Teacher’s union readies initiative for more funding

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Thursday, Feb. 12, 2004 | 9:45 a.m.

A ballot initiative by a Nevada teacher's union would give the state until 2012 to figure out how to increase per-pupil funding to the national average.

Terry Hickman, president of the Nevada State Education Association, said this week his organization will file its initiative in the next 10 days and begin collecting the more than 51,000 signatures needed to get the item on the November ballot.

Voters would have to approve the initiative in November and again in 2006 in order for the state Constitution to be changed.

"We believe the people of Nevada will support this -- I don't think it will be a hard sell," Hickman said during a meeting with the Las Vegas Sun's editorial board. "We believe we're giving the Legislature time to make it happen."

Hickman said the union's plan could be a companion to another ballot initiative in the works, known as "Education First." Backed by Assemblywoman Dawn Gibbons, R-Reno, and consultants Scott Craigie and Jim Denton, the initiative calls for the Legislature to pass the education budget before anything else. The initiative also has the support of the assemblywoman's husband, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R- Nev.

Exactly how the union plans to calculate per-pupil funding is still being hammered out, but Hickman said the group is leaning toward the formula used by the National Center for Education Statistics, a research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

In 2000 -- the most recent year for which figures are available -- Nevada spent $5,760 per student, according to the NCES formula. Of that money, 5 percent came from federal funding while the rest was from state and local revenues. The national per-pupil funding average was $6,911 -- $1,151 above Nevada's average.

With 385,414 students statewide this year, Nevada would need an additional $443.61 million to reach the 2000 national average.

The biennium budget calls for 34.7 percent -- $1.69 billion -- to go to K-12 education. That funding -- which included a 7 percent increase in the state's direct share of the per-pupil funding -- came after a prolonged and bitter legislative session.

According to the NCES, 5 percent of Nevada's education funding in 2000 came from the federal government, compared with a national average of 7.3 percent.

Nevada has one of nation's lowest rates of federal funding. The federal government owns about 85 percent of the land in Nevada and does not have to pay taxes on that property.

Even if Nevada's federal funding were increased to 7.3 percent, it would not cover the gap between the state and national averages for per-pupil expenditures, said Doug Thunder, deputy superintendent of administrative and fiscal services for the state Education Department.

It's a gap that has only widened in the four years since the last NCES report, Thunder said.

"Based on our estimates, we're about $1,500 below the national average," Thunder said. "That's going to be a tough gap to overcome and probably impossible without new taxes."

If the teacher's union initiative passes and the percentage of federal dollars received by the state decreases, Nevada would have to make up that difference as well, Thunder said.

The union's initiative does not explain how the money will be spent or include any accountability measures. Ken Lange, executive director of the NSEA, said there are already plenty of accountability measures in place thanks to the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The federal education reform -- now in its second year -- calls for 100 percent of the nation's public school students to show proficiency in reading, writing and mathematics by the 2013-14 academic year. Schools that do not show gains face sanctions.

The teacher's union has complained bitterly that the federal act amounted to an unfunded mandate.

"We've been asked to do more with less," Lange said. "Now is the time to catch up when it comes to funding, and our initiative will do that."

Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of operations for the Clark County School District, said the union's initiative thus far has lacked specifics.

"Lawmakers and taxpayers need assurances that we would be spending those dollars effectively," Rulffes said. "It seems sort of shallow to ask for more money without explaining how it would be used."

Rulffes took issue with the argument that the federal No Child Left Behind Act provided a framework for accountability, pointing out that both the teacher's union and the district have called publicly for changes to the law.

"That model doesn't have enough miles on it yet -- it needs more road testing," Rulffes said of the law, now in its second year. "It's likely to have more than one recall on its parts before they roll out the final version."

Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Henderson, who had his endorsement from the NSEA yanked last June at the height of the legislative education funding crisis, said the federal act isn't enough of a safeguard.

"The tools exist to measure student and teacher performance," Beers said. "I imagine a number of people will have a problem (with the union's) lack of accountability measures."