New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, approved a budget this week that spared several of her key education initiatives, according to the Associated Press.
The state has faced severe budget cuts in recent years due to the dip in oil prices. The legislature in recent months has been meeting in a special session to come up with a budget for the current fiscal year that decreases the gap between the amount of money the state collects and the amount of money it spends.
In all, the state’s school system would have suffered a $70 million cut from this year’s budget.
But, before signing the budget, Martinez vetoed $22 million worth of line items from the list, including cuts to the state’s teacher pay incentive program, state funding for students to take AP exams for free, and a program that places social workers in middle schools.
“To make cuts as deep as the legislature proposed,” she wrote, according to the AP, “would be to abandon our goals in education as our schools and students as they strive to meet them.”
Earlier this year, I wrote about states whose school funding is closely tied to oil revenue.