State’s schools also could feel budget pinch

Friday, May 4, 2001 | 11:01 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A $20 million plan to buy textbooks, increase teacher training and purchase technology equipment in Nevada schools is a target for cuts because of the $121.5 million shortfall in the state's budget.

And that is fueling a controversy.

Kenneth Lange, director of the Nevada State Education Association, said state budget officials are planning to reduce the $20 million to $9 million.

"Education is wholly underfunded and now we are going after the lifeblood of what you put in the classroom for kids to learn," said Lange. "You start taking away technology and you start taking away the opportunities to train teachers. You are beginning to take all the legs out from underneath the schools."

Gov. Kenny Guinn said the $20 million was under consideration for reduction but there has not been a final agreement between him and the Legislature. "Nothing on the list has been decided," he said.

Al Bellister, financial officer for the teachers union, referred to a legislative audit that found there was a lack of textbooks in the classroom. "Now we are going to ignore those needs," he said.

Despite the necessity to reduce the budget by $121.5 million over a two-year period, Guinn told a news conference that most of his funding for education will remain intact. This would include the $57.5 million for teacher bonuses and also the $2,000 signing bonus for new teachers -- totaling about $10 million -- that the governor proposed Wednesday.

Lange said the recruitment bonus is a "wonderful acknowledgement" that Nevada has a problem attracting teachers. But he suggested the $57.5 million and the $10 million for recruitment be put into continuing pay raises for teachers to retain them.

He said the core of the problem is keeping the teachers in Nevada. "We have an 8 percent turnover rate in Clark County," he said. "The main reason they are leaving is because they can go elsewhere and make more money."

Guinn defended his budget, saying he is pumping $450 million of new money into the public schools, of which Clark County will receive $330 million. There's a crisis, he said, in teacher recruitment.

He said Nevada loses about 1,000 teachers a year through retirement or departures. And it needs an additional 1,000 to take care the growth. The Clark County School District needs to hire about 1,600 teachers for the fall semester to compensate for growth and departures.

The governor said $190 million remains in the budget to finance class size reduction, which calls for 16 students to one teacher in grades one and two and 19 pupils to one teacher in grade three. But he supports giving districts the flexibility to try new methods in these primary grades.

Bellister said he has also been supplied information from Deputy State Budget Director Don Hataway calling for other reductions in education.