The Chile Wire with Abe Baldonado. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Chile Wire. It's a new year. This is a new episode.

It's our first episode of the year, and I'm delighted to introduce my guest today, who's a friend but also a great mentor of mine, Jamie Gonzales with Public Charter Schools of New Mexico. Jamie serves as the advocacy director, and we're honored to have her here today. And Jamie, welcome to the Chile Wire. I know you've tuned in, you've watched, you've learned a lot about this. Even before I started doing this, we had had conversations about what I was up to, and this is my new endeavor doing the Chili Wire, so it's great to have you on as a friend and former mentor.

And we get to talk about some of our favorite conversations that we enjoy as education. And so want to welcome you and I have to ask before we dive into the nitty gritty, red or green?

Honestly, red.

Red? Wow. That's interesting pick. I thought you would have gone green. But okay.

Alright. Red it is. Well, Jamie, thank you for coming on today. I want to open it up to you to talk a little bit about your role with Public Charter Schools of New Mexico and tell us and our viewers who is the Public Charter Schools of New Mexico.

Yeah. Great. Thank you so much, Abe, for having me on. So Public Charter Schools of New Mexico is a member organization, and we represent charters across public charter schools across the state. In advocacy and policy efforts, we represent them at the Roundhouse.

We also provide some professional development opportunities for them and networking opportunities for them. And something that's kind of a little bit different about our association compared to other charter associations in other states is PCS and M also is the grant manager for the CSP grant, which is the federal monies available to charter schools. And so that runs out of our organization and is available to any charter school, even charter schools that don't belong to PCS and M.

Oh, wow. That's interesting. And, Jamie, I think it's good to talk about what are charter schools. And I think a lot of folks hear this. I think there's a large number of folks who have now opted their children into charter schools, but there's also a lot of folks out there who maybe may not be aware of what charter school is.

I think rural New Mexico oftentimes doesn't have a whole lot of charters. So what we're talking about today might be a little bit foreign to them of how does a charter school function? What is a charter school? Is it a private school? And so, you know, can you run us through what is a charter school and what role do they play in our education system?

Sure. So in New Mexico, it's a little bit different than other states, and there's three types of public schools. There's traditional schools, there's magnet schools, and then there's public charter schools. And they're just an option of choice. Charter schools are mission oriented.

They're all designed around a single mission, And those missions range from dual language to the arts to

The trades.

TE. Exactly. And also reengagement charters are a big thing. STEM is a big, leading trend. And it's really meant so they are locally and community based, and they all serve a specific community need.

But they're free. And you enroll, they each have a lottery system for enrollment. So you're interested in going on the charter school, you enter a lottery, and families are chosen that way. And that provides an equity aspect to which students attend all of our wonderful charter schools.

Right. And Jamie, I'm a former charter school teacher, school board member of a charter school as well. And I'm a product of our traditional schools. So I've been fortunate to see all the different perspectives. And charters play a very wonderful role in our education ecosystem.

But they perform really well. And so I'd love for you to highlight just how well charter schools are performing academically throughout our state because there are a number of charter schools that are spotlight schools, which I understand is one of the highest levels of recognition that you could receive as a school. But charters are paving the way of academic success.

Yeah. They really are. And charters are so interesting. So as a parent or a family or even a kid, you know, decides like, hey. I wanna pursue arts or I wanna pursue STEM.

And so you find a charter school that really allows them to lean into whatever specific interest they have. But then like you said, like, our charter schools actually do outperform year over year. They outperform traditional schools in literacy, math, and in science. In 2025, charter schools statewide performed seven percentage points higher in literacy and science than traditional schools and four percentage points higher in math. And that trend keeps even when you look at low income students.

And so for example, statewide in 2025, public charter schools outperformed traditional schools with low income students in literacy by four percentage points. And that may not seem like a lot, but it is statistically significant, and each one of those points represents about 320 kids. So when I say four percentage points, what I'm actually saying is that over 1,200 more low income students are reading at grade level in our charter schools.

Wow. That's amazing. And could smaller class sizes be attributed to that? Because charters oftentimes have much smaller classroom sizes. So you see that there's a lot more one on one attention between a teacher and their students, especially those students who are perhaps severely behind and maybe need to be caught up to other students.

I've seen it myself in the classroom, but those smaller class sizes tend to help lift those numbers. And I'm sure that's just one attribute to that, but and again, it goes to also recruiting some of the best teachers across our state.

Yeah. So yes. So smaller class sizes is definitely something you would see if you go and visit one of our charter schools. They do tend to be really invested in their teacher recruitment. And one of the really great things about being a charter school is you can pay teachers a little bit more, and they do.

And they ask a lot of their teachers. Their teachers put in a lot of time, and everybody in a charter school is really invested in that charter's mission and the success of their students and making sure that their families feel a certain level of engagement and belonging.

Absolutely. And I also want to add what I experienced not only when I was in the classroom, but when I was on the school board of our local charter school. The autonomy that is given to teachers to be creative, to lesson plan, and not have it so scripted. Oftentimes we see a lot of schools, they hand you your lesson plan, that's what you teach for the year. Many charter schools actually give a lot of autonomy to educators to craft their own lesson plans and their learning targets and, you know, really really looking out for the child and looking out for the student.

And I have to say that was one of the things that I was fascinated with when I entered the classroom and I was learning the charter system as a teacher was, hey, you have some autonomy here of how you want to tackle this state standard for this lesson plan. We we're going to give you the utmost creativity to of how you want to work with your students. And of course, pedagogy that has been shown to be be proven to work. But there was that autonomy that I really found fascinating because I looked back at my traditional public school experience and I looked back and I was like, it was actually pretty scripted. Like, was read the chapter, do the section review, and that was it.

Like, that was your learning and versus in the charter school, you were given multiple pathways of how do you wanna engage students with a certain lesson plan and what do you want them to have to get out of it, and how do they master the content? Because I think a lot of it is memorization. I think a lot what I've seen in a lot of classrooms is that we rely on students to memorize rather than truly master the content. And I've seen charter schools really do a wonderful job of we want our students to master the curriculum.

Yeah. And I I think when I think about charter schools and what they do that's really special around instruction, and it varies. All of our charter schools have different missions, and when you walk through them, they can look very different and feel very different. You know, there are some charter schools that have a more laid out, this is our way that we do instruction, And some of those charters are extremely successful, like Jade Rivera's school in the Valley.

Yeah. I've I've actually been able to tour that school. It's wonderful. Albuquerque Collegiate. Mhmm.

I was a fellow changemaker through the program and we got to see Jade's school. We got to sit in on classroom sessions and it is a well oiled functioning machine.

Yeah. And and Jade has the Albuquerque Collegiate Way, and she, you know, ensures that any teacher that she hires signs on to that way. And that's not to say that you're not seeing the teacher's personality or their interaction with the kids, but they do have a way that they teach instruction because she's so focused on the data and she's so focused on ensuring that those kids get a real educational opportunity to master every state standard. And that's really what she's committed to. I think the other thing that charters do really well is they support their teachers super well.

Yeah.

They support them through professional development really well. They support them by taking off some of, like, some of the burdens that might land on a teacher in a traditional school. Our charter leaders structure their schools so that doesn't land on the teacher. And I think, like, you know, when you teach teachers a really good way to do something and then you eliminate some of these extra burdens that are getting in their way and sucking their energy and burning them out, you know, you'd be amazed at just how well that translates to students achieving, students enjoying school, and student students actually being invested in their own education.

Absolutely. And it's the old motto, let teachers teach. Mhmm. And I think that's amazing. And also on Albuquerque Collegiate, one thing that fascinated me when we toured their facility and got to understand their school system, the amount of students from economically disadvantaged families, and they're performing very, very well.

So oftentimes we hear, well, it's because this school district's in a very impoverished neighborhood. We we make excuses of why academic performance isn't happening and that really, really pops the balloon on that narrative because that is in fact not true. It's when you challenge students with rigor and you set high expectations for them, they deliver. And that's something I saw at Albuquerque Collegiate was you have a group of students who don't come from the the greatest zip code. Right?

Like, often talk talk about zip codes and, you know, you see them performing and they're performing right there with some of the more affluent districts. And it's like, yeah, there's no correlation between poverty and education outcomes. If you send them to the right school with the right folk, the right teachers, the right administrators who have their best interests in mind, they're gonna deliver.

Yeah. Absolutely. And we see, you know, the trend with a number of our charters, even like our art schools. So New Mexico School for the Arts and Papa, they have great student achievement results, and their mission is focused around the arts. So you don't necessarily always correlate those two things.

But because they are empowering the kids to lean into what they're interested in and really engaging them to where the kids want to come to school, you see that in the assessment results.

Right. And you also see now where traditional public schools have moved away from some of those arts programs. I've heard it from many parents and just many folks who are interested in education of why don't we have more arts available? I remember when I was in school, we had choir, we had band. And, you know, yes, there they were a mechanism for students to for one hour to do something that they really enjoy, which is actually very good for a student throughout the day where, you know, they're being bombarded with, you know, history, math, science, and rigorous curriculum.

It's also a moment for them to take time and do something that they enjoy and kind of take a breath and then go back, go to the next class and do it again. And I think that's a fascinating move by a charter school to provide arts programs where students who really love music or really love drawing, whatever it may be, whatever their artistic expression is, they have a place to do that. And it's built into the greater curriculum of literacy, math, science. And so that's fascinating to hear.

Yeah. And then another type that I think is worth highlighting. So there's a school in Las Cruces called Sendero Prep, and it really is such a fascinating place. And I'm gonna steal the story that the school leader told me, Cas Martinez. You know, they they're a reengagement school, which means they focus mainly on kids who have dropped out or have complete really gotten close to completely disengaging with the traditional school system.

And so he saw a need, like, we gotta get these kids back in the classroom. We've got to get them to graduate so that they can take their next steps in life successfully. And, you know, they started as a credit recovery type of school where they did a lot of online work. And that has its meaning, but one thing Cass told me is, you know, then we we were graduating kids and I'd be driving to work and I'd see these kids in the same outfits multiple days in a row. And I'd realized, like, we didn't actually change their life.

They graduated, but their life wasn't actually changed. What does that piece of paper mean? So he really took the school in a different direction. And now these kids are engaged in the workforce, and they're getting a lot of their credit recovery. They work ten hours a week.

It leads to full time employment. They're still doing their credit recovery work, but they're doing it within the workforce. Right. So then that way they have future employment and they have like a career pathway so that they their lives are actually changed. And I just thought that was so magical.

Like, one, to have that level of reflection.

Yeah.

And to say, like, you know what? We need to shift directions. And then two, just to commit to the hard work of how do we bring in industry partners and how do we get these kids with their foot in the door for employment. Right. Right?

So

No. That's that's amazing. And, you know, I now that you brought that up, I reflect back to my time in the classroom. And we were a similar charter school. We were known as charter thirty seven.

It was the place where you went when you were at risk of not graduating, but there were some bright students. But I will tell you some of the first, cohorts that I inherited, we it was the same thing, that we didn't change their life. We were able to get them to graduate, but they didn't know what was next. We didn't help them get to that next step. And, you know, the school eventually has done a wonderful job.

Terra and Contaga Charter School, wonderful school, dual language school. They do amazing, at everything that they do. But at that time, you know, I wish we would have reflected the same way of, hey, you know what? We graduated them, but what happened next? Mhmm.

And I think that's that is a great leader right there to realize we were graduating, that was the first goal. But then I realized we need to set higher goals. We need to find a way to get them inserted into the workforce. And that to me is true prosperity. You're you're lifting them up to find a career pathway to be successful, but also be self sufficient.

So not, hey, I graduated, but what next? I never had, any guidance of how to build a resume, how to apply for a job, how to actually maintain a job. It could be a lot harder than we think, like, to maintain a job when you've never had one and you're unsure of what you'd what you're good at or what you like. So I think it's magnificent that we have charter leaders out there that are innovating ways to take our students to the next level and lift them up. That that is truly amazing.

Jamie, we're coming up on the legislative session that's right upon us, And you all have your legislative priorities, and so I'd love to hear what, top priorities you all have through Public Charter Schools of New Mexico. I know one of the big ones, is facilities. And so I'd just love for you to kick us off on your legislative priorities, we'll start with facilities. I think a lot of people don't realize how much troubles charter schools deal with obtaining facilities, but then also maintaining them and also potentially owning them.

Yeah. Facilities is a really complicated issue. To be honest, I think it's complicated for traditional district schools, and it's complicated certainly for public charter schools. So public charter schools get funded for about 60% of their actual facilities cost. And, you know, so right there, 60% Yeah.

Where they're receiving funding is difficult. You know, typically, schools aren't included on GO bonds put out by school districts. Right. They don't have the ability to put those out themselves. Right?

And so, you know, we a a few years ago during the legislative session with some really great champion legislators, PCSNM was able to pass the charter revolving loan fund, and that goes through NMFA. And and it's just like a it's it's a it's a loan that's a little less interest than you're gonna get from a bank where then, you know, charter schools can take out a loan in order to get a new facility or to make changes to their facilities. And so part of our new legislation for this session is getting some more funding into that. That funding comes from PCS PSCOC, which is where all funding for all facilities across the state comes from. And we're also one of the other things, like, this seems small and, you know, like, well, why wasn't this included from the get go?

But we're making sure that the consumer price index is going to be attached to their leasing agreements, which is important because that covers Inflation. Your yeah. 3% inflation, which, like, of course, we all know with rising prices and the price of all the materials that takes to go into facilities or maintenance that you have to increase it to cover that inflation cost.

Well, I even think energy costs. You know, when you're talking about facilities, you're not only talking about funding them at 60%, but you're talking about what they have to pay in a lease agreement. So their monthly lease payment, whatever they're paying for that lease, and then keeping the lights on on top of that. I mean, 60%, you're really tightening your budget there to try to stretch that out over a school term a school year. And so I that is very fascinating.

Yeah. And I got to ask, why don't they fund at a 100%? Is there a reason they don't fund at a 100%?

You know, to me, there's probably a couple of reasons. There's a semicolon, which, you know, you know as working in policy, a semicolon can change a lot. And there's some you know, there's different interpretations as a result of a semicolon and a few words in the legislation. And so that's one of the things we're trying to clean up where, you know, there's currently a ceiling that they can't get more lease assistance than the actual cost of the property, which that makes total sense that that's the ceiling. But there's kind of like a bottomless floor, and so we're trying to ensure that the bottomless floor that there's actually a floor.

Yeah. You know? Because all this kind of you know, when legislation is you know, folks have different interpretations or when it's not as clean as maybe we would want it, you know, it just especially when it comes to funding, it leads to instability. And we want predictable funding that our charter leaders can depend on.

Absolutely. I want to move on to budget. Are there any budget issues that you all are looking at this legislative session? It is a budget session, so I'm assuming charter schools are coming with some ass or even some needs as they look and I know you briefly just touched about it, about predictability. But what legislative initiatives do you all have in mind to address predictability?

Yeah. So one one thing that we've heard from the legislature is a big priority for them is they are moving to an 8020 model for health care premiums. And we just wanna make sure that they're giving as much money as they're willing to for schools to help cover that eighty twenty cost. And generally, our members are supportive of the moving to eighty twenty, and that's for teachers. Right?

That's where they'll cover 80% of the health care premium for their teachers. And actually many of our charter schools do. I know that this is, you know, a really a pretty big push from certain legislators, and those legislators are interested in making sure that the state funds even schools that are already doing this, which I think is great. It's great for teacher Retention. Recruiting teachers and also retention.

And then the public education department is moving to a statewide information system, which is kind of where you track kids', like, attendance and those types of that type of information. And, you know, we think it's an interesting idea, like, to have a statewide system so schools charter schools and districts don't have to pay for the baseline system. Right. And also maybe it'll help clean up some of the reporting pain points that we have. But we're just interested in ensuring that the base model equips our charter schools in doing what they need to do for kids Right.

And also that the funding is adequate for that. And then the last sort of budget thing that well, I'll say the last specific budget thing that we're really aiming at is the at risk hold harmless. So last year, the at risk there were changes to the funding formula around at risk units. And PCS and M publicly supported those changes. It actually ensured that the funding that was tied to at risk students, low income students was following them.

And many of our members benefited from this change. And we think just as education folks, this was a really good thing in our state. There was wide bipartisan support for this change. The problem is is that there was no hold harmless. So there were many schools that were put on a fiscal cliff as a result of this shift.

And the legislature only put in $1,000,000 to cover that fiscal cliff when LFC, the legislative finance committee staff, has calculated that the losses are 12,800,000.0. Wow. So when Little loss there. Yeah. When you when you cause an issue of 12,800,000.0 and then you only give 1,000,000 to cover it, you know, that's just not reasonable.

And many of these schools were told about these 6 figure losses four to six weeks before school started.

Wow.

So they've had to lay off staff. They've had to cut programs. And we're just looking for a three year runway so that these schools have some time to secure sustainable funding, to make hard decisions, and potentially to reorganize

Yeah. Restructure.

So they can mitigate the harm and impact on students and families.

Absolutely. And I've been in those trenches, and it's never easy. I was on the school board when they did the sweeps back in, what was that, 2016, maybe, 2017, somewhere around there. And, yeah, it's never easy having to do a reduction in force, and, you know, restructuring is always tough. And so putting our and it always seems like it very much affects charter schools a lot more significantly.

And, yeah, always a tough position to put our charter schools in. So that is great that you all are leading that effort. One thing that I was fascinated about and and I wanna bring this up because we talked about what charter schools are and on one of your priorities for public charter schools in New Mexico, you want a board of finance for locally authorized charter schools. And so as we look at there are locally authorized charter schools and then there's state charter schools. And so now you have two different versions of charter schools And I think it'd just be helpful for our guests to understand the difference between the two.

Yeah. So all charter schools are authorized by a governing body. So a little more than half of our charter schools in New Mexico are offered are authorized by the Public Education Commission, which is an elected board. And so they apply to become a charter school and they are either approved or not. They also undergo a second tier of accountability through that authorizer, because they're they have a contract with that authorizer and they have to meet goals.

And that includes, financial goals and student achievement goals. And just like for an extra tidbit on charters, charter schools are the only schools in the state that can be closed as a result of their student achievement. And so if you're not authorized by the PEC, the Public Education Commission, then your charter school that's authorized by a local school board. So for instance, the Albuquerque Board of Education, which is APS's school board, has about 30 charters authorized under them.

Wow. Is that the most in the state across the state that APS has the most locally authorized charter schools?

They have the most

local. Mean, it's the biggest city.

So They have the most locally authorized. So like I said, about 30. There's about 40 charter public charter schools in Albuquerque. About 10 of those are state authorized. So one in four students in Albuquerque actually attend charter schools.

In Taos, it's really interesting. About 40% of their student population attends charter schools.

Interesting.

Yeah. So it's a little bit higher.

That is interesting. Mhmm. I I would not expect that for Taos. That that's a good new statistic and Mhmm. Something I learned new today.

Jamie, we talked about facilities, but I'm curious just looking back at one of the issues that has always plagued charter schools as well as transportation. Do you all have something on deck this legislative session on transportation?

We do. So this one one element of our transportation legislation does impact districts also. So right now, as a result of current statute or current law, the first year of a new route is not covered by the state. So if you you know, a housing community, they build a bunch of houses and all of a sudden there's kids in there and those kids need a bus to the school. That one year is just a data collection year, and they're not actually given any state funds for that.

So you kind of start off behind in terms of transportation funding. So we'd like to see that changed. You know, obviously, we'd, you know, we'd want something reasonable where, you know, you check back with the data and, you know, you're only given what you needed. The other thing is a lot of our charter schools depend on their district partners. Whether or not they're locally authorized or state authorized, they depend on their district partners with help with transportation because there's just very few bus companies and contractors.

Contractors. Yeah.

And and we want to incentivize our district partners to work with charter schools in their area.

That's amazing. And I I was going to ask what that partnership looked like because going back to when I was in the classroom, and this is fifteen years ago. I'm aging myself here Mhmm. Somewhere around there. But I remember how scarce it was and just how rare the partnerships were at that time between, traditional public schools and charters with routes.

I mean transportation was very scarce. I think the first year that I was teaching, we didn't have any bus transportation and and it took a couple of years And then finally, there we were able to get a contractor and find someone who can bus our students. But this isn't just about this helps parents. And I think that's the conversation we don't talk about is that this actually helps parents getting their kid to and from school.

Yeah. And one of the other things we're looking to do is some sort of pathway so that charter schools and districts that are paying for bus passes get reimbursed. So in Albuquerque, the the busing system for now is free, but in other cities, it's not. And oddly enough, like, in the sort of the Gallup area, there are there is busing available because a lot of students live rurally, they live far on the reservation, and there is a busing system available to students to bring them to school. But both the charter school out there and the district just pay for that out of their operational budget and they don't get reimbursed for that.

And so we think that the reimbursement should also be in the conversation. Absolutely.

Well, Jamie, I want to give you a last few moments. Are there any other priorities that you all are looking at this session? Also want to give you a moment to share with our audience. Are there any ways folks can learn more about public charter schools through your website? Are there ways that you would like folks to get involved?

I just want to give you a few minutes to share any more tidbits that can help inform our audience.

Yeah. So PCS and M, Public Charter Schools of New Mexico, has a website. You can go on there and you can look at charter schools in your area. If you're in sending your child to a charter school. You can read about the different missions that every charter school has.

You can also follow us on Instagram. We post there. We'll be posting legislative updates. We're always interested in parents or teachers who wanna become advocates. So if you wanna become advocates, please reach out because we always wanna hear from folks in the community who either have children who've gone to a charter school or are going to one, or may they maybe they themselves went to a charter school and have graduated and are doing good work in New Mexico.

It's always just good for us to know that. And, you know, I think my my main, like, sort of call to action would be, you know, when you are talking to an elected official, whether or not that be a school board member or that be a legislator or even a congressman, like, ask them about how they feel about public charter schools in New Mexico and make sure that we're electing folks that are choosing family choice and excellence in education. Because I think charter schools is a huge solution to some of the the educational issues that we have in Absolutely. This

Jamie, thank you for that. Thank you so much for coming on the ChiliWire. Looking forward to learning more post session. We'd love to have you on, learn about the success that you all have this year, and we wish you best of luck this legislative session. We know thirty days is goes by very fast, and it's a lot to take in.

And we wish you all the best of luck in your initiatives and goals. And if there's any way the Chile Wire can share your successes or even call to actions, we'd be willing to help in any way possible. And so thank you, Jamie. Thank you for coming on the Chile Wire. Appreciate you.

And that wraps up this week's Chile Wire podcast. Happy New Year, everyone. Look forward to bringing you more great content through 2026. See you next time.