Our Approach

Excellent Schools New Mexico partners with entrepreneurial local educators to create innovative public schools that put the needs of children and families first.

Why We Are Different
New Mexicans care deeply about their public schools, and for years, many organizations and individuals have worked tirelessly to improve our public education system. But our approach is different than current and past efforts, and here’s why:

  • We believe that schools are the units of change. And we believe that schools do best when educators possess the power to make decisions that meet the needs of their students.
  • We bet on people, not programs or models. We believe that the biggest determinant of a school’s success is the quality of its leadership. So, we focus on identifying, backing and developing talented leadership teams who can build and sustain high-performing organizations no matter the policy or political environments.
  • We pay attention to what families want. We see a disconnect between the types of schools and programming policymakers and school districts advocate for and what families actually choose. So, we intentionally help grow high-demand schools so that more families will not have to wait any longer to access a high-quality public school education.

To-date, we have provided funding and support to local educators in the following areas:

We make startup capital grants to incubate and expand transformational New Mexico public schools. We prioritize schools that show strong family demand and serve at-risk students, many of whom have traditionally lacked access to high-performing public schools located close to home.
We make zero-interest loans to high-performing, growing partner schools. These loans have helped our partner schools access low-interest, private debt financing, which has led to the construction and renovation of permanent, first-rate facilities.

We make grants to best-in-class organizations that support the development and growth of educators and help meet the social-emotional needs of students and families.

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