Bill to add school days dies in Senate

A bill that would have added 25 days to the school year for younger students died Monday in the Senate Rules Committee.

Members defeated the proposed state constitutional amendment on a 4-2 vote.

Two Democrats and two Republicans joined together to stop the bill.

The sponsor, Sen. Joseph Cervantes, for years has been a critic of long summer breaks because he says they hurt student achievement.

Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, proposed to add five weeks to the school year for students in grades K-5. He wanted to use 1 percent of the state’s $14.4 billion land grant endowment to pay for extra salaries, utilities and other expenses of an extended school year.

The endowment, which has grown by $2 billion in less than two years, is the logical way to fund the program, he said.

Charles Wollmann, a spokesman for the State Investment Council, said in an interview that adding five weeks to the school calendar would have cost an estimated $351 million during its first three years.

The legislative staff analysis of Cervantes’ bill said it would have had a deep and negative effect on the endowment.

“By 2020, the corpus of the fund is diminished by $629 million, and 10 years after that, the negative impact has grown to nearly $3.2 billion,” the analysis stated.

Sen. Clemente Sanchez, D-Grants, said he opposed Cervantes’ bill because he is worried about depleting the endowment, which already helps pay for public schools.

Sanchez said another proposed constitutional amendment proposes to take another 1 percent of the endowment for early childhood education, programs for children up to age 5.

If both the early childhood and extended school programs were approved, the state would be spending a total of 7 percent a year from the endowment in 2017.

That is more than is removed from any university endowment, Sanchez said.

Sen. Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, also opposed the bill, but on different grounds.

He said the Legislature should muster the political courage to pay for public schools from the state’s general fund, not the endowment.

Candelaria said the Senate and House of Representatives found ways to approve corporate tax cuts and “a $50 million slush fund” to attract out-of-state companies, but they continue to shortchange schools.

Cervantes said that with his bill, he was providing Candelaria and the rest of the committee the opportunity to better fund schools.

During the last five legislative sessions, Cervantes has regularly introduced bills to lengthen the school year, something he says would produce more accomplished students. He criticized the state for largely continuing to follow a school calendar as though New Mexico still had an economy in which children were needed in summer to work on family farms.

“It’s a quaint notion, but we’re way beyond that,” Cervantes said.

AFT New Mexico, a teachers’ union, supported his bill. The Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce opposed it, saying a longer school year would siphon money from the land grant endowment “with no end in sight.”

Cervantes’ proposal would have gone on the statewide ballot for voters to decide had the Senate and House both approved it.

Contact Milan Simonich at 505-986-3080 or [email protected]