Over protest, feds to stick with cuts for Nevada schools’ English learners

Thursday, Dec. 6, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

If you want to make the case that Nevada has fewer students who need help learning the English language, you'd better not visit Fay Herron Elementary School. Or Monaco Middle School. Or Rancho High School. Or any of the dozens of other Clark County campuses that have seen surges in their immigrant student populations.

Schools that will now have to teach those students with a lot less money because of a change made to the funding formula used by the federal government.

Nevada lost $2.6 million for children learning English, a 30 percent drop from the prior year's allocation. The bulk of the funding was for Clark County, which accounts for 70 percent of the state's K-12 enrollment. One of every five students in the district has limited English proficiency.

Because of the cut, Clark County schools will continue a hiring freeze for language specialists and some successful programs won't be expanded.

"Not having those dollars means some students are going to suffer from a lack of services," said Walt Rulffes, Clark County's schools superintendent. "It's a terrible disservice to the kids in this system."

In July, state education officials found out that Nevada would lose money. In September, Nevada's congressional delegation sought an explanation from the U.S. Education Department, asking how the feds could have possibly come to the conclusion that the state's English language learner population had decreased.

In a Nov. 15 letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings defended the formula that was the basis for the feds' conclusion that Nevada's population of students who are non-native English speakers had declined.

The formula is the best the feds have at this time, Spellings said. A revised formula is being considered but won't be ready before September 2008. That means Nevada won't see its funding restored this time around.

Since 2005, the Education Department has used a sampling conducted as part of the U.S. Census to count the number of recent immigrant and non-English-proficient students in each state. In 2006, that formula worked to Nevada's advantage, resulting in a $1.6 million increase in funding.

Although the survey is favored over the census because it has more timely updates, it depends in part on people's self-reporting data - including their own language skills - to the government. In prior years, the census information was supplemented with student data collected by state education departments.

But, as Spellings noted in her letter, there was a lack of consistency among states in how they counted their English learners, which affected funding. A federal review also found some states were providing incomplete data to the Education Department.

As recommended by the federal auditors, the department's Office of English Language Acquisition is working on a new formula for calculating aid, with a deadline of September 2008, Spellings said.

But that doesn't help Nevada out of the hole this year.

Herron has the district's largest elementary English language learner population, while Monaco and Rancho lead the pack for middle and high schools.

Federal dollars are desperately needed to supplement the basic per-pupil funding received from the state, said Herron Principal Kelly Sturdy.

The English language learner funding let Sturdy hire a facilitator to work directly with teachers and prepare them to work with non-English-speaking students.

"To help mentor teachers, to build the confidence and strength to reach those children, is vital," Sturdy said. "When you look out into the classroom and see there's a vast communication problem, and there's no one to support or guide you, that's a dismal situation."

The federal funds also paid for instructional materials and library books that were beyond the reach of the school's regular budget.

Given that federal law requires public schools to appropriately educate all students, regardless of their residency status or English-language abilities, the government should provide funding to meet that requirement, Sturdy said.

Keith Rheault, Nevada's superintendent of public instruction, said he wasn't expecting the state's funding to be restored, even with the intervention of the Senate majority leader.

"There would have been opposition from all the other states who got what we should have been getting."

Instead, Nevada is focusing on next year's round of allocations.

"Our goal," Rheault said, "is to make sure the formula is cleaned up and that they get it right."