An untenable situation

Thursday, June 5, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

The image of a child stuffing his pockets with packets of ketchup from a school lunchroom so he’ll have something to eat for dinner is almost unfathomable.

Yet children are doing this in Clark County.

Sherrie Gahn told the Las Vegas Sun for a story this week that she initially saw Whitney Elementary School students hoarding the packets when she arrived for her first day as their principal about four years ago.

A majority of Whitney’s 650 students are homeless or nearly so, the Sun’s Emily Richmond reports. They are among more than 4,000 Clark County students who fit the federal government’s definition of homeless: anyone who lacks “a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.”

And that figure, up from 3,500 just one year ago, includes only students whom officials have identified as being homeless. Thousands of others likely are homeless, they say.

About 85 percent of Whitney’s students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and the school spends an extra $1,000 a month to fill backpacks with snacks for children to take home on Fridays so they will have something to eat on weekends.

Gahn has garnered services and donations from community groups and volunteers to provide school supplies, clothes and shoes for her students. She has hired their mothers to work in the cafeteria and office, and the school provides parenting and English classes for their families.

Whitney’s counselors continue working with the children over the summer, and students obtain meals at a community center. Gahn told the Sun she wants to make sure her students “don’t feel like we’ve dropped the ball with them just because it’s summer.”

But Nevada has dropped the ball.

The efforts of Gahn and others like her across Clark County are nothing short of heroic, but thousands of Clark County children don’t have someone like Gahn in their corners. And, more important, they shouldn’t need them.

How on earth did we get to a place where children in one of America’s most dynamic and prosperous cities are eating ketchup for dinner?

In terms of academic scores, efforts to help these children can make a difference — Whitney’s test scores have risen dramatically since Gahn began her crusade.

But this situation deserves more evaluation than a simple comparison of annual test scores. As similar scenarios play out in schools across the Las Vegas Valley, they illustrate just how much schools must do beyond buying textbooks and paying for teachers in order to make sure children can learn what society expects them to learn. As Gahn noted, “The academics won’t come if a child is hungry, or has a stomachache or needs eyeglasses.”

The need for such services is a reality, and the heartbreaking results of not adequately meeting those needs illustrate just how poorly funded our schools really are.

Nevada ranks near the bottom nationally in per-student funding because the Legislature has failed to provide adequate resources. And Gov. Jim Gibbons ought to be ashamed of his efforts to cut even more money from our public schools. Children who are poor are not the state’s problem — they are its responsibility, and Nevada is failing miserably in taking care of them.