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Monday, Sept. 21, 2009 | 2:48 p.m.
Sun Coverage
The Clark County School District is seeing its first enrollment decline in more than a quarter-century, education officials announced today.
As of Friday, the official “count day” used by the state to determine per-pupil funding for public schools, Clark County had 309,573 students.
That’s a decrease of 1,667 students from the official enrollment for the 2008-09 academic year, and more than 4,000 students below projections for this year.
However, district officials were quick to point out that by conservatively staffing schools at 97 percent of the projected enrollment, coupled with $120 million in budget cuts and holding some vacancies open, layoffs are not expected to be necessary.
When asked to comment on when he expected enrollment growth to rebound, Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes said “I’m not going to take a shot at that.”
At the same time, he defended the district’s enrollment projections, saying “We don’t have anything to apologize for … our enrollment projections have always come within 1 percent.”
The district relies on a complicated matrix, which includes local birth statistics and input from county and state demographers, to build its projections.
The sharpest decline this year was among elementary school students living in the east region of Las Vegas. That correlates to the many families living in those neighborhoods that were known to have worked in construction and hospitality jobs, both of which suffered significant losses.
The district hired 688 new teachers for the 2009-10 academic year, and has 340 classroom vacancies. The district also has 125 vacancies for special education teachers and 75 vacancies for specialists.
Thanks to a provision in state statute, the district this year will receive the same amount of state funding it received last year when it had 311,240 students.
Districts won’t know how many students they will receive funding for until October when the “count day” numbers are audited and verified by the Nevada Education Department. But because employee contracts are finalized months earlier, state statute includes a “hold harmless” provision intended to give districts a “soft landing” and more time to prepare for loss of funding.
In anticipation of slower enrollment growth, the district moved 17 elementary schools to nine-month schedules from year-round calendars. More schools are expected to make the switch for the 2010-11 academic year.
The student count will really go down when all the construction workers at City Center finish it.If people think its ruff now wait until 2010.
i'm surprised it's not higher.
City Center is finished. Do you think all the construction workers are hanging around to see when the next hotel is built? Watch the visitors numbers. The administration is now backing changes to allow Indian Casinos on ground other than historical tribal grounds. Expect 7 more Casino Resorts in California alone. The competition grows.
Who made the count? It may give you an idea of how many students actually are in the district. It could be the same ones that want us to believe the test scores.
You don't cut any one's pay just because the count of students is down. You cut the number of teachers and support people. Everyone knows that Nevada school teacher's pay sucks to begin with, and attrition rates are high because of it, which costs the taxpayer more in the long run.
lasvegas2009, Jeez.
1667 out of 309,573 is, statistically, not even a drop in the bucket. About a half of one drop.
I am pretty horrible at math, but that's a .5% drop?
LasVegas2009, think about what you just said. You are asking how many students don't speak English then saying that you want the teachers pay cut all in one breath. How do you expect students to learn English if they don't have enough teachers?
Classrooms are already overcrowded enough. A good ratio of students per teacher is 20-25:1. When I was in the CCSD a couple years ago, it was 30-40:1 at some times.
LasVegas2009 said....
"Now we have less kids to educate so we can cut the teachers pay down by that number of students right?"
Wow! I'm not sure how you came up with that line of thinking....1667 less students means less state money for the school district. Nothing else.
The loss of funding for 1667 students is such a small amount of money when one considers the entire budget of the district. It's like taking one pebble of sand off the beach and expecting the one less pebble of sand to make a huge difference in how the beach looks.....
afveteran hit the nail on the head when he/she said:
"You don't cut any one's pay just because the count of students is down. You cut the number of teachers and support people."
The district came into the new school year understaffed so I would be very surprised if anyone is let go.....it was planned that way.
Settle down all, this is like 2 kids a school. And stop bringing up city center, all the people that lose thier construction jobs will be replaced by people who have to work there to operate it. Vegas 2009, you have permission to drop my salay. That is two kids at my school out of 3000. That is 1/1500. Enjoy that value meal.
We lead the nation in repossessions and have an unemployment rate of 13.4% , yet we only have 1600+ less students. The governor needs to look into each of the school counts and he will most likey find a whole lot of cash will be saved.
rascal said....
"We lead the nation in repossessions and have an unemployment rate of 13.4% , yet we only have 1600+ less students. The governor needs to look into each of the school counts and he will most likey find a whole lot of cash will be saved."
I think that would be a great job for "governor blockhead." He could start that very thing first thing in the morning and by the year 2050 he would probably be finished.....
In short, do you have a clue how the count is taken? Apparently not.....Wow!
If more CCSD schools hire priciples like Tim Adams the enrollment would be even less.
To the general public balancing class enrollments may seem like a simple task. Every year this takes place near the beginning of the second quarter. While moving a few students and teachers around sounds simple it is not. By this time teachers have their classes, policies and procedures in the minds of their students, and classes begin to function with some normalcy.
Then, the count day arrives and all hell can break loose. One teacher's class may lose 5 students and a week later that teacher may receive another 5 or 7 "new students as classes are allegedly 'balanced'. Disruption and chaos are the result. The teacher has to then indoctrinate the new arrives about policies, procedures and have the students play catch up with work assignments.
This process is insane at the very least...it happens every Fall and about mid semester. Students are disrupted beyond belief. Some loose a class they like and are placed in another with subject with a different teacher, etc. Resentment can build on both the part of the teacher and students. "I don't like the class or this teacher" can lead to disruptive, uncooperative behavior from the unhappy student.
The teacher had a class that, by this time, was well adjusted to policies and procedures and now 3-5 or however many new students enter and disrupt the entire situation. It is an insane sysem built and reinforced very year by administrators that have forgotten, if they every really knew, what it was like to be a teacher...or student. The insane are in charge of the asylum, the CCSD.
Why not keep the classes and students and reduce the administrators at the palaces on Flamingo Road and Sahara Avenue.... cut out a few of those brainless, moneywasters and education in this district might proceed ahead.
No one knows what it is like to teach in this district until one has tried it for a number of years. It is like teaching in Alice's 'Wonderland'...nothing is like itshould be or seems to be. It is chaos and a mishmash of ideas, policies and happenings beyond belief for one who would come into it from the outside.
This 'count day' is an unbelievable nightmarish disruption for teachers and students. The brianless operating this district just don't know what it does, nor do they care, about students or teachers; afterall, they are administrtators and don't have to live within the very system that they create.
For most teachers who are involved in this 'musical chairs' rearrangement of student schedules and class sizes it is a continuing nightmare. It may take anywhere from a few days to several weeks for all class schedules of students and teachers are 're-adjusted' by then a good part of the Fall semster has passed. This is really good for students involved as well as those for which no change occurs...that is really providing quality education for our kids.
Imagine having a class of 42 students since the beginning of the school term and then it is decided that 5 students must be transferred to other classes, subjects and teachers to 'balance the rosters'... Sounds great, eh? Now you have only 37 instead of 42 students. But, wait now the real good news arrive. Because of schedule changes, loss of some classes your class is being increased in size to 'balance out' the loss of these course. So, now you receive 8 students new to your class and now you have a total of 43, not 42 student enrolled.
Then you must begin to orient these new students, mid course, to all that has preceeded them so far this year. That is time away from the other remaining students...they loose instruction time, etc. while you play catchup with your new charges.
Tell, me ladies and gentlemen, what other business conducts itself with such insanity. Imagine disrupting a manufacturing plant with this system. Tear out machinery during your production run, replace the familiar workers, and other new machinery with new hires and expect production to continue without chaos or disrution.....
In my opinion only an insane assylum operated by brainless inmates could invent this system and operate under the name "EDUCATION.'
El Lobl, I understadn exactly how the count is taken, do you? It takes too much commoon sense.
http://npri.org/publications/money-down-...
CCSD spends over $12,300 per pupil (over $10,500 if you exclude expenditures from bond revenue).
rascal said....
"El Lobl, I understadn exactly how the count is taken, do you? It takes too much commoon sense."
Yes, I clearly understand how it's done. Do you also know that the Nevada State Dept. of Education sends a team into spot check the enrollment figures at various schools to see if the figures turned in by those schools are correct?
That's one reason I said what I did in reference to your brain-dead statement saying:
"The governor needs to look into each of the school counts and he will most likey find a whole lot of cash will be saved."
vsestini......
Great post, I would say you've been there....you've done that....
I have always believed that the school district (CCSD) is simply too big. It's like the federal government, it has a world all its own.
As you said in your post, it's like Alice's 'Wonderland' where common sense is not very common...
If my memory serves me correctly, I believe Valley High School, (it might have been Las Vegas High) back in the 1980's, actually rescheduled every student in the building in mid to late October....
So it was like starting a new school year after some 6-8 weeks of class. Most students not only had a different teacher, but they had different classes....
The CCSD isn't the only large school district in the country that has lost its way, however. That's pretty much true with most large districts....of course that's not justification for what goes on.
In defense of the CCSD.....the demographics of the area that it serves is responsible for many, but not all, of the problems that it faces. The number of students that have English as a second language continues to grow. The huge turn-over of both the student population and the teacher population is also a real problem.....
In a "normal year," the number of teachers who leave the district is way above the national average. If the district hires 1500 new teachers this year, 50% of those teachers are no longer in the system 5 years from now...
The unbelievable growth of the Las Vegas area over the last thirty years has also contributed to the problem. Many schools have too many students for the size of the facility, and portable class rooms are the norm rather than the exception...
Many of the high schools that are built to handle 2000 students now have 3000 students.
There's often a shortage of textbooks and some classes have no texbooks at all.....class size continues to increase and there are some classes in the district with 45 students or more......
I could go on and on but I think we all get the picture...not pretty is it?
Emily, I'd appreciate some credit here for calling the trick before. Did I not tell the public from the podium at the school board that this was a trick of false statistical reporting 2 months ago? Have a look at my blog... "Perhaps Mr Weiler forgot that on 07-01-09 I spoke to the board when they were voting to build 3 unneeded elementary schools? I told them then that these "Growth Statistics" were false. This was not an accident! They could have realistically predicted the student population by using the last week of school enrollment figures. But they deliberately chose not to." have a look at the NPRI article by Karen Gray that is linked to my site. Remember its the job of the modernization department to see that poor & minority neighborhoods keep substandard schools for their kids while the job of the new construction department is to provide new schools to as yet unbuilt wealthy neighborhoods. Who said you can't go to hell for bad planning? Seeing that I guess God can make an exception.
"Thanks to a provision in state statute, the district this year will receive the same amount of state funding it received last year when it had 311,240 students.
Districts won't know how many students they will receive funding for until October when the "count day" numbers are audited and verified by the Nevada Education Department. But because employee contracts are finalized months earlier, state statute includes a "hold harmless" provision intended to give districts a "soft landing" and more time to prepare for loss of funding."
"Thanks to a provision in state statute...?"
Because of the "hold harmless" statue, the state (taxpayers) will still have to pay the school districts MILLIONS in per-pupil funding for students who are NO LONGER THERE!
Sigfield and Roy were considered masters of magic and illustion; Chris Angel is considered a master of visual deception. Walt Rulffes is a master of both of these skills only he applies it to the school district. He is the master of 'flim-flam' and the rodeo skill of spreading 'the b.s.'
By the way, his salary, perks, benefits, retirement and vacation pay is probably more than either of the above 3 earned for a given 'schtick' on the strip. When he retires from the district he will receive a very hefty check and the trustees undoubtedly try to name a new school with his name engraved for pasterity.
I'm really confused. How come schools are losing teachers, classes, and programs if funding stays the same? Where does the money for those students not attending go?