Billions in savings vs. parents in protest

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007 | 7:44 a.m.

The big reason for going to year-round schools is cost. There are savings in yearly operating costs per student:

Nine-month schools: $787

Year-round schools: $745

Difference: $42

And even greater savings in construction costs through 2018:

New elementary schools needed with everyone on year-round schedule: 58

New elementary schools needed with everyone on nine-month schedule: 126

Cost of additional schools if everyone goes on nine-month schedule: $4.1 billion

Although year-round schools have struggled to find support among parents in Southern Nevada, embracing them could save the Clark County School District - and taxpayers - billions of dollars during the next decade, freeing up money for overdue repairs of older campuses.

Even if the district wanted to satisfy parents who hate sending their children to school through the summer months, it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. To move the 70,000 elementary students attending school year-round to the more popular nine-month schedule would require 15 new campuses, at a cost of more than $505 million, plus nearly $3 million annually in operating costs.

Those were the hard numbers revealed Monday at a meeting of the Superintendent's Year-Round Study Group, which was formed this fall to assess the positives and negatives of the schedule.

Does the district have the money to build 58 schools? The available land? wondered School Board member Carolyn Edwards, who is on the study group.

"Nope and nope," Paul Gerner, associate superintendent of facilities for the district, said at Monday's meeting.

In fact, Gerner said, every dollar in the current capital improvement plan, just shy of $5 billion, is spoken for.

The study group must weigh all factors of the two schedules, including costs and effect on student achievement. And it must solicit the opinions of parents, teachers and administrators. The group's findings are due to the superintendent later this fall.

Year-round schools cost 20 percent more per site to operate, said Jeff Weiler, the district's chief financial officer. However, because they can serve hundreds more children, the per-student operating cost is actually $42 less.

The district will go back to voters next year and ask them to support another 10-year bond measure. The cost depends heavily on whether new elementary schools will operate on year-round or nine-month schedules.

If all elementary schools were nine-month, the district probably would need to build 126 through 2018. Year-round schedules would require just 58 new campuses, at a savings of $4.1 billion in construction costs alone, Gerner said.

To Gerner, the best outcome of the study group would be if the community shifts to favor year-round schools.

"If we could get off the track of saying we need to build nine-month schools, there would be a lot of room in the budget to do what I call the equity work - modernizing older schools in the inner cities," Gerner said. "If we end up with $8 billion in bond revenue, and building the new schools costs us $7.9 billion, that's not going to leave much room for anything else."

Equity has been a hot-button issue with voters who support school construction with their tax dollars. Two years ago, after hearing loud complaints from parents, principals and even city officials, the district promised to add shade structures - a feature at newer campuses - to older schools .

This year some parents complained their children were being forced into year-round schedules to accommodate nine-month calendars at campuses in more affluent neighborhoods. The district disputed the claim, and promised greater transparency when changing a campus schedule. The study group grew out of that promise.

The announcement that a school is switching to a year-round schedule has become a harbinger of doom to many parents.

Kim Coston, a mother of four district students, told the study group she experienced "an indescribable feeling that something bad is going to happen to my kids."

And, she said, parents resent being handed the news as a foregone conclusion.

"We expect to have input, to be part of a democratic process," she said.

In addition to looking at finances, the study group is considering the potential academic costs of year-round calendars. Now, 40 percent of the district's more than 200 elementary schools operate year-round.

District parents have long complained that their children's test scores suffer at year-round schools. But that gap has narrowed since adjustments were made to the state's testing schedule to make testing at both types of schools equivalent.

In its upcoming meetings the study group will hear from parents and teachers on both sides of the debate, and will be briefed on the upcoming bond measure.