The legislature has gone home for what may be the only three day
weekend of this short 30-day legislative session. The real
action of this session starts in earnest on Monday
Wednesday, more than a hundred NEA-NM members from every corner
of the state gathered for our annual legislative conference.
After an intense day of high quality training on current education
issues, these members fanned out across the Capitol Building to lobby
their legislators with our message.
Later that evening
Governor Bill Richardson, Lt. Governor Diane Denish, Attorney
General Gary King, Secretary of State Mary Herrera, as well as
Supreme Court Justices Patricio Serna and Petra Jimenez Maes joined
many legislators and those members for our annual legislative
reception. Members carried our message to these policy makers.
Now it's your turn to TAKE ACTION:
1. Identify Your Legislators.
2. Call your state senator and representative today. Call them at
their office number or 1(505) 986-4300 and ask the operator to connect
you to his/her office.
3. Leave a simple message:
Tell them who you are and that you are a voter in the legislator's
district.
Talking or writing points for your message:
1. Vote against further education cuts.
2. Education has been cut. Those cuts took 1.5% in
salary from all employees to relieve the state of responsibility for
retirement withholdings. Those cut decimated the benefits in
our heath care program, requiring any employees who need health care
to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars out of pocket before the
Public School Insurance Authority assumes responsibility.
Professional development has been cut or eliminated. After
school programs have been cut, class size has been increased in some
instances, support personnel have been cut.
3. The budget proposed by the Legislative Finance Committee is a
recipe for disaster in public schools. It drastically reduces
funding for high schools by cutting the amount of state funding for
each high school senior by 16.4%. This at a time when high
school reform legislation passed by the legislature is increasing
demands on high schools and funding has already been shown to be
woefully inadequate by the legislature own funding formula task
force. It also targets small and rural school districts by greatly
reducing funding for small schools. Tell Legislators that
these untested changes to our school funding formula are just an
excuse to reduce school funding by some $68 million dollars! A
shell game that promised to replace federal stimulus funding and
then removes the same amount by unwarranted changes to the funding
formula.
The changes in
the funding formula hurt small schools, rural school districts, school
districts ability to hire ancillary special education personnel, and
all high schools across the state. These disastrous changes are
currently awaiting a hearing in a bill proposed by Senator John Arthur Smith of Deming. Senate Bill 105 makes major changes in the public school funding
formula without any attention to the consequences of these changes.
It is simply a way to cut some $68 million dollars out of public
school funding. Tell your Senators to oppose Senate Bill 105 !
3. Finally, tell them there are better choices.
(Follow this link
for a complete set of talking points for various revenue increases
from Better Choices New Mexico.) Vote for revenue generators which could include rolling back
tax cuts for the wealthiest and closing corporate loopholes - and use
that money to fund our schools and public services!
Some possible revenue generators:
A 1% temporary surtax on filers with taxable incomes over $100,000
would generate $150 million for our schools?
A Cigarette tax of $1 per-pack tax would generate $31 million for our
schools?
A dime-a-drink increase would generate $80 million for our schools?
SOURCE: *NM Voices for Children/NM Fiscal Policy Project
Remind them of the poll conducted by
the New Mexico Education Partners late last year.
That poll conducted by New Mexico Research and Polling on
behalf of the Partners found the following:
81 percent of registered voters say
balance budget deficit without cutting public school funding.
88 percent of registered voters say balance budget
deficit without cutting education employees’ pay.
70 percent of registered voters support increasing
taxes on tobacco, alcohol to increase revenues.
61 percent of registered voters support closing tax
loopholes for out-of-state corporations that don’t pay taxes on
profits earned in New Mexico.
55 percent of registered voters support using more of the Permanent
School Fund to help fund schools.
49 percent (a plurality) of registered voters support rolling back
2003 tax cuts for wealthiest New Mexicans in order to increase
funding for public schools.
44
percent of registered voters support increasing gross receipts
taxes.
43 percent of registered
voters are less likely to vote for lawmakers who cut school funding
instead of raising certain taxes to help balance the budget, while
only 14 percent are more likely to vote for such lawmakers. 34
percent said it wouldn't affect their vote either way.
Look for updates later in the week on various budget
proposals introduced or recommended by the Governor and various
legislative bodies. Budget
proposals compared.
Contact Governor
Richardson and thank him for saying no
to cuts to the classroom and salaries and yes to funding health care
for school employees.
Governor
Richardson's State of the State Address is at this link.
Education Partners' Poll on school funding and revenues |
