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LAS CRUCES - The Las Cruces Public School District may receive less than half the amount of money needed for textbooks for the upcoming school year, under recommendations the Legislature is reviewing, said Superintendent Stan Rounds. This means LCPS may not be able to adopt a new textbook series for history and social studies for the 2011-2012 school year.
Rounds anticipates that the state may receive $15 million for instruction materials to stretch between replacement of textbooks, work books, instructional software and new adoptions. The state would need a budget that stood around $29 million in order to cover all those bases, Rounds said.
"We need new books, I mean, it's time," Chris Duffy, a history teacher at Onate High School, said. "But it's not 100 percent that we won't get them this year. And if they won't give us books, we'll make do. We've been making do the last few years. Does it make it harder? Sure. Is it the ideal situation? No. But we'll make do with what we have."
Textbooks are primarily funded by the state Legislature and subjects are replaced in six-year cycles. During the 2010-2011 school year, the district was also underfunded in its materials budget and to compensation it shifted about $1.6 million from its operational budget to purchase language arts texts. But that's likely not possible this year as a reduction in state equalization funds "is most assured," Rounds said.
"We know we're going to get cut," Rounds said.
Looking forward, the
"There are a lot of Internet options available that don't cost you and work well if planned well by teachers," Rounds said.
Christine Rogel can be reached at (575) 541-5424.
