Smaller School Pot in Nevada
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008The Nevada State Board of Education is making some tough choices in a time of declining state budgets.
Increasing class sizes, eliminating teacher signing bonuses and slashing textbook funding by 50 percent are just a few of the painful steps that might be needed if the state Board of Education is to comply with the governor’s goal of reducing its budget by 14 percent over the next two years.
“We are really scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said James Wells, the deputy superintendent for finance at a meeting of the board Friday.
Because of the economic downturn, state education officials anticipate shortfalls in revenues from property taxes and gaming taxes and expect growth in student enrollment to slow to less than 2 percent over the next two years.
The state board approved a tentative budget that would reduce funding by $101 million for fiscal year 2009-10 and by $162 million for fiscal year 2010-11.
