Michelle Lujan Grisham must’ve been a math whiz at St. Michael’s High School.

Who reads numbers, gleans numbers, better than the governor? As she runs for a second term, and clearly savvy enough to see her public education system creaking beneath the weight of COVID-19, MLG let her fingers do the walking on a calculator and came up with a payment schedule sure to warm every teacher’s heart: a 7 percent pay raise.

Actually, when you factor in the proposal to lift the flooring for the three tiers of pay that govern teachers’ income, it’s far more than a pay boost. What the governor is proposing in the 2023 fiscal year budget is the beginnings of a makeover in how New Mexico sees its schools.

Phill Casaus is editor of The New Mexican.