School budget nearly $1 billion

Clark County schools haven't reached the billion-dollar club -- yet.

The final budget -- $954,260,792 -- is the district's largest ever, up about 58 percent from $556.1 million in 1992. The budget is on target to top $1 billion for the 1999-2000 school year, said Chief Financial Officer Walt Rulffes said.

Officials said they are barely keeping up with the needs of the fastest-growing district in the nation, including opening eight new schools and hiring more than 1,700 new teachers.

"Our difficulty is that our needs are starting to far out-pace our resources," Clark County School District Superintendent Brian Cram said before a Wednesday meeting in which the School Board approved the 1998-99 budget.

The budget is subject to change if board members decide they want to amend it or if projected student enrollments are not on target. District officials estimate the nation's ninth largest school district will swell next year to 202,388, a 6.1 percent increase.

Cram has said that one of his top priorities will be convincing state lawmakers that Clark County needs more state money for education. State money for K-12 education has dwindled 3 to 4 percent in the past six to eight years, state education officials report.

Cram quotes a recent study that ranked Nevada 13th from the bottom in state spending per pupil. The state pays its 17 school districts according to their wealth, so Clark County gets less from the state than other districts -- about $1,550 per pupil.

Cram said that an increasing number of students with complex social problems are becoming more expensive to educate.

"As parents have less and less time to spend with children, they have less time to serve as the first and most important teacher for those children," Cram said. "We have to subsidize that, so to speak. No matter who does what, we're still responsible for the achievement of the child."

The approved budget also could change depending on the results of on-going salary negotiations with teachers. The longest salary talks ever are scheduled to resume July 20 as teacher and district representatives enter arbitration.

The budget approved Wednesday assumes the teachers will get a 3.25 percent raise, plus a 1 percent bonus for the 1998-99 school year.

Nearly 40 percent of school district money comes from sales tax -- 2 1/4 percent of the state's 7 percent sales tax. Another 32 percent of the district's budget comes from the state's per pupil allocation.

The rest of the budget comes from:

* property taxes (21 percent); * motor vehicles and franchise taxes (3.5 percent); * the district's opening balance (3.4 percent); * federal money (.1 percent); * other (.9 percent).

The district spends 87.7 percent of its money on salaries. That includes 46.7 percent for teachers, 16.2 percent for support staff, such as aides and secretaries, and 5.5 percent for administrators.

No one from the public spoke out Wednesday on the budget. Before approving the budget, the board briefly discussed textbook expenditures. The district will spend roughly $10 million on books in the coming year. Several board members said they were concerned about a lack of textbooks, especially in elementary schools.

"When you talk with teachers, they don't have the textbooks," board member Lois Tarkanian said.

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