38 percent of local grads need remedial help

Tuesday, April 1, 2003 | 9:37 a.m.

Assembly Education Committee members were told Monday that 38 percent of Clark County students who go on to higher education in this state require remedial services.

The testimony even surprised Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, who sponsored Assembly Bill 426 to make school districts pay for the cost of remedial classes and services offered at the state's college campuses.

The committee took no action on the bill following a late afternoon hearing, but heard plenty of testimony that concerned Hettrick even more than the anecdotal stories he had heard that prompted him to introduce the bill.

"To hear that 38 percent of students who are going to some kind of college need remedial help, it makes you wonder about the education," Hettrick said.

John Pappageorge, a lobbyist representing the University and Community College System of Nevada, said Chancellor Jane Nichols neither supports nor opposes the measure.

He did say that Nichols is concerned, however, about the rising cost of remedial education.

AB426 requires a local school district to reimburse the university system for remedial coursework required by a high school graduate who completed at least one year of high school in the district.

The bill requires the transfer of $20 million from the state's Distributive School Account -- a fund of state revenue that funds local school districts -- to a newly created account for higher education.

Nichols said today that "the mechanics of it and how it would work is still very unclear. For us it would not have any impact."

Nichols said one question about the bill is whether the school district will have to pay only for remedial education students who left high school less than a year prior to their college enrollment or all students regardless of when they left high school.