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‘Barely’ maintaining
State schools budget continues to lag behind what is needed to educate children
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.
Instead of using federal stimulus money as intended on innovations and improvements in the classroom, Nevada officials will spend it on trying to keep the status quo.
As Emily Richmond reported in Monday’s Las Vegas Sun, the $324 million of stimulus money earmarked for education will pay for basic services, bridging the budget shortfall created by falling tax revenue. Nevada will also get $140 million for special education programs and schools in the state’s poorest neighborhoods, but that money is expected to go toward existing programs.
School officials are reluctant to launch new programs with the stimulus money because they doubt they’ll have the funding to keep the programs going after the stimulus money runs out.
As a result, the state will likely be out of the running for $4.35 billion in competitive federal grants. Those grants will be awarded to states, districts and schools that use the stimulus money in innovative and creative ways.
“We’re going to end up looking bad because we won’t be able to do even one new innovative thing with the funding,” said Keith Rheault, Nevada’s superintendent of public instruction. “We’re using it to barely maintain what we had before.”
It is pitiful that the state has to rely on the federal stimulus money just to fund the basic school budget. Gov. Jim Gibbons and the Legislature can point to the terrible economy as an excuse, but this is a symptom of a larger problem. For years Nevada’s schools have not been adequately funded, and efforts to improve education have largely been incremental or meaningless, most notably Gibbons’ “Education First” initiative.
The governor and the Legislature should be looking at overhauling the way education is funded. They should find ways to put more money into the schools, giving teachers and principals the resources they need to provide a top-notch education to our children. Instead, they have a long history of passing budgets that merely keep the lights on in the schools.
Is it any wonder why Nevada’s schools have failed to pass muster?
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Nevada officials will spend it on trying to keep the status quo.
So the fat Union public job wages and benefits are fully funded.
Nothing left for the kids.
"School officials are reluctant to launch new programs with the stimulus money ....."
Other schools are faced with the same choice and are taking the money. Clark county is making their's by not applying for it.
Remember that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi push this inept stimulus bill out the door in the midnight deal.
You get what Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi gave us.
Let me see...it Tuesday...yep.....let's push for higher taxes day.
Wait a minute....everyday is a push for higher taxes day if you are a Democrat.
Oh, please. Nevada has thrown good money after bad at education in this state. The problem is a very poor curriculum and a philosophy that cares more about "self-esteem" than it does about teaching the fundamentals. On top of that, the real money problem comes from a bloated administrative staff. Of course, it is liberals (like those on the editorial staff of this paper) that burden the students with a dysfunctional curriculum (in the name of being "progressive") then blame inadequate funding when that curriculum fails to produce successful students. The typical democrat circle-jerk.
I didn't read anything in this editorial about raising teacher pay or benefits. Instead it was talking about funding education at a level where we can properly educate our kids and have them ready for the job market. Over the past twenty years class sizes have increased and textbook and supply funds have shrunk. The ability for the district to innovate and develop new programs that might help students be ready has disappeared. The state has thrown less and less good money at education and the resulting poor education is the result. You get what you pay for.
Isnt it just great when the fed coughs up with hundreds of $millions stimulus money for Nevadas education, saves having to put up taxes, so what will be next to get stimulus money, bog paper, ice cream, condoms, back scratchers, ??
Here are some ideas http://npri.org/docLib/20090318_Failure_...
We don't have to spend more money, we just have to change a system that doesn't work no matter how much we spend.
The education industry is like the fashion industry. They want no input from the customer and you are forced to take what they give you. There will never be any realistic educational reform as long as those running this closed shop make decisions from ivory towers that have no view of reality. If the education industry had it's way we would be going to school from birth till death all the while being taught a bunch of liberal arts garbage. Time to end the incestuous closed shop of education and bring in new blood that deals in reality instead of failed intellectual notions. In most fields of human endevor we are making great strides forward while the education industry makes gigantic leaps backwards. There are a great many teachers who are open to new ideas and willing to innovate but can't because they are not allowed to by their administrators.
Awhile back there was a study of why teachers left the the profession. The largest majority of them left because of out of touch administrators and their policies.