Wednesday, July 1, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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When Nevada lawmakers convene for this month’s special session, they need to make an immediate strategic investment that will speed up our economic recovery and position us for faster growth on the other end of the coronavirus pandemic.
They need to increase funding for public schools.
Yes, right now. This may sound counterintuitive given the enormous hit to the state budget this year, but expanding support for the schools provides both a short-term and long-term benefit.
In the near-term, it will help avert a crisis that looms for many parents in the fall, when they will have to decide between their jobs and child-care needs brought on by plans to limit in-class instruction to two days a week. And if we look out months and years, it’s a chance to boldly transform our schools into an asset that would drive our growth and prosperity for decades to come.
Unquestionably, in-classroom education is superior to remote learning, and if remote learning continues much longer, Nevada students will slowly start slipping behind despite the best efforts of educators and students alike.
Taking this moment to expand education provides a compelling alternative that would lead to a blossoming in the state, benefit students, protect families financially and make Nevada vastly more attractive to business.
Lawmakers first need to figure out a way to give public schools — particularly the Clark County School District — the resources they need to get kids back to school safely, full time, in the fall.
As is, CCSD plans to separate students into two cohorts, with each attending school in person two days a week and then being taught remotely at home the other three weekdays. Classrooms will be capped at 18 students, with desks separated by 6 feet.
That makes sense health-wise, but it’s not good for children’s education and places a special burden on parents and community businesses. Think about it: In a service industry town, it’s absurd to think that having kids home three days a week won’t drive many families to have one caregiver give up their job to watch the kids and keep them focused on their learning. That would leave more families struggling financially, which would drag down the overall economy.
But there is an easier, cheaper and better solution: Hire more teachers and place a permanent cap on class sizes of 18.
This has a host of better outcomes across our educational system, and would ease the burden on families and businesses. It doesn’t have to involve building new schools, either: with retail commercial real estate in crisis, CCSD could rent space for short-term auxiliary campuses until school construction catches up.
Families wouldn’t face the terrible burdens posed by the existing plan. Nevada students would wind up ahead of the nation’s other students, who are facing long-term remote learning. It is well known that class size is a defining characteristic of high-quality education.
Beyond providing a solution for the immediate issues, permanently capping class sizes would create a powerful educational system that would pay off on the back end of the pandemic as businesses look to relocate or expand.
As CCSD Superintendent Jesus Jara has pointed out, urban education across the country was already in a crisis before the emergence of the coronavirus. Educators faced a cascade of problems, all stemming from inadequate funding — overcrowding, relatively poor technology, hiring and retention issues and more, which resulted in a significant performance gap between students in urban districts and their peers in the suburbs. In Nevada, where our school system consistently shows up toward the bottom of national rankings, the need for improvement is urgent.
“The world ignored the harsh truth, and this unfortunate pandemic pulled back the veil on the bleak and dire issues that our students face and the inequities that we face in urban education,” Jara told CCSD board members recently.
Exactly. And that’s why we should use this moment of reckoning to reinvent our approach to education in Nevada. By leaning in on this opportunity, the economic rewards in terms of diversification of the economy are enormous as attitudes cool on high-density urban areas in California and elsewhere.
It’s not enough to simply make our education system equitable — to just flatten out the funding disparities between urban, suburban and rural schools. We should take this opportunity to reinvent our education system to lead the nation and as a tool of economic development.
We owe it to our students too: Great education systems result in students who live prosperous lives, reduce crime and raise quality of life across the board.
Nevada’s history is written in transformational steps that have helped us recover from a series of boom-and-bust periods. We built ourselves into a global tourism powerhouse and a major-league city with a frontier mentality of big dreams and bold actions.
Turning our schools into a shining asset is our Apollo project.
Given our constitutional restrictions, the fairest way to raise long-term, consistent revenue is through property taxes. We are closer to the bottom on rates in the West, so we have some room.
And gaming will need to step up at some point. We must make sure all monies are earmarked for education so legislators can’t shift them someplace else.
Is there money for it? It must be found. Simple as that. It’s high time we bite the bullet and invest in our kids, even when state budgets are ravaged by the virus.
