Budget-cutting victim

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.

A two-room modular building in Moapa Valley that has been used as a College of Southern Nevada campus for 15 years now stands for something else. It has become an unwitting symbol of Gov. Jim Gibbons’ reckless disregard for the future of Nevada.

The Education First moniker associated with one of his past ballot initiatives certainly cannot apply to this governor or his administration. As reported by Charlotte Hsu in the Las Vegas Sun on Saturday, the cream blue building soon will no longer exist to serve the 10,000 people of the rural valley 45 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

The valley’s residents have Gibbons to thank for that.

The Moapa Valley campus, which is scheduled to close in June 2009, is one of many victims of state budget cuts. But this one hurts more than most because there are no adequate educational alternatives for those residents.

Keeping that campus intact is important because it enables high school students to take night classes as well as participate in sports and other extracurricular activities. The campus also serves older residents who work in Las Vegas and gives young Mormon men an opportunity to earn college credits before going off on religious missions.

English professor Felicia Campbell, the longest-tenured professor at UNLV, told Hsu for a separate story that this is the biggest round of educational budget cuts she has seen since arriving on campus in 1962. State archivist Guy Rocha said the budget cuts appear to be the deepest since the Great Depression.

We can thank Gibbons for that.

UNLV itself is not immune to budget cuts, but at least that university campus is not disappearing. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the community college in Moapa Valley.

At a time when Nevada ought to be increasing its investment in education, both rural and urban, it is doing the opposite. Students are being hung out to dry and employers’ dreams of a better-educated workforce are withering away.

We have Gibbons to thank for that.