EDUCATION IN BRIEF
Peñasco whittles down superintendent candidates
A total of 19 applicants put their names in for the superintendent’s position at Peñasco Independent School District. Current superintendent Marvin MacAuley has taken a position with the Mora school district.
Of the candidates, two dropped out before the board reviewed applications on June 10 and chose eight applicants for a Meet & Greet interviews with staff and parents. Three dropped out before the Meet & Greet/Stakeholders interviews held Monday (June 17), according to district staff. That leaves five applicants. The board will hold final interviews June 24 for selected finalists, according to Annette Sanchez of the district.
Taos kids help train service dogs
Students from the New Mexico School for the Deaf are spending a few days a week during June and July in Taos training service dogs with the Taos-based, eight-member Taos Canine-Assisted Leadership Crew.
The dogs will go on to be service dogs for people with disabilities or be working dogs providing comfort after crisis or with victims in courthouses.
This paid work experience also provides students with professional training in Mental Health First Aid, American Red Cross First Aid and CPR (for humans), Pet Tech First Aid and CPR for dogs, ServSafe Food Handler, self-advocacy skills, public speaking skills as well as résumé writing.
Training service dogs is a challenging work experience, where clear communication, leadership, empathy, patience and consistency are all required.
A graduation ceremony in Taos on July 12 completes the training.
New Mexico at bottom, again
New Mexico fell to last place again out of the 50 states in child well-being, as calculated by researchers in the 2019 Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
This is the third time the state has ranked last. The next two lowest states are both in the south, with Louisiana ranked 49th this year, and Mississippi up to 48th. New Hampshire ranked first for child well-being in the United States.
“It’s disappointing, but not terribly surprising to see New Mexico ranked at the bottom again, given the last 10 years,” said James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children, which runs the state’s Kids Count program, in a statement. “It is going to take sustained investment to undo the damage from a decade of underfunding all of our child-serving programs and services like health care, child care and K-12 education.”
The Kids Count Data Book ranks the 50 states on 16 indicators of child well-being organized under the four categories of economic well-being, education, health and family and community. The indicators include areas such as the child poverty rate, child and teen death rates and the teen birthrate, among others.
As it did in 2018, New Mexico ranked last in education measures, and also fell to last place in the family and community domain. The state’s child poverty rate dipped from 30 percent to 27 percent, an improvement that helped it move up in some areas.