By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Secondary schools across Clark County School District (CCSD) were thrown into another budgetary tailspin last week when principals received another funding directive from the CCSD central office in Las Vegas.
In a news conference held Wednesday, July 24, CCSD Superintendent Jesus Jara announced that middle and high schools would be cutting $98 per student from their budgets in order to close a projected $17 million district-wide deficit for the upcoming school year.
This announcement reversed a previous decision by Jara to eliminate roughly 170 dean positions. The decision came after Jara had received a wave of public backlash over his June decision to eliminate the dean positions.
Jara said that principals at affected schools would work with their School Organizational Teams (SOTs) to determine where to cut their budgets.
Both local secondary school principals said last week that they appreciate the concept of returning budget decisions to the school level. But the details embedded in last week’s announcement has put them in a difficult spot, they said.
Those details included a restriction from the Superintendent that no classroom teachers or support staff at the schools could be placed on the chopping block in the cuts.
“In a small school like ours, there really isn’t much else we can look to for cuts,” said Moapa Valley High School principal Hal Mortensen.
Mortensen said that last month he and his SOT had struggled to work out the details of carrying on without a dean this year. But those efforts were now being discarded and switched to absorbing a loss of $54,000 to the school’s budget.
“When they were taking the Dean it was just the position, not the money,” Mortensen said. “We were able to find a way to shuffle staffing and operate without a Dean. We’ve done that before.”
But taking the money leaves the school in a quandary, Mortensen said. Without being able to cut school staffing, the only place Mortensen can go to cut the budget is the school’s supplies and services budget. This is funding for basics like paper, toner, pencils, athletic supplies and much more.
Mortensen said that the supplies category is usually budgeted at around $80,000 per year. This year he had already reduced it drastically to $66,000. But with last week’s cut the fund would be brought to a catastrophic $12,000.
Mortensen acknowledged that it will not be possible to run the school on that amount for supplies. But there isn’t really much of a choice, he said.
“It is really my only option,” Mortensen said. “I have to run it in the budget to $12,000 and then hope to come in over our projected student enrollment next month to give us a funding boost and make up the difference.”
Mortensen expects the enrollment count to be higher, so he considers it a good bet. But if it doesn’t pan out, a teacher position at the school would be surplused from his staff anyway. Then he would attribute the difference to the supplies fund.
“It is no way to run a school,” Mortensen admits. “But it is all I’ve been left to do.”
MVHS parent and SOT member Teresa Holzer said that last week’s news was disappointing. She said that the SOT would work hard to make things work for the kids.
But this latest arrangement seems calculated to have a direct impact on classrooms.
“It is the kids who will be damaged by this most,” Holzer said. “There is no doubt that education will be negatively impacted. No matter what they say, these cuts have not been kept away from the classroom.”
Mack Lyon Middle School principal Ken Paul said that his school is not in as much of a bind as MVHS. But things are still not easy. Paul has been forced to cut $40,000 from his budget. And he is similarly backed into the corner of cutting being able to only cut the school’s supply budget.
Fortunately, this year Mack Lyon had been awarded a $34,000 state grant meant to provide resources to help underprivileged students in raising their standardized test scores. That amount will replenish the supply funds lost in the cuts leaving enough for the school to operate for the year, Paul said.
Even so, it is still a painful cut which has left Paul feeling somewhat unfairly treated.
“I have no problem with paying our fair share,” Paul said. “But in this case the entire deficit has been placed solely on the backs of secondary schools only. It is a big hit to take.”
Paul said that in his many years with the district he remembers facing much bigger deficits which had less of an impact on the classroom. That is because they were more evenly distributed across all CCSD students and, more importantly, across the CCSD central office, he said. None of that has happened this time around.
Lyon SOT Chairwoman Aimee Houghtalen, who was out of town on vacation last week, complained that the announcement had come so suddenly, and principals given so little time, that it was impossible for SOTs to be involved in the decisions at all.
“If any other business were run that way, it would be completely acceptable,” Houghtalen said. “But for some reason the school district gets a pass on it again and again.”
Houghtalen said that the middle school SOT met back in January to begin developing the school budget. They took significant time in doing so. But since then, that effort has been upended twice with these major mandates from the Superintendent.
“This time, they waited until the last couple of weeks of summer break, when everyone is on vacation, to do this,” Houghtalen said. “What was the point of all the work and input we gave before if they are going to do that?”
Houghtalen wished that Jara had engaged the SOTs and asked for input before making such knee-jerk decisions.
“There are way better ideas out there than this,” Houghtalen said. “There are much better ways of spreading the impact so that it is fair and equitable. But he never asked and now it is too late for input anyway.”
Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board member Lindsey Dalley commented that this is yet another example of the CCSD skirting around state law.
“What this amounts to is playing politics at a high level, and our kids are paying the price,” Dalley said. “The reorg law was supposed to end all of that with establishing local control and per pupil funding across the board. But the CCSD hasn’t ever complied with that law. And no one has enforced it on them. So here we are again, right back in the same place as we have been a thousand times before, just a slightly different scenario.”
