Governor highlights millions in investments she supports for in literacy initiatives

SANTA FE — Coming out of college, Amy Biehl Community School teacher Melissa Romero didn’t feel equipped to teach reading to her students.

Then she took a professional development course commonly known as LETRS, which is New Mexico’s flagship offering to school educators in the science of how to teach reading, or structured literacy.

“It’s been very eye-opening,” she said. “ ... These trainings are helping us prepare for the actual students that we see in the classroom.”

That includes Janet Guerra’s daughter, who is in Romero’s first grade class and has seen explosive gains in her daughter’s reading skills.

“She really didn’t have any struggles trying to read or sound out letters,” Guerra said of her daughter. “But now in first grade, she’s doing really well.”

Funding for structured literacy training, providing new investments for a literacy institute and building summer reading intervention programs were among several initiatives Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham highlighted during a news conference Thursday.

In all, Lujan Grisham is supporting more than $102 million in investments for improving literacy among children and adults. Some of those specific investments would match what lawmakers set aside last year.

“This is a game changer. This is what really makes the difference in education,” she said.

Across New Mexico, reading and writing proficiency rates were at 38% last school year, an increase of about 4 percentage points from the year before, according to standardized assessment results. Lujan Grisham has touted structured literacy as the source of those gains.

For the core of her structured literacy priorities, Lujan Grisham is asking for $50.1 million during the current legislative session. During the last session, lawmakers appropriated $8 million for structured literacy, with another $13.5 million for early literacy and reading support.

Among the new investments Lujan Grisham is asking for is a $30 million appropriation specifically for summer intervention programs to help some 10,000 students across the state in need of reading support.

Lujan Grisham also is pushing for a $30 million investment in a brick-and-mortar literacy institute, a project the state Public Education Department has said is on hold as the department awaits legislative approval of those dollars.

The governor’s request for the literacy institute is not a done deal — in its budget recommendation for the coming fiscal year, the Legislative Finance Committee set aside only a tenth of her $30 million ask.

That said, Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, the chair of the LFC, appeared at Lujan Grisham’s news conference to voice support for enhancing the state’s structured literacy mission.

“We should support this in child well-being, and Republicans and Democrats agree. They (agree) on this literacy program,” he said.

Muñoz, who also chairs the Senate Finance Committee, did not immediately return a call for comment on the LFC’s budget recommendation for Lujan Grisham’s literacy institute.