Increases don’t match inflation, student population growth

ALBUQUERQUE— When funding is adjusted for inflation, New Mexico was still spending less per student on K-12 public education in 2015 than it did before the recession. In the two years since then, funding increases — which amounted to less than 1 percent a year — have still been too low to keep pace with inflation and student population growth.

A report released Aug. 31 by New Mexico Voices for Children takes an in-depth look at K-12 spending in New Mexico — both the funding that is funneled through the state equalization guarantee and so-called “below-the-line” spending going to specific programs that are not...

Pay your employees better wages and follow your own operating policies, as well as HR standards. When hiring, you should already have a value scale for education, experience, skills, and certifications. This value scale is used to determine what the position’s total value is as far as base pay. The value scale is also used to determine which candidate is interviewed, and subsequently hired.

What do you pay them? Use this scale again to determine the pay to offer above base if that person had more education, experience, skills, and certifications than the job description requires.

Don’t claim to be working on a “Step Increase” advancement scale, if you are not. Especially...

During the Town Hall Meeting last week at the Milan Recreation Center, it was apparent that no one had a plan of action on “what to do,” or even a direction on “where to go from here” in order to support community and the economy.

Words like crisis and blame were used to express the lay-offs that have been taking place in Cibola County.  For years I have been pondering over these very issues, but prior to now it was the “what if” these things happen.

A number of elected officers for local government and representatives for the New Mexico delegation were present to make statements and hear what the people had to say about the local loss of so many jobs.  Each one spoke in...

When the founders of the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine first contemplated positioning a medical school in Southern New Mexico, they hired nationally recognized consulting firm Tripp Umbach to conduct a feasibility study.

The study found that this region not only has a critical shortage in health-care providers, but that the current physician workforce “does not represent the regional population ethnicity and is less able to deliver culturally competent care.”

Plans to change that were immediately put into BCOM’s mission.

According to Founding Dean and Chief Academic Officer George Mychaskiw II, DO, part of the solution is tailoring the curriculum with language courses...