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Hobbs district previews preliminary 2025-26 budget; House Bill 63 and updated unit values boost revenue estimate
Summary
District staff presented a preliminary operating budget using updated state unit values and legislative changes; officials estimate higher SEG revenue driven by a revised secondary factor and a $6,801.35 unit value, and projected additional personnel costs tied to a 4% salary increase.
District staff presented preliminary budget projections for fiscal year 2025-26 at the Hobbs Municipal Schools Board meeting on April 15, outlining how recent legislative changes and the state's unit value affect district revenue and staffing costs.
Brian (district budget lead) described the district's use of membership averages (80/40/120-day counts) to project units and revenue on the 9-10B-5 planning form. He said the state unit value provided in the spring budget workshop is $6,801.35 and the district's current total generated units are about 19,658, which produced a preliminary SEG figure the presenter cited as $133,706,000. Using conservative estimates for at-risk and English-learner indexes, the packet also includes a rounded operating-revenue projection of roughly $135,000,000 when including property tax, oil and gas receipts and other local revenues.
Staff attributed part of the projected revenue increase to House Bill 63, which raised the secondary factor for grades 6-12 to 1.3; district staff said this change would generate an estimated $1.6 million in additional SEG funds for secondary programming under the same membership assumptions.
Officials also outlined personnel cost implications: with the governor's guidance that raises will be 4% across the board rather than framed as an average, the district estimates roughly $5,200,000 in additional personnel costs to meet the raise, plus additional summer-school payroll and other program costs. After those preliminary adjustments staff reported a remaining estimated budget balance of approximately $2,027,000, with roughly $1,610,000 in priority one site- and department-level requests (including additional Chromebooks for students).
Budget staff said these figures are preliminary; final figures depend on two main outstanding indexes (the at-risk index and the EL index) and the PSFA/PSCOC timeline for capital items discussed later. Staff noted a submission deadline of April 21 for the preliminary budget materials and said the district intends to submit by that date and adjust with a budget analyst if necessary.
Direct quotations in the meeting included: "The unit value for this year ... is $6,801.35," and "we feel like that's a very conservative number to this point." Staff repeatedly noted the numbers were preliminary and subject to change when final index factors become available.
The board asked no substantive change-request questions during the overview; staff asked the board to anticipate further budget details at the next meeting.
