State per-pupil spending suffers

Tuesday, March 11, 2003 | 11:22 a.m.

The Clark County School District is holding the following forums on possible budget cuts:

Green Valley High School, 460 Arroyo Grande Boulevard, at Warm Springs Road, Henderson.

Chaparral High School, 3850 Annie Oakley Drive, at Viking Road.

Nevada spent $5,778 per pupil for education in 2001 compared with the national average of $7,284, according to the census report released today. New York spent the most on each student, $10,922. Utah finished last with $4,625 per pupil.

The report comes as the Legislature is debating a plan to raise about $1 billion in new taxes, and school officials say if that plan isn't passed the state could see its per-pupil spending drop if more revenue isn't found.

"It's all a question of what we consider acceptable for our children," State School Superintendent Jack McLaughlin said this morning. "We don't want our kids to be 46th, not in educational opportunities and not in achievement. We want them to be the best."

Unless Gov. Kenny Guinn's budget wins approval, the Clark County School District will have cut about $220 million from its budget, said Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of instruction.

That would include reducing the per-pupil spending by about $200 for each of the district's more than 258,000 students, he said.

"We would have to say goodbye to music, goodbye to middle school sports, goodbye to art classes," Rulffes said. "Those are all areas that would have to be seriously scrutinized."

School buses could be eliminated for high school students, and class sizes could increase at most grade levels, Rulffes said.

For the past two weeks school district officials have been preparing for an estimated $156 million in cuts over the next two years, as outlined in a memo from McLaughlin. But during a visit with the governor's staff last week Rulffes said he was told the district should be preparing for as much as $220 million in cuts.

"We're assuming it's going to be the higher number," Rulffes said. "I'd rather work from that scenario than be surprised with an extra $60 million shortfall down the road."

The district, which has already cut $90 million over the last three years of its $1.2 billion annual budget, is in the middle of a series of town hall meetings gathering public opinion about what programs and services should be reduced, eliminated or spared. The final two meetings are tonight at Green Valley High School and tomorrow night at Chaparral High School.

The first two meetings attracted standing-room-only crowds.

"We're definitely getting the point across to the public that this is a serious situation," said Joyce Haldeman, director of community and government relations for the school district.

Haldeman has been coordinating the district's push in favor of the iNVest plan, a proposed $879 million two-year increase to education spending backed by all 17 of the district superintendents. The plan calls to raise Nevada's per-pupil expenditure rate to at least the national average. The governor's budget plan calls for backing about a third of the proposals outlined in iNVest, but it would not raise per-pupil spending.

State lawmakers have been flooded with studies, rankings and other data in the attempts to influence them in the tax debate.

The release of U.S. Census data that shows Nevada lagging behind the rest of the states in education spending is only one more piece of the collective information, lawmakers said today.

"I don't know what helps the tax debate right now," Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, said.

Republican lawmakers have long disputed rankings of per-pupil spending, saying the different ways of figuring that data, can lead Nevada to a higher education ranking.

"There will be some that will try to twist the census numbers around," Perkins said. "That said, money doesn't simply solve things, but a lack of money can cause problems."

Education lobbyists are preparing for a more visible pro-tax agenda toward the end of the session with teachers vowing to march on the state Capitol and Legislative Building and others vowing to flood lawmakers with thousands of calls.

The new federal report once again puts Nevada "at the back of the bus" and highlights the need for tax reform, said Greg Bortolin, spokesman for the governor.

"When they say the governor has not made his case, this is exactly the governor's case," Bortolin said. "This is yet another sad chapter that buttresses his case."