CCSD Financial Picture: Who Knows & Who Cares????

From the Las Vegas Sun: This has all the makings of fiscal chaos:
Before the Clark County School District knows how much money it’ll have for the next two years, it will first have to:
• Negotiate contracts with teachers, administrators and clerical staff.
• Talk employees out of pay raises they were scheduled to receive.
• Decide whether to lay off of as many as 3,800 teachers and others, or cut 33 days out of the school year, or cram so many students into classroom as to risk making them unmanageable.
• Adopt a final budget by May.
And then, maybe by late June at best, the district will know how much money it has to spend under the budget hammered out by Gov. Brian Sandoval and the Legislature.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/feb/18/school-board-hears-grim-budget-details-it-confront/
Ok, we know the situation is not very good. There is a lot of blame to go around, especially those who have been on the the school board now and the past and the past superintendent.
So, what is CCSD doing about the budget?
Well, the district is not doing any cost cutting now. As a teacher in CCSD, I haven't seen any e-mails saying we need to cut money. In fact, I got an e-mail the other week saying that we need to spend money or we will lose it. The superintendent has not asked us to cut costs. No mention of cutting utilities, saving paper, stop going on field trips or other small, but meaningful cuts.
In the article, they say they may want to sue the legislatures and governor for raiding certain funds. Great and how long will that take and what are you going to do in the meantime?
The union says they are just beginning to negotiate? Just beginning? This should have been going on for months now.
They have not asked for a show of hands of who is retiring or quitting. But they probably know not too many people are going to be retiring or quitting because there are teaching jobs available nationwide and it is tougher to retire now than in the past.
Of course CCSD is talking about spending money. From a different article in the Sun: In Clark County, one-third of schools are 40 years or older and there are $4.9 billion in needs for rehabilitation in the next 10 years, officials said. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/feb/18/school-union-officials-back-bill-school-constructi/
So, what is CCSD going to do in the next month or so? I don't know, but they better be some quick thinkers on ways to cut hundreds of millions of dollars.
And Wisconsin school districts think they have problems. They are a bunch of whiners compared to CCSD.