Friday, May 9, 2003 | 5:16 a.m.
Editor's note: Numerous national studies have found that Nevada ranks poorly in virtually every critical area regarding children. The state legislative session will end June 2, and all indications are that lawmakers will have done little to improve those rankings.
In fact, the Legislature is moving toward cutting many, if not most, of the funding increases Gov. Kenny Guinn had recommended for programs affecting children.
So while the nation uses "no child left behind" as the motto for one of the most important children's issues -- education -- Nevada's children are being left behind in funding for education and in many other categories.
Against this background, the Sun today begins a seven-part series, "Children Left Behind," examining some of the most pressing problems facing Nevada's children, the reasons the state fares so poorly when compared with other states and what can be done to improve the lives of children in the Silver State.
When it comes to its children, Nevada is a negligent parent, study after study has found.
In more than 50 of the most recent national surveys of children's issues by government agencies, nonprofit foundations and trade associations, most involving data that is no more than 3 years old, Nevada had far more negative than positive rankings.
The state ranks among the nation's worst in per-pupil spending, high school dropout rate, the number of children without health insurance, the tally of linguistically challenged children, child protective service caseloads and cash benefits for needy families.
Nevada has relatively lax child-care staffing ratios and among the nation's highest pupil-to-teacher ratios. Only one of every four financially eligible children can get into the state's Head Start program, which ranks among the country's stingiest in terms of funding. And the state has only recently made headway in vaccinations of toddlers, where it has also ranked near the bottom.
Over the next week, the Sun will examine the meanings of these rankings, the reasons behind them and what experts, lawmakers and the people most affected say needs to be done.
Taking care of children is always critical because they are the future, but it is even more pressing in Nevada because it has such a large percentage of children and because so many of them are younger than 5.
Nevada is the 35th most populous state, but it has the 21st highest percentage of children. For children under age 5, Nevada's percentage ranks only behind Utah's.
Not all of the rankings are bad. The state has far fewer children living in poverty than most other states, fewer disabled children than the norm and among the best-built schools in the nation. Single mothers in Nevada rank eighth and single fathers rank 13th respectively in median income compared with their peers nationwide.
The problem is that Nevada's negative rankings overwhelm the positive ones.
"There's an unconscious inattentiveness to issues of community by our leaders and by our business community," Gard Jameson, vice president of the local Children's Advocacy Alliance, said. "We're at the top of every bad list and the bottom of every good list. What is required is that we give attention to each of these areas."
"The kids are not voters so they don't have the political muscle to make changes," said Jay Keller, national field director for Population Connection, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that advocates slow population growth.
The reasons behind the state's consistently poor rankings are debatable, but most experts highlight four topics:
Compared with other states there is a lack of government funding in Nevada for education and other programs affecting children.
Nevada's position as the fastest-growing state makes it difficult to keep pace with demand for services.
Problems for children are created by the state's 24-hour, vice-tolerant lifestyle.
Southern Nevada, home to roughly two-thirds of the state's population, is a highly transient community, and that drives many of the negative child rankings.
Advocates for children's issues have long complained that Nevada doesn't spend as much as it should on children. But with the 2003 Legislature wrestling with a deficit of more than $700 million, the fear is that state funding for children will drop even lower.
Garth Winckler, United Way of Southern Nevada's former president who is a consultant in nonprofit management, said it is particularly important that lawmakers retain programs such as Nevada Check-Up, which provides health care to uninsured children, and Family to Family Connection, which serves infants and their families.
R. Keith Schwer, executive director of Nevada Kids Count, a nonprofit advocacy group that compiles statistics on children, agrees with Winckler that one area of spending where Nevada can do better involves federally funded welfare programs for children that require state matching funds, such as Nevada Check-Up and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which includes cash assistance.
"There's a limited amount of state funding for these programs," Schwer said. "They're not deemed as important in our state. Otherwise it would be done. If Nevada wanted to support these programs, we could do it."
Schwer, also director of UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research, said he would like to see the private sector get more involved in footing the bill for services such as child care as a way of relieving the government's burden.
"We've had some companies from the gaming industry step forward to say that child care is important," Schwer said. "That says to other businesses that they can step forward, too. If people want low taxes, government doesn't have to do it all."
Population Connection annually issues "Kid Friendly Cities" report cards. In 2001, Las Vegas was the 97th most "kid friendly" of 140 cities with populations of less than 2 million. Henderson and North Las Vegas ranked 37th and 62nd respectively out of 74 suburban communities.
Growth vs. services
Keller said Las Vegas and North Las Vegas were downgraded because of rapid growth, something his organization says is bad for children because of the strain it puts on schools and other city services.
"Some of the other cities that did poorly were also dealing with explosive population growth or tremendous population loss," Keller said. "Gary, Indiana, had a bunch of problems because it was an old industrial city, but we gave them (city officials) good marks because they're making good efforts there."
Nevada's communities must manage their populations better because the rapid growth makes it difficult to resolve issues where children rank poorly, he said.
"They have to look at what kind of growth they can actually handle and what that growth means," Keller said. "The problem with growth is the stretching of resources. If you're not doing a good enough job now, you're not going to do better by adding 10,000 or 50,000 people."
One example of a growth problem: the size of Nevada's schools, which have some of the largest enrollments in the nation. According to Education Week, Nevada ranks second in the percentage of crowded schools.
"We build large schools because we believe they're cost-effective, but they can also be detrimental to quality education," Winckler said.
Silverado High School senior Foster Kamer, a Las Vegas native, said he believes the large populations at high schools such as his, which has more than 3,800 students, are at least part of the reason Nevada ranked among the nation's leaders in fights on school property in a 2001 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"A lot of the fighting happens at the large schools," Kamer said. "There will be a clash of personalities when you have that many kids. It becomes a mob mentality. If you get into a tussle, there are 40 to 50 kids egging you on before a campus cop can get to you."
Kamer said the education problem also is evident in the large class sizes at middle schools and high schools. And it can be impossible for many students to succeed with "kids sharing books," he said.
"At Hyde Park Middle School there were 37 kids in my history class," he said. "It isn't conducive to a kid's education when he can't get that special attention from the teacher. You can't get that with 37 kids."
Education experts have said the same thing for years, but Nevada's schools are facing possible budget cuts again this year, so the problems may get worse.
The large influx of young people looking for jobs and starting families in Nevada translates to a greater demand on government programs such as education, Winckler said.
The problem is that growth is not paying for itself and that "it's hard to play catch-up all the time," he said.
"It's like a traffic jam where everything backs up, and it's happening here in social services."
It wasn't surprising to Winckler that Nevada ranks near the top in areas such as high school dropouts and the number of linguistically challenged kids. Local population growth has been particularly robust among Hispanics, who have higher dropout rates than many other ethnicities and who enlarge the percentage of Nevada children who have difficulty speaking English, he said.
"We have a large number of non-English speaking residents moving here," Winckler said. "We also have an awful lot of entry-level jobs, and you don't need a whole lot of skills."
The transient nature of Southern Nevada, with its constant influx and outflow of residents, is particularly hard on teens who belong to those families, Schwer said.
"It produces instability in young people's lives at a time when they're most vulnerable," he said. "In a young, growing community you tend to find that these problems are more prevalent. It's not only growth that's a problem but the composition of that growth. The construction industry (for example) isn't that stable, and people move around."
"Transiency is a problem when it comes to children without health insurance because you have to work for a period of time before you are eligible for insurance."
Schwer said Utah is an example of a state that, like Nevada, also spends relatively little per pupil on education. But he said Utah gets better classroom results because that state isn't dealing with the transiency problem.
Lack of spirit
Growth and transiency also have combined to produce another negative outcome for children: a relative low level of donations to charity.
In 2000, United Way published a State of Caring index that ranked Nevada 45th. The state was 39th in 1990. United Way, which contributes to many programs benefiting Clark County children, saw per-capita donations in Nevada fall from $11.33 in 1990 to $7.52 in 2000. Nevada's 2000 average was less than half the national average of $16.50.
In late April, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that Las Vegas was tied for fifth on its list of least-generous cities in the nation. "That's a lack of investing in your community," Winckler said. "It means you don't care about your neighbor. Communities that have strong numbers when it comes to giving have a community spirit that values their children and their older residents. Here we're largely disinterested."
The lack of giving in Nevada is disconcerting considering the state's relatively low poverty rate and Nevada's long-running healthy economy prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Home alone
The relative ease of getting well-paying jobs in Nevada compared with other states may help explain why Nevada ranks 18th in the percentage of single-parent households. But single-parent households also increase the chance that children will not have parental supervision when they come home from school.
"When you think of single parents they have double duty," said John Karroll, founder of the nonprofit Stop the Violence youth counseling organization in Las Vegas. "They have to be there for their children, and at the same time they have to bring in the funds, so one can be in conflict with the other."
Nevada's relatively high teen birth rate -- 12th highest in the nation in 2001, according to the CDC -- is partly because of high numbers of teens left unsupervised, Winckler said.
"What you've got here is a 24-hour town, and a lot of parents work evening hours," he said. "We have a lot of kids who are home alone a lot."
Experts say it can be argued that lack of parental attention and supervision is a reason drug use is prevalent among Nevada teens -- they are among the most likely in the nation to have tried or recently used cocaine, marijuana and inhalants, according to the CDC.
Kamer's take on the CDC survey, however, is that Nevada teens simply were more honest than their peers in answering questions related to drugs and other vices.
"It's a big problem everywhere," Kamer said. "But it's so much easier to discuss something like that when you're surrounded by legalized gambling and open container laws. There's no limit to the vices here in Las Vegas. When your city is based on vices, you are desensitized to these things.
"There is never a time when you can't get ahold of alcohol whenever you want. Kids here have so many fake IDs that they fall through the cracks. Vegas is a bit of altered reality. Kids who grow up here grow up in a different world."
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