Report from Santa Fe; Mary Lou Cameron and Roger Montgomery

["Pomp and Circumstance." plays in the background." plays in the background. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education. For bachelors, masters, and PhD degrees, New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-T-E-C-H. The art of communicating science, Los Alamos National Laboratory, reaching out and working to make a better New Mexico. I think we're always up in October. What happens between now and January is very, very

important to us, that we have the involvement with our people back home, that we are not trying to carry this load alone, but that our members are in here with us, and that we move forward with our agenda for education starting today, out to over the 28th and going straight through into February. Mary knew the feeling I get when I look at the interim legislative work is so critical, looking to contacts all year round. But I've said it over the years, we've talked with the former State School Superintendent. We've talked to the Commission on Higher Education. They talk about a seamless web between lower education, meaning the elementary school

of high schools and higher education. And yet, we still get to the point where people will say, we're letting students in who can't do the college work. There's still a little finger pointing there. But how can we be sure that education doesn't go down the bottom of the barrel again when we get into a legislative session? I think we all have to be speaking the same message. We need to stop apologizing when we're asking for the needs of education, which includes salaries, includes programs. We need to be positive. And also, we're putting what we're doing that's good. We tend to say I'm just a teacher or this isn't working or those sorts of negative remarks. We need to be more forthcoming with what we are doing and what we're doing right. Roger Montgomery, when I talked to Bill Fortunetti about four years ago, was in red tone. And the National League of Cities said, we're having trouble with the deep pocket skies

in Washington. They set their own priorities. And the only way we can possibly handle our legislative program is to come back to the local level. We can't put up the kind of money they do in Washington. Is this basically what the educators are doing now? Yes, we are focusing on the local. And as Murray Lewis said, organizing and getting educators and community groups and others at the local level to focus on the needs and the successes of education, that's where it's got to come. But it's different in New Mexico than most other states and that 94-95% of this funding for our public schools comes from the state. So it all is in the hands of the legislature and we've got to have that local grassroots involvement and support to put the focus and the priority on the minds of legislators as they come to Santa Fe and deal with the needs of education in their annual legislative session.

How could we break away from the apologetic attitude we have? I always wonder whether or not teachers are voting as a group. I have never heard anyone, for example, say where I am today to my Pentium computer or giving the credit to a, you know, say, oh, everything I am today, I owe to my laptop. They're able to pinpoint. I owe, you know, I still remember one of my teachers, Maggie McGuire. This is a great, tough lady from a Pittsburgh school and she was, she was rough and tough. You never forget her. That's right. You know, you never would say that woman was the one who guided me properly, not a computer, not something like that. How can we get in there to make sure that the next step of the way we're going to try to substitute the computers for the teachers? Well, Ernie, I think that's happening. I think there are examples all over the state and I would say several. We had a Joint Legislative Conference this, a Joint Education

Issues Conference this past Friday with the, with the Mexico Federation of Teachers and we had 250 or 300 educators from all over the state participating in hands-on instructional programs and educator-led programs about good things that are going on and how to use those things in the classrooms and the professionals and the school employees in the state are indeed stepping forward and taking over and having a more meaningful and positive input into what's going on and helping each other in the classrooms. In a couple of weeks, we've got a massive teacher teaching teacher program underway for the third or fourth year straight down in Las Cruces where we have five or six hundred school employees in the Las Cruces public schools who come together and participate in the same kind of seminars and activities with educators showing their wares and teaching others and sharing with others the good things that do it. Sure, computers and technology are important but what's going on in those

classrooms and the contact between the educator and the student is also important and that cannot be replaced by a machine. Roger, when we have done shows, for example, with Dr. Dan Lopez from the Mexico Tech, we were talking again about distance learning. We've done them with Dr. Everett Frost who is a very cognizant of what can be done with computers. Everyone knows the value, especially when we're looking at the rural areas of the state. But I noticed when it was a governor's conference and one of the first things they said was look what we can do with the distance learning. Look what we can do. For example, this program goes on over an internet as such a network for in the Mexico of the PBS station. We know what we can do with it but again the first thing they said from the Western governor's conference, the association was they said there's going to cost a lot of money and when they say that to me that means we're going to have to cut into the teacher's salary somehow. I have a question, Mary,

I've asked you this before. I hope I won't be asking for the next 10 years. But when we talk to teachers, I have a problem using saying how do you stay focused on single issues by the very nature of teachers. They get involved in whether or not children are being abused, whether children are getting proper health care, whether they're getting the proper diets, the proper food, and all of these impact on the teacher. So when they do look at legislative programs, they're usually saying, well, we are concerned, for example, about teenage pregnancy, we're concerned, and the message is such. Their impact gets watered down a bit. They don't come to Santa Fe and say, I've got one issue in mind and that's salaries. That's what I'm looking at. How can you get them more focused on this legislative picture? Or is it better that we say we

don't want them to change? We want this total involvement we have with our youth. Well, certainly, I think we cannot change teachers from having a total involvement. Most of us that are in teaching are in there because we do educate a whole child. We don't get just one-third of that child at our classroom doors every day, our classroom period. We get that whole child and we have to deal with that just to move forward in the classroom and to survive in the classroom. It is difficult to focus on salaries. We have one thing we're beaten down because we say salary salaries and people say, well, all you care about is salaries. However, I think the statistics show over the last 10 years or so, we have said, okay, let's go and do what's best to move education forward in the areas of childcare and abuse. And even last year we concentrated all of our efforts on the funding formula changes, knowing that the majority of that money would go to programs and not to our salaries. I think it's time now that we show those statistics over the past 10, 15 years and say,

you know, we have given, we have been willing to put aside focus on salaries in order to better reach the children. But we also know we're losing our educators. They're going to California, they're going to Texas are all anywhere but New Mexico right now. We're 44th in the nation in salaries and teachers also have to survive. And so they're looking at it and say, I can work with children, but I can work with them in Colorado or Texas or Utah or even California and Nevada and have a higher level of living for my family and we have families too. So we need to, we need to start saying, this is what we've done, but now this is, we need to focus and get that commitment back to raising our salaries to at least the regional average. Roger, let me ask you, what, where do we stand now? There was, it was almost like a raid for a while of the California school saying, you want to leave New Mexico? Come on out now.

When we talk about economic development, we're always saying we've got to get our economic development together. So student, we don't have to leave New Mexico. They have to go out there, make a living in California so they can afford to come back to New Mexico. Give us some specifics if you will on what we're looking at from the standpoint of teacher salaries compared to these entry levels, for example. We made some intros, but if I leave, I'm teaching today in a school in New Mexico and I want to go to California, what am I looking at a difference in starting salary? Tremendous difference, Ernie, and not so much in starting salary, but experience salary. You know, several years ago, the New Mexico legislature took the lead in the in the nation and step forward and said, we need a significant boost in the beginning salary. We passed legislation and wrote it into law that every certified teacher in this state will make at least 22,000 miles a year. And on a relative basis, that was a base figure. That's a base figure. That's still in

law now. And the beginning salary on an average basis is between 22 and 23,000 in the state, but contrast that with the average salary for a teacher that has 12 years of teaching experience and a master's degree is making 30,000. And the national average is well over 36 or 37,000 now and increasing. Let's stop there, Ian, because those figures come out pretty fast. If I start in the Mexico, I'd base salary is 22,000. That's correct. That's not too bad compared to other states. What about after, say, 10 years or so goes that look at those other figures again with the couple of education. I suddenly get a master's degree. Master's degree and 10, 12 years experience is what the average teacher in New Mexico has. 12 years teaching experience in a master's degree makes 30,000 and $5 based on the state Department of Education figures. On a national basis, that average is over 37,000. As you look at California and Nevada and those other surrounding states that are pulling off good quality teachers from New Mexico,

they're getting 20 to 25 percent increase just to go across the border and take a comfortable job with their, with the same teaching credentials and experience. You know, just about the time that this broadcast is viewed, we're going to have a swearing in of Michael Davis as the new Superintendent of Public Instruction. He'll be succeeding Alan Morgan. I think you did a superb job over there. One of the things that was very interesting there was that when the search was underway for a successor for Alan, Alan Morgan, the Johnson administration said, what we're going to do is we're going to reach out and offer $125,000. Then the decision, and there were some very competent people, both outside and within the state who applied for that job, when they finally thought if they're going to offer it, Michael Davis was selected. They said,

well, we'll offer him not $125,000, we'll offer him $100,000 and then it was cut back to $85,000. Now, I know that I'd made the comment at the time that Dr. J. Placido Garcia, very competent young man who works for the Legislative Education Study Committee. I thought he was, he was one of the applicants. Yes. I thought it was lucky that he didn't get the job because since he's a native in the Mexican, he would have probably had to pay them to take the job. We see, let me ask you now, because you've had your experience, you go back down to the south-eastern corner of this state, and the southwest corner, that's right, over in the Deming, Silver City, Lloydsburg area, they're having problems now with employment and such, and are we penalizing our teachers saying they're from the Mexico, so they won't notice the difference in the south-way.

I think at one point we could assume that natives would stay in the state and work for our lower salary just to locate in your families and to be part of New Mexico. I'm finding one more native leaving and saying, you know, I've stayed as long as I could, but now I have to move on, even though I love New Mexico, I love Deming, I love Roswell Santa Fe. We have to go somewhere where we can get more economical advantages, and that is not to say that the dedication of these employees are not there. The educational employees I find are as dedicated as ever, they're professional, but they also have a life that they need to leave, and they want for their children, what you want for your children, or the governor wants for his children, or the CEOs want. Yeah, I've figured I've been dealing with teachers for children for almost 50 years,

and still doing it. Roger, what kind of surprise are we going to look for? I gather that the relationship between the Mexico Federation of Teachers and NEA in New Mexico is probably working better now than it has in any time in my memory that goes back, you know, several years goes back to the time when the classroom teachers and the Federation of Teachers in NEA in New Mexico seems to be working very, very close knit right now. What are we looking at there? Ernie, you're right. The relationship and the effectiveness of both the NEA and NEA in Mexico is that it's all time highest. We put down our swords four or five years ago and started working together, and as you know, on a national level, we are heavily into merger discussions and looking at whether the NEA on the national level and AFT on the national level can come together as one consolidated organization, NEA in New Mexico, and the New Mexico Federation of Teachers have

had that on the back burner for a few years, and I'm starting to look more closely now at merging our organizations and our agenda. We are working very closely, as I mentioned, with the education conference last week in the upcoming legislative session, and doing our programs as a joint program rather than duplicating efforts. And we're looking closely at that, but you asked about a big surprise. I think the big challenge for this upcoming legislative session is going to be what to do with all the money that's all of a sudden available and how to deal with the political needs of the administration and others on what to do with that money and where education is going to stand in that mix. I don't think there's any question in anybody's mind, and of course we're not as removed or as objective perhaps as others might be, but education has to be by far the top priority and the education in the allocation of resources and prepared for the future of the state. And I think that's going to be paired very closely with the political agenda to reduce taxes and

return money to the citizens of the state and how that all plays out. Now we're dealing with schools and school employees that write at the bottom of the ladder in terms of financial consideration. We're dealing with the needs of the state to build and continue to build reserves and the financial strength on the backbones of the school employees. And I don't think that's going to last very much longer. We've got to turn this around and we've got to put the resources into the schools, into the hands of the employees to do the job that needs to be done, and the job that these students and the future of this nation and this state deserve in that whole process. So it's going to be a tough session. We're going to be in the forefront speaking to the needs of education and the needs to put those dollars into the schools and the support for the children. When we're talking about a possible consolidation with the two major teachers' unions,

can we look at that without thinking of it in terms of downsizing, which is a rather uncomfortable term, you know, that say, well, it'd be more profitable for us if we can downside steps. I still find that in most cases, the administrative costs are quite small when we look at the labor unions as opposed to what we see in business itself. I'd you let me ask you first and we'll check with Mary. Absolutely. I don't see downsizing in the picture at all. I see streamlining of our agendas and better use of the resources, but early we've got 36,000 plus public school employees in this state. You add to higher education employees, we're at 50,000 no more. And the staff that the New Mexico Federation of Teachers and the Indian New Mexico have are by no means adequate to organize and serve the needs of those 50,000 plus school employees. So it's not a matter of downsizing at all. It's a matter of focusing our agenda and resources on the needs. And if we can get those 50,000 employees organized and participating

and leading the agenda, we can indeed make a very strong difference in this state. Mary Lou, when we often hear, I say, creative ways of raising money for schools, and the governor said several times, if we can cut down the cost of like building prisons and operating prisons and financing prisons, we can take that money for education. We're still in a state where we spend probably 20,000 some thousand dollars at the lowest level to incarcerate one inmate for one year. And I think we probably look at what about, and I used to say $6,000 for one student smaller than that. It's probably closer to three now, isn't it? And what we pay for one student for a year. We're still up around five, six thousand up for student when you add all the programs into that. But that's still a small amount compared to a prisoner. But we also need to look at those prisoners and say, you know, most of those have an educational level that is very

low. Their dropouts, they carry a lot of the problems with them into prison. So we're not doing a favor. We, some of our employees would love to work in a facility that's as nice as some of the new facilities been built for, for prisons. The, we keep hearing if we can save money on our prison, save, do our highways, do all of these different things, then we can give it to education. Well, as Roger says, we are being told we're in a great economic uprise in our state. We have money coming in, the gaming, like just last night, and this morning the news about the monies that are coming in from what five of the 14 or nine of the 14 cars. There should be about five out of eight that owe money this time. But the money's coming in. I don't think we have that excuse now. You gotta let me save the monies on the prison. This is the chance we have to say, you need to spend that money on education. That has to be our priority, not after the prison, it's not after the highways. But most people are not, when they save their priorities,

education is usually there. And our public is giving us grades on our local schools, because that's the school we know best. And we feel the public feels like we are working hard. And they want things like computers in the classroom. A recent talk came out that said, public wants a part of the reform. The number one thing was having a computer in every classroom. And we talk about laptops and all these other technological, technological advantages. But just having one computer in every classroom is, you would think that could be accomplished, because the students, we talk work, you know, school to work, we have to prepare them. And we can't prepare them. Funding education like we are today. And we can't prepare them by not having the best teacher stay here in our state and working with those students. As we look at the, I guess, the administrations and looking at, and the lawmakers projections now, they're looking at about 60 million dollars more coming in in this current fiscal year than they had projected.

Last time, by the way, and I do take a pen and a back when I'm right, that we're going to hit a 20 million dollars more, that hit it right on the button. I'm not ready to project yet, because they're not including the lottery money in their, in their projections. But again, we're holding out a bone, if you will, for some of the students when we say we can use the lottery, stay lottery proceeds to help fund their college education. And then say we may not be able to do that after two or three years. That's like waving a little carrot out there and then pulling it back. Somehow we, that whole program was one, there was no criticism of when people said, look at this, I'm guaranteed my tuition for college. This is a major step, you know, that we're looking at. Roger, the time always goes too fast, but we're looking at, let's say 60 days between now and a 30 day legislative session. I know you're going to be talking to the teachers

and the friends with the classroom, the, the federation of teachers. What can we say to the parents and the viewers out there now to make sure that we don't lose a year or such between now and the next 60 days session? I think we say to the parents that our children are important, they're important to the parents as well as to the educators of this state. And it's time for the parents to stand up and take note and to let their legislators know that education and educational opportunities for their kids is important and that they expect education to be the top priority. They expect substantial increase in the financial resources allocated to the public schools and they're going to demand that. And if that doesn't happen, there's going to be a price to pay after this legislative session in terms of who stays in office and leads this state in elected positions. Mary Lou, you're almost, you know, like in two worlds. They always say, well she's one of us former teacher, but you're always a teacher then, but you're president of this

organization. Final message you would have today. Not just to your members, those who may not be members and those who are out there families and friends too. The message that we need to get out is that we all need to be working together in our communities. We are modeling this through our collaboration with the New Mexico Federation of Teachers, Ernie Johnson, their president. We're working together. We're saying that we can no longer afford to divide. We have to be together and the best way for that is for parents, community members, the citizens and educators all be standing together to say education is our priority. It is the future of our world and our state as well. And we have to be in there together given the same message to the legislation and to our governor. And I don't have to look ahead now and say I'm going to have to yell at the school teachers again. They're going to be with it this time and know that they have every right to go out and say we want to be heard. They are more and more ready to say that. They feel that they have given a lot in order to get the things into the classrooms and school houses that are needed.

And we're getting tired. And I think when we get tired we know how to resist and to come back and say this is the priority. And we will be out there doing that issue. How do you feel more responsiveness from the administration itself, the executive? Yes, I think there's an interest there. Again, there's a political agenda, but I think there is a real strong interest in education for a lot of reasons. And I'm looking forward to what the executive is going to put forth in their education agenda as a part of this upcoming legislative session. And as we always say, the agenda should be children first. We all agree with that. Absolutely. I'd like to thank our guest today, Mary Lou Cameron, who is the president of NEA in New Mexico, Roger Montgomery, executive secretary for NEA in New Mexico, like to thank you and you're concerned about our children on report from Santa Fe. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education for bachelor's, masters and PhD degrees.

New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-TECH. The art of communicating science, Los Alamos National Laboratory, reaching out and working to make a better New Mexico.