Message from the Executive Director

Fall, my favorite time of year! The air is getting crisp and the days are beautiful. Underneath all of it, is a Region 9 that is providing incredible services to our member districts and statewide every day. This is the time of year that we are required to have an annual audit and exit interview to present preliminary results. This process is complete, our contracted auditors conducted the required exit interview with the chair of our coordinating council, and they are submitting the audit within the required timeline. I will present more detailed information once the state auditor has finalized and released the audit. As I sat through the exit interview it made me proud to work with a fine group of individuals, (Carmen Spann, Jeanette Lindsey, Diane Bowers, Linda Whitley, Kim King, Arissa Klumker, Judy Jones, Dahn Freed) vested in continually developing and improving systems.

I also recently had the privilege of meeting with several of the NMPED bureaus that we conduct work on behalf of. They are always genuinely excited to have us come visit, sit at their conference tables, and work to develop plans and programs that will have a statewide impact. It is nice to know we have strong teams in place to support the work they bring to our organization.

We are excited to have several Career Technical Education (CTE) opportunities for our member district students in place. With leadership from April Blackwell, we have 25 students enrolled in the GenYes (computer technician) program; we have 18 students enrolled in the teacher cadet program. We anticipate formal notification of funding for the wind energy grant soon. Even without funding, we have 24 students enrolled in the wind energy technician training through MesaLands Community College.

Thank you to Jeanette Lindsey, Arissa Klumker, and Dr. Miller for the work they have invested in filling out and submitting our first local infrastructure capital improvement plan (ICIP). This is a first step in obtaining state money to assist with the development of a Region 9 Campus.

NM RECA Update: The Regional Education Cooperative Association met on September 27, 2019, in Raton at REC#3. This is a group comprised of the 10 REC directors from the RECs in NM that is starting to work well together, trying to align more collaboratively with the PED to support their work with a unified front. We had a good work session and covered multiple topics. We developed an agenda for October 11, 2019, when we will meet with the new Secretary Ryan Stewart. We consolidated the fiscal report as required by the Legislative Finance Committee and determined a plan for presenting our funding request on October 30, 2019, in Santa Fe to the LFC. We agreed upon a common mission and vision statement and we put the steps in place to have an NMRECA annual performance report back in place. The group also agreed on a statewide assignment of non-member districts and charters that each REC would support during statewide initiatives. This group is excited, working well together, and poised to provide support to our PED as they begin to recognize the REC value and work with us.