APS’ spending doesn’t match stated priorities

As the state’s largest school district faces a multimillion-dollar shortfall, its acting superintendent is busy contending her 85,706 students still come first.

But actions speak louder than words. And the same district that says kids come first is:

1. Significantly increasing its current projected budget deficit of $5.2 million so high school teachers can teach one less class, five instead of six in a seven-period day. It’s supposed to give them more time outside the classroom, but the contract allows teachers to “sell back” the time. So in those cases, it’s the same amount of time in the classroom — but for more money.

2. Building a $4.9 million employee health clinic that will cost between $2.7 and $4 million annually to run, all in the face of dwindling enrollment.

So despite the public relations claims, it’s hard to see how the district is “putting kids first.”

Regarding the schedule change, Frank Chiki, writing candidly as an individual and not in his position as Zuni Elementary principal, points out in a letter to the editor published in the Sunday Albuquerque Journal that the plan did not come from the district’s Budget Committee on which he serves and that in reality it means “class sizes will need to increase as the students still need to be taught” and “all of us will feel the brunt of necessary cuts due to almost doubling our projected deficit to $9.3 million.” That’s putting kids first? And if it’s important for high school teachers to spend less time teaching, unless they are on the cash-for-free-time plan, why isn’t it important for elementary and middle school teachers? Their jobs certainly are as demanding, or more.

As for the projected operating funds for the clinic, Albuquerque Public Schools already provides two health insurance plans for employees to choose from, and the cost of running that clinic has ballooned almost three-fold from an estimated $1.5 million. It’s one more project drawn up on the bureaucrat drawing board that relies on using OPM (other people’s money.)

Yet Reedy’s administration supports both, and in fact spent much of the spring convincing voters that the district’s $575 million bond issue would — you guessed it — go to the kids.

Let’s be clear: Many of the district’s 85,706 students are educated in outdated buildings, with leaking roofs and struggling HVAC systems. Many are in classes that Chiki says you could “argue are already too high to effectively reach students’ academic and emotional needs.”

But hey, won’t they benefit from having high school teachers who can sell back that extra free period for thousands of dollars and then visit their private boutique health clinic? Won’t that help the kids who will be shoved into even more crowded classrooms?

Sure it will, if you live in the Orwellian world of APS doublespeak. But in the real world, where the district’s students live, APS’ actions do speak louder than words, and they say the district is not putting taxpayers’ money where its students are.