Suspend sports, reorganize district to save money

To the editor:

As a teacher in the Clark County School District, I know that recent talk of additional education budget cuts leaves me fearful of the impact in the classroom. If these cuts are inevitable, then we must consider all options. Some may find my ideas controversial, but I believe they are worthy of consideration. None of these suggestions is personal, so I strongly urge my colleagues who may be affected to not take offense.

First off, no longer allow teachers to collect retirement while they are also teaching. Give them the choice of either retiring at the end of the school year or suspend their retirement payments until they do retire. This will reduce costs without firing anybody.

Next, end the lease for the superintendent’s office on West Sahara Avenue. According to reports last year, the lease costs the district more than $300,000 per year. We must also consider reducing the number of regions within the district. There are currently five regions, each requiring a regional superintendent and necessary support staff. The savings could be immense.

Lastly, suspend sports for one year. I coached for three seasons, so this is personally the most difficult suggestion to make. Sports have many positive impacts on student performance in the classroom. However, they require a large amount of funding every year.

In times of impending budget cuts, we must keep in the mind the priority of K-12 education is what happens within the classroom. I would hate to see teachers fired while other teachers are collecting two paychecks. I would hate to see class sizes increase while thousands could be saved through reorganization of off-campus administration. I would hate to see more cuts in the classroom while sports continue to be funded.

I would hate to see any cuts to education funding, but experience has taught me better.

Travis Bowker

LAS VEGAS

Sacred cows

To the editor:

Gov. Jim Gibbons is saying that all state budget items are up for review. We read of possible salary cuts, the outsourcing of jobs, etc. But one wonders about other programs that aren’t being talked about.

One that comes to mind is the Millennium Scholarship program, which provides many Nevada high school graduates with $10,000 each toward their undergraduate programs at UNLV, UNR and other Nevada schools. As I understand it, this was started with money from the big tobacco settlement, but it has since become a general budget item, supported with taxpayer dollars.

Is this program being treated as a sacred cow? Are there other programs getting the same sort of treatment? It seems to me that these are questions that need to be asked.

Owen Nelson

LAS VEGAS

Pretty lean

To the editor:

Your Jan. 31 editorial, “District savings,” was built around the false statement that “trustees were prepared to award a $306,000 contract to Morse Communications that would have outsourced as many as 10 telecommunications positions, after four such jobs had been cut last year.” In fact, the contract in question would not outsource a single position, but would partially outsource a minority of the telecommunication work at 71 schools. The school district would then be reimbursed at an 85 percent rate by the FCC for this work.

If the school district decided to outsource the remainder of work (moves, adds and changes) which is not reimbursable by the FCC, Morse Communications would be paid an additional hourly rate for each incident responded to.

The dubious idea that you can replace the work of 10 personnel for only $306,000 should have alerted you that your statement needed substantiating. The blanket assertion that, “Outsourcing is the single most constructive way to reshape bloated governments into leaner, more efficient operations without reductions in services” once again comes without the facts to back up the claim.

Outsourcing can have both a positive or a negative effect on budgets and services, but when you have only nine technicians supporting more than 32,000 telephones, covering 367 telephone systems which handle more than 85 million telephone calls a year, spread over the 8,008 square miles of Clark County, that is pretty lean.

As the school district does not have to figure profit into their cost of business, no outside vendor has ever been able to perform telecommunications work at a lower cost than the in-house technicians. Instead of an ideological knee-jerk reaction, the Review-Journal should have gotten the facts straight. If anything, you should be happy the department in question is doing so much with so few and being a proper steward of the taxpayers’ trust.

Troy Eggleston

LAS VEGAS

THE WRITER IS A TECHNICAL MANAGER FOR THE CLARK COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT.

Federal boondoggle

To the editor:

With the demise of Yucca Mountain, we see an example of the worst of government. Billions of wasted tax dollars shoved down the biggest black hole in the world with no return. Nothing.

Maybe we can turn it into an underground amusement park. How about the biggest time capsule the world has ever seen? And we wonder why we have the biggest budget deficits in history?

When will we wise up? Soon, I hope.

Bob Wong

LAS VEGAS