Graduation requirements strengthened
Governor signs first major bill; students in 2025-26 school year will face standard
If Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham could redo her high school years, she would take home economics.
She was born into a generation of women who rejected the class as sexist, Lujan Grisham said Friday at the Capitol, but she now believes it might have helped her develop useful skills.
“The truth is that feeding yourself and your family is not a sexist agenda,” the governor said.
Home economics is one of a raft of electives to be offered to high schoolers under House Bill 171, which creates new graduation requirements for students beginning in the 2025-26 school year.
Lujan Grisham signed the measure Friday in a ceremony marking the session’s first nonprocedural legislation to be signed into law.
The bill, Lujan Grisham said, will “modernize” the state’s high school graduation requirements, ensuring students can select pathways of study that feel relevant and integrating career-technical education and financial literacy into core courses.
HB 171 also sets aside two required credits to be determined by local school boards and governing councils.
“This has broad guidelines of specifics that we all agree students need — math and English and science and social studies — but then provides a lot of flexibility,” said Sen. Bill Soules, D-Las Cruces, during the ceremony.
Getting HB 171 signed into law — which Rep. Andrés Romero, D-Albuquerque, said took about four years of planning, proposing and revising bills — serves as a shining example of how the legislative process should work, Lujan Grisham said.
She vetoed a similar bill last year, arguing it would have created less rigorous standards by decreasing the number of required class units. This year’s version fixed the problem, she said.
“This is really how it should work — that if we care about something, we figure out how to minimize what constructive criticism or issues still remain and to think about what we can do to come together to get them resolved,” Lujan Grisham said.
Santa Fe Public Schools is well-equipped to implement the bill’s changes, said Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez, who attended the ceremony alongside students from Mandela International Magnet School.
“I think what this bill does is it really creates a unique opportunity for every school district to do something a little different,” Chavez said in an interview.
As the session nears its end at noon Thursday, Lujan Grisham said, she expects to see more bills making their way “upstairs,” to her office on the Capitol’s fourth floor.
For the most part, the session has proceeded smoothly, she said.
The budget for fiscal year 2025, which hasn’t cleared the Senate, includes most of the items Lujan Grisham has pushed for.
“I didn’t get everything, but in large part, it’s there . ... Money for public safety, money for the environment, money for education, money for health care are embedded squarely in the budget, and that’s what I’m looking for,” she said.
The governor said her primary concern is her public safety package, including several gun control bills, hasn’t moved quickly.
“My sense is that New Mexicans are going to be really upset if we don’t have a sound and productive public safety set of achievements this session,” she said.