Santa Fe district leaders meet about potential education cuts
Posted at: 11/02/2009 9:50 PM
| Updated at: 11/03/2009 7:10 AM
By: Joe Vigil, Eyewitness News 4; Charlie Pabst, KOB.com
Under the bill that state lawmakers sent the governor, education funding would be cut less than one percent.
School leaders in Santa Fe say they've been working to keep the cuts from impacting the classroom and teachers, but said Monday they don't know if they'll be able to do that.
The Santa Fe School District has lots of red ink to deal with. Leaders say they just cut $4.5 million from the budget this spring, and are now looking at slicing up another $1.5 million from the district's $78 million budget.
Leaders say on top of those cuts, they will have to make even more cuts to transportation, education technology and other areas under the proposal state lawmakers under the proposal state lawmakers sent to the governor.
Santa Fe resident Liza Suzanne is worried how cuts could impact kids she works with outside of the school.
She had this suggestion for the governor: "Give education more money. Don't make any cuts to education."
There are basically two areas to cut from: The first being the classroom, where 85% of the district's budget is payroll.
If residents don't want cuts there, athletics and programs and activities like music may have to be cut.
Santa Fe School Board President Angelica Ruiz said, "We will have to look at extracurricular activities perhaps and extra programs, which is very, very difficult because that does even indirectly affect our kids in their success."
Some residents say cuts to extracurricular cuts would hurt, too.
Resident John Padilla said, " I want as much support to go into the classroom as possible, however with the extra curricular activities especially with sports and athletics it's important to keep those because we have really high quality student athletes."
District leaders want the public to get involved in the process, but it certainly wasn't a packed turnout for the first meeting.
They have two more meetings scheduled. The first is Saturday, November 14 from 9 a.m. to Noon, and the second is Monday November 16 from 4 -7 p.m.
The meetings will be held at the Educational Services Center at 610 Alta Vista Street in Santa Fe.
The governor has until November 12 to decide whether to sign or veto the budget bills lawmakers have sent him.
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