Class-size changes offered as answer to school budget woes

Wednesday, May 2, 2001 | 11:01 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- In this tight upcoming budget, the state might be able to save $20 million by putting more students in each classroom in the primary grades, a legislative leader said Tuesday.

Sen. Ray Rawson, chairman of a Senate-Assembly budget subcommittee, tossed around the idea of increasing the ratio to 17 students to one teacher in grades one and two. The current ratio is 16 to 1.

Rawson, R-Las Vegas, noting that he knows class-size reduction is a "sacred cow," hastened to add he was not advocating the proposal, but he said it would mean that 300 fewer teachers would have to be hired in the coming year.

All school districts, particularly Clark County, say they are having troubles recruiting new teachers to handle increasing student numbers.

Rawson's idea was one of several advanced, but the subcommittee won't make any decisions until a week from Friday on settling on the amount of state aid for local school districts.

Gov. Kenny Guinn has set aside $57.5 million to give schoolteachers a one-time bonus, estimated at 4 percent to 5 percent this coming school year. The money would come from surplus.

Guinn's budget also provides increases of 15 percent in each of the next two years for heat for school districts and 16 percent a year for electricity. Nobody knows if that will be enough in light of recent rising energy costs.

One suggestion was to tap into the so-called "rainy day" fund, which has more than $136 million. Guinn has suggested using the money to tide over the state government and school districts if need arises.

But Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, said that fund was created to handle "uncontrollable and unforeseen" events such as hurricanes, not rising utility bills. Once the door is opened to something like utility bills, Arberry said, it would be hard to close it to other requests.

Raggio also opposed dipping into the rainy day fund, saying, "It wasn't designed for this type of use." Raggio said paying for schools is a shared responsibility. He suggested it would be prudent for the local school districts to reserve money to pay for higher than anticipated fuel costs.