By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… Recently, the principals of our local schools held a town hall meeting to discuss the $250-275 million budget cut facing the Clark County School District next year. In connection with this, the district has posted a survey on line asking the people of Clark County to select programs to cut to reach a $400 million shortfall over the next two years. I believe that I will look only at the first year.

Looking at the budget as a whole, one finds there are areas the district has not made available to the public to suggest cuts. If you really want to have fun, look at the budget, which explains, what each department does. Sometimes it is hard to tell exactly what each program costs but you can get a total for the department. For instance, you can find the salaries of school police but the rest of the cost of the department is buried in the cost of the Superintendent’s office.

Now before we go much further, let me explain how mathematically challenged I am so if any of these figures actually total what I allude they do; it is a miracle. However, I know they are in the ballpark.

The budget item titled Superintendent’s office totals $33,504, 326. An overall twenty percent cut in this area would save the district $7 million.

Community and Government Relation is budgeted at $2,950, 905, cutting these programs by twenty percent would save $590,181.

A category titled Instruction Unit is presently funded to the tune of $39,955,031 a twenty percent reduction here would be $7,991,006.

The Student Support Division is funded for a total of $283,270, 498. The district survey allows you to defund some of this area completely; however, it does not mention other areas in this department. I would suggest an across the board reduction of twenty percent for a total of a savings of $56,540,099.

In the Curriculum and Professional Development Division, a twenty percent reduction could save $3,015,854.

The Budget and Finance Division is currently budgeted at $128,207,526. You might note that none of this division’s budget is under the knife. It is always good to control the knife in a knife fight. A twenty percent cut here would save $25,641,505.

There is a catch-all category called District Wide Expenditures that is funded to the tune of $162,928,622 and a twenty percent reduction here would net a total of $32,585,724.

Facilities is another large financial category. It is presently budgeted at $210,441,450. A twenty percent cut would be $42,088,290. Here again the District Survey allows you to select some cuts but only those that affect the local schools.

The administrative staff of the Human Resources department cost the district $17,071,650 a year. Twenty percent reduction in this area would save the district $3,414,330. This may be included in the mystery category in the survey called Administrative Unit Budget Cuts. By reducing the cost of Technology and Information Systems by twenty percent the district could save $6,834,753.

But all of these cuts taken together would still fall short of the desired $250 million.

Therefore, I went to the survey the district has offered and began to select what I believed was the best of poor choices. None of this is good and one must keep in mind most of these cuts are coming from the livelihood of your neighbors. These dollars generally represent people’s jobs. With that in mind, how do we cut with as little harm as possible to the education of the students of Clark County? Here is what I selected from the list proposed by the district survey.

Adjust school start and ending times to decrease the number of bus routes necessary and save $10 million. Why aren’t we already doing this?

Increase class size in grades 1-3 by three students, increase class size in grades 4-5 by three students. Increase the 6-12 classes by one. The high schools have been increased over the years to allow for the reduction in grades 1-5 and that is the rationale for the smaller increase at that level. The total cost savings in this would be $61.5 million.

We could cut $2.5 million by eliminating School Humanities Program Teachers.

Eliminating Off-ration staffing for magnet schools would save $18.7 million dollars.

Eliminating extra funds for empowerment schools would save the district $5.1 million dollars. All schools should be empowerment schools and it should not require extra dollars to make this happen.

Cutting school supplies and textbook budget by twenty percent would save the district about $11 million dollars.

By eliminating transportation to magnets schools, Career and Technical Academies, eliminating all late buses, and increasing the high school walking radius to three miles the district could save $17.3 million dollars.

Add all of these cuts to the ones in the paragraph above and I believe that the grand total would be just under $300 million. I am sure there are areas where one would disagree with me but it is a big budget. There are many opportunities to cut, none of which are real good.

After all those numbers, I now remember why I taught history.

Thought of the week…“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.”

– George W. Bush