The Bridge to Future Focused Education Policy

Tony Monfiletto, ED of Instituto del Puente, speaking at EdUprising 2024
Instituto del Puente: A Vision of What’s Possible
This fall, Future Focused Education is officially launching our new policy arm: Instituto del Puente (Instituto). The rest of Future Focused will continue to function as usual - by identifying an inequity that needs to be addressed, listening to those most affected by it and co-creating a solution with them, then piloting that solution and scaling it. Alongside this approach, Instituto del Puente will focus on creating an educational policy landscape in which that work can continue to grow.
According to Instituto’s Director, Tony Monfiletto, “Without a policy environment that creates more opportunities for growth to happen, these programs run out of gas.” That’s the problem that Instituto is attempting to address. Monfiletto says the goal is ultimately “to use policy to bridge the gap between where schools and communities are now and where they want to be in the future: healthy, prosperous, and thriving.”
It’s a bottom-up approach to changing education policy because, as he puts it, “the people who are most affected by the policy should be informing what the policy is.”
“the people who are most affected by the policy should be informing what the policy is.”
- Tony Monfiletto
Background
Monfiletto comes to his new position as Director of Instituto del Puente after directing Future Focused Education for over a decade. Monfiletto left the state for graduate school before returning to start his educational career as a legislative staffer, writing the education budget for New Mexico. But he wasn’t sure how that translated into what happened on the ground.
“I just felt like I had no idea how any of that finance work connected to what was actually happening in schools or with kids,” says Monfiletto. “So, after four years of the legislature, I became a teacher.”
With his experience in the classroom and the legislature, Monfiletto went on to found Future Focused Education, where he and the rest of the staff have collaborated with other nonprofits, state agencies, school districts, industry partners, and community members, to transform education in New Mexico. In recent years, Monfiletto has shifted toward more and more policy work and now that Future Focused’s new Executive Director, Kim Sandoval is taking the helm, Monfiletto is focusing more on Instituto del Puente. His goal is to ensure that the work Future Focused is doing can be supported by a policy framework.

Monfiletto speaking with a youth panel.
Challenging Orthodoxy: The Role of Education
Instituto’s mission - and Future Focused’s mission more broadly - is ultimately to change the role of education in society. Monfiletto says that the future of education is that schools play a more active role in serving communities.
“If you have schools that are oriented toward serving the community, then young people can become the assets, the things that make communities better places to live,” Monfiletto explains. “That’s good for the young person and good for the community.”
This approach has been shaped by Future Focused’s efforts to help create schools that better serve communities, which was the goal since we first helped form the Leadership Schools Network. Monfiletto says that as he was helping set up Health Leadership High School, he learned a lot about the social determinants of health and realized that a school that focused on getting more people into healthcare careers could not fix the underlying problem without also addressing the circumstances that created the problem.
“Schools can and should help change the conditions in communities, not just graduate people to put band-aids on the problems,” says Monfiletto. Monfiletto says he’s learned how schools can do this from collaborators and his team at Future Focused Education, particularly Moneka Stevens:
“Moneka started bringing partners in and we began creating projects based on what the partner said was needed in the community. The school was responding to create projects based on what the community said the needs were. Then those community-based projects created or shaped the curriculum of the school.”
This is how schools can and should function in society - as places that connect students to their own communities and help address whatever needs the community has. Of course, our educational policy needs to not only allow this approach to education, but also actively support it. This has come up with New Mexico’s passing of House Bill 171: Modernizing Graduation Requirements.
HB 171 creates an opportunity to transform the learning experiences for young people through graduate profiles, capstones, and work-based learning. But just because a law passed that allows relevant, hands-on learning that can re-engage our young people, doesn’t mean that districts can or will transform the school day to allow for those opportunities to happen. We need policies in place that give schools the support they need to actually implement changes. That’s why Instituto has been developing policy recommendations based on what young people and communities have told us that they want and need.
“Right now, we don't have the right tools or enough understanding about how to invest in ways that make young people and the communities they live in better off,” says Monfiletto. “Mostly what people look for is changes in standardized test scores or graduation rates, when we should be looking for investments that give kids careers in their own communities and a spinoff impact where the community as a whole benefits.”
“Mostly what people look for is changes in standardized test scores or graduation rates, when we should be looking for investments that give kids careers in their own communities and a spinoff impact where the community as a whole benefits.”
- Tony Monfiletto

Monfiletto at a press conference.
Policy by and for Those Most Affected
Over the past two years, the Instituto has cohosted community meetings across New Mexico with district partners that are focused on learning from young people about their hopes for the future. The data collected from young people in communities like Lake Arthur, Santa Rosa, and Las Cruces have created the context for two statewide policy workshops with over 80 attendees - including students, school board members, legislators, industry partners, administrators, community leaders and educators. The workshops have focused on listening to the voices of young people and developing policies that reflect what they want for the future.
“These policy priorities are about implementation,” explains Monfiletto. “They're about creating a different school day so that it reflects what students say is important. If you don't build out the capacity and the structural change, then the new graduation requirements are just a law that never realized its transformational potential.”
Ultimately, the hope is that Instituto will become a trusted source for schools, young people, and their communities to go to, to make sure their voices are heard. And on the other side of the same coin, we want to be a trusted source for lawmakers and others, to go to when determining policy - so that they can know what’s already working and be sure that what they are doing is what young people and communities really need.

In launching Instituto del Puente, Future Focused Education is taking a crucial step toward building an education system that genuinely serves communities, shaping a policy landscape informed by those most affected. By bridging the gap between legislators and the lived realities of students and educators, we are not just imagining a better future for schools - we are actively co-creating it with our partners and communities alongside us. The work ahead is challenging, but with collaboration and commitment, we can create schools that empower young people and enrich communities, ensuring a brighter, more equitable future for young people in our state.
“If we invest in these things for young people, then the benefits are greater than a change in a test score or higher graduation rate,” says Monfiletto. “We're looking for more health and prosperity in a community, and less poverty.”