Protesters who wave “Don’t cut school funding” signs at Nevada’s Gov. Sandoval in Carson City need to target the real enemy: the Washoe County School District (WCSD). These bozos are wasting our money. Big time.
Ask the parents. Better yet, ask the kids.
When WCSD called a 2-hour snow delay last week, my oldest, a high school junior, groaned, “I HATE snow delays!”
No, he was not thrilled at the chance to sleep in.
“Mom, snow delays are a TOTAL WASTE!” he complained. “They make us go to school 2 hours late, and the classes are so short, the teachers just show movies or make us play games… we don’t learn anything. They make us go, so they can get their money from the state.”
I offered to let him stay home.
“I can’t, I have to go. If I miss track practice, I can’t run in the meet this Saturday.”
His track coach has high standards: state-championship-winning standards, actually. Yet such coaches are rare among WCSD educators, a fact I learned a few days later at a conference track meet that epitomized WCSD incompetence and waste.
In their infinite wisdom, WCSD scheduled a 3-school conference track meet at the school farthest away from the other two schools. Teams from McQueen and Wooster High, located 10 minutes from each other in Reno, had to pull their athletes out of classes on a school day to travel on 5 WCSD buses to Douglas High, more than an hour away. Note: McQueen and Wooster have LARGE track teams, Douglas does not. Taxpayers paid for 5 buses and 5 bus drivers to transport the teams and coaches 60 miles each way. The buses left at 1 pm, they got back at 9 pm. Do the math. That’s a lot of wasted gas, mileage and bus driver labor hours.
Let me be clear. I hate hypocrisy, and I abhor waste. I also hate bumbling fools who think they are competent. (In contrast, I love bumbling fools who admit they are fools and bumblers… such honesty is refreshing.)
We train our athletes (kids) to be the best THEY can be, so imagine my ire when the Douglas track meet officials (adults) could not run their meet efficiently, nor could they correctly time, record, or post the results of our hardworking student athletes.
Douglas has a reputation for running excruciatingly long track meets: twice as long as other schools’. Ask the parents and kids. What would have been a 2-hour Reno meet became a ludicrous, 9-hour ordeal for our student athletes, coaches and parents. Forget the fact that the meet ran so slooowly… Douglas then had the gall to record and report incorrect results for more than half the races… their sloth was stunning! When Reno area parents pointed out obvious mistakes, Douglas staff looked at them with incredulity and suspicion. One Douglas athlete, upon being congratulated for winning his race, told the official, “I didn’t win… he did,” and pointed to my son, who had clearly beaten him. Our student athletes and parents knew the meet was a fiasco, but the Douglas officials did not. It took them hours to fix their errors, repost the correct finishers and announce the corrected results over the loudspeaker for the parents and athletes.
We tell our students to do their best… yet adults don’t have to?
When one parent expressed concern over all the mistakes, a Douglas staffer muttered, “It’s just a conference meet.” Really? Tell that to the Reno area boys and girls who missed classes, endured broken-down buses, competed their hearts out to earn new PRs (personal records), and subsisted for 9 hours on just the snacks they brought with them (Douglas didn’t bother to open their concessions stand). The Reno kids were starving and exhausted by the time they got home at 9 pm!
More concerning, if this was “just a conference meet” that didn’t matter to Douglas, why did Washoe County taxpayers pay for 5 buses and more than 45 bus driver labor hours (5 drivers x 9 hours) to transport 2 teams to Douglas, when the entire Douglas High team could have fit in 1 bus, and they would have been home in time for dinner? (In Reno, our meets run quickly, efficiently and correctly. Not boasting, it’s just a fact.)
Clearly there IS fat in the WCSD budget…. the Douglas conference track meet is just one example of wasted school district money.
Parents and taxpayers, it’s time we called out the hypocrisy, waste and incompetency in our Washoe County schools. Watching movies and playing games on snow-delay days is ridiculous. Busing huge track teams to a small school far away that can’t run a conference track meet is just plain dumb.
Putting more money in the hands of incompetent administrators is not the answer. Our kids deserve better, and they know what’s wrong with our schools.
Just ask them.
For more of Kelly’s unique perspective, subscribe to Kelly Wright in Reno.
