School board gives a sneak peek of APS' budget for coming school year

The mental health of students is a growing concern for Albuquerque High School junior Elsie Miller.

So for her, more support for things like counseling services for Albuquerque Public Schools students nears the top of her list of things the district should prioritize as it crafts its budget for the coming school year.

“Between everyone involved in our school, I think there’s a lot of stress surrounded by school, but I think it shouldn’t be a stressful environment,” she told the Journal.

Dozens of APS community members got a peek behind the curtain on Monday, when district officials gave a crash course in a high-level version of APS’ expected $1.9 billion budget for the coming fiscal year.

As it stands, the budget would mark a 12% decrease from the current school year’s $2.16 billion budget. The total dollar amount for fiscal year 2025’s budget plan reflects the budget APS had in the 2022-2023 school year.

Operational dollars amount to roughly $905 million, and the largest slice of that pie would go to direct instruction, or money that goes straight into classrooms, including teachers’ and educational assistants’ salaries.

As per the state budget bill sitting on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk, public school staff would receive 3% raises under APS’ current budget plan.

APS is budgeting another almost $474 million on capital projects, $45 million on food services and $21 million on transportation.

Chief Financial Officer Rennette Apodaca attributed the smaller budget to a federal funding cliff APS expects to go over in the coming months.

In September, hundreds of millions in pandemic relief dollars through the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund are set to expire.

That is expected to mean the loss of programs throughout APS, apparently including cuts to the district’s Transformational Opportunity Pilot Schools, which affords 21 schools more, and longer, days.

APS has said that for the most part, it aimed to avoid hiring full-time staff with those federal dollars — though there still were some hires. Apodaca would not say if there would be cuts, saying only that vacancies throughout the district would provide ample opportunity for those people to be hired elsewhere.

On Monday, board members had the audience work through an exercise asking them to determine what programs they would value most if faced with such a federal funding fall-off.

Some, though, questioned the value of the exercise, saying they’d attended Monday’s forum for specifics and didn’t feel listened to about what their priorities were.

“We want actual numbers,” shouted APS parent Rebekah Manning during a question-and-answer section of the event. “... This is an exercise in futility and a waste of our time.”

District officials noted it is still early in the budgeting process — in fact, some numbers may change — and had not fully built the budget. Board members added the idea behind the meeting was to give the community the information they had early on.

“It’s important for our community to realize we’re trying to get feedback from the front end versus the back end,” board member Crystal Tapia-Romero told the Journal after the forum. “Because many times they’re given a budget and they’re already told, ‘Here’s what’s going to happen.’ ”

“At no point do we want people to feel like they’re wasting their time or that they’re speaking on deaf ears,” she added.