It appears that for a second year, Hanna Skandera won't win confirmation as the state's Public Education Department secretary.

There is no law prohibiting the former Florida deputy commissioner of education from continuing to serve as Gov. Susana Martinez's choice to oversee New Mexico school systems.

However, it's unlikely that the Senate Rules Committee will schedule a confirmation hearing for Skandera before midday Thursday, when time runs out on the 2012 legislative session.

The "why" of it all is being left somewhat vague by those in control of the confirmation process, but they express concerns with how Skandera has meshed with various segments of the state's educational community as she tries to steer the new Republican administration's reform efforts.

"I do agree we need to have a thorough hearing on Ms. Skandera, but it's just a matter of balancing our remaining time," said Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, who chairs the committee and schedules hearings.

"There are so many questions and concerns about what has happened here in the time that she has been in office. ... If we need to have a hearing, we would need to engage communities from across the state."

Though she did not offer specifics, Lopez indicated that Skandera has not been effective in reaching out to educational leaders in the state.

José Armas of the Latino/Hispano Education Improvement Task Force, in an opinion piece published last week in The New Mexican, called Skandera "a non-educator and outsider" who "came armed, not with education skills, but with an ideological agenda. From the start, it was Skandera's agenda vs. 70 percent of New Mexico's multicultural populations."

Skandera is the only one of the governor's appointees not to receive a confirmation hearing this session.

Asked Tuesday morning whether she had heard anything regarding a possible confirmation hearing, Skandera said simply, "I'm focusing on the [education] bills." She said she plans to remain in her position: "I came to New Mexico to do a job, and I plan to do that job."

Since joining Martinez's administration in January 2011, Skandera -- who served under Florida's Republican Gov. Jeb Bush from 2005 to 2007 -- has successfully lobbied for an A-to-F school grading system, which will officially become law in August. In January, the Public Education Department released preliminary baseline grades for the state's 830 schools, giving New Mexico an overall grade of C.

About 125 of those schools, including two Santa Fe-based charter schools, have appealed their grades, which were determined via a number of complex factors that haven't yet been entirely explained to school districts.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced that New Mexico is the only one of 11 states that applied for waivers from the federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act that didn't get approval. In reviewing the waiver application, the department noted that New Mexico's A-to-F system does not adequately address the achievement-gap challenge among minority students.

However, both New Mexico's Public Education Department and the U.S. Department of Education said they are working together to alter New Mexico's waiver application so it can gain approval.

On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it is granting New Mexico a waiver.

In this legislative session, Skandera has continued to push for a new teacher-evaluation system -- one based in large part upon student test scores -- and for a new reading intervention/remediation law that gives the state the right to hold back third-grade students who cannot read to grade level.

As of Tuesday evening, the fate of those bills -- and competing bills from other lawmakers -- was uncertain. Any and all of them may be heard and voted upon on the House and/or Senate floor in the remaining hours of the session.

The New Mexico Legislature last year also balked at confirming Skandera. In 2011, Sen. Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, the Senate majority floor leader and a member of the Senate Rules Committee, told reporters that because Skandera has never worked as an educator, she might not qualify as a department secretary under the state constitution.

Despite praise from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who told reporters last September that Skandera "is pushing every single day to give every single child a great, great education," Skandera has since come under fire for some of her decisions.

Some state superintendents and other critics criticized her for initiating a questionable state audit of both public and charter schools and for overruling the Public Education Commission's denial of three state charters in 2010.

The Independent Source PAC, a liberal political-action group, has continued to hammer away at Skandera over the past few months for a number of reasons, including her hiring of Patricia Matthews -- a lawyer for a legal firm that represents charter schools -- as the new director of the Options for Parents Office, which oversees charter schools and other alternative-learning venues.

The group has also knocked Skandera for hiring the wife of Martinez's chief of staff, Keith Gardner, for an administrative position, claiming that she and/or Martinez changed the requirements for the job in order to help Stephanie Gardner land that job.

Skandera has also been criticized for dissolving standing advisory committees on bilingual education, Indian education and Hispanic education.

Last October, Skandera told The New Mexican that she learned a lot in her first 10 months on the job: "New Mexico is an unbelievably relational state, and there is a beauty in that. Relationships are key here; more than in other states."

On Tuesday morning, the governor told reporters in the Roundhouse that Skandera will stay on, regardless. Asked if certain senators are playing politics in denying Skandera a hearing, Martinez said, "You'd have to ask the Senate. I don't know why they are refusing to do it.

"We're doing exactly what the Obama administration is saying we should be doing. I don't understand what their pause is, but we are going to move forward."

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.