Albuquerque Public Schools
Ready to Hit the Ground Running
In her weekly message, Superintendent Blakey welcomes staff back and discusses ongoing efforts to make APS more responsive to students and families.
Welcome back!
I hope you had a restful break. Whether you stayed in Albuquerque or left town, I hope you were able to spend quality time with family and friends and that you’re feeling refreshed and ready to tackle a new semester!
I stayed in Albuquerque for the break. When I wasn’t with my family making tamales, catching up with my niece who was home from graduate school or eating great food, I was exploring all that our wonderful city has to offer during the holidays. That included a visit to Old Town, the Trolley of Lights, a Nutcracker performance and craft fairs.
I’m grateful for this beautiful place we call home, for all of our amazing holiday traditions, and, most especially, for my incredible family and, yes, that includes my rambunctious dogs who are always getting into mischief.
It was a wonderful break, but I’m happy to be back at work.
I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions because I tend to think in terms of academic years. I’ve always seen this point of the year as the halfway mark. It’s when seniors truly start to grasp that graduation is around the corner and when the rest of us start thinking about all we need to do before the end of the school year. For me, that includes taking stock of the progress we’ve made in reimagining APS processes so that they’re more responsive and convenient for our students and families.
I want APS to be a student-centric district, where the needs of our students drive our work and everything we do. Revamping our systems to better serve students and their families is a big part of that effort.
A good example is our student transfer process. Prior to this year, obtaining a transfer to a school outside your neighborhood meant using a clunky online process that forced families to bounce between different systems and come back multiple times.
That process was neither convenient nor efficient for our families, so we changed it. Last week we launched a new process. Transfer requests are now being handled online through our ParentVUE system, which is user-friendly and a system our families are already familiar with. It’s a one-stop shop, so families no longer have to learn multiple systems and enter their children’s information multiple times. This new streamlined system is easier to navigate and more convenient for our families.
The two-year calendar we adopted in December is another good example of the work we’re doing to make things more convenient for our students and families. Among the complaints we’ve heard from families in recent years is that dramatic changes to the school calendar each year made it difficult for families to plan vacations, camps and other activities. The two-year calendar adopted by our board creates predictability for our families and allows them to plan long-term.
We’re also planning to modernize employee systems. I’ve heard complaints for years about the aging Lawson system we use for Human Resources and Finance. We’ve begun the process of replacing that system. Make no mistake, this is a major project that will involve multiple phases and will take a few years to fully implement. In the end, I’m confident we’ll have a more intuitive and agile system.
There will be hiccups along the way with any change, but we can’t let that stop us from moving forward.
Before I sign off, I want to congratulate Board President Danielle Gonzales and Board Secretary Janelle Astorga for being re-elected to their leadership posts by their fellow board members. I also want to congratulate new Board Vice President Courtney Jackson and to thank Board Member Ronalda Tome-Warito for serving as vice president and chair of the Audit Committee last year.
And I want to thank our committee chairs. Board Member Crystal Tapia-Romero was re-elected chair of the Finance Committee and Board Member Josefina Dominguez was re-elected chair of the Policy Committee. Vice President Jackson will serve as Audit Committee chair.
All of our board members spend a great deal of time working to improve outcomes for our students, and I’m grateful to them for the time and energy they devote to APS.
That’s all for now. Have a good weekend and see you on Monday.