Ruling from above: 180 school days it is

It was evident from the beginning little would stop Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Public Education Secretary Arsenio Romero from making a grand gesture about the need for New Mexico public school students to spend more time in the classroom.

Thus, the decision to require a 180-day school year, determined through bureaucratic rule-making despite a recent state law that increased time in school using hours, not days, as a metric.

Roundly opposed both as an intrusion on local districts’ ability to set the calendar and on legislative lawmaking, with thousands of comments and hours of testimony against, the Public Education Department announced Thursday it would implement the rule starting in the fall.

Perhaps because of vociferous opposition, especially from rural districts that use a four-day week, the rule carves out exceptions for rural districts, early college high schools, and districts and charter schools with significant growth in reading proficiency rates.

It’s unclear, however, whether rural districts can make 180 days and keep the four-day week that works for them. Much of rural New Mexico, for example, has used a four-day school week for decades for a number of reasons. A shorter week decreases transportation costs, helps in recruiting teachers and allows folks who live far from town a day during the week to schedule doctors’ appointments without having to miss school. Four-day weeks don’t necessarily equate to improved learning in New Mexico, but then, learning often becomes a secondary issue when local control or time-honored traditions are threatened. Meanwhile, Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez built his 2024-25 school year schedule with the rule in mind.

Originally set at 174 days, the district will revert to a three-day Thanksgiving break and switch several school closure dates to learning days and meet the requirement.

The goal of the rule is admirable: Keep students learning more days, in classrooms with certified teachers, so they can begin closing the gap left by the pandemic and New Mexico’s lagging performance in education. It will do little, however, without a strategy to reduce chronic absenteeism. After all, if a student gets behind by missing classes, missing more classes only gets the student further behind. Some educators argue this could increase the gap, though some of their arguments are based more on their own schedules than students’ educational well-being.

Lawmakers have worked diligently to increase instructional time during the 2023 session from 990 hours to 1,140 hours. That boost in time on task has had no time to take effect. Now, the flexibility of some local districts to set a schedule that works for their communities has been removed. Even with the exceptions, lawsuits are expected, with the argument the rule takes away both school board and legislative authority.

So clear were lawmakers that they wanted the 2023 law to stand, they included a provision in budget legislation forbidding the Public Education Department from using funds to implement the rule. More days of school, after all, mean more money spent for transportation, utility bills and salaries. When the governor line-item vetoed the provision Wednesday, it was a clear signal the 180-day rule was on the way.

Which brings us to this: New Mexico politicians, parents, teachers and unions use public schools’ performance as an argument for or against almost any reform, depending on their needs and the political climate. Maybe they should adopt these simple metrics: Do New Mexico schoolchildren need to spend more time learning in school? If the answer is yes — and of course the answer is yes — then 180 days makes sense. How you get there matters, though. Otherwise, we’ll be left with sound and fury signifying a lawsuit and, maybe, self-interest.