Holding schools hostage

When things fall apart—voices raise, blood pressure surges and epithets start flying—the issues clarify like the sky after a storm.

Consider a Washoe County School District meeting Monday with state legislators who represent northern Nevada. It was two days before Wednesday, when the legislators began yet another special session to debate tax packages and what a small but powerful minority really wants—a chance to reopen and hack out chunks of a carefully thought-out and hard-won budget that passed during the regular session of the 2003 Nevada Legislature.

The Monday meeting got off to a calm start. Superintendent Jim Hager worked through the many ways that stalling of the budget affects schools.

During Special Session 1, the Nevada Senate passed a bill funding education through the distributed school account and another bill allowing classroom size reduction. The Assembly did not pass these bills, as leaders tied the bills to a tax package.

Schools have no clue what kind of state funding they will receive.

Indecision will affect thousands of kids. New textbooks are on hold. Fall class schedules at area high schools are in flux. The school district has 350 teaching positions to fill but it can’t offer contracts to teachers that it might not be able to afford.

While the district twiddles its thumbs while waiting for the state lawmakers to do their jobs, the best teachers in the job-seeking pool—the ones you’d want to be teaching your third-grader to read and cipher—are being nabbed by school districts in other states not plagued by indecision.

Instead of “A-team” teachers, we’ll be stuck with “C-team” teachers, said Dan Carne, vice president of the Board of Trustees. And we won’t be stuck with them for just a year.

“It’s permanent,” Carne said. “We may be putting in the C-team, and they’ll be with us forever.”

Things went from bad to ugly when Assemblyman Ron Knecht (R-Carson) complimented the Carson schools. While they’ve also deferred hiring new teachers, at least they aren’t whining about it, he inferred.

“They may have put hiring on hold, but what they haven’t done is terrorize teachers, terrorize parents and terrorize students with layoffs and program cancellations that are completely unneeded and unreasonable,” Knecht said. You could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

Hager’s hackles rose.

“I find it offensive, your assumption of our terrorizing the community …”

Knecht interrupted: “That’s what you did and you should be ashamed of it.”

Hager: “Can I finish?”

Hager explained the district was merely trying to make sound decisions in the face of unpredictable funding.

Knecht scolded him for that, too, saying that the district needs to be prepared to “deal with uncertainties.”

Sen. Bill Raggio delivered a short, frustrated speech.

“Legislation is the heart of compromise,” Raggio said. “We have passed a budget. The state has not only to worry about funding for education, but for corrections, for mental health, for welfare, for health care and lots of other things.

“Everything goes together whether you like it or not. …To say, ‘I’ll vote for [school funding] but not for the tax plan,’ is irresponsible. … Are we going to say ‘To hell with people who have mental-health problems'? Are we going to shut down prisons? In the 31 years I’ve served in the Legislature, I’ve never seen such an impasse as this. … We have until July 1. I think we have to work together to fund a tax plan.”

Many applauded.