The crosses.- Las Cruces Public Schools (LCPS) will extend the school day by 10 minutes each day, just one of many districts that need to lengthen their academic year in response to a law passed during the 2023 legislative session.
Other districts choose to extend the school’s academic calendar rather than adjust the school day. The Albuquerque Public Schools board voted April 5 to extend the school year by four additional days.
House Bill 130 requires districts to increase all K-12 instructional hours to 1,140 hours per year. The previous rules called for a minimum of 990 hours in elementary schools and 1,080 in high schools. When the bill was enacted, only a quarter of New Mexico’s 189 public and charter elementary schools and about half of its high schools met the hour requirements, according to a financial analysis of the proposal.
Assistant Superintendent Wendi Miller-Tomlinson presented the information at last Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, as part of the budget submission process to the state Department of Public Education.
“This is one of the steps necessary to get our budget approved,” he told the board.
With an addition of 10 minutes a day, elementary schools next semester will operate from 8 am to 2:40 pm.
“Time was added at the end of the day, so the kids didn’t have to go to the bus stop 10 minutes earlier in the morning,” he said. “That’s problematic in the winter when it’s dark in the morning.”
Middle schools will operate from 8:55 am to 3:55 pm. High schools will operate from 8:25 am to 3:25 pm.
Miller-Tomlinson said the schedule allows for full bus runs between each grade level and minimizes disruption.
Miller-Tomlinson recounted that state officials verbally said that lunch and lunch breaks would not count toward the instruction requirement.
“We would like to see something more concrete in writing, but we haven’t seen it yet,” he said.
LCPS schools operate on a year-round school calendar, with the spring semester ending in early June and the new fall term beginning in late July. There are two week breaks in the fall, winter and spring.
Estimated statewide costs for the change range from $171 million to $245 million, according to a fiscal impact report on the bill.
Some of those costs will be offset by the repeal of programs to extend the school days from kindergarten through fifth grade and the opt-in agreement for a longer academic year. The fiscal report estimates savings of $34 million to $108 million.
