RRPS seeks feedback at instructional material open house

RIO RANCHO — Community members and Rio Rancho Public Schools faculty and staff packed a training room at the district office Jan. 29 to tour and discuss the options for the newest round of instructional materials for RRPS science programs.

RRPS adopts new instructional materials for the different departments every six years (with an extra year for training, implementation takes place every seven years), and this year, it’s the science department’s turn to get new materials.

There is a long process for bringing in new teaching materials for RRPS, and the process for this round began in August 2024, according to Stephany Moore, executive director for secondary curriculum and instruction for RRPS.

“RRPS has some pretty clear procedures, ... so [new instructional materials] have to be approved by the PED. They have to meet our rigorous standards. They have to align to our state standards,” she said. “We will follow that up with the Team of Implementation. Their mission is, ‘Now that we have them, how do we implement them?’”

Over the course of the last six months, the selections team, made up of faculty from RRPS schools who were selected by school administrators, reviewed dozens of options and narrowed the materials down to two or three options per grade.

This open house was one more step in the process, the “seek community feedback” step.

Next, the publishers of the finalists come in for presentations to the Instructional Material Review Team (IMRT). The IMRT makes a decision and recommendation to the RRPS school board, which then makes the final decision.

The finalists contained some familiar names, according to Moore. McGraw Hill and Sabes are standards of the instructional material industry and were present at many of the tables.

The team brought in a number of new names as well. Twig and STEMscopes were among the most popular of the newbies.

“All of our middle school teams really liked it, so we’ll see,” said Moore.

Jenn Morales, executive director for elementary curriculum and instruction for RRPS, said there were new brands available for the early grades as well.

“Amplify for [English Language Arts] and science is new for us, and there’s a crosswalk between the two of them,” said Morales, referring to the intersectionality of the two subjects in Amplify’s instructional process.

Though instructional material open houses are not the hottest ticket on the event calendar, Moore said they are important for community engagement, and she was pleased with the turnout for this event.

“These are not very well attended,” she laughed. “So, this is a nice group here.”