Two budget bills move from Senate to House

By Peter St. Cyr 10/22/09 5:38 PM

In less than 100 minutes on Thursday, state senators approved two measures that could help offset education cuts for school districts across the state.

The first, Senate Bill 24, the School Equalization and Reduction and Public School Insurance Premium measure, passed on a 39-0 vote.

The bill would allow school districts to use money that has gone for insurance premiums for school buildings to be now used for funding classroom instruction. SB 24 appropriates $29 million from the Public School Capital Outlay Fund to the New Mexico Public School Insurance Authority to pay for property insurance premiums, freeing up $29 million that could be used in the classroom in both school districts and in charter schools.

The sponsor of the bill, Sen. Vernon Asbill, R-Carlsbad, told the Independent that he aimed to keep school cuts down as possible.

“I will go as far as saying education is held harmless as much as possible, even in face of budget adjustments, because of the flexibility we are giving the schools on how they spend their money. They can absorb the adjustments and move money around to fit their needs, ” Senator Asbill said.

“School superintendents and principals—and not rules and regulations can dictate how school funding is spent. They can choose to protect their classroom instruction from being affected by likely adjustments that they will soon face in this year’s budget and the more limited budgets for next year.”

Out of the $29 million total appropriation, $7 million dollars is earmarked for the state’s largest school district.

Albuquerque Public School District Director of Government Affairs Joseph Escobedo was monitoring the debate from the Senate gallery.

“This will definitely help us to offset cuts in our operations budget,” Escobedo said. “With this bill that helps pay for our property insurance, it definitely lessens the hit on us, and we can focus on keeping cuts out of the classroom and away from teachers.”

The second measure, a School District Operation Fund Flexibility measure (SB 25) also passed the Senate on a 34 to 5 vote before senators recessed.

“This is yet another approach to providing school districts with budget flexibility,” Sen. Vernon Asbill, who led the morning debate and sponsored both bills.

If approved by the house, SB 25 authorizes temporary cash transfers to the school district operational account from taxes under the Public School Capital Improvement Act. However, it would prohibit any money being transferred from being used for salary expenses or school district employees.

Escobedo isn’t sure that APS will use SB 5.

“It would allow us to use temporarily use some capital money, but it has a loan repayment provision,” Escobedo said. “At this point, I don’t if we would use that bill.”

If cuts begin to impact classrooms and staff, Escobedo said APS is prepared to tap a “little bit” of its Federal stimulus money.

“We have to be very careful of that because we will have that cliff once those stimulus funds go away,” Escobedo said. “We have to be very careful on how we use those funds.”

Escobedo isn’t the only one monitoring lawmakers’ approach to trimming public school spending.

“I think the community and board of education strongly supported no cuts to education,” Escobedo said. “I think the legislature has worked awfully hard to make that happen. With the situation that we have right now, and the cuts at 2 percent, this $7 million dollars to pay our property insurance, I believe we will not see any negative affects to the classroom or our staff.

Both measures are headed to the House Appropriations and Finance Committee for review.

Angelica Ruiz, Santa Fe Public School board president, explains her support for Senate Bill 24: