Guinn urged to support schools, families

Monday, Dec. 11, 2000 | 11:20 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Democratic legislative leaders today called on Gov. Kenny Guinn to give education and families top priority when he builds his $3.7 billion biennial budget.

Guinn met this afternoon to brief top lawmakers from both parties and ask for their views on what should be included in the budget and also how some $200 million in surplus should be spent.

Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, and Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley D-Las Vegas, outlined their suggestions before the closed-door session.

The three are recommending pay raises for teachers as well as state workers; continued efforts to reduce overcrowding in school classrooms; before and after school tutoring for students to help them if they fall behind; a one-shot appropriation to help small business to provide health insurance for their workers; long-term care for seniors; child welfare reform and improvements to Nevada's Check Up and Senior RX programs.

Perkins said most of the calls he receives around graduation time are from parents concerned because their children have not passed the proficiency tests required for graduation. He said more needs to be done to educate parents earlier about the test requirements and to work with teachers and parents to help students master the subject matter at all grade levels.

The state Board of Education Saturday released results of high school proficiency tests taken in October. It showed 66 percent of the juniors passed the reading test on the first try and 50 percent of the students received approval on the math test on the initial attempt.

Perkins said the key to ensuring the success of children is recruitment and retention of the best educators.

"The quality of our public schools depends on the quality of the teachers in our classrooms," Perkins said. "Yet we have many qualified teachers reaching retirement age, and we are having trouble recruiting teachers in some of our most critical subject areas.

"We must do a better job of competing with districts in other states to get the best and brightest new education graduates to come to Nevada," Perkins said.

Titus said pay increases must be a priority also for state workers.

Guinn has said one of his top goals is to give pay increases to state workers. They received a 2 percent cost of living last July but did not get any increase in 1999.

Titus also said there must be guaranteed safeguards to protect homeowners and small business in this upcoming era of electric deregulation.

"Legislative intent by the 1999 Legislature to protect the small user has been totally ignored in the interim," Titus said. The three urged Guinn to put deregulation on hold so that it could be considered again in the 2001 Legislature.

The three democrats said there must be better utilization of health care programs and more money is critical.

Buckley said that only 300 out of a potential 10,000 to 11,000 Nevada senior citizens have signed up for Guinn's prescription drug program. She said the Check Up program, which receives federal funds to provide health insurance for children, has actually had to return money to the federal government because not enough families signed up for the program.

Buckley said, "We are not talking about expensive, new programs but using existing funds for programs with the potential of helping thousands of Nevada families and seniors.

"It is critical that we closely evaluate both of these programs to see what we can do to increase participation and improve the delivery of the services they provide," Buckley said.