Educators have mixed reactions

Thursday, June 9, 2005 | 11:09 a.m.

As legislators and lobbyists tally their scorecards for the 2005 session, educators at the state and local level had varying viewpoints as to how public education fared.

State Superintendent Keith Rheault said he believes Nevada's schools came out ahead.

"The lawmakers were very fair and hit a lot of the areas we've pressed them on for quite a while," Rheault said. "We still have to go over some of the details of the last-minute items that were passed, but overall I'd call this a very successful session."

For Clark County Schools Superintendent Carlos Garcia, whose resignation takes effect next month, the 2005 Legislature was the proverbial half-full glass.

Teacher salaries will improve, but starting pay is still well below what neighboring states offer, Garcia said. The Legislature approved raising the per-pupil minimum funding the state provides, but it's still not enough for Clark County to keep up with surging enrollment growth, Garcia said.

The state's minimum funding allocation per pupil will increase from $4,424 to $4,486 in 2006 and $4,696 in the following year. While Nevada has increased the minimum guarantee at each of the past three legislative sessions, its national ranking has continued to slide. The Silver State was ranked 47th in the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

"We're moving in the right direction, but the bad news is it's not far enough or fast enough," Garcia said. "I'll be surprised if by 2007 we're not dead-last in the nation in per-pupil allocations.

"Every session people talk about how we've made a good start, but eventually this state is going to have moved past that point if we're really going to see our kids get the kind of education they deserve."

The Nevada Education Department, along with the state's 17 school districts, teamed up on iNVest '05, a $646 million package of proposed educational programs and initiatives aimed at raising student achievement.

With the ink barely dry on some of the bills, it appears about $300 million will be authorized for programs covered by the iNVest plan, said Doug Thunder, deputy superintendent of finance for the state Education Department.

Several of the plan's proposals won outright support. Other initiatives, including requests to directly fund programs for students learning English as a second language, will likely benefit from related legislation, Thunder said.

Elements of the iNVest '05 plan sent to the governor's desk include:

There were some outright failures as well.

Lawmakers rejected the iNVest recommendation that the state's two largest school districts, Clark and Washoe counties, be allowed more flexibility in determining class sizes in lower grades. Nevada's 15 rural school districts are already allowed such flexibility.

A bill draft request that would have required the state's school districts to share information with the state Education Department about disciplinary action taken against teachers died in committee.

The bill, drafted by the Clark County School District, sought to make it more difficult for teachers with troubled work histories to jump from one district to another without having problems in their past revealed.

While the bill never made it out of the Assembly, Rheault said he plans to ask school districts to voluntarily report discipline statistics as well as how many employees resign voluntarily after an investigation has already been launched.

At this point the voluntary reporting would not require districts to reveal individual names, Rheault said.

"We need to get an idea of how many cases we're really talking about, how many people resigned as part of some kind of deal," Rheault said. "We'll ask districts to track it and report it for the next year and then we'll have something concrete to report to the Legislature (during the interim)."

Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of operations for the Clark County School District, said he had hoped testimony about the academic gains made by full-day kindergarten students would convince legislators to fund the program for every child. But the $22 million allocated "is $22 million more than before and nothing to sneeze at," Rulffes said.

Clark County expects to receive about $8 million per year toward full-day kindergarten programs in at-risk schools. The district currently spends about $6 million in federal funds to offer the program at 54 schools. The extra state money will allow the district to add 15 more schools to the list in the fall of 2006, Rulffes said.

Because federal funds may not be used for programs funded by the state, the $6 million in Title I dollars will be shifted from full-day kindergarten to other high-need areas at the district's poorest schools, including early education programs, Rulffes said.

The district plans to study and report on academic achievement by kindergarten students in both its at-risk schools and those attending tuition-based classes at 30 other campuses, Rulffes said.

As for the state Education Department, Rheault said he was pleased that the Legislature approved funding for a full-time grant writer as well as the addition of a social studies curriculum consultant. A request for a second charter schools consultant position was turned down. But the state is allowed to have the social studies consultant spend a quarter of his or her time working on charter school issues, Rheault said.

The state Board of Education got what it wanted when it came to charter schools: the right to turn down applications for sponsorship. Assembly Bill 168 changed the phrase "shall approve" to "may approve." Charter school organizers are allowed to seek state sponsorship after their applications have been turned down twice by local school districts.

A bill pushed by the Clark County School Police Officers Association, which would have mandated staffing levels at the district's high schools and middle schools, did not advance, however.

Two bills by Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, also fell short. One would have pushed back high school start time in Clark County by nearly an hour to 8 a.m. and the second sought to require school administrators return to classroom teaching assignments at least once every five years.