Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Education Budgeting topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Legislative staff urge clearer strategy for below‑the‑line education funding
Summary
LESC and LFC staff told lawmakers that New Mexico’s growing “below‑the‑line” appropriations—budget items for pilots and initiatives outside statutory formulas—now exceed hundreds of millions of dollars and need clearer rules on multi‑year commitments, evaluation, and when to convert successful pilots into recurring funding.
Legislative analysts from the Legislative Education Study Committee (LESC) and the Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) presented a joint accountability report on below‑the‑line education funding at Atrisco Heritage High School, saying the category has expanded into a substantial portion of New Mexico’s K‑12 investments and now requires firmer strategic guardrails.
“Below the line programs are initiatives or pilots the department runs that aren’t statutorily defined—there’s no formula, there’s really no guardrails,” LFC public schools analyst Sonny Liu said, outlining a longstanding practice that has grown to “over $350,000,000 in this current fiscal year.” Liu urged the Legislature to focus less on total dollars and more on how funds are spent and whether programs show results.
Daniel Estupian, a finance analyst for LESC, walked members through several major items funded below the line and staff recommendations. The report groups below‑the‑line uses into four buckets—interventions (evidence‑based work that might merit recurring funding), innovations (emerging programs for evaluation), base operations (personnel that arguably should be recurring), and nonrecurring expenses (studies, equipment, capital outlay). Estupian and Liu recommended using multi‑year mechanisms where appropriate so grantees and districts have a runway to implement and evaluate programs.
The analysts also highlighted process problems that slow and fragment implementation: delayed award letters from the Public Education Department (PED), small one‑off appropriations tied to individual bills, and repeated annual re‑applications for some grants. Those delays and administrative friction, staff said, have contributed to large unspent balances and year‑to‑year volatility in program delivery.
Staff singled out specific programs for scrutiny. They recommended continuing proven interventions with recurring funding, using the new GROW fund to provide multiyear runway for promising pilots, and reserving nonrecurring money for genuine one‑time needs. In the report, LESC/LFC staff recommended sunsetting the Family Income Index pilot as currently structured because of limited evidence of academic gains and local capacity challenges; they proposed keeping the pilot’s EFIS poverty‑identification method as an indicator embedded in the funding formula instead.
Lawmakers pressed staff on specifics—how many pilots have transitioned from below‑the‑line to recurring programs, the amount reverted to the public education reform fund last year (~$50 million, staff said), and how to ensure money reaches school sites rather than being consumed by contracting and administrative costs. Analysts said some programs (for example, pre‑K expansions) historically started below the line and were later folded into recurring funding after sustained evidence of impact.
The joint staff recommendation to lawmakers was procedural as well as programmatic: adopt clearer accountability measures and performance reporting for below‑the‑line appropriations, prefer multiyear commitments for programs expected to scale, require routine public reporting on grantees and expenditures, and treat recurring personnel costs as recurring budget decisions rather than nonrecurring pilots.
If the Legislature follows those suggestions, staff said, the state can preserve the utility of below‑the‑line funding for innovation while reducing volatility, improving oversight, and increasing the likelihood that effective programs are sustained at the school level.
