PED asks for 21% increase in its overall budget

The Public Education Department is asking for a 21% increase in its overall budget, from $4.2 billion this year to nearly $5.1 billion in fiscal year 2025.

However, Thursday's budget request before the Legislative Finance Committee was largely overshadowed by lawmakers' criticism of the Public Education Department's proposed rules, which would require 180 days of instruction for all schools beginning in the 2024-25 school year and impose a new school accreditation process. Lawmakers from all over the state and across the political spectrum denounced the proposal as an infringement on local and legislative decision making.

"You're going to fail at what you're trying to do at rulemaking," said committee chair Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup.

The hoped-for budget increase of nearly $900 million for what is already the single largest chunk of the state's general fund directed toward one agency would maintain and expand several existing programs, said department Cabinet Secretary Arsenio Romero. These include the ongoing implementation of structured literacy and initiatives to close the learning gap for students identified in the Yazzie/Martinez court decision, in which a judge determined the state failed to provide sufficient education to low-income, special education, Native American and English language learner students.

In the wake of a legislative report's findings that New Mexico's enormous investments in special education haven't paid off and armed with a newly established Office of Special Education, some of the money would also go toward improving special education services, Romero added.

Many of lawmakers' questions for Romero, though, focused not on the budget request but on the department's proposed rules.

Much of the criticism surrounding the proposal came from lawmakers representing New Mexico's rural communities, where many schools operate on four-day weeks. Under the new rules, at least half of those school weeks would have to be five days long.

Citing her own 110-mile trek to a four-day-per-week elementary school, Rep. Gail Armstrong, R-Magdalena, argued the rule diminished local school boards' authority to create their district calendar as well as leaving four-day districts to foot the bill for that fifth day of school.

Armstrong is among 25 House Republicans who signed a Dec. 7 letter denouncing the Public Education Department's proposal. A group of state House and Senate Republicans submitted a similar letter to Romero on Wednesday.

Local control "is my biggest problem," Armstrong said. "I was on the school board in Magdalena for 15 years, and we would always put out a survey asking should we have a four-day school week there — asking parents and asking the teachers what they wanted. They never chose to go to a five-day week.

"And so, as a school board member, I listened to my constituents," she continued. "As a state representative, I listen to my constituents."

Lawmakers also called the department's proposal an infringement on legislative authority.

The intention of the proposal, Romero said, is to update state rules to be consistent with House Bill 130, a bill passed during the 2023 legislative session that required public schools to increase school time to 1,140 hours a year, including teacher professional development time. The law went into effect just four months ago with the start of the 2023-24 school year.

HB 130 went through months of vetting — including hearings all over the state with school stakeholders — said Rep. Joy Garratt, D-Albuquerque, one of the bill's sponsors.

"I was appalled when, after only four months of implementation and months of hard work by districts and charters to adjust their schedules and their planning to the law put forth in [HB] 130 ... that suddenly a rule is being proposed without any discussion ahead of time," Garratt said. "I'm deeply troubled by that."