It’s really elementary

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.

Mike Dayton, Gov. Jim Gibbons’ chief of staff, sat before a group of Clark County students last week, trying to defend the governor’s budget cuts.

Dayton said the cut to the education budget was only 4.5 percent, down from the original proposal that called for an 8 percent cut. Besides, he reasoned, the budget for public education had gone up 18 percent, so the cut really wasn’t all that bad.

As Emily Richmond reported in Monday’s Las Vegas Sun, members of the Clark County School District’s Student Advisory Council knew better.

Zhan Okuda-Lim of Valley High School asked whether it was true that the bulk of the 18 percent budget increase was to pay for growth in student enrollment and teacher salaries. Before Dayton could answer, Superintendent of Public Instruction Keith Rheault, who was at the meeting, spoke up.

“You hit it right on the head with that question,” Rheault said.

“The 18 percent everyone’s mentioning, we didn’t see a dollar more for operating these schools or supplies,” Rheault said. “It didn’t add any new programs or new courses at the school level.”

Any “new” money went to expanding programs already inadequately funded, such as all-day kindergarten and career and technical education, but the 4.5 percent budget cuts wiped out plans for that.

Still, the governor and his staff have tried to minimize the effects of the budget cuts by portraying the state budget as bloated, pointing to the large increase over the previous budget. (For good effect, Gibbons commissioned a panel to find government waste.) However, the governor and his staff ignore a basic fact: New government spending in Nevada is largely fueled by the state’s exponential growth.

The high school students who confronted Dayton understand that. Why can’t the governor?