New Mexico's school superintendents are turning over more since the pandemic. Here's why.

Bonnie Lightfoot was House Municipal Schools’ superintendent for six years.

Under her leadership, Lightfoot said her North Star was a mission to provide her small district with the same opportunities afforded to big cities, pushing her to fight to maintain students’ access to the arts, career-technical education and equipment and materials to get hands-on experience in agriculture.

But in a controversy over what Lightfoot would only describe as a student discipline issue she refused to discuss publicly, the House school board ousted her last year and bought out the remainder of her contract, according to a settlement agreement filed in district court.

Around the same time, she was named the state schools superintendent of the year.

“I didn’t want to leave, never intended to leave, had been there for six years. But a politically motivated community that was uninformed and unrelenting became where the situation was unresolvable,” she said. “... And so essentially what happened is they fired the superintendent of the year.”

Just under two-thirds of the leaders of New Mexico’s 89 school districts have been on the job for four years or less, or were doing the job on an acting or interim basis, according to data provided to the Journal by the Legislative Education Study Committee.

Nearly half had been superintendents for about two years or less, or also didn’t have the full job. Factoring in multiple turnovers in single districts, the New Mexico School Superintendents’ Association estimates school district bosses have turned over in even higher numbers.

It’s a problem that’s accelerated in recent years, superintendents’ association Executive Director Stan Rounds said.

Sometimes, superintendents exit amid controversy or are replaced by newly elected school boards. But in many cases in recent years, it’s because of discontent over remote learning and other decisions related to the pandemic, Rounds said.

“You’re the tip of the spear as a superintendent,” he told the Journal. “And so once you make certain decisions, you’re the one, then, if there’s going to be a price to be paid, that is where the price is paid.”

Constantly changing leadership has a tangible effect on students, Rounds said, because it’s difficult to maintain direction — or progress — with a revolving door of superintendents.

“If you’re turning over every couple of years, it’s hard to get momentum a lot of times as you go through changed leadership,” Rounds said. “... And at the end of the game, students lose.”

According to the LESC data , the average tenure of current superintendents in New Mexico is about four years.

Accelerated superintendent turnover stemming from the pandemic isn’t just a local issue, either — in September, Education Week reported “about half of the 500 largest districts replaced a superintendent between March 2020 and September 2022.”

For example, Albuquerque superintendent finalist Thomas Ahart, formerly the chief of Des Moines Public Schools, told the Journal a “highly political” controversy between the state and his district over bringing students back from remote learning eventually pushed him to request his own timely exit.

“I was exhausted. It was an excruciating two years,” he said in a late-January interview. “The last two years felt more like five or six.”

Changing climates

Politics are not supposed to enter decision-making in education. School board elections are nonpartisan, and though top district leaders may disagree with each other on how to reach a certain end, Rounds said they often still agree on what that end should be.

But politics still seep in.

“It’s been an extremely difficult few years. Things have changed, you know, in the politics of education and just the way people react to it,” said Albuquerque’s own outgoing superintendent, Scott Elder. “... It was wearing.”

Whereas superintendent firings throughout the country in many cases have been symptoms of larger culture wars being waged in boardrooms, Rounds and New Mexico School Boards Association Executive Director Joe Guillen both said relationships between boards and district bosses in the state are generally not so divisive.

Both sides, Guillen said, have faced greater pressure from their communities for their districts to do better. Boards have faced their own challenges in recent years with stress and hesitancy to run for such contentious positions.

Anecdotally, Guillen said boards parting ways with their superintendents over disagreements isn’t all that common. He added that in many cases, superintendents depart over the additional stress and work they faced during the pandemic.

Guillen said his organization helps facilitate better collaboration between school boards and their superintendents, partially in an effort to keep the sort of consistency Rounds said is crucial.

“If you hire a superintendent, and he wants to implement two or three new programs — if he’s not around long enough to see if those are working, then there’s no progress being made,” he said. “... It requires teamwork, on all parts, making sure that their top priority is student performance.”

And while it’s true that some superintendents are toppled by new boards, Guillen pointed to new legislation awaiting final approval to help address that problem.

The Legislature passed a measure to up the training requirements for New Mexico’s school board members. That legislation, Senate Bill 137, also has a provision that prohibits new boards from firing superintendents without cause until 60 days after those panels’ first meetings.

As of Friday evening, SB 137 was still sitting on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk.

Sometimes, Elder said, the rapid departure of superintendents catches him off guard, saying he occasionally looks up and finds himself surprised that “here we are, 3½ years later, and I don’t know everybody in the room.”

While he was grateful for the “invigorating” time he got to work with students, Elder still somewhat lamented his own departure, which takes place June 30.

“It’s a little bittersweet, because I’ve been with the district for over 30 years. And I’m sorry to go,” he said, speaking to the Journal after the news conference announcing his replacement, Gabriella Blakey.

But “look at all the gray,” Elder added, pointing at his own hair. “It didn’t use to be this way.”