By wplog

Published Friday, Dec. 14, 2007 | 2:33 p.m.

Updated Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008 | 2:14 p.m.

State budget cuts are coming to previously exempted departments, including K-12 and corrections, Gov. Jim Gibbons is announcing today. In exchange, other departments that had braced for 8 percent budget cuts will now "only" be shaved 4.5 percent. (See Gibbons' budget proposal.)

There were problems with cutting budgets by 8 percent, Gibbons discovered — especially for the Office of Health and Human Services. And there was a math problem, too: the cuts sought by the governor didn't match the projected shortfall, as I reported last Saturday. Sources say that juvenile justice and child welfare services will not have to prepare cuts, and remain in a "lock box." That suggests that Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid prevailed after his stare-down with the governor at the statewide budget summit last month.

School superintendents had been holding their breath, waiting for the shoe to drop, as my colleague, Emily Richmond, reported in the Sun on Monday. And today's shoe dropped hardest, perhaps, on plans for empowerment schools, which are being deemed as expendable for now.

The Department of Corrections was asked earlier this week to prepare 4.5 percent cuts, or $24 million over the biennium, according to Howard Skolnik, the director of corrections. Skolnik said he doesn't know yet what cuts his department will recommend to the governor.

Corrections has a number of jail expansions scheduled for this year. So far, he department has been largely exempted from a state hiring freeze, but Skolnik said he didn't know if that would apply in the future.

Update from Richmond:

A 4.5 percent cut to the K-12 budget equals about $95 million. Clark County School District officials were anticipating having to trim $70 million.

Joyce Haldeman, executive director of community and government relations for the district, said she was surprised by the governor’s announcement.

"I thought he promised he wasn’t going to do that,” Haldeman said.

As for where the district will make its cuts, officials will meet next week with the governor to discuss the possibilities.

Two educational initiatives approved by the 2007 Legislature are now expected to be casualties of the budget war — an expansion of full-day kindergarten for at-risk students, and a pilot program for “empowerment schools.”

When faced with budget cuts in the past, the district has typically responded by increasing class sizes across the grades by one or two students. But that’s not realistic this time around, Haldeman said. “Our class sizes are high already,” Haldeman said. “We really don’t know what to do.”

Keith Rheault, Nevada’s superintendent of public instruction, said the governor’s decision to ask for cuts to K-12 wasn’t a complete surprise. With Chancellor Jim Rogers fighting the demand for cuts to higher education, and the state’s Health & Human Services Department struggling to trim $140 million per the governor’s request, “I knew somebody was going to have to make up the difference,” Rheault said.

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Documents:

• Gibbons' letter to school superintendents• K-12 education funding, 2008-09