College-focused charter network eyes New Mexico
By Lauren Villagran / Searchlight NM / EL PASO, Texas – The kindergarteners of IDEA Edgemere walked quietly single-file down the hall, their uniforms embroidered with the school logo, left hands behind their backs, right fingers over their lips. Shh. Emblazoned on the wall above their heads, a sign read: “We do whatever it takes.” […]
Charter schools target N.M.’s at-risk students
By Ed Williams / Searchlight NM/ Sara Tafoya never pictured herself as one of New Mexico’s at-risk students. She came from a supportive, college-educated family in Albuquerque, had once earned good grades, and entertained dreams of going to college and becoming a physical therapist. But in her sophomore year, Tafoya “attracted bad situations,” skipping classes […]
Underfunded, undercounted
NEW MEXICO AT RISK IN THE 2020 CENSUS By Christian Marquez / Searchlight NM / You won’t find James Ironmoccasin’s house on Google Maps. To get to his place on the northeastern edge of the Navajo Nation, head east from the 7-2-11 gas station on Highway 64 in Shiprock, take the sixth turn into […]
Native communities harnessing the power of data
By Sara Solovitch / Searchlight NM / Marriages and births. Allies and enemies. Wild game, migration patterns, the number of days of rainfall. For hundreds, if not thousands of years, indigenous peoples maintained a strict count of the events, relationships and surroundings that determined their very survival. Native Americans were among the world’s first counters, […]
Where trust counts
The census and NM’s border cities By Ed Williams / Searchlight NM / According to the state tourism bureau, Sunland Park is one of the last towns of the Old West, tucked below the commanding peak of Mt. Cristo Rey, a slender finger of southern New Mexico between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. To […]
The great divide
DEPORTATIONS FORCE FATHER TO LIVE APART FROM HIS FAMILY By Lauren Villagran / Searchlight NM / EL PASO, Texas and VALLE DE JUÁREZ, Mexico – Gabriela Castañeda and Adrián Hernández were lovestruck teenagers when, in 2002, they crossed the border to start a life together far from the violence-plagued valley east of Ciudad Juárez. They […]
Here’s how we learned where New Mexico’s vendors are located
By John R. Roby / Searchlight NM Legislators, auditors and business groups have tried for years to answer the question: Where does the state of New Mexico spend its money when it pays independent contractors for goods and services? Does the bulk of the money stay inside New Mexico? Or do most of the dollars […]
New Mexico is ignoring its own rules on vendor transparency
By John R. Roby / Searchlight NM New Mexico is over a year late in following a law that compels greater transparency in vendor contracts. In 2015, the legislature passed — without a single “no” vote — bills requiring the state to clearly indicate on the Sunshine Portal whether a contract went to a resident […]
For contracts, New Mexico increasingly looks elsewhere
SEARCHLIGHT ANALYSIS FINDS GROWING RELIANCE ON OUT-OF-STATE VENDORS By John R. Roby / Searchlight NM Billions of taxpayer dollars have flowed out of state since 2013 due to government purchases that are not filled — or cannot be filled — by New Mexico companies, a Searchlight New Mexico analysis finds. Over the past five […]
‘I felt like I was dying’
By Lauren Villagran / Searchlight NM They told me they were going to handcuff me, and I begged them not to do it in front of my daughter. I said goodbye to my daughter and I told another young girl, a little older, who also had been separated to take care of my daughter. They […]