Survey to help district make cuts that many oppose

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Saturday, March 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.

In a new online survey conducted by the Clark County School District, Gov. Jim Gibbons’ proposed K-12 education budget cuts received nearly unanimous disapproval.

That’s not surprising considering that 62 percent of the more than 9,000 responses came from the district’s own employees.

School officials are the first to concede the survey, conducted over 10 days in February, isn’t scientific. But even with those caveats, the results are still useful, said Joyce Haldeman, associate superintendent of community and government relations.

The results will help guide discussions on how the district can trim its budget by $66 million over the biennium, Haldeman said. The Clark County School Board members wanted to get public input on the matter, “and given the shortness of time they felt an electronic town hall meeting would be more effective,” Haldeman said.

Respondents answered the survey using the district’s employee portal and the public Web page, which accounted for 35 percent of the responses. The remaining 3 percent came from parents and community members who responded to an e-mail asking for their participation.

When broken down by subgroup, the responses were generally similar on major issues.

Overall, respondents were divided on which programs should be the first to go. The “one-shot funds,” which were allocated by the Legislature for programs such as full-day kindergarten and empowerment schools, should be cut first, 52 percent of the respondents said. But 48 percent wanted to cut existing district programs and move ahead with the new initiatives.

Just 7 percent of respondents wanted to increase class sizes. And more than 70 percent of respondents opposed shortening the school year to save money. Charging students to participate in sports had support from 52 percent of respondents, with 48 percent opposed.

The strongest support — 87 percent of respondents — went to raising fees charged to community groups that use schools after hours.

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School Board members say they plan to give the survey results careful consideration, but they may want to think twice before raising facility use fees to boost revenues.

In 2003, facing rising energy bills and complaints from schools about the wear and tear caused by after-hours users, the School Board established a facilities use fee policy. The policy applies to all groups, including nonprofit organizations such as religious groups and Scout troops.

The local Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts councils fought back and won some concessions the following year. The fees were reduced, and some troops were able to do service projects for schools in lieu of payment.

Raising fees to make up for a budget shortfall would be a “terrible mistake,” said Philip Bevins, Scout executive of the Boy Scouts of America Las Vegas Area Council.

There are more than 33,000 Boy Scouts in Southern Nevada, and nearly 120 troops meet at schools. More than half of those are Scoutreach units, with about 2,000 participants total, serving at-risk youth in inner-city and rural schools.

“It would be regrettable if the School District were compelled to impose fees on their own students for extracurricular use of their own school,” Bevins said. “The unintended consequences would be creating hardships for the same children they want to help.”

The School District is gearing up for a $9.5 billion bond campaign, so this might not be the time to discourage people from seeing schools as community hubs.

“Can they justify the increase in revenue with the potential negative impact on their own students?” Bevins said. “If there’s a marginal increase in revenue, does that compensate for the loss of good will?”

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With no discernible fanfare, the Clark County School District launched its new public Web site this week, and the improvements are obvious.

The home page offers a search engine for parents who want to know school assignments based on home addresses. And a link to “Jobs” is now included in a top-of-the-page banner. On the old site, employment seekers had to hunt for the appropriate link, which was a source of frustration for many.