Schools may fall $15 mil. short

Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2002 | 10:49 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Clark County School District will face a budget shortfall of up to $15 million in state funding next fiscal year, a new "report card" on Nevada schools says.

In a report to be presented Wednesday to the Governor's Task Force on Taxes, Jack McLaughlin, the state superintendent of public instruction, said the Clark County School District has already asked its departments to cut budgets by 10 percent or about $3.4 million for this fiscal year because student enrollment is less than expected.

And the district may have to lower this year's spending program by another $800,000.

"Preliminary projections for fiscal year 2002-2003 indicate that the Clark County School District will have a $12 million to $15 million fiscal shortfall to maintain existing programs and services, and to increase salaries by the legislatively authorized 2 percent," the report prepared by McLaughlin says.

The district is struggling with the financial issues at a time when Nevada ranks among the worst in the nation in state support of its public school system, McLaughlin said.

Gloria Sizemore, Clark County schools budget director, said the schools are planning for next year's budget but expect an "adjustment" of $12 million to $15 million.

Sizemore noted the issues of maintaining existing programs and meeting the salary increase, but said "we have not identified the specific areas" to cut.

Susan Brager, a member of Clark County School Board, said that over three years, $70 million in state funding have been cut.

"I feel like we've cut and cut, and we don't have any more room on our belt," she said. "Pretty soon we're going to start adding holes to our belt."

Brager is worried that class sizes will grow and students will be impacted.

"It has to stop. It has to be that the children are first in this state," she said. "We believe there has to be a change in this next legislative session to stabilize our funding so that we can educate our children to the best of our ability."

McLaughlin prepared the report after getting the green light from the state Board of Education Monday night. He'll present it to the governor's task force, which is looking at possible tax increases to take care of such things as schools, health care needs and other programs.

The superintendent doesn't have a price tag on what the education system needs but he said it has a "lot of gaps."

After the task force gives an indication of what it would like to see improved in the schools, McLaughlin said he will then start developing the price tag.

Part of the issue centers on state funding of public schools. He said the state Department of Taxation recommends school districts have an ending fund balance of between 3 percent and 8 percent depending on their size. The current unreserved balance in Clark County is less than 1 percent.

That's about $11 million that would operate the district only for two days, the state superintendent said.

In his report, he notes that the Education Department ranks Nevada 46th in the nation in the amount the state contributes to the public schools. It shows the state supplies 31.8 percent of the total school budget with 60.1 percent coming from local revenues, 4.6 percent from the federal government and the rest from private money.

And, he said, public schools face serious challenges.

McLaughlin said some of the need areas include early childhood education. He said that there is a large percentage of students who are not going to preschool and that the size of the kindergarten classes is large. So by the first grade, students are not prepared for school, he said.

And there is a growing percentage of children who don't speak English. The number of Hispanics in the public school system is expected to grow to 150,000 and he estimated that half of those don't speak English.

Financially, Washoe County faces a similar situation. For the next fiscal year, Washoe County faces nearly an $8 million shortfall, McLaughlin said.

Washoe County, he said, already made budget cuts for this year by doing such things as increasing the class sizes in the 4th-6th grades from 24.5 students to one teacher to 25 pupils to one instructor; reducing overtime by 50 percent; cutting maintenance; reducing travel and eliminating bus leases.