Biting the budget bullet

It seemed a cold, calculating, darkly apt move: sending 30 teachers notice last week that their contracts with the Washoe County School District might not be renewed. No better attention-getter than a little demonstration of the coming educational disaster. Nothing would have brought more parents, teachers and band lovers out to town hall meetings on education this week.

The first target—school music programs. None were exempt when popular heads rolled last week. Two of the three music instructors in Incline Village received letters of warning. “We’re losing our orchestra teacher,” said Anna Kang of Incline Middle at the school district’s first town hall meeting at Galena High on Monday. The band had just come back from San Francisco, where it won armloads of trophies and plaques, all of which the young students brought with them to the town hall meeting. Hundreds of concerned citizens turned out for the meeting. The auditorium was packed. People stood in the back and sat on the floor in the aisles.

“He’s been like a father to us and a friend,” Kang said of Incline music instructor John Mueller.

In Sparks, my kids’ schools lost a middle school orchestra teacher and Reed High band director Todd Hudson, who has been stationed with the U.S. Air Force in Iraq for the past several weeks.

“He’s over there fighting for our country,” says my clarinet-playing sophomore. “And they do this to him!”

I remind my daughter that they—the school district—are not the enemy here. Teachers received letters because school officials were worried about next year’s budget.

“We took that action because we don’t think we’re going to have the dollars to pay them,” says Steve Mulvenon, public-info guy for the school district. “We don’t say ‘fired’ because that implies it was done for some sort of disciplinary reasons, poor performance or bad teaching. That sure as hell is not the case.”

The folks who really hold our state’s educational future in their sweaty palms are our state legislators, who have only a few more weeks left to discern their hind ends from holes in the ground.

Rather than fight over what’s more important in Washoe County—the availability of school buses or the full funding of alternative-education programs—students and teachers would be better served by making their voices heard in Carson City.

Bring a few student string quartets down to play in the halls of the State Senate to send a message. Line the halls of the State Assembly with JROTC students. Tote a boatload of ancient textbooks down to the Legislature for a little show-and-tell. March the high school drum line across the State Capitol’s lawn. Loudly. Repeatedly.

OK, deep breath. For about a month now, Washoe County School District officials have been aware of some dreary news. Budget cuts from $6 to $25 million are inevitable.

In the best-case scenario, the Nevada Legislature will fund all of Gov. Guinn’s budget requests for the schools. That would ultimately add $19 million to the Washoe County School District. Whoopee! Unfortunately, with inflation, rising insurance costs, 1,200 new students and start-up costs for the new Damonte Ranch High School—not to mention shelling out dough for the federal government’s barely funded Leave No Child Behind mandates—the school district needs about $25 million in new funds to break even.

Bottom line: Best case, the school district will have to cut $6 million.

(Unless the legislature decides to give the school districts more funding than Gov. Guinn requested.)

But wait, there’s more. In the worst case, those folks down in Carson won’t reach a consensus on what to do about the state’s evil budget problems. So they’ll do nothing. Then the school district will be left with the funding it had this year—$25 million short of the need.

Everything goes.

“I’m angry that we’re having to do what we’re having to do,” says Mulvenon. “I’m angry that we have to do these potential cuts because of factors beyond our control.”

In April, the Board of Trustees requested an annual budget that leaned toward the worst-case scenario. What would $20 million worth of cuts look like? With the input of educators, parents and administrators, a proposal was crafted. Here’s the bad news.

Student instruction: The biggest cut, $10.3 million or so, comes from cuts to student instruction. For starters, change the ratio of students to teachers in grades 4-12. By adding a hypothetical two students per classroom, the district can “not hire” a mind-boggling 116 teachers next year for a savings of about $5.2 million.

Carving 20 percent from each of the district’s alternative-education programs—Regional Technical Institute, TMCC High, Washoe High and the Opportunity School—saves another $1.5 million. Eliminating about one-quarter of the funding for ROTC, gifted-and-talented programs and music in elementary and secondary schools makes for about $1.8 million. Cutting 90 percent of the district’s sex-ed program (can’t cut the program entirely because of a state mandate) saves another half-million or so. These cuts translate to the loss of another 50 teachers.

Finally, forget about $1 million worth of new textbooks.

Student support: Slicing and dicing student support services saves $3.2 million. This includes 10 percent cuts to school counseling, library services, school police and nurses—along with an 80 percent cut to the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Administrative support: Fire three high-school assistant principals ($274,000). Can one middle-school assistant principal ($115,000). Cut 10 staffers from central administration ($523,000). Fire all six people in the Education Collaborative ($379,000).

Supplies and materials: Make teachers buy even more of the paper, crayons and chalk they waste on our children each day. Save $900,000.

Other reductions: Cut the athletics budget in half ($1.1 million). Save $621,000 by increasing the “walk zones” around schools. (High-schoolers will have to live more than four miles away to qualify for a bus ride.) Reduce district-provided professional development so that teachers can’t further develop their classroom skills ($2.1 million). Eliminate sabbatical leave ($250,000). Prorate job share benefits ($150,000). Cut 50 percent of out-of-district travel costs ($250,000).

Feeling ornery yet? Yeah, me too. At least as angry as spokesman Mulvenon, who made some startling statements at the Galena High meeting.

“What makes these cuts so much more difficult is where we’re starting from,” Mulvenon said. “We’re starting from $1,500 less per pupil than the national average. … You can see the kind of draconian impact that these cuts are going to have on our kids.”

Money’s not everything, he quipped. But it’s useful when paying for textbooks and teachers’ salaries.

When asked whether increased costs per pupil necessarily led to better public school students, Mulvenon was blunt. Research doesn’t demonstrate a causal link. Despite the funding gap between Washoe County schools and the national average, students here regularly test above the national average. The drop-out rate has been lowering over the past few years. Mulvenon attributes this success to the county’s teachers.

“It’s that unselfish dedication that our teachers give your kids every day,” he said, and the crowd went wild with applause. “They bust their buns day in and day out. They pay for supplies out of their own pocket.”

He noted the never-ending slew of fundraising done by parent groups and booster clubs.

“It ain’t right, and it needs to stop,” he said. “It’ll stop when the legislature gets off its duff and votes to fund education in this state at at least the national average.”

He encouraged parents to write their legislators—"Be gentle. Think of this as a first date. Just tell your story.” He warned them that they may not get responses they’d like, especially from such recalcitrant legislators as Assemblyman Don Gustavson (R-Sun Valley) and Assemblywoman Sharron Angle (R-Washoe County).

Gustavson’s been in the news for his sarcastic letters to constituents who are in favor of raising taxes. The form letters include a “necessary form so you can start sending money [to the state] immediately.”

“It’s a very ugly process at this point when you go down and watch the legislature,” said Superintendent Jim Hager.

At the town hall meeting, we filled out Scantron ballots on the proposed cuts. On one side of the ballot, we indicated whether we agreed, disagreed or weren’t sure about specific cuts. On the other side, we were to pretend we were the school trustees who were forced to make at least $6 million worth of cuts.

I couldn’t do it.

As I sat in the crowded Galena auditorium, I found it easy to fire a handful of administrators. But I couldn’t “not hire” 186 needed teachers. I could envision schools with three fewer police officers, but I couldn’t cut music or ROTC or even textbooks. Yeah, I could tell teachers to forget about sabbaticals—after all, these are troubled times. But I couldn’t cut half the budget for sports. The cuts I could live with added up to less than $2 million.

A high-school sophomore with scruffy brown hair and a red T-shirt picked up a mic and addressed the crowd. Mark Corbin of McQueen High spoke of music, the Mozart Effect, the JROTC and the need for alternative education.

“We hear people saying that kids are our future,” Corbin said. “But I think that idea’s being neglected.”

Corbin received a standing ovation.