By:  Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President

The opinion piece in the December 28th Reno Gazette entitled “State Needs To Make Education A Priority” implored us to recognize that education is an important component of our society being able to improve itself. http://www.rgj.com/article/20081228/OPED/812280330/1098/OPED

We wholeheartedly concur with the person sharing his thoughts, Vito de la Cruz that “A well-informed populace is better able to demand accountability from government and is less likely to get hood-winked by political sound bites and mood swings.”

This quest for a higher degree of understanding is exactly the point we want to drive home here.

We agree that education should be a priority for Nevada. 

At this time, we’re not certain that we concur with the perspective that the other side of the coin is automatically higher taxes…

“Counter-posed against the need to improve Nevada's system of higher education and the consequences of failing to do so stands our governor. Our governor declares that he is "not in a tax-increase mood" and that he will shrink government even more in order to cover almost 35 percent in budget cuts. So married to ideology is the governor that he forgets or ignores that a well-funded public education system is a right for all people for a multitude of compelling reasons. He turns a blind eye to the fact that Nevada already has the smallest government among the 50 states. Moreover, he seems oblivious to the reality that strong leadership entails adaptability to changing circumstances. And look where that has led us with regard to our educational system.” -- Vito de la Cruz, “State Needs To Make Education A Priority”.

We probably need to begin with understanding if “Education” means K-12, Higher Education, or all the above.  In terms of what we understand to be the case, education does receive a large portion of financial support from our state budget, but let’s get the full picture before we make those decisions. 

By way of explaining our request, we’d like to start with a complete overview, as well as the nuts and bolts of educational finances for K-12.  We need to understand very basic details of how much revenue goes into paying for the primary education system we have.  Beyond Nevada general fund support, what other streams of income go into school district checkbooks?

Once we understand the income side of the ledger, bring out the power points to help us get our minds around where educational dollars are spent. 

Perhaps an idea to help in these presentations would be taking the example of a single dollar and breaking it into understandable pieces.  Explain the sources of revenue in this manner, as well as the line-items for where the money spent goes.  We need to be aware of how many cents from a dollar goes into the classroom and how much goes to administration or physical facilities.

Of the portion that goes into the classroom, what’s the breakdown for paying for the teacher…what goes to books or other educational materials?

From this coverage and information, we hope that we can have a higher degree of exchange in the public conversation that needs to take place on whether funds need to be reallocated or if MORE is automatically the answer.

Tomorrow, let’s get into something similar to this for Nevada’s Higher Education system.