Cutting spending is not the sole answer

Dave Miller, Las Vegas

Thursday, April 7, 2011 | 2:04 a.m.

I learned a new word in church on Sunday when a member shared that she had been surplused. Not having any idea what that meant, I asked my wife, who is much smarter at understanding these things. She explained that surplused is the nice way to say we have too many teachers. But the problem in Las Vegas isn’t that we have too many teachers, it’s that there is no money to pay them.

So instead of saying we are laying teachers off, we now just surplus them. Categorize them as extra. Like too many ball bearings at an axle factory.

The problem is, we are not talking about a commodity here. We are talking about real people, who just a few years ago we were convinced we needed to educate the children of the Las Vegas Valley. Is that not true now, or were we wrong then?

Our politicians seem intent on closing a budget deficit they helped create, not with a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases, but solely by cutting spending.

As anyone who has ever grappled with a budget at home knows, seldom can you make all the ends meet by just tightening the belt. There comes a time when the stay-at-home parent must get a job, or perhaps a second job, to make more money.

There is always a point at which you cannot cut spending any more and expect to move forward. You must consider raising additional revenue.

If we are at a time when teachers are told that they are little more than surplus, perhaps that time has come in Las Vegas.