RENO, NV - Since the Special Session of the Nevada legislature mandated a 6.9% cut in state support to K-12 education Washoe County school officials have known they would face a challenge balancing their budget.

Today that effort started. School Superintendent Heath Morrison told a meeting of the school board their work was cut out for them.

“None of this is going to be easy,” he told them at a late afternoon meeting at the district’s Reno offices. “This is going to impact the district there’s no way we can keep it away classrooms and schools because at $33 million dollars that just can’t happen.”

The process gets underway in earnest Wednesday with the first of 6 scheduled meetings with district employees.
Ninety percent of the budget is personnel, so any concessions eventually reached there will ease the impacts elsewhere.

But the search for solutions won’t stop there. The school board will also be scheduling a series of town hall meetings asking for the public’s input and it’s soliciting ideas from them on the internet, posting a simple, one question survey on its website, “What’s your one idea to save money in Washoe County schools.”

School district officials tell us they’ve already been hearing from individuals concerned about cuts in various areas and programs.

The answer they’ve been getting is that nothing has been decided yet, but as much as possible, the aim is to first listen to everyone.

“What we can do is pledge to reach the best and I’m already pleased with the way we are communicating with our employees and the public,” Morrison told the board.

Morrison wants the outreach to be completed by the end of the month.

The board could start making those hard decisions sometime in April and May.