Educators press Legislature for more money

Kiley Russell

Thursday, April 22, 1999 | 9:46 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Schools are taking a big pay cut under Gov. Kenny Guinn's education budget, educators say, despite the administration's insistence that it gives K-12 programs the highest percentage of funding in 10 years.

A joint budget committee heard Wednesday from public school officials from around the state who say Guinn's proposed $1.73 billion school spending plan lowers per-pupil spending.

The governor recommended putting $553 million from the state general fund into a distributive school account next year and $573 million in 2001. That compares to this year's $495 million education budget.

The budget actually raises per-student spending from about $5,000 a year for 1998-1999 to $5,300 for 1990-2000 and $5,500 for 2000-2001, according to the administration's deputy budget chief, Don Hataway.

And that's without folding the millions of dollars from class-size reduction, adult education, special education and counseling budgets into the main K-12 public school budget, Hataway said.

"We're treading water and this basically is a status quo budget. We're holding our own against an influx of 30,000 new kids," he added after the hearing.

But school officials say the state's expected population boom and rising inflation negate almost all of the budget increase.

"You can call it whatever you want, it's a cut and it's a real cut to us," said Brian Cram, Clark County public schools chief.

"When you don't properly inflate the base in the budget, it gets worse the further out you go. What you are actually doing is retracting money," he said, adding that his district stands to lose almost $8 million in the governor's budget.

Paul Johnson, business officer for the White Pine County School District, agrees.

"The DSA proposal does not meet our needs for the coming biennium," Johnson told lawmakers.

Guinn also wants to put money earmarked for class-size reduction, special education, counseling and adult schooling into one budget pot, saying the accounting maneuver would give local school districts more flexibility.

Rolling the $160 million Nevada spends each year for those programs into the main $1.73 billion budget for K-12 also would provide a better accounting of what the state spends per pupil, Hataway said.

But critics of the plan say it inflates the per-pupil spending numbers without actually allocating any new funds to the school system.

"That is artificially inflating those numbers," said Assemblyman David Goldwater, D-Las Vegas.

School officials worry that programs folded into the main education budget may be inadequately funded without distinct budgets of their own.

"Whenever you roll items together, you run a risk of these items losing their character and identity," Johnson said.

Mike Schroeder, business manager for the Washoe County School District, said that under the governor's budget proposal his district will see just a $5 per-pupil increase.

"The bottom line is that although we were told that this was a harmless budget, we found out it's not," he said.