Governor signs bill upping school board member training, transparency requirements

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill on Friday that advocates say is aimed at bolstering transparency from the leaders of school districts, fostering better relationships between school boards and their superintendents and providing more stability for students.

Senate Bill 137, which goes into effect July 1, raises the training requirements for board members, establishes restrictions around hiring and firing superintendents too soon and enhances accountability measures for school boards and candidates for seats on them.

“Stability within the district matters a lot on how effective the public schools are working,” bill sponsor Sen. William Soules, D-Las Cruces, told the Journal.

Under the bill, school board members in their first year on the job must complete 10 hours of training covering topics including budgeting and public school finance, laws and other protocols affecting school boards and best governance practices.

Current school board members must also complete five hours of training each year on similar topics.

“It’s very important that they understand their roles, their responsibilities, the laws that are involved in conducting business in schools,” said New Mexico School Boards Association Executive Director Joe Guillen, who added that his organization has provided training to board members for years.

Guillen has also pointed to the bill as a way to improve relationships between school boards and their superintendents, who have seen a large amount of turnover in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic and are also often felled by new school boards.

“Board-superintendent relations are very important,” Guillen said. “... We need to ensure that they each understand their roles and there’s communication, and they’re all working together.”

Through a provision in the bill prohibiting new school boards from firing their superintendents without cause until 60 days after those panels’ first meetings, Soules said he hoped the bill would also help curb superintendent turnover, for the betterment of students.

“Consistency in education is one of the most important things,” he said. “And the inconsistency of superintendent changeover, which usually occurs shortly after a new board comes in, is detrimental to all of education.”

Notably, SB 137 also eliminates a requirement for only candidates for school board seats in districts with enrollments above 12,000 students to report campaign contributions $500 or larger. Soules said that would help provide accountability to the public.

Before the session, Soules expressed some hesitation with the bill for not having enough teeth to actually require school board members to take training courses.

And while the bill does require the number of training hours board members complete to be published, Soules said he still wishes the bill had harsher penalties for those who refuse to receive mandatory training, such as legal grounds for malfeasance or for that board member’s recall.

During the session, the bill also faced some opposition. For example, some Republican lawmakers on the Senate floor expressed concerns about state government overreach and that the bill would diminish districts’ local control.

But the measure ultimately passed both floors’ chambers, each time in a landslide.