SANTA FE —The Legislative Finance Committee is recommending changes to the state's roughly 40-year-old school-funding formula to address factors that may be stopping funds from getting to those most in need.


More than 80 percent of the state's Hispanic students (who make up 63 percent of all students) are considered impoverished and therefore at risk, for instance. As it now stands, the formula only devotes 3 percent of funding to those students.

"Money is not flowing to where children need it at the end of the day," Charles Sallee of the LFC told a joint session of Senate and House education committee members at the Roundhouse on Wednesday morning.

Also, the formula currently encourages districts to identify high numbers of students for special-education programs and includes unclear guidelines that may allow districts to claim more money than needed for these programs.

And the formula's use of a Training and Experience index to give 9 percent of funding to districts based on teacher education and experience doesn't align with the state's three-tier teacher licensure/compensation system -- and may be unfairly aiding a select few districts without any evidence that their teachers impact academic achievement.

Rep. Patricia A. Lundstrom, D-Gallup, recently introduced House Bill 158 to amend the Public School Finance Act to address the same issues that the LFC has with the funding formula. The LFC has endorsed that bill.

Santa Fe school Superintendent Joel Boyd said he favors the LFC suggestions, since Santa Fe is near the bottom of the 89 school districts in terms of state funding.

"The formula doesn't seem to be set up to allow the money to follow children," Boyd said. "The notion is money will be equitably distributed, but what we are seeing is an inequitable distribution."

Both the LFC report and Lundstrom's bill also ask districts to start providing accountability to prove that their funded initiatives are leading to improved academic ratings.

The state's public-school funding formula, initiated in 1974, is designed to ensure that all New Mexico students receive equal educational opportunities.

Lawmakers have changed the formula some 80 times since its inception.

Funding is not based on student enrollment numbers alone, but on a complicated equation in which "student units" are first measured based on the number of students enrolled in a given grade or program, and then multiplied by the cost differential assigned to the program within the funding statute.

The state uses 24 different categories to account for these grades and programs. No student qualifies for all 24, but students may qualify for several categories -- a second-grader in a rural district who speaks Spanish and is also a special-education student may account for several units, for instance.

The LFC would like to see additional weight given to at-risk students in order to increase funding for them.

Sallee said three recent studies of the state's school-funding plan suggest the formula is "too complicated." He said the state would have to boost education funding by about $23 million per year over the next few years to implement the Legislative Finance Committee's recommendations for changes.

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or