Use education grants to make biggest impact

The conflict over how to allocate New Mexico’s federal Impact Aid to public schools mirrors a larger discussion over how to spend money in public schools.

Pretty much everyone in the state agrees that schools need more dollars. The key question is how best to allocate those funds so that the students who need the most receive the extra support to succeed. If money is divided equally, the neediest students are shortchanged. In this case, equal adds up to failure.

Not only is the process unfair, but such a method of paying for public education seems to counter a district judge’s order that is demanding more money be spent in schools — but more specifically, that the dollars be directed to helping at-risk children succeed.

And that gets us back to the question of federal Impact Aid, grants from the U.S. government designed to assist districts affected because of their proximity to the federal government — whether because they’re on federal land or have parents who work on federal property or are areas with large numbers of children whose parents are in the military, for example. In New Mexico, this category includes a number of pueblos and Indian reservations.

After the federal government hands out the grants, the state allocates them to the districts only to reduce general fund support by the equivalent of 75 percent of the Impact Aid money. Affected districts receive only 25 percent of the intended support.

Senate Bill 170 — introduced by Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, and Sen. Clemente Sanchez, D-Grants, would remove the federal impact money out of the state’s funding formula over time. By 2022, federal Impact Aid money would go to the districts that qualify for the grants. They’d keep it all, in other words.

This will be painful, but redirecting aid to the districts that most need assistance is smarter spending. As District Judge Sarah Singleton pointed out in her findings of fact about public schools in New Mexico, “The obstacles facing at-risk students and their schools, while daunting, can be overcome. …”

Overcome, that is, if students receive quality pre-K instruction, more time in school, strong early childhood education, instruction that supports their cultural background, wrap-around services and other programs that support achievement. Programs take money. More money than has been spent to date on public education in New Mexico. But the money must be spent where it will do the most good.

That could include taking federal Impact Aid and considering it more of an “extra,” on top of regular operational dollars that flow to schools through the funding formula.

The Public Education Department, in its analysis of the legislation, worries that such a redirection of funds could upset equity in the system; that’s a valid concern, but again, we are dealing for the most part with students so far behind that they need concentrated services. (One of the districts that receives Impact Aid is the affluent Los Alamos Public Schools. Its share of Impact Aid is negligible, however, compared to the Gallup school district, which stands to gain millions annually.)

Again, Singleton in her findings of fact: “At-risk students include children who come from economically disadvantaged homes, children who are English Language Learners, children who are Native American, and children with a disability. At-risk students begin school with certain disadvantages that are not the making of the school system.”

It goes without saying that taking millions — which this would do — from one set of districts for the benefit of other districts is controversial. It does change the impact of the much-lauded formula that equalizes funding for schools. This is complicated.

The legislation as introduced likely will need tinkering, not just to provide dollars to bridge the transition — there is $15 million in the bill currently — but to offset funding losses. A longer transition period might help, too, as would a different split of the dollars; Sen. Bill Soules, D-Las Cruces, suggested a split of 50-50 for several years as one possible compromise.

In the end, though, money to help boost children in the poorest districts of New Mexico needs to go — for the most part — to those students. That’s how they will catch up.