Jon Ralston examines the price tag that’s attached to an improved educational system in Nevada

Sunday, Aug. 27, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

$1.3 billion.

Sounds like a pretty expensive price tag to me.

That's what a Denver-based consultant told a legislative committee last week it would cost - yearly - to allow students to meet achievement standards.

The reaction was monolithic: Shock from all quarters, including those who have been enmeshed in the discussion for many, many years.

As someone who has watched the non-debate on the topic of school funding for two decades, highlighted by evasions on the right and equivocations on the left as almost every legislator has been left behind, I am stunned, too. But my incredulousness stems from the realization that no one has been listening or too many people are in denial or have believed their own hollow rhetoric.

Even education advocates seemed ready to muzzle the consultant for daring to suggest such an outrageous number for fear that it would discourage any increased funding.

Yes, $1.3 billion. Sounds pretty pricey to me.

The reaction by various interested politicians was depressingly familiar. A spokesman for the GOP contender for governor said Jim Gibbons supports increased funding but that more money should go to the classroom - a typical sound-bite on this issue, bereft of any substance and one that could be heard during the primary season from ... the Democratic contender for governor, Dina Titus. For her part, Titus reacted by saying the figure was asking for too much, too fast and that she would have a meeting with interested parties to talk about it.

Has anyone been listening and watching during the last decade-plus?

Apparently not, as the dithering and maundering continues.

$1.3 billion! Sounds outlandish to me.

What should stun everyone into outrage is that they all know what the truth is - Titus, Gibbons, Republicans, Democrats and, yes, Gov. Kenny Guinn.

And here's where the real frustration comes in, folks. Guinn is the only one who has been willing to tell the truth about how far behind Nevada is falling in funding, especially in education.

The governor delivered the castor oil in his 2003 State of the State speech.

"Now is a time for courage," Guinn said at the time as he prepared to propose a billion-dollar tax increase. "It is up to us to face our challenges, and face them we will."

Yes, a billion dollars. Sounded insane to me at the time.

What too many people still don't understand - or do but won't acknowledge - about that 2003 tax increase is that 80 percent of it was just to keep up with growth, primarily in school enrollments. The governor barely kept pace and was subjected to ridicule and demagoguery as a reward.

Yes, Guinn should have sold it better and with more grace, and he should have kept talking about the needs during the last three years. But Guinn was a chastened, almost beaten man after the 2003 nightmare. He had tried, but at what price?

$1.3 billion. Sounds like too high a price to me.

I am not suggesting money is the only answer, although Nevada continues to rank near the cellar in school funding.

This isn't about games with numbers - any way you look at it, the per pupil funding is a disaster and has been for a long time.

But the Democrats who support increases, except when the heat gets too hot, simply won't budge on what the Republicans always use as their escape hatch - merit pay. They have to begin a serious dialogue about accountability, and perhaps new Democratic leaders in Carson City - Speaker Barbara Buckley and perhaps Steven Horsford as the Senate Democratic boss - will engage in that colloquy.

If they don't, funding will continue to barely keep up with growth, students will suffer and, sooner or later, the state will face an adequacy lawsuit because of the serial failures to step up.

So how do you avoid that?

$1.3 billion.

Sounds like a bargain to me.