Editorial: Students getting shorted on funds

IT'S a disgrace that the state doesn't provide enough funding for educating students, forcing public schoolteachers in Nevada to dip into their own pockets to pay for school supplies.

The funding problem is basically twofold and originates with the Nevada Legislature. Despite the state's booming economy through most of the 1990s, funding for public schools still isn't what it should be. This places a hardship on school districts, which receive funding on a per-pupil basis from state government. And while the school districts aren't getting enough money in the first place, some Clark County teachers contend that what money they do receive for school supplies and other expenses isn't being used wisely by the school district.

As the Sun's Diana Sahagun reported Monday, the Clark County School District gives each school a formula for expenses, with each elementary school getting $30.72 per student for teaching supplies. But teachers don't often see that amount because principals use the bulk of their total budgets for textbooks or technology.

To provide just one example of the shortages that can occur, one only has to look at Culley Elementary School, where teachers are running out of paper. Just a few weeks before the end of the 1997-98 school year at Culley, which is a year-round school, there is only one box of paper left. "Teachers have to beg me for the last little bit," Principal Dennis Cobia acknowledged. "Once it's gone, it's gone."

It's not required that public schoolteachers use their own money to fill the funding gap, but many do. For instance, Williams Elementary School fifth-grade teacher Sheryl Roberts buys some of her own materials, spending $400 to $500 a year of her own money on writing paper, teacher guides and art supplies.

Although there are teachers who will use their own money, not all have the means, while others are unwilling to do so. Ultimately, the students are the ones who suffer because there isn't enough money for basic school supplies.

Inadequate funding that makes teachers use their own funds is wrong. Considering that they are not adequately paid for the importance of their jobs in the first place, it is adding insult to injury to ask them also to use their own money for what is the responsibility of the state and school districts.

Funding quality education is a real problem in this nation, including here. The 1999 Legislature, which meets in January, should make sure that schools receive the appropriate funding so that teachers will no longer be required to use their own money to pay for part of their students' education.

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