Parents air concerns over district’s budget shortfall

By Emily Richmond

Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008 | 7:38 p.m.

Carl Allen, the father of three Clark County School District students, doesn’t like the idea of higher taxes, “But there’s got to be a way to solve this budget problem without taking away from our children.”

He wasn’t sure what the solution would be, but “I want our voices to be heard.”

Allen was one of the more than 500 people who crowded into the gymnasium at Chaparral High School for a town hall meeting on the Clark County School District’s looming budget cuts. This was the second of two sessions scheduled for public input. The state has told the district to expect $120 million less in funding for the next biennium, which begins in July. The district has already made about $133 million in cuts since the state’s budget crisis began unfolding nearly a year ago.

As people arrived at the Annie Oakley Drive campus, district staff handed out packets with an outline of the proposed cuts, along with two small slips of paper. The blue slip was for writing down their first choice of program or service they wanted to keep, and the yellow slip was for listing what they were willing to lose.

Collection boxes, with a district employee keeping watch, waited on a table underneath a basketball hoop.

Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes went over the results of a recent parent survey, which gave the district a glimpse of people’s priorities. While 711 responses might not sound like much in a district with 308,000 students, it’s consistent with prior surveys, includes a cross-section of demographic groups and is considered a reasonable barometer of public opinion, Rulffes said.

In the survey, parents said the top five items the district should protect were athletics ($6.3 million), extracurricular activities ($5.2 million), special education facilitators ($12.9 million), custodial services for schools ($754,000 for every 1 percent reduction in force, or 15 positions) and keeping class sizes smaller in grades 1-3 ($15.6 million).

First to go, the parents said, should be extra deans and assistant principals at middle and high schools ($2.7 million), the empowerment schools program ($1.7 million), an early retirement incentive program for employees ($2.5 million), services provided by the five geographic region offices and paid preparation time for department chairs at the high schools.

The empowerment schools program has been something of a pet project for Rulffes. Principals are given extra funding and greater control over daily operations, in exchange for stricter accountability. Rulffes reminded the crowd that the district’s investment in the 14 empowerment campuses has yielded $14 million in funding from outside sources, including grants and private foundation money.

To make sure a range of views were heard during the hour set aside for public response, district staff sorted through comment cards and called up individuals to a microphone set up in the middle of the basketball court.

Parents urged the district to keep popular programs such as block scheduling, which allows students at a handful of high schools to take more elective classes during the course of the academic year. That can translate to a higher GPA, more opportunities to attend better colleges and in the long run steers the student toward a more productive life, parents argued.

Block scheduling, offered at 17 high schools, costs the district $11 million annually.

A teacher urged people to support continued funding of preparation periods, saying educators need that time to correct assignments, set up activities and labs or for professional development.

Extracurricular programs also had vocal support. The mother of a Silverado High School student said her daughter has played cello in her school’s orchestra and plans to study music education in college.

“If we cut fine arts, we are sending the message that she does not count and her area of study does not count,” she said, to loud applause.

The mood in the room took a heated turn when Courtney Curtin, a fifth-grade teacher at Sheila Tarr Elementary School, stepped up to the microphone.

Curtin said she was angry that the surveys of 711 parents were deemed sufficient when no such input opportunity was made to teachers.

“You would have had a 90-100 percent participation rate,” Curtin said, to loud applause. “Teachers have no voice and no rights.”

The district must complete a preliminary budget by December and submit a final version to the state for approval in May. In addition to the $120 million in cuts estimated for the next biennium, district officials say another $75 million might need to be trimmed from the current fiscal year’s balance sheet.