Following the state’s ruling on House Bill 6 on April 5, Gallup-McKinley County Schools has been given another reason to feel optimistic about district funding.

In a letter dated April 15, Federal Impact Aid Program Director Faatimah Muhammad issued a new determination for FY21 for the State of New Mexico under section 7009(b) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, revoking a certification issued on Dec. 7, 2020 pertaining to Impact Aid.

As a result, the state is no longer eligible to consider Impact Aid payments as local resources in determining state aid entitlements for FY21.

District Superintendent Mike Hyatt told the Sun this means $24 million slated for GMCS...

ARIDE program helps officers know how to recognize impaired driving

Law enforcement authorities are preparing for Jan. 1, when recreational cannabis will become legal in New Mexico. Police are preparing for the change by investing in DWI training.

Charles Files, the New Mexico Drug Recognition Expert program coordinator, said that the Advanced Roadside Impairment Detection and Enforcement program, which began in 2009, has seen an uptick in officer participation. He explained that the program is a two-day course and that the state offers it 16 times a year. About 250 officers participate in the program each year, and Files said they’ve had about 1,500 people go through the program so...

Week ending Friday, April 16, 2021


In Hot Water

Oceans have become so warm under global heating that temperatures are now too high near the equator for some marine species to live, new research finds. Scientists from New Zealand and Australia write in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that location analysis of nearly 50,000 marine species between 1955 and 2015 found that many were moving away from the equator, “on a global scale.”  While the number of species living on the equatorial ocean floor remained unchanged,  there are now fewer free-swimming creatures near the surface, such as fish. “These species haven’t disappeared, they’ve just gone...

New Mexico has grieved alongside the rest of the nation and the world over the unconscionable killing of George Floyd as he begged for breath in the street last year. We have grieved with each new instance of injustice in the interim.

And while no courtroom verdict will ever bring Mr. Floyd back to his family, to his children, and while no guilty verdict will ever fill the hole in the hearts of those who have loved someone taken from them in such a grievous act of injustice, today’s [April 20] decision does give us all hope that our system is capable of achieving some measure of accountability.

We can work to ensure, now and forever after, that accountability will be realized by...