New Mexico education takes a step backward in addressing vacancy problems

Oct. 4—During the first couple weeks of this school year, Jose Barrios Elementary School teacher Gabby Begay said her school in Silver City was down one of its two special education teachers.

While it didn't take too long to fill that position, she said the vacancy had an effect on her students — sowing uncertainty into their routines, especially among those who needed special education services, a student group that especially thrives on structure.

"I think they were worried ... because some of them had that special ed teacher last year. And so there was a little bit of concern," Begay said. "Anytime when we don't have a teacher ... it throws them off balance emotionally, academically — it's hard for them."

The total number of educator vacancies in public schools across New Mexico grew by roughly 9% from last year to 1,471, according to a report released earlier last week by New Mexico State University's Southwest Outreach Academic Research Evaluation & Policy Center.

Last school year's number of vacancies marked a small backslide from the year before, when the state made headway in its educator workforce woes and brought its teacher vacancy count back to pre-pandemic levels.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic onset, New Mexico educator vacancies spiked to a five-year high of 1,727 in 2021. The year after, the number of vacancies dropped to 1,344, which education officials touted as a step in the right direction, albeit on a long journey.

This year's number, which is greater than 2022's by almost 130 open positions, appears to be a small step backward in that journey. The vacancy totals are made up of almost a dozen categories of educators, not just teachers, that also include educational assistants, counselors and administrators.

The state Public Education Department did not respond in time for publication to a question about the percentage of the state's educator population this year's vacancy totals make up.

Current vacancies in Albuquerque Public Schools, New Mexico's largest school district, make up at least about 30% of the state's educator vacancy total. According to the district human resources department, APS had 436 educator vacancies, 57 of which were teachers and interventionists. That number did not include three of the categories of employees NMSU classified as educators — speech language pathologists, educational diagnosticians and school psychologists.

While schools in the rural corners of New Mexico may not always face the high volume of vacancies APS does, they encounter a different set of problems when they have them, said Dawn Bilbrey, a high school teacher in the village of San Jon{span style="background-color: #deffde;"},{/span} near the New Mexico-Texas border.

"You don't want to be in San Jon unless you have a reason to be in San Jon. And that reason is usually family roots," she said. "If we lose teachers, we wouldn't be able to replace them."

Across New Mexico, teacher vacancies specifically grew the most, from 690 in 2022 to 751 in 2023. Special education and elementary school teachers, respectively, were the first and second highest areas of need among all teachers, according to the report.

Those two teacher groups also had the greatest number of vacancies at APS, but their rankings were reversed — educational assistants, instead of special education teachers, had the most open positions with 210. Educational assistants had 146.

But there is good news on both of those fronts.

New Mexico saw a jump in the number of prospective educators enrolling in preparation programs at schools of higher education or other institutions, according to the report. Last school year, 2,055 students were admitted to such programs. The school year before, there were 1,886.

Special education and elementary school teachers-to-be together made up more than half of those admissions. Those two groups also made up the majority of students who completed educator preparation programs, with a combined 656.