No One Asked Me But… (December 5, 2018)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… The Clark County School Board of Trustees have released their 2019 legislative platform. They have indicated that their top priority is: “…to stabilize the Clark County School District (CCSD) budget by … increasing the public dollars dedicated to, and staying with, K-12 education.”

They plan to use the additional funds in the following manner:
(1) “Investing in our staff and students. This includes more adults on campuses such as teachers, support professionals, school police, school psychologists, school counselors, and school social workers, as well as recurring incentives for all teachers in Title 1 Schools.”

I can agree with a plan that will increase the number of teachers, but I see little value in increasing the “support professionals”, a euphemism for central office administrators. It is time to cut central office personnel and return the running of the local school to the local school principal.

The $30 million school police department should not be increased, as any real criminal problem on the campuses is dealt with by Metro anyway.

There should be no “school” social workers paid for out of educational funds. The county funds social services and the social needs of students should be itsresponsibility. Using educational dollars for police, social workers, or other feel-good services that other government agencies should provide is counter-productive.

(2) “Fund professional development for teachers and administrators, along with research-based instructional materials aligned to the academic standards to provide high quality, standard based instruction in every classroom.”

CCSD wastes millions of dollars on professional development programs that are neither needed nor asked for by their professional teaching staff. I would further suggest that “research-based instructional materials aligned to academic standards” have never taught a single child anything.

The money wasted in this area could well be spent for more teachers and the materials they determine they need to reach the goals established by CCSD. The individual teacher should evaluate the individual student and the materials needed to move that unique student to the standard.
Teaching may be done thirty to one, but learning is done one to one. The purpose of school is not teaching but learning, and these are not the same thing.

(3) “Ensuring a safe learning environment, including Comprehensive School Safety Evaluations and facility upgrades, to improve safety measures.”

The part of the budget that is designated for capital improvements, a part of the budget the District seldom speaks of, will have in 2019 an ending fund balance of $529,516,265. When the total budget is under consideration there will be an ending fund balance of $687,431,990.
If the Trustees of CCSD are concerned about the safety of the children under their charge, they could designate a portion of these unspent funds to make all schools as safe as possible.

Our local high school has been begging the District to secure the campus and have been told that if we want a secure campus, we will have to sacrifice instructional funds rather than use any of the $687,431,990 ending year balance. The CCSD refusing this $78,000 request is like the family whose member has a potentially deadly disease and the father tells the family they will have to stop eating to pay for the cure so he can keep $200,000 in the bank in case of a family emergency.

The CCSD is allowed two bill drafts in the 2019 legislative session. One might want to look at those bill drafts and assess how they relate to the three issues listed by the District as important to them.
Bill draft one states: “The District purposes inserting the language from the Nevada Administrative Code 354.660 into the Nevada Revised Statues protecting the districts ending fund balance of not more than 8.3%.”

The overall ending fund balance for CCSD in 2018-19 school year is 14% of the total budget. However, the District is not talking about the entire budget. They are talking, as they always do in public, only about the General Fund half of the budget. At the end of the 2018-19 school year the ending year General Fund balance will be 2% a total of $45,529,000.

District officials will tell you that this is not a viable amount of money to have left at the end of the year. They wring their hands and whine of a possible catastrophic event that will require them to close schools for lack of funding with only a $45 million cushion. I would suggest that if this community has that kind of incident, the closing of schools will be the least of our problems.

Barring a complete collapse of the State’s economy, the CCSD General Fund budget for the 2020 school year, will be well over $3 billion dollars. Yes, that is with a B; 8.3% of that would be over a quarter of a billion dollars. This is money not spent on education for the children of Clark County.

I do understand a private business must maintain a reserve for the lean years. And I would have no objection to CCSD building a modest reserve if Nevada was not ranked 50th as the worst educational state in America. Let me assure you that ranking is basically because of the failure of the CCSD, which serves the vast majority of the students in the State.

District officials continually rant about the fact that they need the quarter of a billion dollars in reserve for a rainy day. I would tell them to step outside their offices and feel the rain. It is pouring and they need to use all the funds available to build a boat.

They will be using their second bill draft for a law called “Handle with Care” requiring emergency service to notify the schools when a student has suffered a trauma. Let me suggest that is a waste of law. The staff of a school should know their students as people and know when a student suffers a trauma.

In the 2018-19 school year, the per pupil funding for the General Education Budget is $8,689. When the total budget is considered, the people of Nevada and Clark County set aside $15,345 to educate a child in Clark County. Less than $6,000 of those dollars reach the classroom. The District needs to stop all the “poor mouthing” and use the funds available where they belong: in the classroom. One might suggest that the District ask for legislative help in instituting the programs required under AB 469 as codified in the Nevada Revised Statues.

Thought of the week… “The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.