School board members Monday evening hosted the first of two “community conversations” intended to gather public input for Albuquerque Public Schools’ next spending plan.
The Board of Education is expected to approve a fiscal year 2024-2025 budget in early June, then present it to the New Mexico Public Education Department. The new budget will go into effect July 1.
More than three dozen people attended the session at the Berna Facio Professional Development Complex.
Among the main components of the evening was an exercise in which attendees were divided into groups of five and assigned the roles of teacher, parent, principal, finance/budget analyst and academic adviser. The groups then were given a fictional scenario involving a set of programs without funding and a list of cuts that could be made elsewhere to pay for the programs they wished to keep.
The exercise was panned by some, who said they would have preferred real numbers to the fictitious ones. Parent Rebekah Manning called the activity a waste of time.
“I want to know the real numbers, the real programs,” Manning said. “I want to know what’s getting cut. That’s why I’m here.”
Parent and student advocate and one-time school board candidate Verland Coker said that some of the hypothetical items — including take-home devices for all students — should not be on the chopping block and that district officials should be fighting for such items in Santa Fe.
“A lot of the stuff that was in this exercise are things that can be mitigated without taking away services from our students,” he said.
Others said they found their pretend budget useful, as it helped them understand the jobs of those who put the budget together.
Fifth-grade teacher Raquel Padilla said she enjoyed the activity and appreciated the insight into the minds of those who work on the budget.
“There are lots of tough decisions to be made, and there’s not (enough) money for everything,” she said.
In his group, parent Ian Esquibel said he was in favor of items for students taking precedence over items for adults. The group had several questions concerning the impact of some of the proposed trade-offs. For example, one theoretical savings area was closing or repurposing small neighborhood schools, which are more expensive to operate.
Group members wanted to know more about the benefits to students that might result from the closing, as well as how far those students would have to go to their new schools and whether transportation would be provided.
One member said that leasing a campus out to a charter school could allow students to remain in the same building and provide revenue for APS.
In the real world
The exercise used fictional numbers, but APS will have to contend with a similar problem in the real world: the budget for next fiscal year is expected to drop 13% from about $2.19 billion to $1.9 billion, with much of the difference due to the discontinuation of $242 million in COVID-related state aid.
District Chief Financial Officer Renette Apodaca went over the various sources of money in the budget and what each may and may be not used for. For example, money tied to transportation or food service isn’t allowed to be used to pay teacher salaries, but the former can be used for anything related to getting children to and from school, while the latter can pay for meals, cafeteria staff or kitchen equipment.
She said $904.6 million of the total is in the operation category, and includes the district’s largest expense, personnel. The second-largest area is $473.7 million in capital funds, earmarked for building construction, renovation and repairs and technology.
A number of factors beyond the district’s control impact the budget, Apodaca said. Among them are enrollment, inflation, state legislation and supply chain issues. Legislators this year passed a state budget bill that raises teacher pay by 3%, which will affect school budgets.
Apodaca told attendees that APS’ budget must by law be balanced, meaning that some trade-offs become necessary when the district doesn’t have enough money for everything it wants to do.
Rosalinda Montoya, executive director of budget and strategic planning at APS, said that 98% of operational dollars come from the state.
Montoya said that 80% of the district’s budget goes into the schools, and about two-thirds goes directly into classroom instruction.
In response to an audience question about administrative costs, Montoya said that APS spends about 4% of its budget in that area, according to the Legislative Finance Committee, while many comparable districts across the country are at 8 to 10%.
Working on a promise
Board member Courtney Jackson told the attendees that building the budget is the latest prong of the district’s new overall focus on “student outcomes focused governance.”
She said that means everything APS does should align with the goal of improving student outcomes and that will be the driving factor throughout the budgeting process. Jackson said after the meeting that for next year’s conversations, attendees will receive more specific information regarding the actual budget in play.
“I think it went well for what our objective was, which was to present an overview,” Jackson said of the event.
Jackson said Wednesday, that the recently elected board members — all of whom have taken office since 2021 — are dedicated to including the public in their decisions.
“We promise that we will continue to listen to your input, and we will provide opportunities to (give) feedback as we all work together to improve the outcomes of our APS students,” she told those at the listening session.
The second meeting is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Lyndon B. Johnson Middle School, 6811 Taylor Ranch Drive NW.