By Marty Mayfield
KRTN Multi-Media
The Raton Board of Education started their March regular meeting Monday March 18, 2024, with a budget hearing and report explaining the budget to begin the budget process for the next school year.
RPS Business Manager Myra Baird spoke about how the budget is put together starting with program units which is the dollar value set by the Public Education Department as established by the New Mexico Legislature. The funding formula is based on research that indicates it costs more to teach a high school student versus an elementary student. The funding formula will be calculated on the 40-day student count. The school’s budget deadline this year is May 2 with the state.
For the 22-23 school year the unit value was $5522.50 at a 40-day count of 802 students, while the 23-24 school year saw a student count of 786 at a unit value of $6241.67.
The school year will be 180 days or 1140 hours of instructional time. A full day is considered to be 5.5 hours of instructional time with a 30-minute lunch period plus passing periods.
Teachers and staff will see a 3% pay increase based on House bill 2 from the 2024 legislature, however health insurance premiums will increase by 15.5%, Dental will increase by 5%, and the vision plan will see an increase of 3%.
Christéana Piancino who spoke about a tobacco free campus at Raton High School and across the entire district. Piancino noted that there needs to be a couple of changes to the current policy in order to get tobacco free program 24/7 funding and training.
Students from FCCLA spoke about their programs and what some of the students are competing in. They are in the process of fund raising so they can go to Seattle Washington for the national competition. The students are limited to four fund raising events per semester and they are asking to be allowed to have additional fund raising due to the high cost of going to Nationals. The estimated cost to send students to nationals is about $3000 for each student. There will be five students, one chaperone and sponsor going to the national event. Board President Jason Phillips felt that the board really couldn’t go against the current fund-raising policy.
There is $932,000 left on the GEO bond. This is the last of the $2 million bond. The remaining money will be used to complete ongoing capital improvement projects.
The district has disposed of four vehicles taking the highest bid for each vehicle but held back Bus 30 and will rebid it since no one offered a bid for it. The district will receive about $1486 for four of the five vehicles.
The school district received BDCP monies for the purchase of E-Rate Cat two purchases. This is the purchase of computer networking equipment to replace existing equipment. The Bid from Camnet is for $26,503.
The district is also updating the Photoshop Lab equipment which is used by the art department. The cost of the equipment is $35,674 for 20 Lenova Legion Pro computers.
Archuleta Construction will do work at the stadium to include concrete improvements and other small projects at a cost of $48,561.
Josh Chism will be the engineer for AE Capital to head the oversight of the new campus build.
Josh Chism with AE Capital was chosen to be on the oversight committee for the new campus build as he is very familiar with district and was the engineer who did the inspection on the current buildings.
Board members appointed Brenda Ferri to the finance committee and added Jason Phillips to the audit committee.
The Raton Board of Education will meet again on April 29, at 6:00 p.m. for a public hearing for the budget followed by the regular meeting.
