School districts seek greater autonomy on belt-tightening

By Emily Richmond

Friday, Feb. 5, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Lawmakers listened Thursday as school officials described the effects state budget cuts would have on their districts. Their almost universal message: Leave to us the final decision on what is cut — and what is saved.

Shortening the school year, reducing teacher pay and delaying textbook purchases were among the options floated Thursday to cope with the 10 percent cut in K-12 education that Gov. Jim Gibbons has proposed.

“One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to budget cuts,” Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes told the Interim Finance Committee. “Rather than statewide cuts, please let each district know (its) share, and make local decisions.”

Statewide, the cuts would amount to $41 million for the current fiscal year and $125.6 million for 2011.

Jim Wells, Nevada Education Department’s deputy superintendent of administrative and fiscal services, agreed that local decision-making would be better than the state ordering the elimination of specific programs and services such as full-day kindergarten or career and technical education.

“The goal of the Education Department is to minimize the impact on student learning and to retain jobs,” Wells said. “We want to leave districts as much flexibility as possible.”

All of the proposals on how to cut education spending would require the Legislature to change statutes, and could give local districts greater leeway in how they spend their money.

Lyon County Schools Superintendent Caroline McIntosh, who addressed the committee on behalf of rural districts, offered an example of how local control can aid belt-tightening:

Since the onset of the budget crisis more than two years ago, she has made 31 public presentations soliciting public input and received more than 2,200 online submissions. (Lyon County is the state’s fourth-largest district with 8,800 students.) As a result, there have been staffing and policy changes that resulted in budget savings.

But local creative thinking can only go so far.

The contract with Lyon County’s teachers requires layoffs to meet the $4.2 million cut that is proposed for the biennium. McIntosh said she doesn’t want to take that step, given that Lyon County has the state’s highest unemployment rate at more than 15 percent. Many state workers who live in the community and work in Carson City are expected to receive pink slips.

Washoe County Schools Superintendent Heath Morrison, whose district would lose about $25 million over the biennium with a 10 percent cut in basic K-12 support, asked lawmakers to consider granting districts flexibility in shifting class-size reduction money.

The Legislature has mandated it be used for grades 1-3. But Morrison said the more pressing issues for Washoe are large class sizes at the secondary level, and an initiative to expand early childhood education. If the class-size reduction money could be redirected to those issues, the effect from the cut might be mitigated, he said.

The Clark County School District is facing cuts of $27.7 million this year and $84.7 million next year. That’s on top of the $250 million that has been trimmed since 2008, and doesn’t include projected deficits in local tax revenue.

With personnel costs accounting for nearly 90 percent of the district’s $2.1 billion operating budget, the best hope the district has to save jobs would be for teacher and administrator unions to agree to “shared sacrifice,” Rulffes said. “The only way to really do that is a temporarily shortened work year.”

Lawmakers and education officials agreed Thursday that if the school year were to be shortened — the savings statewide would be

$13 million for each day trimmed from the 180-day calendar — professional development days would go first, not instructional time for students.

Each day cut from Clark County’s school year would save $8.8 million in personnel costs. If the district were to eliminate the four days it currently sets aside for professional development, it would equal a 2 percent pay cut for the majority of employees, Rulffes told the committee.

Legislative approval would be required for the district to set aside employee contracts “on the basis of a fiscal emergency,” he said.

Lynne Warne, president of the Nevada State Education Association, said her members would vehemently oppose any attempt to reduce teacher pay, whether through a shortened school year or changes in the salary schedule.

She agreed, however, that decisions should be made at the local level — during contract negotiations, “with the employees who are going to be most directly affected.”