APS' legislative agenda includes an ask for inflation stabilization funding, smaller class sizes

The Albuquerque Public Schools board on Wednesday approved the district’s agenda for the upcoming legislative session, which in part is aimed at putting New Mexico’s revenue windfall to use so the district can put more resources back into classrooms.

The session, a 30-day budget session, begins Jan. 16.

Among typical priorities, like adequately funding instructional materials, the district and its board are also emphasizing more funding for school construction projects, a strategic need to replace the APS’ business software system, and education law changes, such as legislating smaller class sizes.

Office of Innovation and School Choice Senior Director Joseph Escobedo said the former would help address ballooning labor and material costs impacting projects within APS as well as in districts around the state.

“That’s a big issue,” he said. “In broad terms, the inflation and construction costs have really hurt our ability to complete construction projects that were approved in our last bond cycle.”

In 2021, APS got approval for almost 20 major projects making substantial improvements to schools around the district. But because of inflating material costs and labor shortages, district officials say they’ll be lucky to get through seven of those projects.

That problem’s impacting districts throughout the state, Capital Master Plan Executive Director Kizito Wijenje said during Wednesday night’s board meeting, adding that a failure to get help from the state could mean those projects would go back to taxpayers, who would bear the brunt of the costs.

APS is also seeking help to replace its software, described as “woefully out-of-date,” for logging things like payroll and leave time. That replacement, Escobedo said, could cost up to $25 million.

While not a direct investment in the district’s classrooms, Escobedo said the general idea is to leverage a boom in state revenues fueled largely by oil and natural gas production strategically so that APS doesn’t have to use money that could go into classrooms for such administrative purposes.

On Wednesday, school board members also emphasized an interest in pushing for smaller class sizes, in one case citing students who expressed feelings that “ ‘we have too many kids in classrooms, teachers don’t have time for us.’ ”

“I didn’t have to say a word, I just listened to them,” board member Barbara Petersen said. “And basically what they said is, ‘If you actually care about social-emotional learning, if you actually care about how we’re doing emotionally, you’re going to reduce class size.’ ”

Currently, class sizes for kindergarteners are capped at 20 students, provided the teacher has an educational assistant to help. First through third grade teachers must have an average of 22 students across all three grades, and fourth through sixth grade teachers’ magic number is 24.

Generally, the cap for seventh through 12th grade teachers appears to average around 32 students per day, but is slightly less for teachers of required English courses.