No One Asked Me But… (August 22, 2018)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… The Clark County School District (CCSD) is allowed two bill drafts in the upcoming 2019 legislative session. They are drafting a bill that would require the District to maintain an Ending Fund Balance of 8.3 percent of all General Operating funds. The Board of Trustees claim they need this large Ending Fund Balance in case of an emergency.

They really want the law to protect them from having to use the money in salary settlements between the various organizations representing the employees of the District. They call it their rainy-day fund and are appalled at the fact that an arbitrator would see the Ending Fund Balance money as a way to meet their contractional agreements with teacher, administrators, and support personnel.

In the current final budget document, the Ending Fund Balance is $45,529,000. The Board of Trustee feel that Ending Fund Balance designated for the 2018-19 school year is way too small. An 8.3 percent of this budget would be well over $200,000,000. Would someone want to explain what a district in financial disarray would look like if you took another $150,000,000 out of use?

I have never been a businessman and am no financial genius. My business owner friends indicate that it is important to hold back some money in case of a bad year in the future. While this makes sense in business, one must wonder how that applies to an organization like the Clark County School District.

The people of Clark County and the State of Nevada set aside a certain amount of taxes to educate their children for the 2018-19 school year and I would suppose that the expectation is that the money would be spent to do so. One might believe that the withholding of more than $45 million dollars and then crying that the District is underfunded is, at best, dis-ingenious and, at worst, criminal.

If the CCSD was ranked in the top 25 of 50 states in education one might believe that they could afford to maintain an Ending Fund Balance of $45,529,062.61. However, CCSD is ranked at 49 out of fifty states in educating their children.

Besides the $45.5 million End of Year Balance held by the Central Office, the Chief Financial Officer indicated that individual schools held back $27 million dollars in their own personal rainy-day funds. That is over $72,000,000 dollars not spent on educating our children.

Now before everyone decides I am a complete financial fool, let me state that I believe it is imperative to have some money left at the end of the year no matter if you are in business or just a family trying to survive. However, the situation for CCSD reminds me of a family that has a member who is facing a life-threatening disease and has finances setting in a bank that might save the member’s life. The family gets together and decides the bank account is more important than the life of the family member.

Decades ago when I was on active duty with the United States Marine Corps, each Marine carried a personal compression bandage. This bandage was to be used to stem the bleeding in a wound suffered. Each Marine was instructed to not use his compression bandage on a fallen comrade. He was to use the one the wounded Marine was carrying for if he used his it would not be available if he needed it. I never met a Marine that would not have used his bandage for a fallen comrade and worry about his emergency later. I would contend there are a large number of students out there bleeding and they need the bandage now. It is time to stop the bleeding of today and worry about tomorrow’s wounds tomorrow.

Before you believe that the District is destitute, let me remind you that this is only one half of the District’s budget. The total budget when one considers a category in the budget designated Other Funds, is 4.9 billion dollars and the CCSD total Ending Fund balance is $687,431,990.

The District will be quick to point out that the two billion dollars listed as Other Funds cannot be used in the General Fund Budget. However, when one looks close at the budget one will find that the District has already found some creative ways to use these funds for items one might think would fall under the General Operating Budget.

This move to require the District to have an Ending Fund balance of 8.3 percent in its General Operating Fund is merely an attempt to circumvent the binding arbitration agreement between the District and its employees. There are those who lament the fact that an outside arbitrator will be the one to decide if the District has the ability to pay their employees a fair wage. I would bring to your attention that this is an agreement reached by the District and its employees. The employees have agreed to abide by the decision of an impartial outside arbitrator and not engage in a work stoppage. The District on its part has agreed to accept the decision of the arbitrator. The employees have been good to their word. There has not been a work stoppage in CCSD since 1967.

Two years ago, when the arbitrator found that the District had the ability to give the teachers a pay increase, the District stated they needed the money to hire 1,700 new teachers. The arbitrator found in favor of the District with the stipulation that the money available for raises would be used to hire the new teachers. I am not sure how many of those positions were actually filled. The District is still short over 500 teachers. Though the teachers did not receive their raise, there was no work stoppage.

This year an impartial arbitrator found the District had the ability to increase teacher pay. The District has refused to accept the arbitrator’s decision and challenged it in court. The court found in favor of the teacher’s pay increase. While cutting the budget by $68 million dollars, half of which would cover teacher’s pay increases, the District has still refused to honor its agreement and the state law dealing with binding arbitration.

Instead of looking for a law to protect a large Ending Fund Balance. that could in the 2020 school year exceed $300 million dollars, it would behoove the District to figure out how best to spend most of that money in improving the performance of the public schools in Clark County.

Thought of the week… “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”
― Joe Biden