State’s Last Superintendent Dies

Michael Davis, New Mexico’s final state superintendent of public education, died on his birthday on Wednesday. He was 66.

The cause was lung cancer, said Jack McCoy, former colleague and longtime friend.

Davis, a native of Ames, Iowa, first came to New Mexico as part of the federal Teachers Corps program in 1972, later earning his masters degree in bilingual education from New Mexico State, where he met his wife, Karen.

“From the central part of the United States, where he was raised, to being a scholarship football player for a while in the 1960s, to going off to the Peace Corps in Columbia for two and a half years, and then back to the United States where he floundered around for a little bit like a lot of people did in 1970, before I met him, he had experiences all over,” Karen said Thursday.

“… But he got himself into a program, fortunately, (at NMSU) to get a masters in education — that’s also where we met — and we stayed in New Mexico ever since.”

From Las Cruces, the couple relocated to Chama, where Davis served as the head teacher at Canjilon Elementary School.

“It was kind of a unique situation for this red-headed Iowa boy and his wife to be up in Canjilon, but there they were,” McCoy said.

Davis spent the early 1980s with the Chama Valley Independent School District, first as an instructional coordinator for both the elementary and middle schools, and then as the principal for the Tierra Amarilla Elementary and Middle schools.

Davis later relocated his family to Santa Fe, joining the state Department of Education — then an independent agency, not part of the gubernatorial administration — in 1984.

He held various posts before serving as state associate superintendent, and then as the state superintendent of public education from 1997 through 2003, when a ballot measure eliminated Davis’ position and created the Department of Public Education as a cabinet agency headed by a secretary appointed by the governor.

During his time as superintendent, Davis championed full-day kindergarten, the three-tiered teacher licensure system and equity in funding school buildings across the state, McCoy said.

“He had a passion for education and I guess you could say he was sort of a populist in the way he approached the world.” McCoy said.

He added: “So a lot of things people take credit for today really trace back to Mike. But people who know, know that in the era that Mike was in there, he did a lot of important things for education in New Mexico.”

And the former head of the Legislative Education Study Committee, Pauline Rindone, said things haven’t been the same since Davis’ departure from New Mexico public education.

“He was such a passionate person when it came to education and kids — he would have taken on anybody that was against them,” said Rindone, who spent 11 years with the Legislature. “… But what made Michael unique was that there was always communication with the legislators and the public education department — it was called the state Department of Education back then — and there was always open communication. There was always give and take. Michael always made sure legislators knew what was going on with the department of (education) even before it hit the news.”

His wife, Karen, recounted numerous times when Michael would engage various groups with different agendas and the conversations ended with everyone seeing eye to eye.

“He was an incredible people person, and he wanted all the children of New Mexico to have what his kids had, which was a great experience from public education. His focus was children and everyone knew that,” she said. “And my husband was able to speak with large groups of people with disparate ideas and bring them together. I’ve seen him do that over and over again.”

While it’s said that some wear their beliefs on their sleeve, Karen said Michael had his on his license plate.

“Learn for life,” she said. “He really wanted a high-quality education to be available for everyone. That was the premise this country was built on, and that was his main focus professionally.”

Besides his wife, Karen, Davis is survived by three children, Jonathan, 33; Jessup, 29; and Addie, 27; and three grandchildren.