Daily Hotline

We spent much of the 2005 legislative session just hanging on to previous progress. We largely succeeded. We continued the full and on-time implementation of the teacher salary minimums mandated by the 2003 Reform Act.

We made modest gains in teacher licensure statutes by increasing the length of a level one license to five years, clarifying the definition of teacher to include anyone whose job requires a teaching license, and giving level three teachers the same level of due process as level two teachers. Insurance premiums increases were held to 3% for those districts in the New Mexico Public School Insurance Authority (all except the Albuquerque Public Schools, who will unfortunately see a 15% increase), thereby insuring that most school employees will actually see a small net increase in take-home pay next year.

We managed to fend off a major attempt to make school employees bear a punitive increase in payroll withholding taxes for retirement (see below). If legislation is signed by the governor, we started on the road toward correcting the under-funding of educational retirement, created by legislature's failure to fund the Educational Retirement Association on a par the funding of the Public Employees Retirement Association over the last decade.

We achieved new salary minimums for Educational Assistants and secured at lease some salary increase for all employees; no one will receive less that a 1.25% increase, and about 50% of teachers will see sizable increases due to the new level two and three minimums of $40,000 next year.

We also fended off the usual attacks on the public purse by beating back tuition tax credit and voucher bills.

The overall funding of public schools increased by some $130 million. At first glance this overall dollar amount may seem large. However, $51 million of that funding is simply to meet the statutory mandates for new minimum salaries. Most of the rest goes to cover mandated increases such as enrollment growth, fixed costs, insurance, and retirement. Essentially leaving no discretionary funding for school districts. When Constitutional Amendment Two funds are factored out, only about 101 million new general fund dollars are spent on public education! If you consider that 275 million new general fund dollars were available for budgeting, again factoring out amendment two dollars, that's only 36.7% of new revenues! Before the passage of Constitution Amendment Two, public schools were receiving about 45% of new general fund revenues! If that were still the case, schools should get at least 124 million general fund dollars plus the funds provided by Constitutional Amendment Two for a total of about 154 million new dollars, leaving us theoretically 23 million dollars short of where we should be if the legislature were not using the Amendment Two dollars to supplant usual general fund dollars. We believe that legislators need to be more responsive to "sufficient" funding of public schools, as required by the New Mexico Constitution!

While it was not all we wanted and certainly not all that you deserved, public schools still received an increase in funding and we are on the road to securing our retirement fund (if the governor signs SB181, as amended) We must redouble our organizing efforts for the 2006 Legislature and its possible even more severe revenue crunch.

A more complete update will be provided after the Governor's deadline for signing legislation passed by the 2005 session (April 8).

Senator John Arthur Smith's Senate Bill 181, EDUCATIONAL RETIREMENT EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTIONS with a provision that makes employees pay an additional 1% of salary into retirement at the rate of .25% for each of four years was amended on the House Floor March 17. The change requires only a token employee contribution of .075% a year for four years, finally equaling just 0.3% rather than the full 1% contained in Smith's original proposal. This means about $2.50 additional payroll tax on retirement per month for an employee earning $40,000 per year and about seventy-seven cents for an employee earning $12,000. Under the change, the employee share will increase to 7.9% at the end of four years, finally equaling $10.00 a month for a $40,000 salary and about $3.00 a month for the $12,000 annual salary.

The measure increases the employers' share of retirement contribution to 13.9% over seven years in increments of .75%, providing at the end of that period the assurance of financial solvency needed to correct the under-funding of the pension system.

The House floor amendment also restored the current retirement eligibility rules for new employees and does not, as did the Senate version, segregate new employees as second class citizens who have to work longer before retirement eligibility. While not perfect, this compromise does not deal punitively with school employees as did the version that left House Appropriations and Finance Committee on the morning of March 17; that committee removed the House Education Committee amendments and returned the bill to its original Senate version!

While we had many supporters speak out in the House debate, Representatives John Heaton, Mimi Stewart, and Sheryl Williams Stapleton deserve our special thanks for their passion in support of school employees

While we would have preferred no employee increase, our supporters in the House and Senate worked hard to convince the sponsor to accept this compromise. In the end, with many complaints about all the contacts he received from constituents who just "didn't understand," Senator Smith recommended concurrence with the compromise worked out by the House. The compromise passed with all Democrats, except Tim Jennings, voting in favor. Most Republicans voted against the compromise; however, Senators Komadina, Kernan, and Asbill voted with the majority.

Our friends (and there were many) who stuck by school employees on this issue deserve our thanks. During the Senate floor debate several Senators' comments were especially vitriolic toward school employees, teachers, and school employee unions. Democrat Tim Jennings and Republicans Sue Wilson Beffort and Joe Carraro were especially demeaning and insulting to teachers and other school employees and their unions. To hear these folks tell it, you have no real status as a genuine individual constituent because you belong to a "labor organization!" Their comments provoked stern rebukes for the "hits" taken by teachers from Senator Gay Kernan, Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, and Majority Whip Mary Jane Garcia. These three individuals deserve our thanks for their impassioned support of school employees!

The legislation, House Bill 337, sponsored by Representative Rick Miera and supported by NEA-New Mexico, establishing a pre-kindergarten program for New Mexico passed the Senate on a largely party-line vote late March 18. Under the measure "pre-kindergarten" means a voluntary developmental readiness program for children who have attained their fourth birthday prior to September 1," it does not expand the beginning of public school to age four and it does not provide vouchers for four-year olds; rather, it funds a variety of programs on the basis of competitive grants.

The measure will spend $5 million in nonrecurring revenue to establish a pre-kindergarten in 2005-2006. Half the funds will be channeled through a fund controlled the Public Education to public school programs and half will be distributed a fund controlled by the Children, Youth, and Families Department other providers. The funds will be distributed through a competitive grants proposal process. Any contract "with an eligible provider shall specify and ensure that funds shall not be used for any religious, sectarian or denominational purposes, instruction or material." Programs in school districts with the highest number of schools in need of improvement will given priority for funding.

The Governor signed General Appropriations Act Thursday morning with little damage to education funding. The measure still contains language mandating a 1.25% salary increase for all school employees not receiving an increase from new minimum salary requirements. In debate on the Senate Floor last week and in the Finance Committee, vice-chair Senator John Arthur Smith, one of the main architects of the budget, admitted that education is under-funded by at least $6 million; we think its more like $22 million. The current version of the school budget increases money for enrollment growth by some $1.8 million over the version originally passed by the House and Senate.

The measure contains funds to fully fund the new minimum teacher salary increases and a mechanism to make sure that the funds flow to districts in a manner that gives each district enough funding to maintain the new minimums (unlike last year when some districts were hard pressed to meet the minimums and still meet other budgetary mandates). The bill also contains funding for the districts of increased insurance costs and the new .75% of employer share of retirement.

The funding for the EA salaries is enough for a minimum salary of $12,000 for EA's.

We will begin to look at the budget in detail over the next few weeks and explore strategies for dealing with school funding at the local level.

Representative Mimi Stewart's H 84, PUBLIC SCHOOL CODE CLEAN-UP Amends the Public School Code to expand the definition of “teacher” to insure that all whose job requires a teaching license are eligible for the new minimum salaries; make a level one license for up to five years to give beginning teachers more time to prepare a dossier; makes due process rights of level three teachers equal to those of level two teachers; and to restore health education as a required subject in grades 1 through 3 and as an elective in grades 4 through 8 and in high school.

Amended Version of Educational Assistant Licensing Framework Dies in Senate Finance Committee

Actions of the Senate Finance Committee have made it clear that House Bill 137, Educational Assistant Licensing Framework introduced by Representative Rick Miera will not be acted on by the Senate. Committee Republicans joined by Senators Smith and Jennings have a hammer lock on the committee decisions and continue to exercise their punitive assault on school employees. The good news is that language in the General Appropriations Act directs that $1.9 million be spent on raising Educational Assistants' Salaries to a $12,000 minimum next year. Again not all that we wanted, but at least a continuation of the progress we started last year!

The same Senate Finance Committee coalition that prevented action on HB 137 has also prevented Senate consideration of Representative Mimi Stewart's H 83 EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDER LICENSURE This Bill would have provided a progressive licensure and compensation framework for all instructional support providers; prescribes criteria for each of three levels in the framework; and establishes minimum salaries for each of the three levels by school year 2007-2008, with PED’s adoption of a highly objective performance evaluation method.

On Friday, April 1, NEA-NM President Eduardo Holguin delivered the following letter to Governor Richardson requesting his action on specific pieces of legislation important to our legislative agenda.

Governor Richardson took the NEA recommended action on all pieces of legislation identified in the letter, signing HB 84, HB 337, HB 1091, HB 1101, and SB 181. He vetoed SB 216 and SB 875.

April 1, 2005

Dear Governor Richardson:

Thank you for your attention and efforts on behalf of educational reform and on the issue of insuring the solvency of the educational retirement fund, while assuring equity for education employees. The legislative progress on these issues would not have happened without your leadership.

We believe that there are some pieces of legislation currently on your desk that can further or hinder our mutual goals in these two areas.

First, I congratulate you on the passage of the pre-kindergarten act, Representative Miera’s HB 337. I suspect that we don’t need to add our voice to those urging you to sign this important reform legislation, but, just so you know our support continues for this program, we do urge you to sign HB 337!

Another important piece of reform legislation is HB 84. This important legislation clarifies some important points from the education reform act of 2003 and gives important flexibility to the Public Education Department in dealing with licensure issues. NEA-New Mexico urges you to sign HB 84.

Representative Miera’s HB 1091 is another reform measure that we recommend that you support. This measure came forward from a meeting of public school advocates and Public Education Secretary Garcia. It eliminates consideration of the public school membership on the fortieth day of the school year for consideration in calculating average annual membership for funding purposes. We believe that this is an important reform that effectively encourages school districts to do everything possible to prevent dropouts and “push-outs.”

House Bill 1101, introduced by Representative Martinez, but actually carried by Representative Swisstack, re-institutes an important piece of education reform. The ability of school districts to become “Charter Districts” adds real flexibility for districts to continue or begin education reforms that are, perhaps, otherwise constrained by regulation and red tape. We recommend that you sign HB 1101.

The process that led to the passage of Senator Smith’s SB 181 on educational retirement was a long and difficult one. As you know from our meeting with you during the legislative session, we preferred the option you proposed, which did not require that school employees’ salaries be further reduced by an additional retirement payroll tax. That, however, was not the option chosen by the legislature. SB 181 is not perfect, but it does begin the process of restoring financial stability to the educational retirement fund with minimal impact on school employee salaries—and it can be modified in future legislative sessions to move in the direction you proposed. For this reason we advocate that you sign SB 181.

Now I turn to two measures that I believe are ineffective and unnecessary when viewed in the best possible context, and punitive toward retired school employees when viewed at their worst.

Senator Smith’s SB 216 will require retired education employees who return to work to pay full retirement withholding payroll taxes even though they get no additional benefit and cannot reclaim this money on final retirement. Educational retiree return to work has no negative actuarial impact on the retirement fund. We believe that this is unfair to those retirees who have already returned to work and made this an important part of their long-range financial planning. Please veto SB 216. Likewise, Senator Altamirano’s SB 875, while perhaps well intentioned, discriminates against all education employees, except faculty, by preventing them from using return to work provisions. NEA-New Mexico believes that all education employees deserve the same retirement options without discrimination as to job title. Please veto SB 875.

Thank you for consideration of NEA-New Mexico’s views on these issues. We look forward to continuing our positive working relationship for the benefit of New Mexico’s students and education employees.

Sincerely,

President, NEA-New Mexico