Q&A: Portales schools superintendent talks changes, expectations

Editor's note: This is one in a continuing series of interviews with local officials. Johnnie Cain is the superintendent for Portales Municipal Schools.

Q: The Legislature made up some new rules for public schools' classroom time that go into effect this school year. What's changing at Portales Municipal Schools?

A: The biggest thing we're going to do for adding classroom time is we're going to go 30 minutes extra a day. So, you know, we'll go from 8 to 3:30, instead of 8:05 to 3:05.

Other than that, our calendar has stayed the same. We are kind of starting the same time as we had in the past. The only difference is the elementary schools will start a little bit later so that they can bring in little groups of kids to do the testing and some of those kinds of things that they need to do to be prepared for the year.

There will be quite a few Fridays where we'll be doing early release, releasing at 1 o'clock on some Fridays during the year. That'll give our teachers time to get together to do planning and work with teachers in their own disciplines and do some training.

Q: Talk about enrollment. How has that been trending the past few COVID years and what are the expectations for the next few?

A: Since COVID, our enrollment has declined. Especially 2020-2021, we were down about 100 students. We never really recovered fully from that, and so we're down about 30 students from where we were last year. Ever since 2020, our enrollment has declined every year. This last year, we ended at 2,539. The year before that we ended with 2,553. But I think it's probably going to maybe steady out.

Q: Are you seeing more or fewer students dropping out as they get into high school? And do you know why?

A: I think the dropout rate is probably about the same as it has been. I have no idea why that happens, you know, some kids just aren't into school. Society is a little different now. Some just got behind, and then suddenly, they get to be seniors, and they're still 14 credits behind, so they drop out.

That's what we've seen for years. We've got a new program with our social workers to work with kids who are having problems with their grades. We're in the 80 percents for our graduation rate.

Q: Talk about teacher shortages. How many teachers did you lose at the end of the last school year? How many have already been replaced?

A: It's not really an issue for us. We didn't lose very many teachers this year. As of right now, I've got four teaching positions still open. They may be hard to fill. Our drama teacher, we've got a media arts teacher position open, and so we're working on those. And then of course, we've got a special education teacher job, and those are hard to fill.

Q: Are recent salary increases having an impact on teacher retention and recruitment?

A: I think it's probably helping to retain teachers. Because the minimum this year was a 6% raise. So that was a pretty good raise for teachers. I think across the area, we're all paying about the same.

Q: What's the status of the civil lawsuit filed against the school in connection with events from the honors English class that led to the teacher's resignation?

A: There hasn't been anything done in the last several months. They're in depositions right now, that's all I know.

Q: Has any school policy changed as a result of the fallout from that controversy?

A: No.

Q: Has Portales added any security measures in the past year? How do you feel about school safety overall? Anything you could implement if you had more money?

A: We will do more training next school year, when all our folks get back. There's also going to be some security money coming from the state, so that we're going to look at more fencing and some things like that, more cameras.

We're thinking about some bulletproofing some of our doors and different things like that. We've been working for a long time trying to get a school resource officer, but you know, the police can't get anybody to do it. They're having a hard time hiring people. We used to have one every year and then for the last couple of years, they've just not been available.

Q: What about vaping and cannabis in the schools? Are you seeing anything alarming?

A: We've seen more of it, mostly in the form of vapes, the THC vapes. That has been kind of increasing for several years. Of course, we deal with it when we find it.

Q: What is the school's number one priority right now? What are your hopes for the next school year?

A: One of our main priorities, of course, is to keep our kids safe, and to get them into school. We want them in school every day, so that we can make sure they're getting the information they need, so that they can succeed in school.

We started working on next year back in March with this, as we started looking at new calendars. We're going to be doing some different things, especially on Fridays, that we're hoping are going to have high impact for kids to make them want to be in school.

We've got some principals and teachers that have come up with some really good ideas that I think are just going to make it an exciting school year.

- Compiled by Landry Sena, the Staff of the News