Board approves consent agenda including RFP awards, budget adjustment requests, property dispositions and vendor payments; district outlines safety-technology,

The Las Cruces Public Schools Board unanimously approved a consent agenda that included the Hermosa Heights roof and HVAC contract, the supplemental behavioral-health services award, budget adjustment requests (BARs), property dispositions and vendor payments.

President Court moved the consent motion, Board Member Frank seconded it, and present members voted yes. The action bundled multiple procurement and budget items for ratification; staff said the items required board approval for contract awards, budget alignment and routine disposals.

Finance staff reported the district’s total non‑payroll disbursements for July were $46,468,038.65; $1,243,122.95 (2.7%) were checks and $45,224,915.70 (97.3%) were ACH payments. Tony Corral (disbursements) answered board questions about several vendor payments: the New Mexico Public School Insurance Authority (NMP SIA) premium has risen substantially in recent years, staff said, representing a cumulative increase of about $2.9 million over five years and a large annual payment this July. Staff also said a roughly $30,000,000 payment earlier in the month represented bond principal and related payments processed through Bank of Albuquerque.

Board members reviewed several BARs that align current-year and prior-year budgets to ending balances. Staff highlighted these items: - Instructional-material transfers for a K–12 science adoption: district staff said this year’s adoption budget is near $4.9 million, up from a typical annual adoption of about $3.5 million, covering materials and professional learning across elementary, middle and high school levels. - A GoSkoolbox (doing business as Everest) contract to provide analytics and return-on-investment analysis for district instructional resources; staff said the district receives deep discounts—totaling about $245,000 off list prices—and that the purchase is an annual fee procured via the TIPS cooperative. - Transportation increases to replace four buses under rents and leases funding. - A small carryover of roughly $38,000 for weapons-detection equipment (Evolve) that the district will use for materials and some recurring software costs.

Capital BAR discussion included the district’s decision to move to a Verkada visitor-management and camera platform districtwide, replacing Raptor for visitor management. Chief Rodriguez said Verkada bundles visitor management, cameras and the ring-camera integration under a single vendor; the district is piloting a reunification feature built for LCPS and will brief the board at a September work session on safety-implementation components. Staff said Verkada required an upfront purchase covered in the capital BARs and that recurring costs are estimated to be roughly $5,000–$6,000 higher per year than their prior Raptor expense but consolidate multiple systems under one vendor.

Procurement staff also noted LCPS joined the APEX/APEC cooperative to access cooperative pricing for Verkada and other purchases. Finance staff reported the district’s audit work is underway and praised accounting staff for reconciling records in preparation for the audit.

Board members did not pull any consent items for separate discussion.