With only about a month remaining to turn in a completed budget projection to the Public Education Department for the 2016-17 school year, the Española School District administration has implemented a new approach toward building the overall budget in the wake of persistently low oil and gas prices.
“They are going to tell us what they need,” Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez said. “We are going to have the individual school sites and principals take ownership of their allocations by letting us know their needs, instead of us telling them.”
Gutierrez said Interim Director of Business Services Myrna Garcia provided a “budget needs request” worksheet this week for each of the District’s principals to fill out, with the help of a budget committee, which outlines all needs for all funds, not just operational expenditures. Exclusive of each principal’s budgets are allocations for paper, custodians, salaries and benefits, elementary fine arts and instructional material purchases.
The District budget is due to the Public Education Department by April 25.
“Of course, there probably will have to be some negotiation with that depending on our funding,” Gutierrez said. “Right now, it seems education is OK. We’re not going to have more funding than we had last year, but we’re not going to have, as it stands now, less funding.”
Gov. Susana Martinez signed the Fiscal Year 2017 state budget on Feb. 29. According to a press release made public by the Office of the Governor, House Bill 2 reduced spending by roughly $31 million and reduced the base budgets for most state agencies, by a total of approximately $53 million.
The $6.2 billion budget increases spending in education, amidst other areas, and also includes compensation increases for some teachers.
According to comparisons made available by the Public Education Department, since 2013, the state has seen decreases in state equalization funding, instructional materials, capital outlay and transportation.
“There’s always a risk if the oil and gas revenues continue to decline that the Legislature can come back to us in the fall and say we have to reduce our budgets by a certain amount,” Gutierrez said.
Documentation made available by District officials shows that among the budget items requested by various departments, and expenditures to be considered, are staffing needs for new and vacant positions, student travel, professional development, building maintenance and custodial services and technology requests throughout the various school sites.
Gutierrez said there hasn’t been any significant increases to state funding for next year. Although the Public Education Department said they restored the unit value, it was only restored to 2008 levels.
“It looks like our operational funding will be about 29 million this next year,” she said. “Not counting federal and entitlements.”
The District’s Special Projects Facilitator Denise Johnston will assist the District in reapplying for a truancy prevention specialist.
According to the Public Education Department, $2.5 million in competitive funding is available from the state to New Mexico districts to support placement of 41 truancy and dropout prevention specialists in middle and high schools.
Gutierrez said she may also request a couple more truancy coaches to work with the elementary schools because that is where most of the attendance issues get started.
“We’ve already done some preliminary calculations,” Gutierrez said. “I don’t think we’ll have right now the big budget cuts we had last year, but there were some reorganization within departments that I wanted to do, like creating an office of student services.”
She said the District needs someone overseeing instructional technology.
During the Legislative session, which ended Feb. 18, the Legislature passed, by a 36-0 and 65-0 vote, through the Senate and House, respectively, Senate Bill 306, sponsored by Mimi Stewart-D, Bernalillo County.
The bill amends the Public School Code to reinstate, for the 2016-17 and 2018-19 school years, a provision that allows the Secretary of Public Education to waive certain requirements for public schools that need financial flexibility to meet decreased support.
“This particular waiver because of the shortage of funds, allows some flexibility in terms of class loads, teaching loads and length of school day,” Executive Director of the New Mexico School Board Association Joe Guillen said.
According to a bill analysis, prepared by the Legislative Education Study Committee, on the impact to Districts, the primary benefit to school districts will be the waiver of individual class loads and teaching load requirements due to financial limitations.
In addition to waiving certain requirements pertaining to staffing patterns, subject areas and purchases of instructional materials for public schools that need financial flexibility to meet decreased support, the bill requires the Public Education Department to monitor the waivers and report to the Legislative Financial Committee on any issues or actions of a District that appear to adversely affect student learning.
In addition to school flexibility waivers for higher class sizes, Gutierrez said the District also plans to take advantage of state-funded targeted opportunities such as stipends for hard-to-staff positions, recruitment and retention stipends for teachers, special education, science technology engineering and math and bilingual education.
She said the District had contingency reserves in place to use in case of unexpected expenditures — especially given the volatile nature of the state’s economy.
She said one area that is hard to budget for is substitute teachers, because of unpredictable factors like teachers’ health.
“You never know if it’s a bad year for the flu,” she said. “You never quite know if it’s going to be a bad year or a good year for substitutes.”
Gutierrez said schools, in general, won’t have too many increases with their site budgets being comparable to this year’s amount.
She said administrators will try to increase the allocation provided for students’ supplies and materials from $10 to $20 per student.