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A sign from Thursday’s rally against Gov. Jim Gibbons’ veto of education funding leans against a tree in front of Valley High School.
Thursday, May 28, 2009 | 7:07 p.m.
Sun Coverage
On the eve of a promise from Gov. Jim Gibbons to veto education spending, dozens of educators and students rallied against the decision, calling a veto a lack of support for the state's future.
About 30 protesters decried Gibbons' opposition to Senate Bill 429 during an event Thursday organized by the group Nevadans for Quality Education in front of Valley High School. The bill was one of eight he ultimately vetoed on Thursday.
The Republican governor had long said he would reject the bill. (The Senate overrode the governor's veto later in the night.)
Mary Jo Parise-Malloy, president of the nonprofit, said the event was aimed at raising public awareness about the bill's effects on education and to encourage others to write to their legislators in protest. If it passes, the bill would raise taxes to funnel more money into the state's education budget.
"I made a promise a long time ago that I intend to keep. No new taxes," Gibbons said in a statement. "The Legislature has chosen to waste their time and your money creating a budget filled with a billion dollars in new taxes that will hurt every single person in this state."
Parise-Malloy said spending money on education in Nevada is vital to the state's future.
"We've endured over $180 million worth of cuts this past year," Parise-Malloy said. "If this tax package doesn't go through, we're looking at teachers being laid off, enlarging class sizes, and larger class sizes aren't good for anybody. They're not good for teachers, and they're not good for kids."
Among the speakers were Peg Bean, an intermediate resource teacher at Ronzone Elementary School, and Alison Turner, president-elect of the Nevada PTA. Both spoke about the need for better funding in a system already lacking in money. They said teachers shouldn't have to take on second jobs to make ends meet.
"This bill could mean the difference between people staying in the profession and not staying," Bean said.
With lower salaries, she added, it would be difficult to attract new teachers.
"These budget cuts could be critical for the future education of Nevada," Bean said. "If we want quality educators, we need to pay them a quality salary."
Melissa Morelli, a junior at Valley High School, said the veto would lead to activities being cut that several students participate in.
"If they're cut, I won't do anything my senior year, and I'm on student council," Morelli said. "Getting involved is what high school's about."
Daniel Burns, Gibbons' director of communications, said "a recession is not the time to raise taxes."
"Our (state) revenue is down 40 percent, and it's time to tighten the belt," Burns said. "Families are doing it everywhere. The government needs to do the same thing."
Why do teachers and other state employees feel their wages should not be cut while everyone paying their wages has been cut. How did they get so privileged?
neiman are you aware of how much a teacher makes hourly?? $9.00 to start. I got that from a school district employee's mouth. The teachers are over worked and underpaid. I have spent time in a classroom being a teacher's helper and it is amazing what these teachers are put through. Not only do they get stress by students, parents, and the district is absolutely is sickening. These teachers start out with a classroom size of 19 or 20 and within a month or two the class size is up to 30 students. And these teachers rely on the help from parents to come in and volunteer their timewhat little they have. I have volunteered for up to 6 teachers on any given day. As for the state employees, well I cant speak for them.
neiman1, you are an uninformed buffoon... with way too much time on your hands. Walk a mile in a teacher shoes, then you can comment on the occupation intelligently. You are making yourself look ridiculous. If you have school-aged children, you should be ashamed on yourself.
The mining industry continues to get a free ride, as do other big businesses: Wal-Mart etc. Public employees are taking a cut, but much of big business is not.
Parents relying upon public funding to educate their children should not only be ashamed of themselves for irresponsibly robbing their neighbors but cheating their own children out of the best educational services available through the private sector.
There is plenty of waste to be found in the CCSD that will not effect your child's education. I think it is time that we wake up and realize that the most important person in the school system is the teacher. All other positions should be there to support teacher's in their quest to educate your child. Teacher's should be the highest paid person in the system and those who teach core classes paid even more. Extra curricular activities are very nice but they are not central to the purpose of your school. Your school is to EDUCATE your children in the basic skills they will need to become productive members of society.
The "kids are our future" cliche is getting tired. If kids are the future, then I guess the future is going to be like "Terminator Salvation". I don't have kids so I don't care about education cuts. Even some people who have kids know that at some point in time we can't keep shoveling money at the schools, which seem to be a Bermuda triangle for money. Apparently that time is now, since Calif., Nevada, Arizona and a lot of other states don't have any more money. Calif. can't even borrow more money because nobody wants to buy Calif. junk bonds.
I work at a big box store. Everybody has lost hours and they aren't coming back. Sales have not improved AT ALL in the last 4 months. We are in a depression that is never going to end. The next bubbles that are going to burst are the student loan bubble, the commercial real estate bubble, and the credit card bubble.
Schools better accept the fact that there's no money. Get rid of the football team. Get rid of the computer lab. Tell illegals not to go to college (it's pointless--no employer can ever hire them). Get rid of the library. Cancel the senior prom. Don't buy new textbooks--just print stuff off of the internet. Or let the students vote on what they want to eliminate.
Your state deficit is like the H-bomb in "Lost". You guys blew it up and now nobody knows what's going to happen.
Stop allowing kids of illegals to become citizens. Just because someone crawled across the border and gave birth. Take care of this country first. It is not possible to help others when we can't even take care of ourselves. American people need to stop breeding if they can't afford their children. I should get a tax cut for not having kids sucking the system dry.
"neiman are you aware of how much a teacher makes hourly?? $9.00 to start. I got that from a school district employee's mouth."
- Well if you got it from a school district employee's mouth, then it was an incorrect figure - or a lie.
To the girl that said... "The mining industry continues to get a free ride, as do other big businesses: Wal-Mart etc. Public employees are taking a cut, but much of big business is not."
Guaranteed... Wal-Mart gets more money to the state in a day than you will in your lifetime. The business I worked at has about 45 employees and provided the state with over $2,000,000 last year (and also in the previous two years) - that's over TWO MILLION a year! Just what constitutes a "fair share?" to you? That is over $40,000 per employee if you want to break it down.
Also, how many children of ignorant people that can't figure out how birth control works should those of us that actually ARE productive have to pay for?
I also know that because of THIS tax package, that within 2 years, that the same company is restructuring so that the $2,000,000 figure will be only around $375,000 per year. I imagine other companies are doing the same.
Nevada can look forward to losing some major employers in the next few years over this debacle.