Editorial: Withering schools in rural areas

Tuesday, April 27, 1999 | 11:43 a.m.

Clark County residents rightly complain about rundown classrooms in older parts of Las Vegas, but comparatively speaking, theirs is a state of frustration. A state of emergency virtually exists for some rural schools in Nevada, where buildings are in such bad shape that they are no longer safe for students.

A case in point is White Pine County in mideastern Nevada. The Sun's Martin Kuz reported Sunday that engineers two years ago inspected Lund High School and found the school was structurally unsafe and that a new school should be built to replace it. Officials also want to build an elementary school in Pleasant Valley so that 75 students will no longer have to take a 90-minute ride (each way) to a school in Utah. In addition a deteriorating, 89-year-old middle school needs to be replaced. The price tag for three new schools is $25 million, a staggering amount for such a sparsely populated county.

This isn't a phenomenon confined to White Pine County. The Pioche Elementary School in Lincoln County, which borders Clark County to the north, also is structurally unsound and local officials say they may have to close the school at the end of the year. To build a new elementary school in Pioche would cost at least $2.5 million, a steep cost for the county's 4,000 residents. If money isn't found, students would then have to be bused to Ely, which is a two-hour ride away.

A variety of factors have conspired to permit these schools to decay. The school districts themselves -- not the state -- are financially responsible to build new schools. And since the school districts have to rely heavily on local property taxes to pay for new buildings, rural counties are hit especially hard, since so much of the property within their borders is owned by the federal government and can't be taxed. The state-mandated cap on property taxes makes it even more difficult for these thinly populated counties to get enough funding to build new schools.

Lund High Principal Hugh Qualls likened some of the rural school buildings in Nevada to those found in the Third World. Nevada is a prosperous state and it should be embarrassed to find such a huge disparity between urban and rural schools. The 1999 Legislature should immediately provide funds so that rural school districts can tear down those schools that are unsafe and replace them with new buildings.

The state's rebounding economy might mean there will be as much as an extra $40 million for each of the next two years in the state's budget. If the money materializes, the Legislature should use part of these monies to build new schools in White Pine and Lincoln counties. Even if those funds don't materialize, the state should dip into its rainy day fund to pay for this genuine emergency.

The Legislature has to deal with this immediate need, but it also needs to work with Gov. Kenny Guinn and come up with a long-term strategy to provide state funding for building schools throughout Nevada. The state has to stop dealing with this issue year-to-year as each emergency develops.