Santa Fe and Los Alamos school districts will not use required AI reading software over student privacy concerns – Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
Santa Fe and Los Alamos public schools have spurned a state requirement to use an artificial intelligence-based software for reading assessments when the school year begins in the coming weeks, citing student privacy concerns.
At a board meeting Thursday in Santa Fe, Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Christine Griffin announced that the district would be pausing use of the program, called Amira, until it received direction from the New Mexico Public Education Department on student privacy.
Parents said they were concerned that the program — which works by listening to students read aloud and catching their mistakes — was saving and recording their students’ voices to “train” software products for commercial purposes.
“PED is actively working with Amira to address these concerns and provide districts with additional guidance and flexibility,” Griffin said. “While this work continues, however, Santa Fe Public Schools will refrain from using Amira, including the voice recording feature, until additional guidance is available.”
If SFPS does not receive direction from the PED by Aug. 14, one week into the school year, Griffin said the district would use i-Ready, the software both SFPS and Albuquerque Public Schools use for math assessments, which does not incorporate voice recordings.
In a letter to PED Secretary Mariana Padilla published Sunday in the Los Alamos Daily Post, Los Alamos Public Schools Superintendent Jennifer Guy said LAPS, too, would be pausing use of Amira until security and accuracy concerns were resolved. Guy said the district would instead use the DIBELS test, a reading assessment administered by a teacher, in the interim.
“Our families are asking questions we cannot fully answer: Where are these voice recordings stored, and for how long? Who can access them?” Guy wrote. “Until we can provide our district and families with clear, verifiable answers to these questions, we do not believe the state should require children to submit their voices to the platform.”
PED spokesperson Janelle Taylor Garcia said in a statement that the department’s updated guidance on Amira use is “forthcoming.”
“This guidance will include options related to the use of Amira for student literacy assessments as well as information regarding student privacy and confidentiality of student education records,” Taylor Garcia said. “Student safety is our priority, and we will continue to work with districts and charters to ensure that both student privacy and high-quality literacy instruction remain priorities.”
APS, the state’s largest district, is among other school districts that will continue to use Amira in accordance with state requirements, APS Superintendent Gabriella Durán Blakey said Monday.
“We’re just following the Public Education Department’s guidance on it,” Durán Blakey said.
As of the beginning of the 2025-26 school year, Amira use is mandatory for students in kindergarten through second grade at public schools and public charter schools, though its use is approved up to grade eight. The program tutors, conducts reading tests and screens students for dyslexia.
“Amira, right now, is the dyslexia screener that we’re required to use,” Durán Blakey added.
APS has had successes using Amira for both testing and tutoring, APS Deputy Superintendent Randy Mahlerwein said.
Last school year, APS first and second graders logged their highest reading scores since at least 2021 using Amira — 34% of first grades and 38.6% of second graders were proficient in reading at the end of May.
“We know that AI is a tool, and we know that AI can benefit, but I think we also need to be responsible,” Mahlerwein said.
The PED began using Amira after the software provider schools had been using for testing, Istation, was acquired by the San Francisco-based company Amira Learning.
Amira is required for assessments in two states — New Mexico and Idaho — and is authorized for state use in Oklahoma, Georgia, California, Texas, Michigan and Massachusetts, though some New Mexico policymakers have admitted its rollout was hasty.
“PED’s deployment of Amira highlights the state’s current policy gaps,” Saraí Ortiz, a policy analyst with the Legislative Education Study Committee, said at a committee meeting in Raton in May. “It’s unclear what vetting process and stakeholder input PED used prior to implementation.”
At that same meeting, Ortiz made a recommendation to the committee that the state adopt a statewide governance plan for the use of AI in schools. New Mexico is one of three states that passed a legislative measure to study AI in education, though the Legislature has not yet implemented a formal policy.
Sally DeRadke, the mother of an incoming second grader at APS, said she felt uneasy at the thought of her child’s voice being used to train an AI software.
“My main concern is that my child’s biometric data has been collected for a year without my knowledge or consent, and we have no idea where this data is being stored and what is being done with it,” DeRadke said.
DeRadke said she hopes the district develops an option for parents to opt their children out of Amira in favor of more traditional testing methods.
“Assessment is important to catch developmental delays and any learning differences early on, so I want my child assessed,” she said. “I just don’t want them using an AI tool to assess my child.”
Man accused of shooting bear in Northeast Heights – Gregory Hasman, Albuquerque Journal
A mother bear is expected to be OK after being shot by a man who claimed she was threatening his dog on Sunday.
New Mexico Department of Wildlife (NMDOW) spokesperson Darren Vaughan said in an email the bear was “wounded but not fatally.” One of the bear’s cubs, however, was killed after it fell from a tree during an attempt to capture it.
"An investigation into the landowner’s action is ongoing, and potential charges have yet to be evaluated,” he said.
Just before 2 p.m. Sunday, deputies received a call of a person shooting a bear in the 600 block of Roadrunner NE, near Sandia Peak Tramway, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jayme Gonzales said. (The address is also just north of Black Bear Road and Black Bear Loop.)
One of the man’s neighbors, Dina Hannah, said in a phone interview that she saw a mother bear and two cubs eating from the man’s trash bin when he came down from his patio with a rifle.
“I saw him just calmly lift the rifle and just take a shot,” she said.
Hannah said the bear screamed, then her family and the man yelled back and forth at each other.
“He was just like, ‘I did not shoot the bear. I shot the berm.’ And we said, ‘That’s a lie. That’s a lie. You shot the bear,” Hannah said. “He’s like, ‘Well, the bear was attacking my dog,’ and we were like, ‘That’s a lie.’”
After NMDOW officers arrived, the mother bear was captured and the cubs climbed into a tree. Officers tranquilized one cub, who then “became entangled in the branches and suffered injuries from which it could not recover,” Vaughan said.
“Wildlife rescue situations can be unpredictable, and despite using the safest methods available, there are inherent risks,” he said.
Officers then tranquilized the second cub, who “climbed down on its own and moved toward the trap where its mother was being held,” Vaughan said.
The mother bear and cub were relocated to “a more suitable bear habitat away from populated areas,” he said.
Tension over the shooting spilled onto the Nextdoor website Sunday afternoon and Monday, where dozens of neighbors expressed frustration over the shooting.
New Mexico has seen an uptick in bear activity this year, including in Albuquerque, Santa Fe County and the East Mountains. Wildlife officials said bears have been coming into more populated areas for food and water because of drought.
“Unsecured garbage is the primary cause of most human-bear conflicts,” said Vaughan, who offered suggestions to homeowners such as storing garbage in “closed, sturdy cans inside a secure garage” and not putting garbage out the night before a scheduled pickup.
Will CYFD watchdog get more authority? — Estaban Candelaria, Searchlight New Mexico
No one said being a watchdog for the troubled New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department would be easy.
But state child advocate Dawn Walters, who in March officially started building a new office designed to hold the child welfare agency accountable, has had a challenging first months on the job.
The state Department of Justice has reported that records she requests as part of her investigations at the Office of the Child Advocate are released very slowly, if at all. She struggles to secure meetings with CYFD’s leaders. And discussions to create a memorandum of understanding laying out a guide for how the two agencies interact with each other — including an agreement for sharing records and information in real time — has dragged on for months.
CYFD’s failures to cooperate effectively with Walters have snarled her efforts to help families and solve problems in the child welfare system. The stonewalling also has raised the ire of New Mexico lawmakers, who created the Office of the Child Advocate in 2025. Some have vowed to make changes to state law to give the new agency the teeth it needs.
“Timely communication and information is fundamental to oversight, and oversight really only works when everyone’s working from the same factual foundation,” Walters said in a recent interview. “So when that information is delayed or incomplete, it really delays the ability to answer families’ concerns, to figure out what the problems are or what’s actually happening, and then to make meaningful recommendations.”
House Speaker Javier Martínez, an Albuquerque Democrat, also criticized CYFD and its resistance to accountability.
“This is not about sticking it to the governor,” Martínez said. “… This is about keeping kids safe. And the agency clearly over the last 25 years has proven itself unable to keep children safe.”
CYFD spokesperson Jake Thompson said in a statement the agency is “committed to a productive working relationship with the OCA, because ultimately, both offices share the same goal: improving the quality of services for children and families in CYFD’s care.”
However, Thompson and the Governor’s Office rebuffed the idea that Walters’ office has oversight over CYFD, and said Walters at times has tried to overstep the bounds of her position.
“Investigating, attempting to resolve disputes, reviewing policy, and referring matters to the Attorney General does not amount to ‘oversight,’ ” Thompson said. “That distinction matters, because this particular Child Advocate appears to believe she can direct CYFD’s day-to-day operations.”
Walters argues that examining both individual cases and systemic issues across the department does not amount to an effort to direct CYFD’s operations — it is simply an effort to solve problems in a timely fashion.
“I see the role as an outside perspective raising issues to the department so that they can be proactively addressed rather than written into a report after the fact,” she said. “It would be a disservice to children if I didn’t go directly to the department to raise issues and try to advocate in that moment to fix time-sensitive problems or address decisions that could detrimentally impact a child.”
‘Frustration runs deep’
Near the end of the 60-day legislative session in 2025, the Senate voted to strip a number of powers for the state child advocate out of House Bill 5, the measure creating Walters’ office. The move was described as a compromise between lawmakers and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration as a way to get the governor to sign the bill.
Those nixed powers included the office’s ability to subpoena witnesses for investigations in cases in which a child in state custody has died or nearly died, and to make determinations about whether CYFD or its employees violated children’s rights or law, or operated with disregard for children’s safety.
Lujan Grisham’s office at the time approved of the move, stating the initially proposed powers would create a legal conflict of interest “by creating an active enforcement role over CYFD.”
Lujan Grisham’s administration now says it has worked with Walters to set up ways to share information.
The Office of the Child Advocate is entitled to obtain documents from CYFD to conduct its investigations, and the department has worked to provide those records quickly, Thompson said.
CYFD and the office are currently negotiating a memorandum of understanding to ensure Walters’ requests are handled in a timely fashion, he added.
Though, he said sometimes the office’s requests take time to fulfill because CYFD “does, at times, have to triage its limited resources to ensure urgent child-safety situations are staffed and handled first.”
Acting CYFD Cabinet Secretary Valerie Sandoval told lawmakers on the Legislative Finance Committee last week collecting information Walters requests often means tracking down individual caseworkers and digitally scanning and sending paper copies of records from binders they are required to keep on each child in their caseload.
Thompson also said in a statement CYFD “does not agree with the Child Advocate that she should automatically receive attorney-client privileged documents, or records protected under HIPAA, without meeting the federal threshold required to release them.”
He added, “These children and families have rights too, and CYFD isn’t willing to waive legal protections.”
Lawmakers have said the Senate’s amendments — which the House later concurred with — are a core reason the office struggles to bring accountability to a child welfare department that continues to endanger children.
Legislative leaders have said they plan to address the issue next year, particularly through proposals to give Walters the authority to subpoena witnesses.
“Our frustration runs deep, it’s [run] deep for a long time,” Martínez said. “I think that we can hopefully make those things happen in 2027.”
Plans to revisit state law creating the Office of the Child Advocate — as well as anger over CYFD’s reported stonewalling — extend across the aisle.
House Minority Leader Gail Armstrong of Magdalena said in an interview her Republican caucus would support amending state law to grant the Office of the Child Advocate subpoena power and is willing to work with House Democrats to do so.
“Until there are teeth put into that office, nothing is going to change,” Armstrong said.
Lujan Grisham, however, has remained steadfast in her opposition to the idea of granting the office more power over CYFD.
“The Governor does not support expanding the Office of the Child Advocate’s authority to include subpoena power,” spokesperson Leah March wrote in an email. “… The governor predicted that the Office of the Child Advocate would become politicized — and that is exactly what has happened.”
‘Peel back the shades’
Despite her opposition to expanding the office’s powers, Lujan Grisham is on her way out, with her second term as New Mexico’s top executive ending Dec. 31.
Lawmakers interested in giving more teeth to the Office of the Child Advocate may encounter a governor more sympathetic to their cause next year — both candidates vying to succeed Lujan Grisham say they would support granting the office more power over CYFD.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Deb Haaland said in an interview she believes the office does need more authority to hold CYFD accountable, and said she wished the agency would be more willing to collaborate with others in the name of improving the lives of vulnerable children.
“It’s pretty clear that more oversight of CYFD is desperately needed,” Haaland said. “… We just need to peel back the shades, shine a light on this department and this issue, and get to work. No egos, no shame, no nothing — let’s just help our children to live happy lives.”
Haaland noted she also does not plan to hold onto control of CYFD — if elected, she would appoint a qualified, experienced Cabinet secretary to lead the agency while state leaders work out a way to move governance of the department to an independent commission.
Republican nominee for governor Gregg Hull also highlighted the importance of providing checks to CYFD.
Though, Hull said if he is elected governor, he would work to strike a balance between developing an Office of the Child Advocate that provides accountability to the state while also keeping it from becoming an agency that “goes in and runs roughshod over CYFD” through excessive investigations and monitoring.
“I would definitely give the agency more teeth, and we’d be looking for other ways to make sure that there was transparency and oversight in CYFD,” Hull said. “If this is what it’s going to take to have collaboration between the agency and the Office of the Child Advocate, well, then those teeth need to be put back in there because, clearly, taking them out has not solved the problems.”
New Mexico Attorney General Torrez says feds wrongly denied his request for fentanyl records — Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez on Monday announced that the U-S Department of Justice has denied his office’s requests for records relating to allegations that federal drug agents allowed large quantities of fentanyl to enter New Mexico without seizing them.
Source New Mexico reports the New Mexico Department of Justice in early July demanded records regarding the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s fentanyl investigations between 2022 and 2025.
That’s the time period during which a whistleblower alleged that the DEA was regularly allowing shipments of fentanyl to go unseized as agents pursued prosecutions of high-level drug dealers.
New Mexico’s request for records asked the DEA to provide the records by July 31 in recognition of the “urgency and gravity of this matter.”
However, the NMDOJ said on Monday that the USDOJ and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Mexico denied Torrez’s request. Federal agencies say the NMDOJ failed to identify a federal or state lawsuit related to the records, and inadequately explained the relevance of particular records to its investigation.
State Attorney General Torrez, in a response letter sent Monday to the federal agencies, said no federal regulation exists that requires a lawsuit before federal agencies can fulfill requests like the one his office made for DEA records.
New Mexico plugs record number of abandoned oil and gas wells, thanks to Biden-era funding — Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
New Mexico environmental officials plugged a record number of abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells last year.
Source New Mexico reports that state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department staff told a panel of state lawmakers Monday that the effort to plug the wells was possible thanks to Biden-era federal funding.
In the most recent fiscal year, which concluded in June, the state plugged a record 114 wells. That’s up from a previous annual average of 25-50.
State officials say the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law helped the state more than double its average.
Nevertheless, about 1,600 wells in New Mexico are designated for cleanup but have yet to be plugged or fully remediated. State officials say it would cost about $200 million to complete work on those abandoned wells.
Four bears killed on Interstate 25 south of Santa Fe — Santa Fe New Mexican
It’s been a tough summer to be a black bear in New Mexico.
Last week, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported that two adult black bears and two cubs were found dead on Interstate 25 about five miles south of Santa Fe. The bears were found last Wednesday between La Cienega and La Bajada.
A state Department of Wildlife spokesperson told the New Mexican one of the adult bears was found on an overpass with a creek running beneath it, which suggests the animals might have been seeking water.
Those bear deaths followed an incident earlier in July in which a bear climbed an electric utility pole in northeastern New Mexico and was fatally electrocuted. Videos of the incident went viral.
The New Mexican reports there have many bear sightings this summer on the edges of cities and towns. Near Santa Fe, a popular hiking preserve off Canyon Road was closed for a while in July after three bears were spotted in the area.
The Taos News reported in late June, a large black bear spent hours sitting in a tree in downtown Taos. And in Albuquerque, KOAT-TV reported that at a least a dozen bears have been spotted this summer in neighborhoods near the Sandia Mountains.
Despite the start of monsoon season, New Mexico remains in severe drought, causing wildlife to search for water and food outside of their usual habitats.
Hundreds of fish reported dead at Monastery Lake amid heat, drought — KOAT-TV
Monastery Lake is in Northern New Mexico, situated along the Pecos river, just north of the village of Pecos.
KOAT-TV reports hundreds of fish have died at Monastery Lake in recent weeks. State wildlife officials have linked the deaths to warm water temperatures and low oxygen during the current severe drought.
New Mexico Department of Wildlife staff conducted a site visit to the lake last week and found 120 dead rainbow trout during their observations.
Department officials say that’s not a total count of all the fish that might have died.
Rainbow trout are especially sensitive to elevated water temperatures. Warmer water also holds less dissolved oxygen, making it harder for fish to survive. Staff observed the fish clustered near the lake’s inlet, where cooler and more oxygenated water from the Pecos River flows into Monastery Lake.
'Crazy intense': Secret military exercise in Española took residents by surprise — Santa Fe New Mexican
In Española, locals have learned the reason for the low-flying helicopters and loud noises that alarmed residents on the night of July 23.
It was a military training exercise. And, because the exercise was secret, people in Espanola had no idea what was going on.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that the training exercise surprised and confused people in Espanola, and also in Abiquiu, about 25 miles to the northwest.
Low-flying helicopters were also accompanied by simulated gunfire and flash-bangs. One resident described the scene as “terrifying.”
The New Mexican reports that some city and county officials who agreed to the secret exercise said they would think twice about agreeing to such an exercise in the future.
Rio Arriba County Manager Jeremy Maestas said the event was organized by Miguel Gutierrez. Gutierrez is listed as the director of operations for the defense contractor Asymmetric Solutions, which hosts a military training facility in the region.
