Education petition qualifies

Tuesday, July 6, 2004 | 10:42 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The proposed constitutional amendment to raise Nevada's support of public schools to the national average qualified today for a place on the November ballot.

Secretary of State Dean Heller said the certification of the initiative petition showed 76,775 verified signatures of registered voters, far above the required 51,337 needed to put the issue on the ballot.

It qualified in 15 of the 17 counties. The law required the petition to include 10 percent of the registered voters in 13 of the 17 counties.

Ken Lange, executive director of the Nevada State Education Association, which pushed the petition, said he was pleased the petition qualified.

"We had tremendous grass-roots support. Lots of members worked weekends and evenings," he said. "Very few people who were asked to sign the petition refused."

He said the association, which is the schoolteachers union, will run a "multi-faceted campaign" leading up to the November election, but has not set a budget on how much will be spent.

Raising the support level to the national average will cost more than $400 million a year, which is more than the 2003 Legislature raised in taxes. The per-pupil expenditure in Nevada was $5,813 in 2002, which is below the national average of $7,548, according to the rankings by the National Education Association.

The initiative to increase the funding, if approved by the voters twice, would not take effect until 2012.

Under the plan backed by the teachers union, the added money would go for basics such as pre-kindergarten classes, full-day kindergarten, textbooks, supplies, technology and salary and benefits for teachers.

This was the second initiative petition to qualify for the ballot. The plan to require the Legislature to pass the school aid budget first before other state budgets qualified earlier.