EDITORIAL: Police investigation puts adult English instruction under scrutiny

Clark County School District officials and a wide range of elected officials want more tax money put into public education. They want fully subsidized full-day kindergarten for every child in Southern Nevada and expanded pre-K and early education programs. They want to hire more teachers and specialists. They want pay raises. They want to restore the system’s building maintenance budget. And, eventually, they want new capital revenue to build and renovate schools.

Even the smallest example of wasteful spending hurts arguments for bigger K-12 budgets. The criminal misuse of public funds, on the other hand, could completely undermine political support for new funding. After all, if the school district can’t be trusted with what it gets now, how can the public get behind giving it more?

The school district’s Adult English Language Acquisition department has a relatively small annual budget, at $1.09 million, but the stakes are far higher now that the organized crime bureau of the Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the potential theft of public resources. News of the investigation broke last week, and on Monday, Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky shut down the department, suspended two department managers with pay, suspended three other employees without pay and reassigned the other 17 workers.

The school district requested Metro’s involvement almost two months ago, and the investigation could take many months. Police have served search warrants on the department’s office, a private residence and a private business. Detectives have stacks of documents to review and many interviews to conduct.

Obviously, governments should have no tolerance for the abuse of tax dollars, regardless of the political climate, and Mr. Skorkowsky indicated as much in moving swiftly to address the investigation. That said, taxpayers would be perfectly justified in asking why a purportedly cash-poor education system is spending $1 million per year teaching English to adults. Yes, the school district faces huge challenges in educating tens of thousands of children who aren’t proficient in English, primarily because their parents speak another language at home. But should it be the responsibility of a K-12 system to teach English to students’ extended family as well?

Mr. Skorkowsky said the Adult English Language Acquisition department will open within two weeks under new staff. If the existing staff is so easily replaced, perhaps now would be a good time for the school district to examine the program’s effectiveness — and whether it can be shut down for good.