2003 Legislature through the eyes of: Carlos Garcia

By Emily Richmond

Friday, June 13, 2003 | 6:19 a.m.

For Clark County School Superintendent Carlos Garcia, the "what ifs" won't stop replaying in his head.

What if the Legislature doesn't approve a budget by the end of the fiscal year? What if the district must use its limited reserve funds for payroll? What if the district is short 1,000 teachers when students return in August?

"Every tick of the clock puts us further behind," Garcia said Thursday as the extended special session of the Legislature was ending with no resolution of the state's funding crisis. "We understand that the lawmakers are just as frustrated as everyone else, but how much longer can we keep waiting?"

Garcia met with his Cabinet last week to devise contingency plans if lawmakers fail to finalize a budget before the end of the fiscal year June 30.

"We figure we have enough (money) on hand to pay our bills through the end of August," Garcia said. "After that, we would be totally depleted. It's a terrifying thought."

The legislative standstill has hamstrung school district recruiting efforts. Officials need to hire 1,600 teachers by early August.

As of last week, job offers had been accepted by fewer than 400 applicants, with 350 offers pending. Some people have called and said they may renege if the Legislature doesn't approve the $2,000 signing bonus, Garcia said.

And if the district has to rescind job offers because of a lack of funds, the damage to the district's reputation will make it even more difficult for Clark County to hire teachers in the future, Garcia said.

"I just hope if the school year starts and we're short of teachers, the individuals who got us to this point will be held accountable for their decisions," Garcia said. "I don't want people storming into the district office blaming us."

The district's contingency plan includes compiling a roster of twice as many substitute teachers as usual when school starts. But while substitutes might provide a temporary fix and give the district time to hire permanent staff, new federal regulations require that districts have only highly qualified teachers in every classroom.

"If we wind up relying heavily on substitutes, I imagine we'll find ourselves out of compliance with No Child Left Behind," said Garcia, referring to President Bush's education reform act signed into law in 2002. "That's going to put us in a very awkward position, all because the Legislature couldn't wrap things up in a timely manner."

If the district is in violation of the act for too long, it could lose federal funding.

While the long-term effects of the prolonged legislative session remain to be seen, Garcia said he's already seeing short-term damage to morale.

"It's been very hard on our employees; I get 20, 30 calls a day from people worried about their jobs," Garcia said. "All I can tell them is that we're in the same boat, we don't know any more than they do what's going on up there in Carson City. We all have to just keep hoping things will work out."

District officials have consistently tried to find the silver lining as word of each new -- and rejected -- version of education funding levels trickled down.

"The best-case scenario with the budget right now is that we'll get just enough funding to keep doing what we're doing, with no money for anything new or anything innovative," Garcia said. "It's a sad day when that makes us happy, but it's better than the $111 million in cuts were imagining."

Over the course of the legislative session Garcia -- along with the state's other 16 school superintendents -- made frequent trips to Carson City to pitch the "iNVest" plan to lawmakers, an $879 million blueprint for improving the quality of education in Nevada. The plan called for bonuses for teachers in hard-to-fill positions such as special education and English as a Second Language, as well as increasing allotments for textbooks and raising the per-pupil expenditure level to the national average.

However, most of the iNVest elements have fallen by the wayside.

"Every legislator has said that education is the No. 1 priority, but they have a funny way of showing it," Garcia said. "We need to change Nevada's tax base so that in the long run it generates sufficient funds. That way we don't have to watch this drama played out every two years."

There's a lesson here, Garcia said -- and it's for the voters, particularly the parents of the district's 258,000 students.

"The Legislature is elected by the public and we're the public," Garcia said. "The public education system is being held to a new level of accountability. Who's holding the lawmakers accountable?"