Gov. Jim Gibbons met with Nevada’s 17 public school superintendents yesterday to discuss his order for a 4.5 percent decrease in the 20 percent increase public education received just a few short months ago. Make no mistake. There are NO CUTS to public education involved with the governor’s order.
The increase in spending for K-12 is simply going to be 15.5 percent instead of 20 percent…still a very generous increase for a system which systematically turns out mediocrity at best. In addition, K-12 gets a boatload of money from additional sources, including separate sales tax revenue and funds from Uncle Sam at the federal level. So the actual reduction in the K-12 increase is more like 1.5 percent, not 4.5 percent.
On to the meeting.
After an initial presentation by the governor and Budget Czar Andrew Clinger explaining why the budget cuts were necessary, a roundtable *%*$#& (rhymes with “witch”) session ensued in which each superintendent moaned-and-groaned about how “these cuts are going to harm education.” It was pretty pathetic. If you want to know why our schools can’t seem to provide a superior education for Nevada’s kids, one need only look at the “no can do” spirit of its top education officials. Creative, outside-the-box thinking is definitely not their strong suit.
For example, one superintendent from a rural county whined that she couldn’t cut her budget because a lot of her budget was tied up in providing bus transportation to students from outlying areas. I’m not buying her complaint since she was able to provide that same bus service last year with 15.5 percent less money than she’s getting this year, but I couldn’t help but wonder, in this Internet age, how much it would cost to give each student currently being bussed 2-3 hours back and forth from school each day a computer and a satellite dish and signed them up for an online distance learning program instead.
Seems to me such an idea would not only dramatically reduce the cost of bussing these kids, but the time currently being wasted riding on the bus could be put to better use behind a computer screen with an online educational program. Has anybody thought of that? Not the school superintendents. In their closed minds, education simply has be done today exactly the same way it’s “always been done,” no matter how much it costs and no matter how detrimental it might be to kids.
Or how about the “radical” notion of offering school choice via vouchers or tax credits?
According to the Budget Czar, Nevada currently spends over $7,000 per year per child to educate them in the public school system. How much money could we save if we offered families, say, a $3,500-per-child voucher or tax credit if they would remove their kids from the government schools and send them to a private school, or even if they’d undertake home-schooling. Not only would the state save a huge chunk of change, the kids remaining in the public schools would enjoy dramatically reduced class sizes. A win-win for everybody.
Did any of the school superintendents raise this idea as an option? Yeah, right. It was bull that was flying yesterday, not pigs.
Another superintendent suggested reducing the university system’s increase more than K-12’s increase, but the governor explained that even if he wanted to, current law prevents him from doing so - a claim being contested by at least one Democrat legislator. The cuts…I mean, reductions in increases…have to be made uniformly, the governor said. He can’t, for example, reduce K-12’s increase by 2.5 percent and higher education’s by 6.5 percent. According to the governor he would need line-item veto power to do that.
Even if true, don’t hold your breath waiting for this Legislature to give this governor line-item veto power.
One last observation. University Chancellor Jim Rogers has used as an excuse for not being able to cut his higher education budget the fact that many of the system’s staff, executives and vendors have contracts. If we break those contracts, according to Rogers, we’ll open the system up to a lot of expensive lawsuits.
However, according to the Budget Czar all state contracts supposedly have a clause which stipulates that if revenues aren’t available to fulfill the contract, then the contract is null and void. If this is true, that should take care of one of the Chancellor’s excuses for not reducing the increase in his budget.
If, however, such a budgetary sanity clause (Yes, Virginia, there is a Sanity Clause!) isn’t included in the contracts Chancellor Rogers and his top university executives are negotiating and signing, why not? If a budgetary sanity clause isn’t being included in university system contracts, it’s time to take the chancellor and his highly-paid presidents and vice-presidents, deputy-vice-presidents and assistant-deputy-vice-presidents to the proverbial woodshed and force them to get with the program.
If, on the other hand, such a clause IS included in the university contracts, I’ll be happy to spring for the cost of a red “Null & Void” stamp and send it to Mr. Rogers.
Posted on December 21st, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
Well, there really will be a real 4.5% reduction in revenue coming into the local school districts if and when the State withholds about $96M (4.5% of the State’s contribution to all school districts). Part of the 100% funding pie already includes the relatively small amount of Federal revenue.
And really, the schools probably may have already had a decrease in revenue as sales tax, local tax et cetera have seen a decline througout the State. It was only months after the State said they were suffering a shortfall that the local governments said they were, too.
But, considering the 22.6% increase in State funding to Clark County School District this year when balanced against their claimed 3.58% increase in student enrollment, they should still be in pretty good shape (and they have a $40m unreserved reserve account), at the end of the day.