Schools need adequate new revenues, we can't find all the money need for salaries and reform by simply reallocating current budgets (although prioritizing salaries and the classroom over administrative costs is an important priority). The use of cash balances and the need to fund the second year of reform require new revenue!

We need to contact all House Members, and all Senators as well as Governor Richardson, immediately regarding creating new revenue sources for public schools.  

Public Employee Bargaining Bills Return to Chambers for Final Passage 

The House version of the public employee bargaining bill House Bill 508, sponsored by House Speaker Ben Lujan passed the house last week. The bill now waits in the Senate, it received a do-pass from the Senate Public Affairs Committee late Thursday.  It has been withdrawn from the Senate Judiciary Committee and will appear on the Senate Calendar.  

Senate Bill 46 passed the Senate  last week.  This measure, sponsored by Senate President Pro-temp Richard Romero is the Senate version of public employee bargaining; it received a do-pass recommendation the House Labor and Human Resources Committee on Thursday afternoon! It was withdrawn from the House Appropriation and Finance Committee is on the House calendar,  perhaps as early as Tuesday!

We need to call all House Members, and all Senators now, to urge support for House Bill 508 and Senate Bill 46.

House Passes School  Funding

The House passed House Bill 2 , the General Appropriations Act late Friday.  The Act now includes accelerating the 6% salary increase for teachers and other certified instructional personnel to begin with the second paycheck in December and a 3% salary increase for other school employees to begin July 1.  (State and higher education employees remain at 2.5% increases in the measure.)

After several days of negotiations regarding school funding with our lobby team, the NMFEE lobby team, school administrators, the Governor and leaders of the House and Senate Education Committees, the major parts of school funding proposals appear to be holding. However, some school administrators appear to be backing away from the formula for spending cash balances as agreed by the parties to the spending compromise and have had an amendment drafted to reward cash rich districts at the expense of cash lean districts.  Currently the formula is contained in House Bill 745, sponsored by Representative Rick Miera.

House Bill 745 also passed the House on Friday afternoon.  As agreed to in this version, districts that have large cash balances (balances that could have been expended on student and employee needs, not squirreled away) will give up more cash than districts that have prudently expended school equalization money each year for the operations of the school district.  It has been a long standing part of our legislative platform that school districts should be required to account for all funds as the budget is prepared, not hide funds to later appear as cash balances! Attempts to amend the bill to favor the cash rich districts failed by a narrow margin,

The major components of the compromise funding proposal include:

• A requirement that school districts cut administrative spending by one percent of their total budgets, resulting in 18 million dollars statewide.
  

• A require that school districts spend 16.4 million dollars of cash balances.
  

• A  requirement that school districts provide a 3% raise for all classified staff starting at the beginning of the 2003-2004  school year; this will be reflected in base funding for 2004-2005.    
  

• A requirement that school districts provide a 6% raise for all teachers and instructional staff (such as librarians, counselors, special ed ancillary, etc.) starting in December of 2003 (about 1/3 of the way through the year); this would be reflected in the base funding for schools in the 2004-2005 school year and become a permanent part of salary bases at the 6% increase.
  

• A guaranteed minimum salary for beginning teachers of $30,000 starting at the beginning of the next school year.
  

• Caps on school district cash balances and the requirement that school districts use 1% of non-instructional budgets along with 16.4 million dollars from cash balances to help fund salary increases were also agreed to fund the 3% salary increase for classified staff.
  

• 6.3 million dollars (in Senate version only- remains to be worked out) to  help districts growing at least 1% to fund  new students over beyond the previous year's level.

These efforts represent the foundation of fundamental changes in education for the state.  If we remember that early proposals provided only teachers with any salary increase and the potential for cuts in school district non-instructional personnel, this compromise is a great step in the right direction.

When we consider that most of our neighboring states are dealing with deficits and proposing cuts in public education funding, this proposal seems even more substantial.

The Rest of the Reform Story

House Bill 212, sponsored by Representative Mimi Stewart for the Legislative Education Study Committee, representing the recommendations of the Education Reform Task Force, passed the House late Friday.  Passage of this measure is also vital to completing the education reform agreements.  The measure provides real reform including a new licensure system for teachers tied to minimum salary levels, which when fully implemented after five years, will provide $30,000 starting salary for level I licenses, $40,000 minimum salaries for level II licenses, and $50,000 minimum salaries for level III licenses.  While the bill mainly addresses teachers, it is a good first step to comprehensive reform and is supported by most education advocacy groups. 

The major components of education reform and funding are in place after the today's House action.  All measures require the concurrence of the Senate, which has already passed similar funding mechanisms in different pieces of legislation.  However the failure of Senate Joint Resolution 6 calls some of the funding mechanisms for this package for the future into question-stay tuned! 

We need to call all Senators now, to urge support for House Bill 2 (as passed by the House, without any amendments lowering public school funding-amendments increasing school funding are ok!), House Bill 745, and House Bill 212.  These three bills represent the major education reform package before the legislature and the funding for reform as well as salaries!