THINK NEW MEXICO News:
New Mexico Senate Finance Committee Chairman George Muñoz (D-Gallup) and Sen. Crystal Diamond (R-Elephant Butte) have introduced Senate Bill 438 to maximize the amount of the state’s education budget that is spent in the classroom, rather than on school district central administration.
The bill was developed by the nonpartisan think tank Think New Mexico, which recommended this reform in a 2020 policy report titled A Roadmap for Rethinking Public Education in New Mexico.
In that policy report, Think New Mexico cited research from the Legislative Finance Committee showing that spending on school district general and central administration grew by 55% from 2007-2019, nearly three times faster than spending on instruction and student support, which grew by 19-20% during the same time period.
Senate Bill 438 shifts more resources to classrooms and school sites by directing the Public Education Department to reject any school district budget that increases spending on general and central administration faster than spending at the school site.
General and central administration includes expenses like the superintendent’s office, business management, public information officers, legal services, purchasing, warehousing, and distribution. Spending at the school site includes expenses like salaries for teachers, principals, instructional aides, counselors, nurses, coaches, and librarians, as well as school supplies.
Because one contributing factor to the growth in administrative spending has been the growth in state reporting requirements, Senate Bill 438 also lays out a strategy to identify and eliminate nonessential, redundant, and unnecessarily burdensome school and other reports, with a goal of reducing school district reporting requirements by 25%.
“Nearly half of our annual state budget is distributed to school districts, yet the state has no voice in how school districts spend that money,” Sen. Muñoz said. “Since state taxpayers are providing most of the funding, it is our responsibility as state lawmakers to put in place some reasonable accountability measures to make sure that the money is spent in ways that will benefit students.”
“Senate Bill 438 will enhance the effectiveness of the investments that the legislature is making in our public schools by ensuring that more of those new dollars will reach students in the classroom, rather than going to administrative overhead,” said Sen. Crystal Diamond, a former school board member in Truth or Consequences.
“New Mexico’s students need more teachers and support staff, and this bill will help us get there by shifting more of the state’s education spending to the classroom,” said Think New Mexico Education Reform Director Mandi Torrez.
In a July 14, 2018 front-page interview with the Albuquerque Journal, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham stated: “The administrative overhead in our schools is outrageous. [Changing that is] going to be hard. Everyone is going to fight it. … But if they think I’m not taking on this fight, they don’t know who I am. We’re taking it on. You have to. It’s outrageous.”
More information is available at www.thinknewmexico.org.