Assembly approves schools’ $71 million supplemental fund

Erin Neff

Wednesday, April 16, 2003 | 10:11 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Assembly approved supplemental funding for local schools Tuesday, knowing that the $71 million contained in the bill may change in the coming weeks.

The routine supplemental money is needed whenever the sales tax revenues earmarked for school support do not meet the projections used to design the schools' budget. The amount budgeted for the fiscal year that ends June 30 remains the same, so the state is required to make up any difference in the revenues to fund that.

Assembly Bill 253, which appropriates $71,750,000 to the local school account from the state's general fund, passed unanimously. The Senate is expected to amend the bill, possibly to add another $5 million to $7 million, depending on the latest sales tax revenue figures available at the time the Senate votes.

The Senate will decide on an amount in the next few weeks and the Assembly has voted to approve that number.

The inability to settle on the supplemental number led some education officials to worry about the big bill for the distributive school account of DSA that will fund schools for the next two years.

"They haven't resolved a funding mechanism yet," said Clark County Superintendent Carlos Garcia, who was in the capital for his second day of lobbying for the iNVest plan. "Meanwhile in the next couple of weeks, we have to prepare budgets that are simply horrible."

School superintendents have proposed a plan called iNVest, which would increase spending on schools by $900 million over the next two years. But without some kind of boost in state revenue, schools could be asked to cut their next biennial budgets instead.

The Clark County School District is preparing a budget with $200 million in cuts covering everything from orchestra to busing for magnet schools. The district has frozen positions and is in a hiring freeze for teachers despite shortages.

On Tuesday morning Garcia and the state's other 16 school superintendents asked the Assembly Ways and Means Committee to support Assembly Bill 266 -- the iNVest plan.

That bill contains funding for 5 percent teacher salary raises; textbooks; signing bonuses and stipends for teachers; tutoring and alternative education programs; and full-day kindergarten in at-risk schools.

Assembly woman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, vice chairwoman of Ways and Means, said she thought the committee would be able to support funding for some items in the bill.

"There are pieces of the iNVest plan we want to incorporate," Giunchigliani said.

Giunchigliani, a former teacher, said she supported the teacher salary raises. She also said she wants schools to stick with class-size reduction, as opposed to the governor's plan to give local districts the discretion, and save the state some money.

One of the difficulties of a 120-day session is that lawmakers must close budgets by mid-May, and they'll need those numbers so they can begin crafting a tax plan to fund the budget.

In the meantime local school districts are required to submit their budgets to the state, also without knowing how much will be raised in new tax revenue to fund the state's programs.com