Education has been hit hard by teacher shortages and professional burnout. That’s especially true in rural New Mexico. The Legislature has recently taken steps to return over $80 million dollars of operational funding to some school districts in northern New Mexico and several plan to use the funds to construct or maintain teacher housing.
The teacher shortages don’t stem from any one issue. It's a combination of retention issues, overwhelming workloads, and what many say is a general lack of support.
Now funding from 2021’s Impact Aid Bill will help alleviate at least one of these burdens: housing costs. The New Mexico Public Education Department will tap the money to recruit high-quality teachers to rural school districts by building or maintaining housing for educators.
Gwen Perea Warniment said housing is a critical element in sustaining the workforce.
"We cannot continue to isolate and separate the education system from the health of the community, or the health of economic development of the community," Warniment said.
For the first time ever the Public School Capital Outlay Oversight Task Force has made a teacher housing funding award as part of new school construction in Zuni. Awards are based on how rural the district is, how much housing is already available, and how many teachers need housing.
Warniment says that being able to make these investments creates affordable and reliable housing for educators and that benefits kids and families too, as well as the community as a whole.
Right now, the majority of existing teacher housing units are in the Gallup, Zuni, and Central school districts and the Legislative Education Study Committee estimates it would cost $20 million to replace them.
This coverage made possible by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and KUNM listeners.