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Superintendents highlight construction, safety and special-ed cost pressures; new Lexile study challenges 'last place' narrative
Summary
Superintendents told LESC rising construction and liability costs, educator housing shortages, and special-education funding gaps strain districts; a new Everest Analytics white paper using Lexile scores was presented as evidence New Mexico outperforms national averages on certain literacy measures.
Superintendents and district leaders urged the Legislative Education Study Committee to address structural cost pressures and operational challenges facing school districts.
Lee White, superintendent and president-elect of the Superintendents Association, said construction and maintenance costs have risen dramatically in recent years and cited a mismatch between the Public School Facilities Authority's (PSFA) $300-per-square-foot construction base and local commercial projects running $650 to $1,200 per square foot. He proposed options including a statewide reserve fund for high‑need districts and statewide contracting options for emergency maintenance.
White also flagged educator housing shortages and school safety investment needs as recruitment and retention barriers. On special education, White said districts are facing high-cost cases that require multiple ancillary staff and that the funding formula uses a 40-hour denominator while legal limits assume a 37.5-hour workweek, creating funding shortfalls.
White announced a new study by Everest Analytics that attaches Lexile and Quantile scores to state-assessed students to enable cross-state comparisons. "I can definitively say that New Mexico is not fiftieth in education," he said, adding the white paper is publicly available and that Alejandro Mendoza and Parsa Rezvani of Everest Analytics contributed to the analysis.
During the committee's question-and-answer period, legislators and presenters returned repeatedly to teacher workload, assessment burdens and the functionality of state-mandated screeners. Ellen Bernstein of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation criticized the AMIRA reading screener as "highly dysfunctional," saying it fails to account for students with speech impediments or accents and consumes classroom time otherwise used for planning and interventions.
Committee members cautioned that available recurring revenue has contracted since earlier estimates, limiting the state's capacity for new long-term salary commitments. Presenters and legislators said they will continue interim work to refine proposals and funding options ahead of the 30‑day session.
