Budget won’t fund much of what schools wanted

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, July 23, 2003 | 11:16 a.m.

When Nevada's 17 school district superintendents descended on Carson City in January, they hoped to convince lawmakers to back a record $879 million in education spending increases.

With the budget finally approved and signed into law by Gov. Kenny Guinn Tuesday, educators say they're glad some elements of their proposal, known as the iNVest plan, survived, even if the majority failed to become law.

The Legislature approved pay increases for teachers and signing bonuses for new employees, gave school districts more flexibility in setting class size limits and increased funds for textbooks by $50 per student -- all elements of the iNVest plan. But proposals for full-day kindergarten programs for at-risk students and increased spending on programs for students who are not native English speakers -- also iNVest items -- did not survive.

"It's a lean budget and certainly not our ideal, but it's the budget we have and we'll make it work," said Clark County Superintendent Carlos Garcia. "Even if all the iNVest elements didn't survive this time around, we've gotten people talking and that's a real step forward."

Jack McLaughlin, state superintendent of Nevada's public schools, said Tuesday the overall increase in education funding will help but won't do much to bring the state closer to the national average when it comes to per-pupil expenditures.

The budget calls for raising the statewide per-pupil funding average by about 7 percent to $4,295 for the 2003-04 fiscal year and then to $4,224 in 2004-05. The state makes up the difference between the basic support guarantee and what's collected on behalf of schools in sales and property taxes by each county.

Clark County is scheduled to receive $4,127 per pupil in the first year of the biennium and $4,249 in the second.

"We won't move ahead, but at least we won't fall further behind," McLaughlin said, noting that only four states spend less on education than Nevada. "In these tough economic times we're appreciative that lawmakers would step up and go this far."

The diversification of the state's tax base will mean a more stable funding source for schools, McLaughlin said.

"In the long run this is going to be a landmark for the cause of education," McLaughlin said.

Joyce Haldeman, director of community and government relations for the Clark County School District, said she expects the full-day kindergarten program and more money for English Language Learners, or ELL, to remain at the top of the priority list for the state's superintendents.

"We'll give everyone a little bit of a breather and then start writing action plans on how to make these things happen next time," Haldeman said. "We'll retool the programs and work with lawmakers in the interim to make sure everyone realizes how critical these programs are."

Funding for ELL students was also a priority for the state Board of Education, said Keith Rheault, deputy superintendent of instruction.

New federal requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act require schools to show yearly gains by all student groups, including English Language Learners. Schools that don't show gains will go on the state's list of campuses needing improvement and could risk losing federal dollars. Nevada's ELL population has grown by more than 600 percent since 1989, according to state figures.

"We can pretty much predict that schools with high ELL populations will find themselves on that list," Rheault said. "The Legislature is going to have to address that reality at some point down the road. They've just put it off for two years."

The final budget, and the delay it took to get one, has taken a toll on the entire school community, said John Jasonek, executive director of the Clark County Education Association representing the majority of the district's teachers.

"We're relieved for our school employees, teachers, children and parents, but we're angry things had to go this far," Jasonek said. "We're certainly going to take note and hold the right people accountable so that this doesn't happen again."

The district's priorities must now shift to hiring the more than 600 teachers still needed for the start of classes Aug. 25. There's been a record rate of rejections -- about 28 percent versus the 15 percent experienced in previous years, officials said.

"The only silver lining is that other states are experiencing the same problems, and California was laying off teachers which meant they didn't gobble up all the candidates the district couldn't hire during the freeze," Jasonek said. "If they could have all gone across the state line and gotten hired we'd be in a bigger mess."