Pay now -- or later
Funny thing this state legislature of our: grudgingly funds the barest necessities for public and higher education but all too willing to pass green legislation that’ll shear hundreds of millions from pet projects backed by our state’s major industry.
Funny guy this governor of ours, Jim Gibbons. And by funny, I’m not referring to his forever-elongating list of gaffes -- the alleged sexual assault on a waitress; claims of federal influence peddling; employing an illegal nanny. Rather, I’m talking about Gibbons’ willingness to pour $300 million into building more prisons but only $15 million to expand all-day kindergarten.
Funny set-up this tax system of ours: in that education officials must beg our state lawmakers who, in turn, must appease the governor, if there’s any chance of securing enough funding to just keep pace with our unbelievable growth, much less snagging additional monies to bolster successful pilot initiatives or create new programs.
No one would call me an educrat or an educationista. Nor do I hold press-released truths about the Clark County School District (that it’s administratively lean, that it’s hiring the best teachers, that it’s effectively deploying all its resources) to be self-evident. I know certain schools could be run better, that some administrators are the problem, not the students. Yet I can’t shake this unfunny feeling that, for all its problems and challenges, for all its promise and potential, that most people treat the Clark County School District as an afterthought.
When we ignore education, we ignore young people like Fertitta Middle School students Jaime Bustamente and Chauntee Kahele. They were among 1,500 students who competed in the national “Do The Write Thing” contest, in which seventh- and eighth-graders write creative essays about violence and pledge to make positive choices for their own lives.
“When I turned 13, I joined a gang,” Kahele writes. “I guess they thought I was something special because they got really protective over me. It was weird. I never felt protected before, and now all these people were being protective over me? I think that’s why I stayed with them, why I did all the things I did, why I sold the drugs and got in all the fights, just because I had to represent my crew, and got all the tattoos, and bragged about the scars and bruises I got. One thing I never did though -- I never shot, or jumped or killed someone just because they were from a rival crew. But others did.”
Three years after joining the gang, Kahele’s clique was at bloody war with rivals, “people were dying all over.”
The story picks back up: “My crew and I were at headquarters, trying to decide what to do next, when the door swung open with a bang.” Out came the guns. Bullets flew. Bustamente’s 8-year-old sister died. Hours later, Kahele pumped bullets into the shooter. Ended up doing time for the crime and, after getting released, coming back to the neighborhood and “teaching kids about the terrors of being in a gang, gang-related violence and child abuse.”
Told with such vivid recall, Kahele’s story leaps out of the page. You have to remind yourself that it’s fiction, part of a contest entry. But it’s also rimmed with truth. Go to any ghetto or barrio and you’re likely to find a similar story -- the names will differ but the essential facts won’t.
Bustamente’s entry screams realism, too.
“When we think of a white person, we think of a stiff, smart, successful lawyer or a corporate worker. When we look at ourselves at age nine, we think we are going to become firemen, lawyers and etc. Then when we grow up to be 13 or 15, we realize that what is expected from us is that we are going to be on the streets standing up for our barrio, selling drugs on the street corner just to help our mom with the rent.”
“… I do not think we could stop violence altogether, maybe not even at all since evil will always live around us. Also, because there is always bad in us even if you are known as the nicest person in the world.”
Hard to think Bustamente doesn’t believe at least some of those words -- about violence’s pervasiveness, about evil’s perniciousness. How many other students, of the 314,000 in ours, the nation’s fifth-largest school district, feel that way?
With more than 2 million people behind bars, America is the top jailer in the world. Research shows the link between poverty, economics and education and incarceration rates. In 2003, the U.S. Justice Department reported that “66 percent of state prison inmates with learning disabilities, and 47 percent of drug offenders, did not complete high school or a GED” and that “less educated inmates were more likely than educated inmates to be recidivists.”
This type of information has been out for years, readily available for politicians to wield in the fight for more funding for early-childhood development programs, all-day kindergarten, vocational initiatives, magnet schools, etc. We must push our elected officials to Do the Right Thing by the Kaheles and Bustamentes of the world and properly fund education, lest today’s students become tomorrow’s taxpayer-subsidized inmates.
Damon Hodge joined Las Vegas Weekly, in 2001. His specialties include hard-news stories, music reviews, pop culture commentary and occasional forays into social advocacy journalism. Hodge has won numerous awards from the Nevada Press Association. Email him at [email protected]