Commentary - March 2004

No Child Left Behind –

Money Left Behind Instead

by Lyle Brennan

Here’s a word problem, like those you might see on a multiple-choice test in one of Nevada’s schools: Company XYZ receives an $80 million grant from the federal government to cover its annual expenses. Any money not spent must be returned to the U.S. Treasury. At the end of the year, the company has to give back $309,000 in unexpended funds. What happens to the employees in charge of managing the grant and disbursing the money?

A) They have to make up the $309,000 out of their own salaries.

B) They are dismissed from their positions "with extreme prejudice."

C) They are congratulated on a job well done.

Those of you who marked "C" must have looked at the answer book and figured out that Company XYZ is not a private company, but a public-sector entity like the Nevada Department of Education. The chart below, using figures provided by the Department of Education, shows that over $650,000 was returned unused at the end of the last two fiscal school years.

Doug Thunder, deputy superintendent of administrative and fiscal services for the department, points out that the total returned is less than one-half of one percent of the federal money received. However, it’s still over half a million dollars that Nevada’s school children desperately needed.

Take a look at this month’s Industry Focus on Higher Education to get some idea of the crisis we’re facing in trying to keep up with the exponential growth in Nevada’s school population. Students are graduating from Nevada’s schools without the basic skills they need to succeed in college or in the workplace. For a good overview on this problem and some proposed solutions, download a copy of a recently-released report by the American Diploma Project. It’s available at www.achieve.org.

I’m sure we all remember the battle during the last legislative session over the education budget and the difficulties we had in raising the money necessary to fund it. To hear that over $650,000 was returned because it was unused should not only be a cause for concern, but perhaps also for righteous anger.

Explanation of terms:

Unrequested sub-grants: School districts or community organizations were given an allowance for funding in a sub-grant, but did not request the full amount of the sub-grant.

Prior Year Refunds: Funds returned by school districts to the state after the fiscal year closed. The funds were either not expended, or the districts spent the funds without adhering to the grant guidelines, so their claims for reimbursement were denied.

Unobligated Funding: Funding that simply was not spent during the year, for whatever reason.

Lyle Brennan Publisher
COMMENTS? email: lyle@nbj.com