School District’s inability to raise $125,000 may kill study

By Cy Ryan

Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012 | 5:01 p.m.

The Clark County School District has been given an ultimatum to raise $125,000 or the state will abandon a study on the financing of public schools.

Assemblyman Marcus Conklin, D-Las Vegas, said the money must be available by Feb. 22 or his committee set to study a new method of funding public schools won’t move forward.

The School District pushed through a bill in the 2011 Legislature calling for the study and promised the financial support.

Joyce Haldeman, associate district superintendent, told the committee Tuesday that it had a commitment from a foundation to donate $125,000. But on Monday morning, the foundation notified the district it was canceling its pledge.

The committee agreed it wanted to study whether there was adequate money coming from the state to support students who are not proficient in English, those who are considered poor and those in special education.

Clark County has a large number of students in these categories who require more funds to teach.

But other school districts are worried that any redistribution of the available state support will shortchange them.

Caroline McIntosh, superintendent of schools in Lyon County and president of the association of school superintendents, expressed concern about redistribution of state money.

“Any change to the Nevada Plan without supplemental funding is simply a redistribution of existing inadequate levels of funding,” she told the committee.

Mike Schroeder, interim chief financial officer in the Washoe County School District, said there should be some agreement that no school district would be hurt in any redistribution of state money.

“It is difficult to support a study that will be harmful to a district,” Schroeder said.

The Nevada Plan, the formula for distributing state money to the school districts, was adopted in 1967 and things have changed dramatically since then, said Haldeman.

In Clark County, 17.6 percent of its students — 54,398 — are in the English Language Learner programs. That is more than the enrollment of the Washoe County School District, the second largest district in the state. And Clark doesn’t get any extra state money for this program, Haldeman said.

The district has 60.3 percent of its students in the free and reduced-price lunch program, which signals poverty. That’s 185,905 students — more than all in the rest of the state. “The amount of poverty we deal with is staggering,” Haldeman said.

The state allocates $70 million to the Clark School District for special education students but the cost is $327 million.

Haldeman said she felt “positive” about getting donations or grants for $125,000 for the committee. “If we don’t find the money, we will abandon it.”

She said this was an “ideal” time for the study since the state doesn’t have any extra money. The recommendations could be adopted and put into effect when the state gets more cash.

Assemblyman Ira Hansen, R-Sparks, questioned the necessity of a study. There was a $225,000 study in 2007 on the equity of funding for education by Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, which Hansen said found that state funding was equitably distributed. That study committee had four Clark County lawmakers and two from Northern Nevada.

“We’re reinventing the wheel,” and why is this committee ignoring that report, he questioned.

Conklin said this study is about the money following the student. He said the 2007 study never looked at the equity of funding for the different types of students.

But they both agreed that 2007 report could be a starting point for the consultant who is to be hired by the committee if it finds the money.