Improving education not about ‘moonshots’

When new Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fired her first education secretary, Karen Trujillo, in July, 2019 after just six months on the job, I thought it was a rash decision.

But to be fair, I was biased. Like many people in Las Cruces, I knew Karen a little bit, and liked her. Still, the governor’s explanation seemed weak.

“It is absolutely imperative that we genuinely transform public education in this state,” she said. “We must identify a vibrant and ambitious new leader for the Public Education Department as soon as we can.”

“She just didn’t have the leadership qualities for us to deliver on the governor’s ‘moonshot,’” spokesman Tripp Stelnicki told the Albuquerque Journal.

Trujillo returned to Las Cruces, where she became one of the most respected and well-liked superintendents ever to serve the Las Cruces school district before her tragic death from a car-pedestrian accident in February 2021.

Six years and four education secretaries later, Gov. Lujan Grisham is still looking for that magical leader as she enters the lame duck portion of her eight-year term. Last week, she announced that Mariana Padilla will be the next education secretary expected to transform a system that consistently scores at or near the bottom on national standardized tests. Padilla will be the fifth person hired by Lujan Grisham to complete the task.

Trujillo was replaced by Ryan Stewart, who held the job from 2019 to 2021. Stewart was replaced by Kurt Steinhaus, who lasted from 2021 to 2023. Steinhaus was then replaced by Arsenio Romero, who only lasted from 2023 to this year. Now, it’s Padilla’s turn.

Not surprisingly, changing leaders every two years has not produced the “moonshot” that the governor once envisioned. But the sad truth is, there never was a moonshot to be had.

That was the dream then-Gov. Bill Richardson sold to us in 2003 when he convinced voters, myself included, to scrap the old state Board of Education in favor of an education secretary.

If we could put one person in charge, he said, that would change everything. We just need to find that magical leader who will turn things around.

There is no magical leader and our education system won’t be transformed by a moonshot. Improving our schools is a long, hard slog where progress comes incrementally and often far too slowly. And a school year lost to the Covid-19 pandemic certainly has not helped current students.

Progress is possible. But it will require consistent, uniform dedication to a set of principles that remains the same from the time a child enters first grade until they graduate from high school. And that simply can’t happen in a system where every new governor is looking to impose their own solution to fix the problem by the end of their term.

Sen. Bill Soules, who is chairman of the Education Committee, introduced legislation this year to go back to the voters and ask for a return to the school board system. It passed 36-1 in the Senate, but didn’t get put to a vote in the House.

Soules said during a recent community radio interview that he would work to increase support in the House and bring the legislation back for another try. He is running uncontested in this year’s election.

That change alone won’t fix anything. But it would create a stable, long-term leadership that could take a more far-sighted view, instead of always looking for a mythical moonshot that never comes.

Walter Rubel can be reached at waltrubel@gmail,com.