Albuquerque Public Schools eyes largest budget to date despite enrollment decline

Albuquerque Public Schools could spend more than ever next year, even as enrollment has declined by more than 10,000 students since the COVID pandemic.

While it is “still punching numbers,” Rennette Apodaca, chief financial officer for APS, told the Journal, the district is looking at passing a roughly $2.3 billion budget, which would be its largest to date — if approved by the board.

The proposed budget comes while APS faces a $4.7 million deficit and projects less than 65,000 students will be enrolled in the upcoming school year. The district’s enrollment dashboard — which was updated following a Journal inquiry — shows there are currently 65,887 students enrolled at APS schools.

On the final day of the 2020 school year, APS had 78,997 students. APS’ enrollment woes are in line with national trends. In 2015, 50.3 million students across the country were enrolled in public schools. That number is down to 49.6 million in 2025. The biggest drop, both locally and nationally, came around the time of the pandemic. In 2019, some 50.8 million students were enrolled in U.S. public schools. The next year that number dropped to 49.4 million.

“This same narrative is playing out across many school districts across the United States,” Thomas Dee, professor at Stanford University’s graduate school of education told the Journal, “where they’re facing a kind of perfect storm of sustained declines in enrollment, federal aid that has expired, while at the same time, there are many learning challenges that they face.”

As the number of students drops and uncertainty looms around what federal funds will be terminated, the proposed budget is largely supported by the state increasing funding it offers per student, by some $250, alongside additional funding programs. According to a presentation on the proposed budget, slated to go in front of the school board Wednesday, a projected $985 million is funded through a program called the state equalization guarantee.

“We get additional money from the state, which has really helped us,” Apodaca said Monday. “They’ve been able to increase the state equalization guarantee each year, and even though enrollment is dropping, with that increase it’s really helped us stay close to balance.”

Another part of the state equalization guarantee that helps APS is the funding it receives per student increasing, even as enrollment declines.

“Unit value has gone up, and unit value refers to basically a formula about what each kid receives in terms of funding,” APS spokesperson Phill Casaus said, “and the unit value generally over the last several years has continued to go up.”

The state’s Public Education Department (PED) confirmed to the Journal that the unit value will increase from $6,553.75 to $6,801.35 — or around $250 a student.

PED provides additional financial programs to support districts with low-income students and those — like APS — which have 180-day school years, according to Sara Cordova, director of PED’s School Budget Bureau. The increased funding to programs and per student over the years has helped offset the declines in enrollment, Cordova added.

Adds APS’s Apodaca: “Regardless of the enrollment, we make sure that each school gets their base resources.”

While she said the proposed APS budget is “grounded in reality,” Amanda Aragon, executive director of education policy advocacy group New Mexico Kids Can, believes it’s fair to question the amount of assistance the state is giving districts despite plummeting enrollment.

“What we have seen, one of our reactions from COVID, is that districts have not felt any negative downside for losing students,” Aragon said.

“So if your budget growth is such that districts can lose 20,000 kids and their budget today is bigger than it was with 20,000 kids less,” she said, “but we should at least ask the question: ‘Does it make sense that APS has a bigger budget today than it did at the peak of its enrollment?’”

While enrollment has dropped, the operating costs in APS’ budgets have not. Raises the state has given public school employees and rising “costs on a variety of other fronts” were the reasons Casaus gave in a statement.

“The district faces many of the same challenges that other businesses are experiencing — rising costs on almost every front,” Casaus wrote.

New Mexico public school teachers and school personnel will receive 4% raises starting this summer, under a budget bill signed last week by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Federal funds

The declining enrollment number isn’t the only thing making the upcoming budget challenging for APS. The district also cites uncertainty around federal funding as another challenge.

While vowing not to eliminate Title I and funding for children with special needs, the dismantling of the Department of Education by President Donald Trump creates uncertainty about what other federal funds will continue to come in for public schools. Currently, federal grants make up some $345 million of APS’s budget.

The district is set to present a finalized budget to the school board again at its May 7 meeting and send it to the state’s Public Education Department by May 19.