The new mexico public education department (NMPED) is continuing its long-standing partnership with NS4ED, LLC DBA PATHWAY2CAREERS (“P2C”) to support the development, maintenance, and enhancement of the statewide career technical education (CTE) hub. High

The New Mexico Public Education Department is continuing its sole-source partnership with NS4ED, LLC dba Pathway2Careers (P2C) for development, maintenance, and enhancement of the statewide Career Technical Education Hub, with proposals due September 2, 2026. High Plains Regional Education Cooperative #3 (HPREC #3) is administering the procurement on behalf of NMPED.

The sole-source determination rests on P2C's exclusive ownership and operation of the CTE Hub platform, its proprietary codebase, hosting infrastructure, and integrated tools including P2C Math, P2C Career Exploration, and the Labor Market Navigator. HPREC #3 and NMPED determined that no alternative vendor can lawfully or practically perform the contract because no other provider holds rights to the required proprietary systems or possesses the accumulated New Mexico-specific data assets, CTE frameworks, Career Cluster Maps, Perkins performance data, and labor-market datasets that P2C has developed and maintained over eight years of partnership with the state. The agency's due diligence included internet research, review of industry publications, examination of statewide price agreements, and identification of commercial providers, all confirming that selecting an alternative provider would require abandoning the existing platform and rebuilding an equivalent system at substantially greater cost and risk.

Contract scope includes four primary deliverables: development of an interactive cluster mapping tool integrating labor market data; implementation of a secure unique user login system; development of a course planner with building administrator roles and student tracking capabilities; and continued hosting, maintenance, and periodic updates to the platform. The platform currently operates at careerpathways-nm.com and serves educators, students, and employers across New Mexico by connecting education and workforce data for career exploration and program planning.

The contract value is $575,000 for a one-year term covering Fiscal Year 2026-2027. The sole-source request was certified by Agency Chief Procurement Officer Brandon Hightree on July 31, 2026, and approved by Jill Fernandez on August 3, 2026.