August 20 – For Alisa Cooper de Uribe, the state Department of Education’s teacher leadership programs were a revolution.
Cooper de Uribe, a bilingual first-grade teacher at New Mexico International School in Albuquerque, knew she wanted to stay in the classroom — after all, she said, her “heart is 100% with the students.” But she also longed for more opportunities to improve her leadership skills.
The teacher leadership programs she joined about seven years ago made that kind of growth possible. Cooper de Uribe began receiving regular policy updates from the Department of Public Instruction, attending workshops and sharing her new knowledge with her colleagues.
“It completely opened up my world in terms of [being] “A professional teacher who goes beyond just my classroom,” she said.
Cooper de Uribe now said she worries that those kinds of experiences could be jeopardized. Public Education Department officials have proposed a change that would remove teacher leadership programs from official department rules.
That doesn’t mean teacher leadership programs will go away, Amanda DeBell, assistant secretary of teaching, learning and innovation at the Department of Public Instruction, said in an interview. The programs will remain in the department’s official guidelines.
“Essentially nothing is going to change. … Putting it in the guidance means we feel it is so important that we are just doing it as an exercise,” DeBell said.
While the programs are expected to remain in place, educators and advocates are concerned that the rule change bodes ill for the future of leadership opportunities for classroom teachers. Dozens of educators from across the state submitted public comments opposing the switch from rule to guideline.
It is the latest in a series of controversial rule changes the department has made in the past year, including proposed changes to school meals and an effort to mandate 180 school days statewide that was halted by a judge in May amid a lawsuit.
“Whether intended or not, the repeal of the rule sends a message to education that their leadership, their investment in their development as professionals, and their seat at the table are not valued,” Amanda Aragon, executive director of the education policy organization NewMexicoKidsCAN, said in an interview.
Discussions about repealing the rule governing the state’s teacher leadership programs — while keeping the programs in the department’s guidelines — began about a year ago, DeBell said. The old rule has dates — such as references to programs in 2018 and 2020 — and definitions that are no longer consistent with the realities of the current program.
So, DeBell said, the rule change is just that: a change. It will update teacher leadership programs, but not eliminate them.
“We expect this group to be a valuable advisory group to the agency that will continue to exist. … We value this relationship and therefore believe it is important that it continues to develop,” she said.
Still, teachers and advocates argued that the repeal would have significant and negative consequences.
Hope Morales, executive director of the education leadership organization Teach Plus New Mexico, worries that the transition from rules to guidelines could lead to a quiet demise of the state’s education leadership programs, despite the department’s claims to the contrary.
“It will take away the accountability and transparency for the Department of Public Education to actually implement these programs. These programs could cease to exist under supervision,” said Morales, who is also a former classroom teacher and participates in the state’s teacher leadership programs.
Aragon argued that repealing the rule would be a blow to teachers’ morale.
“When your government agency, intentionally or unintentionally, lets you know that you’re not a priority, it absolutely impacts the way teachers think about whether this is a career they want to continue in,” she said.
That’s not good in a state already struggling with a teacher shortage. At the start of the 2023-24 school year, New Mexico was short about 750 teachers, according to the latest data from New Mexico State University’s Southwest Outreach Academic Research Evaluation and Policy Center.
The state’s teacher leadership programs helped Dawn Bilbrey stay committed to her profession.
Bilbrey is “the English department” at San Jon High School in the far eastern corner of the state. By 2016, she had spent nearly two decades in the classroom. She was tired, bored and ready to leave the profession.
Participation in the teacher leadership programs changed that.
“These programs keep me engaged. They give me something to do outside of teaching English, and they feed my passion for teaching,” Bilbrey said.
She said she worries that other teachers won’t have the opportunity to grow now that the teacher leadership rule has been eliminated.
“I teach these kids; I work with them every day. They are wonderful, wonderful individuals,” Bilbrey said. “They deserve teachers who are supported, who are trained, who are mentored, who are enriched.”
