New Mexico government in a nutshell: spend more money, fail, wash, rinse, repeat

If I had a nickel for every time I saw a similar story about New Mexico government, I’d actually be pretty wealthy. We’d ALL be wealthier if New Mexico politicians actually stopped spending money with seemingly no thought as to whether the spending would achieve stated policy goals or not.

Take the latest in a long line of such stories like this one from Source NM “Despite $2.6B investment, NM schools ‘largely failed’ to increase instructional time, report says.” The LFC report can be found here. Among its findings: While schools across the state have increased the number or the length of school days, chronic absenteeism and teacher absences are the most common sources of “time loss” and threaten to undermine the state’s progress.

Sen. George Muñoz (D-Gallup), who serves as vice chair of the interim Legislative Finance Committee, said he was disappointed that billions of dollars “haven’t moved the needle one bit.”

“I don’t know what’s going to change education. It ain’t money,” he said.

We couldn’t agree more with him. And, the problem with absenteeism is obviously not entirely the fault of the system itself. Certainly, Gov. Lujan Grisham’s fateful decision to keep New Mexico schools closed for over a year during COVID was a big factor in changing the culture around school attendance. But, there are undoubtedly an array of carrots and sticks that could be used to get kids to attend school regularly INCLUDING simply making sure that the education system does its level best to make the time spent in school worthwhile and free of bullying and other issues.