E-mail Story
Print Friendly
Send E-mail
Reprint story
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
APS Budget Lowest Since '07
By Hailey Heinz
Copyright © 2011 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
The Albuquerque Public Schools budget for the coming fiscal year will be $22 million less than last year's operating budget — putting it at the lowest levels since fiscal year 2007.
And after months of bruising criticism from Gov. Susana Martinez, Superintendent Winston Brooks emphasized Tuesday that 71.2 percent of the APS salary budget will go to teachers and educational assistants.
"That really aligns itself with the governor's charge that we should spend money in the classroom and not on administration," Brooks said.
APS officials gave the Journal a limited preview of the spending plan Tuesday, although they would not discuss details until it is formally presented to the board today.
The total proposed APS operating budget is $594 million, down from $616 million in the current fiscal year. Of the proposed budget, $537 million would go to salary and benefits for all employees, leaving $57 million for other expenditures like utilities and textbooks.
Details of how the district will accommodate the reduced funding are set to be rolled out this morning at a finance committee meeting.
APS budget staffers will show the school board their plan for closing the shortfall, which was caused by a 3.3 percent reduction in state funding and other factors like increased utility rates and the cost of paying teachers who move up through the three-tier licensure system.
While this year's proposed budget is $22 million less than the current budget, APS will have to trim $37 million in expenses to cover rising costs.
Principals were asked earlier this spring to cut their school budgets for next year by 4.9 percent, and heads of central departments were asked to cut budgets by 12.8 percent. Those cuts are expected to save the district about $23 million. Brooks will reveal strategies this morning for cutting the other $14 million needed to balance the books.
As the overall budget shrinks, the percentage of salary costs paid to teachers and EAs has grown slightly over the past two years. Brooks said the 71.2 percent figure proposed for next year is the highest in recent years, although the number has hovered around 70 percent. Teachers and EAs account for 69.7 percent of salaries in the current year.
"Our budget places the highest percentage of resources into the classroom that we have had in recent times, certainly since 2007," Brooks said. "And my hunch is this may be the highest of all time because none of us were nearly as sensitive to this."
Brooks also said APS could have kept cuts completely out of classrooms if the budget had been cut by only 1.5 percent. Martinez has publicly emphasized that her administration cut just 1.5 percent from public schools.
While the school appropriation is down 1.5 percent from last year, enrollment growth was not built into the budget and many districts — including APS — face additional cuts because the funding is being spread more thinly around the state.
"I think the governor is still saying she only cut education by 1.5 percent," Brooks said. "If it were only that, which is $10 million for us, we could have gotten that from the bureaucracy without touching the classroom."
The governor's spokesman, Scott Darnell, issued a statement Tuesday night saying, "We look forward to reviewing the budget and we join parents and teachers throughout the district in counting on APS to make savings in the administration to protect classroom spending. For example, APS should not make cuts to the classroom before cutting their PR staff, lobbyists, and newly-added administrators."
Brooks also pushed back against statements Martinez made Monday to KOAT-TV, in which she called Brooks' decision to hire a new professional development director "insanity." Martinez also said "padding administration" is what APS "does best."
Brooks said Tuesday he felt the statement did an injustice to the teachers and students doing good work in APS.
"I think that's an unfair statement," Brooks said "I think that our teachers and our administrators and our board and district-level administration does a lot of things really well."
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
