Cyndi Loza

The state’s revenue shortfall has led to Nevada school districts take unexpected funding cuts and additional budget trimming will be a drastic step back for the state, Washoe County Superintendent Paul Dugan plans to tell the Legislature’s the interim finance committee today.

Dugan will share his sentiments with the committee in a multi-site teleconference meeting at the Nevada System of Higher Education on 2601 Enterprise Road.

“We’ve dealt with 4.5 (percent) cuts and we certainly understand the economic situation that the state is in, but we now hear that we’re suppose to plan for a 14 percent cut and that, in our opinion as superintendents, would be devastating to education in the state of Nevada,” Dugan said.

On May 14, Gov. Jim Gibbons’ budget director Andrew Clinger said agencies needed to submit “what-if scenarios” for cutting 14 percent for the 2009-11 biennium so Gibbons can decide how to solve the $594 million revenue gap. State school districts were asked to find $189 million in cuts for the next biennium, before receiving funding calculating inflation and student enrollment growth.

Gibbons’ on Dec. 14 reversed his decision to exempt Nevada’s school districts and public safety agencies from the cuts, saying the burden of the declining tax revenue was falling too heavily on services for the state’s needy.

He proposed an across-the-board 4.5 percent cut to state agencies that would cut funding to the state’s school districts by $95 million over the next two years.