pollutant" that is more potent in the short term than carbon dioxide and is responsible for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. The oil and natural gas sector is the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the United States, and advocates say reduction of methane emissions is an important way to slow climate change.
Excess methane produced this year would result in a fee of $900 per ton, with fees rising to $1,500 per ton by 2026.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the proposed fee would work in tandem with a final rule on methane emissions EPA announced last month. The fee, formally known as the Methane Emissions Reduction Program, will encourage early deployment of available technologies to reduce methane emissions and other harmful air pollutants before the new standards take effect, he said.
The rule announced in December includes a two-year phase-in period for companies to eliminate routine flaring of natural gas from new oil wells.
"EPA is delivering on a comprehensive strategy to reduce wasteful methane emissions that endanger communities and fuel the climate crisis," Regan said in a statement. When finalized later this year, the proposed methane fee will set technology standards that will "incentivize industry innovation'' and spur action to reduce pollution, he said.
Leading oil and gas companies already meet or exceed performance levels set by Congress under the climate law, meaning they will not have to pay the proposed fee, Regan and other officials said.
Sen. Tom Carper, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said he was pleased the administration was moving forward with the methane fee as directed by Congress.
"We know methane is over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere in the short term,'' said Carper, D-Del. He said the program "will incentivize producers to cut wasteful and excessive methane emissions during oil and gas production."
New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said oil and gas companies have long calculated that it's cheaper to waste methane through flaring and other techniques than to make necessary upgrades to prevent leaks.
"Wasted methane never makes its way to consumers, but they are nevertheless stuck with the bill," Pallone said. The proposed methane fee "will ensure consumers no longer pay for wasted energy or the harm its emissions can cause.''
Republicans call the methane fee a tax that could raise the price of natural gas. "This proposal means increased costs for employers and higher energy bills for millions of Americans," said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia.
The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's largest lobbying group, slammed the proposal Friday and called for Congress to repeal it.
"As the world looks to U.S. energy producers to provide stability in an increasingly unstable world, this punitive tax increase is a serious misstep that undermines America's energy advantage,'' said Dustin Meyer, API's senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs.
While the group supports "smart" federal methane regulation, the EPA proposal "creates an incoherent, confusing regulatory regime that will only stifle innovation and undermine our ability to meet rising energy demand,'' Meyer said. "We look forward to working with Congress to repeal the IRA's misguided new tax on American energy."
Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, called the proposed fee "common sense,'' adding that oil and gas companies should be held accountable for methane pollution, a primary source of global warming.
In a related development, EPA said it is working with industry and others to improve how methane emissions are reported, citing numerous studies showing that and oil and gas companies have significantly underreported their methane emissions to the EPA under the agency's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.
The climate law, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, established a waste-emissions charge for methane from oil and gas facilities that report emissions of more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year to the EPA. The proposal announced Friday sets out details of how the fee will be implemented, including how exemptions will be applied.
The agency said it expects that over time, fewer oil and gas sites will be charged as they reduce their emissions in compliance with the rule.
NM gov has ignored calls to pull executive order that could hinder speech critical of Israel - Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
New Mexico’s governor has so far ignored calls from her constituents and the state’s most prominent civil rights organization to withdraw a once-obscure executive order that has received renewed interest three months into the war in Gaza.
In 2022, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an executive order to direct all state agencies under her control to adopt and use the “Working Definition of Antisemitism” written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
This week the governor’s office declined to answer questions about Lujan Grisham’s response to a letter asking her to rescind the order, and about how many times the state has enforced it.
“We are clear: discrimination of any kind, including antisemitism, has no place in New Mexico,” said Maddy Hayden, a spokesperson for the governor. “The governor is also a staunch believer in free speech, and we have seen no indication that this order signed in 2022 is being misused in any way.”
In interviews with Source New Mexico, New Mexicans criticized the order as part of a broader attempt to conflate Judaism with Zionism, in order to expand the traditional definition of antisemitism to include criticism of Israel and quash expression in support of Palestinian self-determination.
Dr. Lori Rudolph is a professor of counseling at New Mexico Highlands University studying continuous traumatic stress in the West Bank, and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.
She said it’s vitally important for Jewish people to counter the claim that criticism of Israel is the same as antisemitism. Lujan Grisham’s executive order is unfortunate, she said, because it undermines the credibility of claims of real antisemitism.
“We have a moral obligation to speak out against genocide, especially in light of our own history of genocide and the historical trauma that we carry,” Rudolph said. “It’s unconscionable to watch Israel committing the same atrocities that were committed against Jews in Europe, for example.”
After Lujan Grisham signed the order two years ago, Rudolph joined civil rights attorney and author Jeff Haas, along with others affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace, to gather signatures for a petition calling the governor to withdraw it.
For a couple of months that year, Haas said, the group tried to meet with the governor, but it did not happen.
Then in September 2023, a pro-Israel advocacy group in Santa Fe tried to get Lujan Grisham to enforce the order against Palestinian poet and journalist Mohammed El-Kurd to try to prevent him from speaking at the University of New Mexico.
In response, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico urged Lujan Grisham to rescind the order, arguing in a letter on Nov. 14 that it violates the state’s constitution.
ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson and attorney Kristin Greer Love told the governor her order “threatens freedom of speech,” which “applies to and protects everyone in our state — not just those with whom we agree.”
“We are deeply concerned that it could be used as the basis for silencing protected speech, and indeed have begun to see signs in New Mexico that our fears could be realized,” they wrote, citing the effort to silence El-Kurd. “We urge you to rescind this dangerous and unnecessary order.”
They wrote Lujan Grisham’s administration has legal tools to protect Jewish people in New Mexico and combat antisemitic harassment and discrimination, “But make no mistake: adopting the IHRA’s ‘working definition of antisemitism’ through an executive order is not among them.”
Maria Archuleta, a spokesperson for ACLU-NM, confirmed Wednesday the governor has not responded to the letter.
THE ‘WORKING DEFINITION’
The IHRA “Working Definition of Antisemitism” has been criticized by Israeli Jewish academics and lawyers defending the movement for Palestinian rights in the United States. The executive order adopts the definition by linking to a website but does not spell it out word-for-word.
Lujan Grisham’s order states the IHRA definition “has been an essential tool used to determine contemporary manifestations of antisemitism, and includes useful examples of discriminatory anti-Israel acts that can cross the line into antisemitism.”
Most notably, the IHRA definition asserts that “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” is an example of “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.”
This is immensely dangerous, because it means you can’t call Israel racist, says Dr. Fatima Van Hattum, a former member of the central committee of Lujan Grisham’s Council on Racial Justice and a member of the Muslim community in New Mexico.
“It means that any true historical recounting and examination of the Nakba — the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine — would be considered antisemitic,” Van Hattum said. “It means that any critique over half a century of Israeli occupation would be considered antisemitic. It means that any future solutions — like potentially one democratic, secular state in critique of an exclusively Jewish ethno-religious state — would also be considered antisemitic.”
In their letter to the governor, ACLU-NM wrote the order’s adopted definition is “unconstitutionally vague, classifying certain (unspecified) criticisms of Israel as antisemitic, leaving New Mexicans with uncertainty about whether their speech or expression could violate the law.”
The IHRA definition “does not allow for nuanced political debate and expression that are critical for a functioning democracy: it lumps in criticism of the government of Israel — and support for Palestinians’ rights — with the scourge of true antisemitism,” ACLU-NM wrote.
In doing so, the definition “impermissibly threatens to chill speech,” they wrote.
“Protected speech and expression include non-violent protest, activism, criticism of Israel and support (for) Palestinians’ rights,” the ACLU wrote. “One can criticize the government of Israel and support Palestinians rights without being antisemitic, just as one can criticize the Palestinian Authority or the governments of other Muslim-majority countries without being anti-Muslim.”
In her statement expressing the governor’s stance, Hayden added that “New Mexico stands alongside the Biden Administration and the majority of other states in adopting this stance against antisemitism.”
Van Hattum, who has a Ph.D in educational thought and sociocultural studies, said the order comes amid a push by the right wing in the U.S. for deeply restrictive policies preventing the proper teaching of slavery, Black history or colonization.
By endorsing the IHRA definition, both Lujan Grisham and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are limiting people’s “ability to factually recount the history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” Van Hattum said.
“It’s not only a First Amendment violation, but it’s very dangerous to our democracy in the same way these right-wing attacks on curricular materials and books are dangerous in the long term,” she said. “It means our country is becoming more and more fascist. That is not a small thing.”
From a perspective of racial justice in the U.S., Van Hattum said, “Israel, as a settler colony like the U.S., is built on violent dispossession.” She compared racism in a settler colony like the U.S. or Australia to an individual living with a chronic disease.
“If there is ever a future that isn’t just blatant occupation and genocide, and a political outcome where people can actually live together, this will still be the case,” Van Hattum said. “What this definition does is it denies us the ability to even engage in that discussion intellectually.”
Councilors propose 'poop patrol' for public, private property - Rodd Clayton, City Desk ABQ
This story was originally published by City Desk ABQ.
Those who have encountered human feces on the streets of Albuquerque would say it’s unsightly and offensive to the nostrils of residents and visitors.
But the effect of these deposits goes beyond the aesthetic, according to city leaders and health experts.
City Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn recently introduced legislation that would establish a $100,000 fund to pay for proper removal of human waste. Citizens would report seeing feces by calling 311, and a private company versed in handling biohazards would be dispatched to clear the site.
Currently, cleaning up outdoor human waste in Albuquerque is the responsibility of the property owner. Fiebelkorn’s bill would have the city taking the lead on that, whether feces is found on public or private property.
She said that the legislation came about after she received reports from constituents who were having to clean up feces in their alleys — some of the residents provided photos. Fiebelkorn said that she initially had assumed that such cleanups were a city responsibility, but discovered otherwise while doing research.
“We can’t have individual people handling human feces,” she said. “It’s a risk to themselves and a risk to our water supply.”
Fiebelkorn said she talked to the city’s Environmental Health Department and learned of businesses with proper qualifications for disposing of biohazards. She said that staff in the Albuquerque Solid Waste Management Department also aren’t trained for that type of cleanup.
“I want to make sure people do it correctly,” Fiebelkorn said. “You don’t want people to wash it into storm drains.”
Councilor Nichole Rogers is co-sponsoring the legislation. She said her involvement is a direct response to concerns her constituents have raised.
Rogers said that her background in health care makes her aware of the potential for spreading various illnesses that unattended human waste represents.
“This is a no-brainer for me,” she said.
Rogers tied open defecation to the lack of available public restrooms for the city’s homeless.
“Should they be doing that?” she asked rhetorically. “No, but the fact is, there are not enough places for people to do it.”
She said she’ll be working on getting new restrooms for District 6.
Fiebelkorn said that the cleanup program is a short-term solution, and that going forward, the city needs to provide more public restrooms. She said the Old Town Loo, in the Uptown Transit Center is the only 24/7 restroom in Albuquerque — extremely inadequate for the city’s homeless population, which she estimates at 4,000.
Fiebelkorn said more public restrooms would also benefit transit users, tourists and residents out running errands.
A report in BMC Public Health states that after restrooms were installed in San Francisco, reports of exposed feces declined by more than 12 per week.
Fiebelkorn said that increasing the city’s affordable housing stock will lead to fewer people living on the streets and a reduction in public defecation.
A report in Environmental Justice states that people experiencing homelessness defecate in public for a variety of reasons. Those include lack of public resources, perceptions about public toilets, feelings of being unwelcome at service centers, concerns about safety, and physical and mental illness, including addiction.”
Authors Elizabeth Frye, Drew Capone, and Dabney Evans state that additional public toilets are necessary and would reduce open defecation, but also urge policies that help get the homeless into permanent supportive housing.
A team from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health collected discarded feces from streets and sidewalks in San Francisco and confirmed that 20% of the samples gathered were of human origin.
The researchers discovered pathogens in more than half of the samples they tested, according to a news release the school, affiliated with the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, issued in September. Those included Cryptosporidium, Giardia, Shigella, pathogenic E. coli, norovirus and others.
“San Francisco deserves credit for addressing this issue head-on,” associate professor Joe Brown, who led the research team, said in the release. “Open defecation is not just a nuisance; it can bring public health risks too, with the majority of risks borne by unhoused people. We need cities to take action to meet people where they are.”
Fiebelkorn’s bill will go through the Finance and Government Operations Committee, then to the full City Council, which would vote on sending the matter to Mayor Tim Keller. She said she’s confident in its chances for adoption.
“I can’t imagine a rational reason to oppose this,” Fiebelkorn said. “(Residents) shouldn’t have to clean up human feces just because they live next to an alley.
Fossil unearthed in New Mexico years ago is identified as older, more primitive relative of T. rex - By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
The Tyrannosaurus rex seemingly came out of nowhere tens of millions of years ago, with its monstrous teeth and powerful jaws dominating the end of the age of the dinosaurs.
How it came to be is among the many mysteries that paleontologists have long tried to solve. Researchers from several universities and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science say they now have one more piece of the puzzle.
On Thursday, they unveiled fossil evidence and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. Their study identifies a new subspecies of tyrannosaur thought to be an older and more primitive relative of the well-known T. rex.
There were ohs and ahs as the massive jaw bone and pointy teeth were revealed to a group of schoolchildren. Pieces of the fragile specimen were first found in the 1980s by boaters on the shore of New Mexico's largest reservoir.
The identification of the new subspecies came through a meticulous reexamination of the jaw and other pieces of the skull that were collected over years at the site. The team analyzed the specimen bone by bone, noting differences in numerous features compared with those synonymous with T. rex.
"Science is a process. With each new discovery, it forces us to go back and test and challenge what we thought we knew, and that's the core story of this project," said Anthony Fiorillo, a co-author of the study and the executive director of the museum.
The differences between T. rex and Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis are subtle. But that's typically the case in closely related species, said Nick Longrich, a co-author from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom.
"Evolution slowly causes mutations to build up over millions of years, causing species to look subtly different over time," he said.
The analysis — outlined Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports — suggests the new subspecies Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis was a side-branch in the species's evolution, rather than a direct ancestor of T. rex.
The researchers determined it predated T. rex by up to 7 million years, showing that tyrannosaurs were in North America long before paleontologists previously thought.
With no close relatives in North America, co-author Sebastian Dalman wanted to reexamine specimens collected from southern New Mexico. That work started in 2013 when he was a student.
"Soon we started to suspect we were on to something new," Dalman said.
T. rex has a reputation as a fierce predator. It measured up to 40 feet (12 meters) long and 12 feet (3.6 meters) high. Dalman and the other researchers say T. mcraeensis was roughly the same size and also ate meat.
Thomas Richard Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study, said the tyrannosaur fossil from New Mexico has been known for a while but its significance was not clear.
One interesting aspect of the research is that it appears T. rex's closest relatives were from southern North America, with the exception of Mongolian Tarbosaurus and Chinese Zhuchengtyrannus, Holtz said. That leaves the question of whether these Asian dinosaurs were immigrants from North America or if the new subspecies and other large tyrannosaurs were immigrants from Asia.
"One great hindrance to solving this question is that we don't have good fossil sites of the right environments in Asia older than Tarbosaurus and Zhuchengtyrannus, so we can't see if their ancestors were present there or not," Holtz said.
He and the researchers who analyzed the specimen agree that more fossils from the Hall Lake Formation in southern New Mexico could help answer further questions.
New Mexico Attorney General’s Office rebrands as state Department of Justice - KUNM News, Santa Fe New Mexican
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced Wednesday that the office he leads is no longer called Attorney General’s Office, but instead the New Mexico Department of Justice.
The department’s announcement said the change aligns New Mexico’s office with those of other states’ Attorneys General, but also language in state law. It cited a statute that refers to the office led by the AG as “the Department of Justice.”
Torrez told the Santa Fe New Mexican that he believes many New Mexicans don’t have a “clear sense” of what the office does, or that it's a place they could go to seek justice as citizens or consumers. He told the newspaper that the name change could also help the public understand that the office aims to “lend our voice to big national issues.”
The name change comes along with a larger rebranding effort, including a redesigned website and a logo that features a doric column in the shape of New Mexico. In the announcement, the state DOJ said its new seal is meant to convey “strength, fairness, and inclusivity.”
APS Board names superintendent semi-finalists - By Tierna Unruh-Enos, City Desk ABQ
This story was originally published by City Desk ABQ.
Four semi-finalists have emerged from the list of two dozen local and national educators who last month submitted their applications for the top job of Albuquerque Public Schools superintendent.
The semi-finalists are:
- Thomas Ahart the former superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools, now a consultant with the Council of the Great City Schools
- Mason Bellamy, the Chief of Academics and Schools for Metro Nashville Public Schools
- Gabriella Durán Blakey, the current Chief of Operations Officer at APS
- Channell Segura, the current Chief of Schools at APS
The APS Board of Education will meet in executive session on January 16 to interview the semi-finalists and choose the finalists.
“This is a critical decision and a great opportunity for the board and community,” said Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education President Danielle Gonzales. “The futures of our children depend on finding an accomplished educator who prioritizes student learning and social-emotional wellness and commits to the strategic plan to make it all happen. We need to hear from our students, staff, families, and communities and encourage everyone to attend our January 30 public forums to meet the superintendent finalists and provide input.”
The board is encouraging the public to submit a question for the superintendent finalistat this linkno later than January 26.
APS staff and the public will have the opportunity to meet the finalists in several public forums scheduled for Tuesday, January 30 at the Berna Facio Professional Development Complex located at 3315 Louisiana Blvd. NE.
The board is scheduled to meet in executive session on Wednesday, January 31 to interview the finalists. The new superintendent will replace Superintendent Scott Elder, whose contract expires June 30.