APS board accepts monitoring report; administration outlines outreach plans for bilingual seal, career pathways and AP expansion

The Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education voted April 2 to accept the administration’s progress monitoring report on interim goals 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3, which cover bilingual seal attainment, career-connected learning and Advanced Placement coursework.

The motion to accept the monitoring report was moved by Board member Benavides and seconded by Member Jackson. A roll-call vote recorded a unanimous “yes” and the motion carried. Board members framed the vote as an acknowledgment that the board had a satisfactory monitoring conversation and that administration presented sufficient evidence of strategy and growth toward the goals.

Administrators described several tactics to increase participation and measure effectiveness. Mark Garcia and the academic leadership team said communication about bilingual-seal pathways will be continuous from pre-K through grade 12 and not confined to ninth grade; they plan updated handbooks, multi-language one-pagers, slide decks, and family nights at transition points (e.g., fifth-to-sixth and eighth-to-ninth grades). Garcia also highlighted the district’s recent recognition of students who earned bilingual seals, including the first APS students to earn the Navajo bilingual seal.

On career-connected learning (interim goal 3.2), the administration described pilots using Ford Next Generation Learning (Ford NGL) academies at Manzano and Highland high schools to link curriculum to industry partners, and said the district is developing asset maps to match local businesses to school pathways. Presenters reported a 60% rate of tenth graders earning a career-connected-credit in fall 2024, a 7.8 percentage-point increase from a prior period. The administration also reported that 70% of students had activated LevelUp (LevelAll) accounts (26,948 activations) and that 2,841 students had completed “next step” plans in that platform.

For AP access, administrators said the district is shifting from asking who is “ready” for AP to asking how to prepare more students. They reported growth among focus groups: AP attainment for students with disabilities rose from about 8% to 12.9% (semester-to-semester comparison), and English-language learner AP participation increased from about 32% to roughly 40.5% in the most recent reporting period. The district said it uses senior exit surveys and data from the National Student Clearinghouse to monitor postsecondary enrollment, though tracking post-graduation career placement remains difficult.

Board members pressed for specifics about measuring communication effectiveness, task-force membership for the LevelAll rollout, and long-term tracking of career-connected learning outcomes. Administrators said they will triangulate measures — enrollment trends, family and staff feedback, principal and advisory committees, and pathway completion rates — and return with more dashboarded, longitudinal data at future monitoring sessions.

The board accepted the report as meeting the three acceptance tests the board uses for monitoring: (1) reality aligns with the vision, (2) there is growth toward the vision, and (3) there is a strategy sufficient to cause further growth.

No changes to district policy or budget were adopted in the vote; the motion accepted the monitoring conversation and report.