District wants new funding plan, which could mean tax hike

By Anthony Ramirez

Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Even as Nevada’s school districts face more drastic cuts to already bare-bone budgets, Clark County’s school officials are looking ahead to a more profound issue: Are many students with costly needs being shortchanged, and how can the district get more money to teach them?

The formula state lawmakers follow in funding the state’s 17 school districts is known as the Nevada Plan. The concern is whether the plan, written more than 40 years ago, skimps on funding for the teaching of gifted, poor or non-English-speaking students, who cost more to educate.

Clark County School District officials suspect that is the case and say it is time to revise the Nevada Plan. And the question in the coming months and years is, inevitably, whether revamping means something few can barely spit out in an election year: Higher taxes.

The funding plan goes back to the days when the Rat Pack still capered on a Las Vegas stage and the state Legislature saw a problem:

How could it guarantee a minimum amount of money to schools in the cities, such as Las Vegas, starved for funding because of fast growth, as well as to schools in rural areas, such as Fallon, where growth was slower?

Unlike other states, where school districts have the most say over their money, Nevada lawmakers in 1967 came up with the Nevada Plan to determine overall spending for schools. It takes into account state and local taxes, and myriad other factors, such as enrollment and transportation.

Although the total amount varies, a minimum amount of state money is guaranteed to each district. Today, 75 cents or more of every school district dollar is calculated according to the plan. Changing the plan would affect nearly every child in public school.

One flaw, however: For the most part, it treats all students alike. (A broad category of “special education” programs, for handicapped students, was added later to the formula.)

Rejiggering the plan could address the flaw, the Clark County School Board hopes. Last week, the board settled on final wording for the proposal, which the Legislature must rewrite into law — if it wants to.

Left unstated is whether a change in the formula would require more money for schools — money that might be available only through increased taxes.

The original Nevada Plan did lead to higher taxes, after a political fight. No proposal by itself leads automatically to taxes, but where would the Legislature get the extra money the Clark County School District says it needs? It could come at the expense of smaller districts, although School Board members say that is not their intention.

It is no surprise that Clark County is opening the discussion. The original Nevada Plan was designed to address explosive growth in Las Vegas and its suburbs. Since 1990 alone, county student enrollment has tripled to more than 300,000, making it the fifth-largest district in the nation (New York City is the largest, with more than 1 million students).

A Clark County classroom is far more complicated today than in 1967 and has more burdens than those in smaller counties in the rest of the state. In a typical class of 33 students, for example, 15 are poor and qualify for free or subsidized meals, six are learning English as a second language, and three have physical and learning disabilities.

But the 800-pound primate in the room is the Legislature. When it returns in February, however, a multibillion-dollar budget gap will be the first thing on lawmakers’ minds, not the Nevada Plan.

Sen. Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas and the majority leader, declined to comment last week on the School Board’s proposal.

Earlier this month, however, Horsford raised the prospect of taxes by using the word “revenue” in an interview with The Las Vegas Sun.

“There has to be some combination of spending reductions and revenue to balance the budget,” he said. Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas and a member of the Education Committee, noted that it asked the district in 2006 to study “the practicalities” of a method like the School Board proposes. In an e-mail response, Cegavske said, “when you increase the formula for any population of student the cost goes up.” She wasn’t more specific, but said, “all things we need to look at.”

The Nevada Plan is a Rube Goldberg-like multipart calculation in which the state pays the school districts “basic support per pupil” — say, $5,000 — times the number of students — say, 10,000. The state then adds special allotments for various needs.

It’s time for the formula to change, says Dale Erquiaga, a strategic planning official for the school district and one of the principal authors of the proposed revision.

“It’s as if you drove the same car as you were driving in 1967,” he said. “You would want to add to it air bags, safety belts, and antilock brakes. That’s what this proposal does.”

The proposed revision recognizes basic funding guarantees for four categories of students, up from two (those with special needs and those without). The new categories are gifted and talented students; those in career and technical education; those learning English as a second language; as well as those in special needs education “based on the intensity of services,” presumably ranging from the mildly physically handicapped to the profoundly autistic.

Erquiaga, 47, was born and raised on an alfalfa farm in Fallon in rural Churchill County. He has a personal interest in the Nevada Plan. The sponsor of the plan, state Sen. Carl Dodge, a Republican from Fallon, was a contemporary of Erquiaga’s father.

“The Nevada Plan has worked for 43 years,” said Erquiaga. “It does exactly what it was intended to do: provide an equitable distribution among the county school districts in a way that required the state not to have to write big checks every year to make up for a loss in local revenue.”

Over the years, there have been calls for revision. Former governor and Clark County Schools Superintendent Kenny Guinn said in 1997 when he was running for office: “That formula needs to be torn apart and put back together so people get more for their money.”

Erquiaga said, “The pie’s not getting any bigger, and in fact the pie may be getting smaller. So this is a good time to be having this conversation about where the money should go, when there is more pie.”