HMS: 40-day count passes 10,000

Through the first 40 days of the 2018-19 school year, the student enrollment of Hobbs Municipal Schools is 10,302.

That is the highest it has been in the district’s history and because of the continued growth, HMS will benefit with some additional funding from the State of New Mexico.

During Tuesday’s Hobbs school board meeting, assistant superintendent of data analysis Rene Cantu said the school district has grown by 233 students since last year’s 40-day count of 10,069. Because annual budgets are determined by the previous school year’s enrollment, adjustments are allowed if the district grows by more than 1 percent. In this case the additional students allow HMS to receive approximately $1.174 million in additional funding from the New Mexico Public Education Department.

Currently the HMS Data Processing Center is preparing the district’s growth membership report to be sent to the New Mexico Public Education Department.

“We have had a significant amount of growth in the school district,” Cantu said. “So we will receive some funds as far as growth funds in early spring.”

The report is a set of variables or “templates” that make up the overall dynamic of the school district. Cantu said district officials have completed 17 of 18 “templates” and the last is undergoing maintenance by NMPED. To get an accurate student count throughout the school year, Cantu said this report is done four times — at the 40th day, 80th day, 120th day and at the end of the year.

The report is sent through the state’s STARS (Student Teacher Accountability Reporting System) program, which Cantu described as a platform for all school districts to send many variables of data that make up the district’s student full-time equivalent (FTE) membership. An FTE is a calculation showing how many students would be attending school if all were enrolled full time. It is based on a sum of credits carried by students of a particular school level. Even though the district’s student enrollment is more than 10,300 on the 40th day of school, the district’s FTE membership is 10,042.5.

The one-half membership is because pre-K kids are counted as one-half by the NMPED because of the half-day of schooling they receive, Cantu told the board.

Some of the variables or “templates” named include the number of bilingual students and special education students. The report also assesses the teaching staff, from total population, to if those respective teachers are qualified to do their assigned jobs.

“It basically keeps any district from having a home economics teacher in a math classroom,” Cantu told the News-Sun on Wednesday. “The state asks for a lot of data, but also a specific type of data that really analyzes the makeup of each district.”

All of this data is checked and re-checked by district and state officials. From there the numbers are plugged into the funding formula, producing a district Growth Data Unit. That number is multiplied by the “Total Unit Value” which is what each HMS student is worth. This school year the HMS Total Unit Value per student is $4,159.23. Those two numbers make up the $1.174 million in additional funding. Cantu said the school district should receive the additional funding in February.

Hobbs schools superintendent TJ Parks told the school board the 40-day membership report given by Cantu is not as simple as what he made it sound.

“There are thousands of files that are round pegs that have to fit in a square hole,” Parks said. “We take those reports from our data entry people. They have to match what is happening at PED and we don’t get funding until everything aligns. Whenever (NMPED) gives a blessing on that alignment, it is sent forward. To have 17 of 18 complete at this stage of the game is phenomenal.”

Todd Bailey may be contacted at editor@hobbsnews.com.