In 2021, New Mexico needs to get connected

Perhaps the biggest initiative in the first years of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s term was the push to improve education. Described as our “moonshot,” the effort resulted in millions spent, reforms implemented and focus directed on classrooms so all New Mexico children would reach their potential.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic and the crash in the price of oil and gas. COVID19 meant children switched to remote learning, without ample time for teachers to train in new methods — and for too many kids, without the technology and connectivity needed to access classes.

Plunging prices for oil and gas meant what had been budget surpluses turned into budget shortfalls.

Looming over it all — and rightly so — is the Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit, in which a judge ruled New Mexico has fallen short of its constitutional mandate to fund the education of its children sufficiently, especially English-language learners, Native Americans, low-income and special-education students.

Lujan Grisham, as a candidate, promised to accept the judge’s decision. Her focus early in her term as governor was spent implementing programs to improve education for at-risk kids so the state met its constitutional requirement. Her administration since tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, but that effort was denied — again, the correct decision. We’re not at sufficiency yet, not by a long shot, let alone a moonshot.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are increasingly impatient, and we can’t blame them. Not because the state is not trying to do the right thing, but because every year a child lags behind in school is another year wasted.

Too many children, behind from elementary school, reach middle or high school and simply give up. We can’t afford to keep losing these children.

A recent motion filed earlier this month by Yazzie plaintiffs asked the District Court to order all public and public charter schools to provide at-risk students computers and adequate internet access. A student can’t make it to class remotely without either; rural students and especially Native American students, the motion claims, lack the tools they need.

The pandemic is making already deep inequities worse, although the state has stepped up to provide 6,282 laptops on tribal lands and create more than 1,200 Wi-Fi hot spots. Plaintiffs lawyers, though, estimate 23 percent of New Mexicans lack broadband internet service, with 80 percent of Natives living on tribal lands doing without.

It’s clear that the lack of internet access is bigger than public education.

Connecting the state must be a top priority in New Mexico — combining state, federal, tribal and private efforts to bring broadband throughout the state. No more excuses.

The 2021 legislative session offers the opportunity for a reset. Find the money to expand internet reach to rural areas, especially tribal lands and remote villages, where children and adults need connectivity as much as residents of Albuquerque or Santa Fe (where some also do without). It can’t be done quickly, but it can be done systematically, with a plan and a process.

Think about the new at-home tests for COVID-19, something the governor is rightly proud of offering to New Mexicans. To take the test, a person needs internet access and Zoom capabilities. Many New Mexicans, right off the bat, are just as excluded from this health advance as students are from remote learning.

The pandemic, as we have said before, has brought into focus the many ways some people in our society are more equal than others. In Santa Fe, where voters agreed to tax themselves so all children would have access to technology, children sent home to become remote learners had the equipment they needed.

Even here, though, not all families could afford internet access, and in some places, connectivity just isn’t reliable. And we’re the state capital.

To open opportunity across New Mexico, the state must develop a plan to bring reliable internet to all parts of the state. This matters for students in K-12, college kids learning at home during the pandemic, adults working remotely, sick people who need virtual health care — for all New Mexicans, really.

In 2021, may we be connected, in person and remotely, across the entire state.