The risk in the Nevada State Education's proposal for a 4-percent tax on business is that a spotlight will be shined brightly on the state's schools and what, exactly, the teachers' union is doing to improve them.
The initiative's simple premise is that Nevada schools need more money. The proposal is to tax the state's larger businesses in order to raise $250 million specifically for education.
The goals, as outlined by the SNEA, are laudable. They include:
-Reducing overcrowded classes.
-Establishing and providing a safe and productive learning environment by removing disruptive students and providing alternatives so that they can become productive learners.
- Providing improved educational opportunities for students with limited English proficiency and students with special educational needs.
- Equipping schools and classrooms with the computer equipment, technological and scientific tools, and resources and supplies needed for modern teaching.
-Promoting and providing vocational, technical and computer training.
-Allow for physical education, arts and music programs.
-Increase the number of school nurses, speech pathologists, school counselors and related support professionals.
-Hiring qualified new teachers to meet the needs of the growing student population;
-Promote parental involvement .
-Increase student accountability, such as enforcing strict disciplinary policies and ensuring that students know the consequences of unacceptable behavior.
Exactly how these goals would be accomplished would be left to individual school districts, which would be required to report quarterly exactly how they are spending the money.
The business people who would be paying the bills, however, want measurable results. They want to be shown why the answer starts with more money, which they are not convinced is being spent efficiently and effectively now - let alone for an undefined effort that will cost an additional $250 million.
What they see is a union pushing for an income tax on businesses that would be spent mainly to hire more members of the union at higher pay.
"Our salaries are the measure by which our value is recognized by our communities," Ken Lange, executive director of the NSEA, wrote to members. "By claiming that we already make enough, the chambers (of commerce) diminish the importance of the job we do. We believe the public won't buy it."
What they're asking the public to buy, however, is that higher pay will mean better education for their children.