Thursday, February 14, 2019

The Purse Strings of the New Mexico Legislature


We all know that it is the legislature that determines where our permanent fund money goes. The idea is that the legislature controls the purse strings and creates the bills that sets the laws and policies that are then carried out by the executive branch of the government. Details are left up to cabinet members and local boards. The ideal is that they use the money allocated by the legislature to carry out policies that benefit the general public.

Why is it that the legislature is totally failing in that manner when it comes to education? I have had to listened for years that education in our state takes a large amount of money with little to no results. Has anyone working in the field of education every been listen to by the legislature? When it comes to spending all you have to do is look at how the money is being used to understand what the problem is when it comes to results. We have top educational administration which gets outrageous salaries while teachers and support staff get bread crumbs for pay. Teachers and support staff have to apply to programs listed as social safety net just to make ends meet. When I talk to legislatures they refuse to help. They say they don’t want to micromanage the schools. My question is how is that working out for New Mexico!?!

They tell you to go through chain of command as if you were in the military. The chain of command is the problem to begin with in the first place. Tutor are retiring because they are angry and fed up with getting the short end of the stick. Let them hire workstudy students that don’t know what they are doing. Why should we care if the children of New Mexico don’t get a real education? Clearly the legislators in Santa Fe don’t care. Maybe if they spent less time listening to lobbyist paid for by the educational administration and started caring about the people working with students results would improve. 

My advice to the legislature is keep your raise because we will never see it in our paycheck! The money will be spent on raises for the top administration and lobbyists. And when the voters blame you for the failing students in this state you can do what you always do and blame the people who work with our students. You can explain why their students have substandard nonprofessional people failing to help them when their grades drop. 

                                    Am I angry YES! The votes should be as well.