Education Budget—Distributive School Account

The Nevada State Education Association has many concerns with Governor Gibbons’ proposed Distributive School Account (DSA)--the school budget and we have no intentions of accepting the Governor’s recommendations as is. 

NSEA encourages all members, citizens, and lawmakers to consider the following:

• Governor Gibbons is proposing a 2 percent salary increase for the 2007-08 school year (the first year of the biennium) and a 4 percent salary increase for the 2008-09 school year (the second year of the biennium).  This proposal does not keep up with the cost of living. 
• The amount of money Governor Gibbons is allocating to education is at least $53 million less than the proposed Guinn budget.
• The Governor’s budget recommends cutting the following one-shot monies:

• Performance pay for teachers ($10,000,000)
• Alternative classroom settings for disruptive students($1,000,000)
• Incentives for speech pathologists to become nationally board certified ($1,106,028)
• Programs for limited English proficient pre-K students ($175,000)

• The Governor is proposing to do away with the funding for the 1/5 Service Credit Incentive Program, which encourages teachers to work in at-risk schools and hard to fill positions such as math, science, and special education.
• Governor Gibbons is proposing to cut over $22 million for “innovation and remediation;” a program that allows schools to apply for funds that go directly to the classroom.
• The Governor ignored the recommendations of the recent study that investigated the adequacy of school financing in Nevada—instead, choosing to cut the amount of funding going to K-12 public education.  
• The Governor has chosen to ignore Nevada’s school district superintendents—three of whom are on his own transition team—and not use any of the recommendations from iNVest.