One thing Nevada is NOT is an “average” state. Compared to the other 49 states, we are one of the driest, emptiest, fastest-growing, least regulatory, most-visited states. Our expenditures for education are also unlike any other state’s. In an effort to keep up with our above-average growth rate, our urban school districts are building elementary and secondary schools far more quickly than anywhere else.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Nevada taxpayers spend about twice as much money each year to build new schools (18.59 percent of our educational spending) as the rest of the nation, which averages about 9.45 percent. Debt service, principally driven by bonds for school construction, takes up another 5 percent of Nevada’s educational spending, versus 2.47 percent for the rest of the U.S.
In 2001-2002, the most recent year for which NCES provides statistics, the average state spent $8,745 per pupil in the K-through-12 public school system. According to the Insight database maintained by Nevada’s Legislative Counsel Bureau, Nevada’s per-pupil spending that year was $8,667, and the following year it was $8,641. In other words, Nevada taxpayers spend pretty close to the national average on education, even though a larger percentage goes for construction.
One of the questions on the ballot this November will be the so-called “Improve Nevada Public School Funding to the National Average” proposal, put forward by the Nevada State Education Association (the labor union for Nevada teachers). It would amend the Nevada Constitution to require that “the annual per-pupil expenditure of Nevada equals or exceeds the national average.” Wait a minute – didn’t we just determine that we are actually spending within $100 of the national average already? Not so, according to the teachers’ union.
The figures they want to use to calculate the “national average” ignore all the money spent for construction and debt service. In other words, Nevada taxpayers get no credit at all for footing the bill for all those new schools. Since that money didn’t go into classroom instruction, teacher salaries or school district overhead, it must not exist.
If Nevada voters choose to raise the state’s level of education spending to equal that of the rest of the U.S., without taking construction-related expenses into account, we will be committing ourselves to spending a lot more than the national average per pupil.
And…where is the funding going to come from? It has been pointed out on numerous occasions that Nevada lacks a stable tax base, such as a state income tax. Its sources of revenue ebb and flow with the tide of the national and state economies: sales tax revenue, gaming revenue, etc. We all saw what happened to state revenue when tourism dollars stopped flowing after the Sept. 11th terrorism incidents. Committing ourselves to funding education to a particular percentage of the national average without having a means to fund that spending is totally irresponsible.
Suppose for a moment that this measure eventually becomes part of the Nevada Constitution. Assuming we continue to have a high growth rate – which most experts, including the state demographer, have predicted – we will continue to build new schools and pay interest on new school bonds (in an economy in which interest rates are rising). In addition to that, we will be obliged to fund non-construction, per-pupil expenditures up to a national average driven by school districts in states with extremely high taxation rates that fund equally high levels of education spending. And we’re supposed to do all this without a predictable source of funding.
There are two possible outcomes to this nightmare scenario. If the size of the budget “pie” remains the same, K-through-12 education’s slice will increase at the expense of everything else, including healthcare, infrastructure, social services and higher education. The other alternative is to increase the size of the pie by raising taxes, either on businesses or on individuals. Besides increasing the economic burden on current taxpayers, this would hinder efforts to diversify the state’s economy.
It has been proven time and again that throwing more money at school districts does not increase the quality of education. On the other hand, if Nevada voters do decide they want to spend more money on teacher salaries, or on efforts to reduce class size, they may do so at any legislative session, through their elected representatives. But, locking the state into an inflexible formula based on national averages, as this ballot question proposes, is a recipe for disaster.