RIO RANCHO, N.M. – A great opportunity at a state university is being overshadowed by stress after student teachers say they haven’t seen a dime, and have been working since the start of the school year.

“They are messing with several participant’s livelihoods. One had to sell her car to pay her mortgage. Another one is a single parent, how do they get food to feed their children?” said a New Mexico Highland University residency participant. 

This yearlong program is how they get their teacher’s license, and we know we need all the teachers we can get in New Mexico. 

“Had I known that the university wasn’t going to hold up their end of the bargain, I would not have committed to being in this program,” said another NMHU teacher residency participant. 

The program pays each teacher resident $35,000 throughout the year. Residents told KOB 4 they were expecting their finances to be tight with this budget, but nothing prepared them for this. 

Student teachers are given four stipends from Highlands throughout the school year. But the student teachers say the university missed the deadline on their first paycheck back in August.  

“I barely manage to get my rent paid, if I can’t pay it next month then I will have to leave my housing situation,” said a NMHU teacher residency participant. 

Because the money comes from a grant through the New Mexico Public Education Department, they are not allowed to have a second job. 

“They gave us some guidelines, if we worked for APS we had to take a leave of absence,” a NMHU teacher residency participant said.  

Participants told us there have been several emails back and forth from Highlands about the delays in pay. 

“Errors were made, miscommunication, and we did not serve our student teachers as we would like,” said Stephen Weatherburn, a NMHU School of Education Field Office director. 

We took these concerns to NMHU. They tell us they got the grant money from NMPED back on Aug. 8 but waited too long to input the data into their system to distribute the stipends on time. 

“Everybody in the School of Education is absolutely dedicated to supporting and serving as student teachers, as they in turn are supporting students in their classroom,” said Weatherburn. 

Now their focus is on getting the student teachers their checks as soon as possible and making sure it doesn’t happen again.

“I offer my apologies, but you can’t pay rent with an apology I understand that, so our focus is right now fixing this in as quick a timeframe as possible,” said Weatherburn.  

Wheatherburn told us all of the data is in correctly now, and they are just waiting for the stipends to be processed. 

He also said this will not affect other payments and the rest of the year should run smoothly. 

Participants are hoping to get their first check next week.