In a brief visit late last week with Sen. Howie Morales, the Grant County Beat heard his main priorities for this 2015 60-day legislative session.

"As always, we want to accomplish a balanced budget," Morales said. "Even with such little revenues, we think there is no need to cut programs. I want to increase funding to education through the whole spectrum, but especially K-12. Educators took a cut to get the state out of the recession. We'll see what the revenue estimate is in February."

He weighed in that he believes school policies on the state level are confusing and creating a burden to education. Morales said he feels frustration from the schools. "I want to continue to ensure that the 46 percent of the budget, which is funding for education, that the dollars are getting to the classrooms."

Because of testing, the Public Education Department and the test publishing companies are putting a burden on the schools to perform pre-tests. He said the Public Education Department, which receives funding for those tests, because the pre-tests help the companies, are not sending funding for the extra testing to the schools. "Don't use students as guinea pigs."

Morales said $2 million a year has been available to schools for technology, capital projects and infrastructure for the past four or five years from House Bill 33, which was passed for the sole purpose of readying schools for assessments.

Although he said he doesn't like to get involved in local politics, he suggested school board members from Cobre and Silver school districts should challenge the PED system. "Santa Fe and Rio Rancho have challenged the PED successfully over programs that didn't fit their needs."