K-5 Plus rolled out in New Mexico this summer. How'd it go?

It was kindergarten's first day back at Highland Elementary School in Las Cruces on Aug. 13, and grades 1-5 were on their second day of school.

The majority of the students in Normajean Oleary's second grade classroom reported to her classroom for an extra 25 days in June and July, and are now following her into the school year.

She told reporters visiting her classroom that the children who took the summer off picked up classroom routines quickly from their peers. 

"Those other students have been in the rhythm," she said. "It helps a lot." 

"The majority of the students are acclimated to their routines and procedures and the schedule," Highland principal Joan Howard said, "and the curriculum was a very specific curriculum, because they know when they start the regular school year they might start with students who didn't attend over the summer."

25 more days of classroom time

The extra month of school was provided by K-5 Plus, a program funding 25 additional days of instruction time, with some requirements. It was rolled out statewide, with $120 million from the state legislature this year.

In Las Cruces and some other districts, the program was deemed a success. In others, not so much. 

In general, those districts that had some type of summer program, often K-3 Plus, already established, fared better while newcomers to the summer program around the state struggled.

Disappointment over the rollout may have figured in Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's dismissal of her education secretary, Karen Trujillo, after just six months on the job.

Education leaders tout the voluntary K-5 Plus program as essential to improving the state's educational outcomes.  

Why K-5 Plus is not 'summer school'

Each day must include at least five and a half hours of instruction, and the 25 days must begin no earlier than two months before the beginning of the regular school year.

The program is voluntary for students as well for teachers, who sometimes use summer months for other employment or to pursue higher education.

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School districts must plan carefully. While the state offers funding to seat students, the amount disbursed ultimately is based on the number of students enrolled on the 15th day, who attended 10 of those days.

The students also must follow their K-5 Plus teacher into the regular school year. 

Opportunity gaps

Keeping student cohorts together with an effective teacher is a priority based on research, according to New Mexico Public Education Department Deputy Secretary Gwen Perea-Warniment.

Warniment said that PED's research on K-5 Plus programs show that students progress more quickly when they and their classmates move up with the same teacher. 

She called it a crucial strategy in closing what PED calls an "opportunity gap." 

For years, New Mexico has ranked at or near the bottom of the United States in child well being and K-12 education.

The Anne E. Casey Foundation has ranked New Mexico at 50th two years in a row in its annual "Kids Counts" report on child education and wellbeing.

While the 2019 report noted improving trends in nearly every metric, it noted that the number of children living in high poverty areas is growing.

“On average, students in New Mexico experience about a year’s worth of learning every year," Warniment said. "They are moving steadily. What’s happening, though, is not all of the students are starting at the same place. Some are starting from behind even as we begin in Kindergarten or pre-K.”

For those students especially, experiences outside the classroom or adjacent to the regular school calendar are crucial in closing the gap. 

“Students who come from a low income background have access to 6,000 fewer hours of educational experiences than their more affluent peers," Warniment said. 

The legislature was persuaded by research from Utah State University that K-3 Plus, later K-5 Plus, works best when tied into the school year, rather than being a separate "summer school" program with a different teacher. 

Deming Public Schools Superintendent Arsenio Romero was an administrator in the Las Cruces Public Schools when New Mexico began funding K-3 plus programs in 2007.

Romero recalls the program appealing to some school districts right away, with interest only increasing after Susana Martinez became governor in 2011, instituting A-F school grades and fighting for legislation to hold back third graders who did not meet state reading standards.

Although retention bills were filed annually during Martinez's two terms, none passed.

Persuading kids and families

Since the funding needed to open up school buildings, pay teachers and provide services for students is based on attendance, districts need to persuade students and their families to spend some of their summer break at school. 

At Bell Elementary School in Deming, school resumed on July 2, and Chelsea McGinnis wasn't sure about sending her three children back so soon. 

McGinnis had sent one of her children, a special needs student, to the program last year, and saw a difference in what is known as "summer learning loss," when students move backward slightly after a long break from their study routine. 

"We actually have test results showing he regressed less when he attended the summer program versus the previous year when he didn’t attend," McGinnis said. 

Yet her children wanted time off for the summer. After meeting with the school's principal, Melanie Rinehart, the family agreed to give it a try and were not disappointed.

McGinnis said her children came home energized, talking about activities like building catapults (and learning about the engineering and the physics that make them work), with water sports and other recreation woven into the school day. 

A persistent problem in the K-3 Plus days, Romero noted, was that, “when you had students who were fifth-graders and a sibling was a second-grader, nobody would go because the fifth-grader couldn’t go.”

The district's answer was to use federal Title I funding to make school available for fourth- and fifth-grade students, too. Participation blossomed. When Romero became superintendent of Deming Public Schools, he instituted the same policy, with similar results.

During a period when the legislature cut funding for K-3 Plus over three years from 2015 to 2017, Deming and some other districts were pioneering K-5 Plus on their own. 

Cobre Consolidated School District in Grant County went further still, using federal funds to include sixth graders.

Some parents told program was mandatory

Some parents in Deming told the Sun-News that local elementary schools did not make it clear K-5 Plus was voluntary. Written communications from the schools, provided to the Sun-News, described it as "mandatory" and "required." 

Many parents who met with school principals to ask questions said they were clear the program was voluntary, and said schools worked with families to accommodate vacation plans.

However, some memos to parents said attendance was compulsory, warning parents that their children would fall behind and be ineligible for afterschool programs if they did not participate.

A letter sent to Bell Elementary families in May stated, "Your child is required to attend K-5 Plus at Bell Elementary" (emphasis in the original).

The letter continued, "Students must attend K-5 Plus for 90 percent of the days. On July 2, 2019, we will be starting our school year... Per the principal's request, it is mandatory that all students are here beginning July 2."

Romero acknowledged that Bell presented the program as mandatory, and praised the school for exceeding 90 percent participation this year – the highest in the Deming Public Schools.

The hard sell was not limited to Bell. A letter from Deming's Ruben S. Torres Elementary School warned parents, "if your child does not attend they will start the school year 5 weeks behind in their academics" and stated, "students who do not attend will not qualify to attend the after school program activities throughout the school year." 

"I commend Bell Elementary and all elementary schools in Deming for having such high expectations of our students and for wanting to provide the much needed instruction for our students," Romero said.

Families that made direct contact with schools were advised that planned absences for family commitments could be arranged and work sent home with students, Romero said, with similar accommodations available for teachers.

State committed $120M in 2019

During the 2019 legislative session, Democrats held strong majorities in both chambers as well as the governor's office. In January, Grisham appointed Trujillo as her education secretary.

Lawmakers committed $120 million to funding K-5 Plus across New Mexico, its largest commitment yet. The bill also funded Extended Learning programs. The appropriation was part of a package of reforms in response to a court order giving Lujan Grisham and the legislature until mid-April to provide adequate educational services to children facing opportunity gaps. 

However, districts were left with about two weeks this year to plan and apply for funding. Districts less experienced with the program needed to recruit families and teachers. In districts spread over wider areas, transportation presented both financial and health challenges, with very few air-conditioned buses and some long trips during some of the hottest days of the year.

Unique challenges in some districts, and rural districts in particular, suggest that one size did not fit all. 

By late July, Lujan Grisham's office conceded that fewer students were served than expected: 23,139 students, short of Trujillo's goal of 25,000. 

Trujillo was fired as PED Secretary in July because, the governor's office said, "expectations were not met in a number of areas." She was succeeded in August by the appointment of Ryan Stewart. 

'A tough rollout'

“There were maybe some schools that had the infrastructure and some that didn’t," Lt. Gov. Howie Morales said.

In Sierra County, the Truth or Consequences Municipal Schools shied away despite past participation in K-5 Plus.

Last year, after participation fell short of projections, Superintendent Randall Piper said the district had to return $30,000 to the state — yet still had to pay teachers to whom they had extended contracts.

"It’s a tough rollout, because it’s on projections," Piper said.

With only two teachers per grade level, Piper said the district could not fulfill the requirement that students follow their teacher from summer into fall. If he assigned a different teacher, those students would not eligible for state funding. 

Morales, who served in the legislature before being elected lieutenant governor in 2018, was hopeful lawmakers would incorporate feedback from districts and improve its model for extending K-5 Plus statewide.

"You pass something with the hopes of it being workable and accessible," Morales said, "and you come back the next session and you clean up, you do what needs to be done to make sure that we can roll that out in an appropriate way.”

Personnel and inequity

Mary Parr-Sanchez, president of teachers' union NEA-New Mexico, said changing teachers' contracted days in April is tough for many teachers. Usually, those are set in August, at the beginning of the school year.

While some districts, like Deming, paid K-5 Plus teachers at their daily contractual rate, others paid less. 

"High poverty schools have turnover with staff. Schools that have higher income students do not have trouble keeping staff," Parr-Sanchez said. "K-5 Plus targets students that have barriers to learning many times caused by poverty, but requires the same teacher. Therefore ... many low-income schools could not swing the staffing requirements." 

Due to a prolonged shortage of certified teachers in the state, Parr-Sanchez added, "many teachers have had to work double duty, covering classes and doing extra lesson planning." 

Perhaps related to that, Parr-Sanchez said some districts lean heavily on e-learning computer platforms.

"K-5 Plus is too reliant on screen time," she said.

Bus routes in rural districts

Transportation also presented challenges exposing inequities between districts. 

In Truth or Consequences, Superintendent Piper said students live as far as 57 miles from school.

"We have bus routes that go to Hillsboro, out to Winston, several areas where we would have had some lengthy bus routes,” Piper said.

Romero said that about five days into the summer session, Deming reduced routes, asking families further out in Luna County to bring their children to bus stops closer to town. 

"For the most part parents were very accepting of that, but there were some issues where they just couldn’t do it, so they weren’t able to participate," Romero said.

To cope with the summer heat, in which bus interiors can exceed outdoor temperatures by 10 degrees or more, Deming coordinated a pickup routine to reduce idling time, pulling the buses in with a line of students ready to load up within three minutes, in an effort to keep on-board temperatures below triple digits.

K-5 Plus did not appeal to everyone

Animas Public Schools Superintendent Loren Cushman said families and educators in his district gave K-5 Plus a pass because "kids need to be kids."

The district is located in rural Hidalgo County and Cushman said summers are a time for family, work and rodeos.

"We're on a four-day week, so it would have meant close to year-round school," Cushman said.

Providing the instructors as well as educational assistants, food service, custodial staff and special education services far exceeded what he projected the district would receive from the state. 

Besides that, Cushman said, "Kids need time to play in the summer and be kids; that's the attitude of our community."

Calls for flexibility and a tiered model

“Our job at the Public Education Department is to support districts and schools, to think about how to build this in the best possible way that meets the needs of the entire community," Deputy Secretary Warniment said.

Superintendents speaking with the Sun-News for this story unanimously called for greater flexibility, particularly for assigning teachers. 

With no funding available for classrooms who could not follow the teacher into the school year, Truth or Consequences Superintendent Piper said, "They lose the opportunity. Something's better than nothing, and what we took advantage of this year was nothing."

At the Cobre district in Bayard, a district with enthusiastic participation by teachers and families, associate superintendent Jose Carrillo said, "We always have one or two teachers who cannot stay with those students. We won’t get funded for them."

To accommodate them, the district dips into its Title I funds. 

As a prominent advocate for K-5 Plus, Deming Superintendent Romero has recommended a tiered funding model to the Legislative Education Study Committee, allowing districts with little to no experience with the program some support while they build local capacity. 

“The legislature took a really strong step and put a lot of funding in,” Gadsden Independent Schools Superintendent Travis Dempsey said.

The Gadsden district, in southern Doña Ana County, has successfully implemented the program since its inception in 2007, but Dempsey said it has had to subsidize its program from operational funds because it cannot always provide the required track from summer to fall with the same teacher. 

“That’s the part I’d like our legislature to look at and ask, what’s a good theory and what’s a good reality?” Dempsey said.

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonActor on Twitter.