Editorial: All talk, no action on computers

Saturday, Oct. 4, 1997 | 4:06 a.m.

If that were the case, Nevada school children wouldn't have to wait through another academic year while bureaucrats dally over how to spend millions on classroom computers.

An 11-member Commission on Education Technology created during the legislative session months ago finally held its first meeting last week in Carson City.

The panel is off to a C-minus start.

After a long session last Wednesday, the committee agreed not to rush into spending $27 million for equipment and another $8.6 million for repair, maintenance and teacher training.

A government committee agreeing not to rush into anything -- there's a concept.

The education panel calls to mind another committee that the 1997 Legislature created. This one was set up to study growth problems in Southern Nevada and to offer recommendations at the next session in two years. That was in lieu of a planning board that would have forced local governments to work out differences /it now.

Like the growth board, the education panel is another example of the way government likes to study problems to death.

Here we are into October -- school has been in session for more than a month -- and the committee is urging a go-slow approach to buying computers. The panel wants to give the state's 17 school districts time to develop plans.

Shouldn't those plans be in place? Don't schools know what they need?

The state leaders who created the commission, Gov. Bob Miller, Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, and Speaker Joe Dini, D-Yerington, didn't even attend Wednesday's meeting.

In recent months, Miller has seemed less than interested in moving the commission along.

That hasn't always been the case.

He was gung-ho at the beginning of the legislative session in January, when he used much of his State of the State address to promote an ambitious education package that would have included, over time, five computers in every Nevada classroom.

During the Legislature, which ended in July, Miller battled Raggio and other Republicans over how much to spend on computers. Republicans insisted the state should focus on teaching kids how to read before giving them computers that would quickly become obsolete.

After a compromise that provided less money for computers than Miller wanted, he signed the bill during the summer and promised to set up a committee within a week.

Then Miller went on vacation without naming a commission.

When he named the panel in September, Miller promised that it would "lead Nevada into the high-tech educational world of the 21st century."

At this pace, we'll be well into the next century before there is any "high-tech educational world" in Nevada.

If the panel wants to avoid a failing grade, it will get going on its task of putting computers in Nevada classrooms. School kids all across the state are waiting.