NMPED News:
SANTA FE — New Mexicans can now access detailed financial information about state-chartered schools, school districts and regional education cooperatives with a few clicks of a computer mouse.
Open Books is the Public Education Department’s new online financial reporting system, launched in response to Senate Bill 96, passed in the regular session in 2020.
The legislation appropriated $3 million for the department to develop an accessible financial reporting system that would allow comparison between schools, districts and regional education cooperatives on measures like administrative costs, salaries and benefits, and program costs.
“Open Books gives the public easy access to information about how educational tax dollars are being spent at the state, regional and local levels,’’ Public Education Secretary Kurt Steinhaus said. “We are pleased to offer New Mexicans a 21st century tool to access that information.”
The Open Books website includes financial data for school districts, state-chartered schools and regional education cooperatives. The department does not collect district school-level data, so that information is not included at this time. However, that data will be collected beginning in Fiscal Year 2023 (which begins July 1) and will be added to future versions of the Open Books site.
The department soft-launched the portal in mid-December to superintendents, charter leaders and district financial officers, who requested additional time to review the portal. A working group of district financial officers suggested changes, which the department continues to work on. The public launch was Jan. 11.
“Seeing the data for the first time through an analytics tool sparked some interesting questions which resulted in reworking some of the dashboards. With the help and advice of school district financial officers, we are able to launch a better tool,” said Mary Montoya, the PED chief information officer and lead on the Open Books project.
The reporting system will allow anyone to determine how schools budget and spend funds, including expenditures to support at-risk students, offer bilingual and multicultural educational services and support special education students.
“Implementation is important so all stakeholders can have transparent access to see how allocations are spent. The current system does not assure that dollars are spent on students who generate the funds,” said Rep. Rebecca Dow, House sponsor of the legislation.
The portal aligns with state and national movements to improve transparency and accountability by providing the public with digital tools to easily access information on how tax dollars are spent.
A PED project team has been working for over a year to develop the online tool and will continue to refine it during the next few months. That work included holding focus groups where stakeholders suggested what information should be included and contracting with vendors to modify the existing financial database and create the new website.
PED then recruited pilot districts to provide school and special program data for Fiscal Year 2022, which began July 1.
About The New Mexico Public Education Department:
The New Mexico Public Education Department partners with educators, communities and families to ensure that all students are healthy, secure in their identity and holistically prepared for college, career and life. Currently, the NMPED serves more than 317,000 students in 187 districts and charter schools. Find an abundance of resources for administrators, educators, families and students at New Mexico Public Education Department (state.nm.us) or follow the NMPED on Facebook and Twitter.
