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Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010 | 2 a.m.
Mo Denis
Sun Coverage
Sun Archives
- ‘Ouch’ — School District grappling with $180 million deficit (11-19-10)
- New members join School Board at turbulent time (11-19-10)
- Time, budget cuts taking a toll on Clark County schools (10-26-2010)
- Year-round schools could face calendar shift to save money (3-16-2010)
- School maintenance slipping (11-11-2009)
- Recession hits charter parents two ways (10-9-2009)
- Keeping kids in class often falls to novice school workers (9-15-2009)
- School district: If you must cut the budget, do it our way (3-23-2009)
- Here, to teach is to supply (8-15-2008)
- Clark County schools chief outlines budget crunch possibilities (6-11-2008)
Beyond the Sun
The arguments against more cuts in education are blunt: The schools are in bad enough shape. Children are our future. It would be irresponsible.
To that list, Mo Denis, who will be chairman of the Senate Education Committee next year, would add one word: litigation.
If the Legislature cuts too much, he said, “Somebody will probably file a lawsuit and we’re probably going to lose it.”
The lawsuit would likely argue that inadequate funding for schools is unconstitutional. Several such landmark suits, beginning in New Jersey, have been filed across the country and won over the years.
Denis, a computer technician at the Public Utilities Commission, added that many voters think, “With my household budget, if I don’t have any money, I cut back. Why can’t government? If we do that, we get sued. We don’t have a choice.”
And Denis is frustrated that some voters reflexively seek to cut school administrators first.
“Everybody wants accountability, but what does accountability mean?” said Denis, a former head of the Nevada Parent Teacher Association. “You have to generate a report to justify what you’re doing.
“If you have no administrators, you have to have teachers take extra time to fill out paperwork and not use that time to teach.”
The question of how much to cut education is hardly academic.
Fifty-five cents of every dollar of current state spending goes to education — 15 cents for colleges and 40 cents for K-12 (much of it to Clark County).
If, as state budget Director Andrew Clinger projects, the state may fall short as much as $3 billion in a $6.5 billion two-year budget — education cuts will be harsh, even with tax increases.
An assemblyman since 2004, Denis, 49, was born in Brooklyn of Cuban parents. Denis (pronounced “Dennis”) was elected to the Senate this month.
Democrats retain a bare 11-10 majority in the Senate and have held on to a 26-16 majority in the Assembly. Committee chairmen such as Denis — along with Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford and Assembly Speaker-elect John Oceguera — will shape the budget.
In an interview, Denis also said:
• More than $800 million in federal stimulus money won’t be available in this budget cycle to help close the deficit. “It will be much more difficult this time around.”
• “Everything is on the table,” including keeping one-day-a-month furloughs for state workers, which are set to expire and saved up to $500 million in the last budget cycle. Adding a second furlough day, in effect moving toward a four-day workweek for state government, might save hundreds of millions more.
• The Legislature is committed to the $25 million Millennium Scholarships for higher education, but money for them will have to come from other parts of the budget. Much of the scholarship money comes from taxing cigarettes, and fewer people are smoking.
But it’s litigation that weighs on Denis’ mind.
The landmark case in school-finance litigation is Abbott v. Burke, a protracted lawsuit in New Jersey with key court decisions in 1997 and 1998.
The New Jersey court, followed by courts in other states, defined for state legislatures what is adequate school funding for low-income and high-income school districts.
If the Abbott case is the Brown v. Board of Education of school-finance law, then David Sciarra is its Thurgood Marshall. The lead lawyer in the Abbott case, Sciarra is executive director of the Education Law Center in Newark, N.J.
Nevada is ripe for a lawsuit, Sciarra said, but notes that it is one of only five states in which no case challenging the state’s education finance system has ever been filed.
Nevada ranks 39th among states in the law center’s ranking of what it calls school-finance “justice”.
“Nevada is also regressive,” Sciarra said. “The lower the school is in money, the less likely it is to get money. Nevada is very bleak, very unfair, one of the most unfair in the nation.
“You don’t want to have to deal with this in the courts,” Sciarra added. “It’s time consuming.” Abbott, filed on behalf of inner-city students in 1981, did not reach resolution for 16 years.
If Denis must keep his eye on the big picture, he also has his eye on a smaller picture: His wife became a teacher this year.
Susan Denis has been a stay-at-home mother for 24 years for the couple’s five children, ages 8 to 25. She will be 47 next month and got her teaching credential in May.
Her first weeks were hard, and she thought about quitting, she and her husband said. Instead of 26 kindergartners, she had 33 and several students were disruptive.
“You wouldn’t think seven children would make a difference, but you’re just one person,” she said.
Moreover, as in many other Clark County schools, most of the children are Hispanic and their English is limited. Susan Denis doesn’t speak Spanish. “I’m doing a lot of motioning with my hands,” she said.
Eventually, the class size fell by six students because an extra teacher could be hired with federal stimulus money. And she learned coping strategies.
“I fell back on my background as a mother,” she said. Some of the disruptive students moved to other classes, others she moved closer to her. “There’s a lot of comforting needed because they’re away from their mothers.”
The Denises have always been interested in education.
Mo Denis moved to Las Vegas with his parents and siblings in 1967. His mother was a nanny from Havana and his father a college student from Santiago de Las Vegas (in English, St. James of the Meadows), near Havana. The family settled in a largely Hispanic neighborhood near the Stratosphere.
“I used to say that I got involved to make things better for my children,” Denis said. “But then I realized, when I joined the PTA, that I had to make things better for all children.
“Then, in the Legislature I realized it takes 10 years, sometimes more, to make things better, because it’s so piecemeal.
“So now I’m trying to make it better for my grandkids.”
Mr Dennis when was the last time you talked directly with a classroom teacher in the CCSD? Your statement,"If you have no administrators, you have to have teachers take extra time to fill out paperwork and not use that time to teach..." already happens in this district. Administrators in this district simply pass the paper work onto teachers now! If you think the highly paid and perked school administrator sits down and fills out all the reports your are ignorant and blind of the real facts. Wise up, go visit a real school and talk to real classroom teachers.
Salad bars should alleviate the problem.
It's long past time to bring "public" education back into the real world. Get back to educating instead of indoctrinating. Teach the basics (the "3 R's") so kids can actually go out into the work force prepared instead of needing remedial work. Open the education system up to real competition by allowing parents to choose the schools their children attend. Get rid of "social promotions." Unshackle teachers from political correctness. Teachers actually want to impart knowledge and not merely be babysitters. Time to use their capabilities to the fullest.
Here's a novel concept: it's called taxes. If the state isn't willing to raise them to ensure basic services like education, it deserves to be sued.
Chunky says:
He likes what Mr. Jerry Fink wrote in his comment above!
We don't need new taxes, we need efficiency and to get back to the basics until such time we can AFFORD to spend more on eduction.
Giving parents a choice is a good idea as well and getting them involved in their child's education is critical. Most home-schooled children Chunky has met are leagues above and beyond their age group in intellect, maturity, manners and attention span!
Maybe parents should supplement what their children are getting or missing in public schools with a little "face time" instead of outsourcing their kids like you'd outsource your lawn maintenance!
That's what Chunky thinks!
Kids can learn way better than they have been learning; the reason for failure is their emulation of their folks - lazy bums who piss away their chance to pursue holy grails, fortunes or the big one, understanding of this paradise.
The kids are mirrors of the culture. You can see what counts: toys, distractions and folly.
In a better society we would turn them loose to discover their powers, their planet and other local heavenly bodies, and how they plan to move forward with the moment of their genetic potential becoming manifest.
By setting low standards and obligating the teachers to provide cookie-cutter services with no regard for differentiated instruction, direction or appreciation on a human basis, we have concocted a system for administrators, not for children to see who they are, where they are and what they might want to do with their lives.
Preparing human beings for a life of labor is hardly an education. Engendering self-awareness that incorporates increasing world-awareness that leads to creative and integrated self-development is the real goal, nothing less.
Life-long learning has nothing to do with our current system. Passing tests is not thinking; curiosity and research go hand-in-hand, except in our public school system.
The only thing we have lost is the connection between the child and the world.
When we focus on people who are trying to figure this place out, we can call it education.
A person's chosen life-work is more than just a source of legal tender to trade for bananas and a cot; it involves the soul and the footprints in the sands of time and of course all the vanity and conjured self-importance attached to this brief shining.
Getting lumped into a trade or profession ya don't dig can suck big time. I knew a guy who graduated from medical school and then built sailboats. Another lady got a Ph.D. in education and worked in the Peace Corp for years building composting toilets and water catching systems. And they all agreed that college was fun but just a training ground for the real learning experiences that can come your way if you swim in stream right.
Enhancing education is vital to this state's improvement. Cut elsewhere.
I predicted this. Add the Courts, the prisons, and the environment to the list of areas that tax cuts will be fought with law suits.
Courts, prisons, and other public safety agencies will feel the brunt of any cuts to education.
For every kid that doesn't make it out of high school, the crime rate and social costs will increase.
Cutting education is not a zero-sum game.
When I went to primary and secondary school in the 80's and early 90's, things were quite different. My elementary school had one administrator - the principal - a secretary, a nurse and custodial staff. Today, in the school where my wife works, there are two principals, five secretaries, area supervisors for each subject, area superintendents, "consultants," learning support specialists, school cops, IT people, and the list goes on. Yet there are fewer actual teachers in the school today than there were five years ago.
Anybody else see the problem?
We've added millions in overhead costs, year after year, to try to improve "the system" but we've failed to improve the actual education that students receive. Teachers cannot be effective in classrooms with 40 elementary school students. It is impossible. Teachers cannot be effective in classrooms where the students don't speak the language in which they are being taught.
Put all CCSD schools on year-round, 8-hour class schedules. Students (and teachers) need MORE TIME IN THE CLASSROOM. Deport some of the illegals and reduce what we pay for ESL and such.
Whatever the "educators" are doing and thinking is NOT WORKING. Let's try something else. European immigrants CAN TEACH OUR YOUNG CHILDREN TO READ. Until you can read, you can't learn too much else. As the students progress, teach them to WRITE a complete sentence in the English language.
Money is not the problem with education. It's how and where it's being spent. Washington D.C. public schools spend the most money per child and have the worst record when it comes to results. Ms. Rhee was turning that around and, voila, she's toast! She broke the prime rule: Don't mess with the sacred cows! Administrators don't want results; they want perks, pensions and promotions! The kids be damned! Chunky: thank you.
OpenRange, I agree that a bad education system will lead to increased costs in social programs, and at the same time, we'll continue to have a low educated population.
At the same time, I agree with lvfacts101...money isn't the solution, unless radical changes are proposed. I'll be more than willing to pay more for teacher training (math/science seminars, etc.), but I want to get rid of the useless adult education programs that nobody attends. If the teachers want to be taken seriously, instead of just asking for more money, they need to expose the waste in the district and really push for those cuts. I think they need to do away with seniority, and accept the fact that performance based compensation (based largely on test scores) is a reality. They need to do away with contract terms that prevent us from firing the useless teachers, and they need to help to identify the useless, ineffective teachers.
They do all this, and they'll deserve MORE money, and won't have to constantly defend against proposed cuts.
I guess when you're already on the bottom when it comes to performance, you don't have to worry about failing our children....we need a whole different educational system, not just tinker around the fringes with the same people in charge.
mo's idea of " making things better " is simple, more money. our money. the thing mo is missing is reality. typical bureaurcrat.
I'm glad the courts may get involved. Republicans have obliterated education in this state by insisting that it constantly be cut even though for years the numbers of students increased and the teachers were paid nothing. Giving parents a choice as to where they will drive their kid to school in the morning does nothing to improve schools that are not doing well; it also ignores the fact that all of our schools in Nevada do poorly compared to the rest of the country. Enough with the Republican idea of wanting to "train workers" as Jerry and Chunky-Wunky desire. I want my tax dollars to inspire teachers and educate future leaders. That will not be accomplished by constant cuts in both public education and higher education.
If I had kids in school, and i don't, i would want them to get understanding of who they could become and how to reach their little personal goals. That little set of genes and combo unit includes a bundle of wonder and pack of wishes and instincts and quirky behaviors too. i want them to come and go as they will.
Throwing money at them won't help them as much as throwing the universe their way in edible chunks. Let 'em learn to chew and gobble and puke.
Let 'em discover the joy of discovery; let them find self-reliance and curiosity resounding from within. Theirs is the kingdom and the power; show them what they got, not standardized mealy-mouth mushy pablum of worksheets and coloring books, the crayola curriculum of the warehousing dumbing-down system previously known as school.
Some of these comments are totally divorced from reality.
Having attended CCSD schools for most of my life (thankfully, not for the first year...), my experience tells me that the answer is much simpler than anyone here has said: when an well-educated workforce is in the economic interest of the gaming industry (mining too, maybe), then we'll have one.