APS should shift its adult clinic funds to classrooms

The good news: Albuquerque Public Schools has for now abandoned the idea of building a $4.9 million employee health care clinic that was going to cost up to $4 million a year to operate.

The bad news: APS gets to keep that money and spend it wherever.

In February 2016, the 6.5 percent of eligible voters who bothered to cast ballots in the school election overwhelmingly approved a $375 million mill levy and another $200 million in general obligation bonds for APS and Central New Mexico Community College. Tucked inside the APS request was the $4.9 million clinic that would serve its employees — not its students.

When APS officials pitched the idea of an employee health clinic — at a time when the district was facing a $9.5 million budget shortfall — the Journal pointed out that the state’s largest district should focus on educating its 80,000-plus students instead of going into the adult health care business, especially as APS employees already have two different health care insurance options.

APS, which will receive one-sixth of the approved funds each year for six years, hasn’t entirely killed the health clinic project, saying through a spokeswoman the current uncertainty in health care insurance nationwide could prompt reconsideration in the future.

But the future of APS students is now. APS should focus on its classrooms and apply the would-be clinic funding there, instead of squirreling it away for a health center that would benefit only teachers and administrators.