Schools facing hard choices

If projections for next year's school budgets are close to accurate, the Douglas County School District is facing 14 percent cuts in revenue from the state over the next two years.

With all indicators flat, the 2009 Legislature is going to have to make some hard decisions with regards to two large budgets, the public schools and the university system.

Those decisions will filter down to affect our school district and the Western Nevada College Douglas campus.

If the information school district Superintendent Carol Lark received pans out, that means cutting $5 million out of the district's $35.55 million budget two years in a row.

Neither the sale of Kingsbury Middle School nor a bond issue proposed for the November ballot will help, since both deal with the district's capital fund, not its operating budget.

We don't claim that Nevada is breaking any new ground in education. But we do believe that our schools are important to our future.

The students attending our schools today will grow up to be our leaders, our doctors, our bus drivers, our firefighters and our law enforcement officers.

The education we provide for them today will come back to us in the next 20 years, when we will need them most.

Times are hard and Gov. Jim Gibbons and the 2009 Legislature will have their work cut out for them to keep teachers in our classrooms for the coming years.