Public education backers seek community volunteers
Slashes in the state education budget make helping our students succeed more important than ever. The Interfaith Coalition for Public Education, a grass-roots network of Santa Fe volunteers, remains committed to engaging our community in promoting academic achievement and ensuring graduation and career and college readiness for every student in Santa Fe Public Schools.
Despite the best efforts of our teachers, education leaders and school board, well over half of our third-graders are below grade-level proficiency in English. The same is true for our eighthgraders in math. In fact, 2016 test results show that districtwide, only 16 percent of SFPS students met or exceeded proficiency in math. And our high school graduation rates hover in the 65 percent range. Our youth deserve more.
All are welcome to join and attend our monthly coalition meetings to learn more about our initiatives. To better enlist community support, the Interfaith Coalition for Public Education has evolved a new leadership structure: co-leaders Nadine Stafford and Lynn Bickley; secretary Charlotte Whitcomb; and treasurer Ellie Edelstein. Coalition members are independent, unpaid volunteer professionals, many retired, from both the community at large and our Santa Fe churches, including First Presbyterian Church, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, United Church of Christ, Santa María de la Paz Catholic Community, Temple Beth Shalom and HaMakom.
In 2015-16 the coalition organized five community forums on key issues affecting student success: What does it take to have a high-achieving school; to evaluate student progress; to boost student graduation; to take effective action; and to provide sustainable funding? The forums drew a broad range of community sponsors — Communities In Schools of New Mexico, First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association, the Santa Fe Association of Realtors, the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, the Santa Fe Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Santa Fe Chapter of the NAACP and Temple Beth Shalom. After panel discussions featuring experts from our schools, our city and Northern New Mexico, there were numerous roundtables where participants voiced community solutions. Discussions with more than 300 concerned community members generated action teams addressing:
Communications for Community Engagement, Nadine Stafford, nstafford@q.com
Santa Fe High School and Mandela International Magnet School Tutors Program, Lynn Heffron, lgheffron@gmail.com
Early College Opportunities Community Action Team, Lynn Bickley, lbick09@gmail.com
Teacher Development Support, Lois Rudnick, lois.rudnick@umb.edu
Sustainable Education Funding, Melinda Silver, mjsilverenterprises@gmail.com
Support for the Birth to Career Mentoring/Tutoring Hub, Lynn Bickley, lbick09@gmail.com
Articles on Santa Fe Public Schools that help students achieve, Lois Rudnick loisrudnick@umb.edu
Initiatives for 2017 include: Principal for a Day — bringing a business leader to Ramirez Thomas Elementary School on May 4; Workshops for Math Tutors — launched March 29 with 35 tutors attending, and a forum probing the Role of Charter Schools in New Mexico planned for this fall.
Coalition accomplishments to date include the Santa Fe High School and Mandela Tutors Program (over 20 tutors); the Early College Opportunities Community Action Team at our new trades high school, the Early College Opportunities Applied Magnet School; recruitment of over 60 tutors for Adelante, Communities in Schools and SFPS; collaboration with
The New Mexican on the Monday Education page; legislative advocacy for education funding; and support for the Santa Fe Community Foundation Birth to Career Collaborative.
Contact us. Make a difference. Go to our website, www.icpesantafe.org. Our students and our schools need you, for tutoring, for targeted projects, for whatever time you have available.
Lynn Bickley, M.D., is co-leader of the Interfaith Coalition for Public Education.