El Rito Media News Services

Sen. Bill Soules, D-Las Cruces, said his proposal to overhaul the leadership structure of New Mexico’s public education system lost its, well, soul, after undergoing significant changes in the Senate Education Committee, of which he is the chair.

So in an effort to leapfrog over the dying Senate Joint Resolution 3, Soules is pushing a different measure, Senate Joint Resolution 15.

That legislation would still cut the Cabinet secretary position leading the state Public Education Department, a key feature of Soules’ original proposal.

But SJR 15 would leave intact another provision that would have been cut from New Mexico’s Constitution under SJR 3, drawing objections from charter schools.

Both bills propose bringing New Mexico back to having a statewide school board to oversee education policy and funding in the state. But by the time the Senate Education Committee lawmakers finished with SJR 3, the earlier proposal, it included a measure that would require a separate election for members of New Mexico’s Public Education Commission, which authorizes the state’s charter schools.

That committee change came after strong opposition to the original resolution from charter school advocates, who worried SJR 3’s plan to also eliminate the Public Education Commission would have excessively disrupted the system for authorizing such schools.

Calling for an entirely separate election for that body, however, left Soules with a sour taste in his mouth, he told the Senate Rules Committee on Monday.

“I wasn’t happy with my own bill at that point,” he said, referring to SJR 3. “… It wasn’t very feasible, it was going to be confusing.”

Instead, Soules opted for a reimagination of the original legislation in SJR 15, which would keep the Public Education Commission as-is but instead create a nine-member board envisioned as a panel of stakeholders.

Soules said parties including the governor, teachers unions, tribal nations and others would each choose a member to serve on the board. Creating a board of appointed members, Soules said, would help take politics out of the highest level of education decisions.

But SJR 15 still faced opposition last week.

Although the new resolution largely solved the problems charter schools had with the original one, Public Charter Schools of New Mexico Executive Director Matt Pahl still argued that lawmakers should hold off on SJR 15 and study it during the interim.

“It’s a significant change in direction on how we accomplish this, and we have a real great interim committee focused on education issues that have figured out some pretty big things,” he said, apparently referring to the Legislative Education Study Committee. “… We think they’re up to the challenge of figuring out the best path forward with this.”

Others took issue with the lack of clarity in the resolution as it stands over who exactly would serve on the panel, including Amanda Aragon, executive director of the education policy organization NewMexicoKidsCAN.

“It asks a lot of stakeholders, of residents of the state of New Mexico, to say ‘Vote on this, and then later, we’ll decide exactly who would be qualified to serve, who gets a seat,’ “ she said.

Soules said the exact method for appointing those members would be ironed out in separate legislation after the resolution wins approval from voters in a general election, noting those types of details cannot be included in resolutions.

SJR 15 ultimately passed the committee on a 5-3 vote after a separate motion to table the measure failed.