After being left out of a 2023 bill that helped raise educator pay across Nevada school districts, charter schools leaders say new funds approved by state lawmakers this year will help them catch up. 

On Thursday, an interim legislative committee approved charter schools’ pay raise plans for the first half of the $38 million in AB398. 

It comes as schools across the state are grappling with flat per pupil funding and an increase in contributions to the state retirement system further straining budgets. 

Unlike a 2023 law that required school districts to chip in funding to cover educator raises in order to access $250 million in state money, the new funds have no such requirement. 

“It was important to me not to require a match because I knew many charter schools would not be able to afford one,” said Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas), who sponsored the bill, in an Oct. 8 statement to The Nevada Independent. 

Ignacio Prado is the executive director of Futuro Academy, a Title I charter school in East Las Vegas that serves about 500 students. He said removing that match requirement is a big help after per pupil funding only increased by $2 per student in the 2025 legislative session. 

“Trying to match with no new money would have been very difficult,” he said in a Tuesday phone interview. “If the match was required, I think you would have seen schools that might not even have been able to apply.” 

Charter schools — which recently became the state’s second largest “school district” with approximately 69,000 students on 80 campuses — operate outside of traditional school districts but receive similar public funding support, excluding local funding for facilities.

The 2023 law (that left charter schools out) resulted in Nevada’s two largest traditional school districts, Clark County and Washoe County, raising their teacher pay by about 20 percent (and a subsequent record low number of teacher vacancies). 

But some charter schools, such as Futuro Academy, chose in 2023 to dip into their per pupil funding to give raises to their staff as a way to keep up with school districts. About 60 percent to 65 percent of the school’s $6 million budget goes toward instructional staff salaries. 

Prado said Futuro slightly increased the number of students it accepted, which allowed the school to provide instructional staff with an average pay increase of 13 percent and keep up with Clark County schools’ new starting teacher salary of about $57,000. 

“We’ve had pretty decent teacher retention since then, and so hopefully it was because we made that choice to make sure we kept pace,” Prado said. 

Over the past two years, Amplus Academy, which has a K-5 campus and a K-12 campus in southwest Las Vegas serving about 2,500 students, provided its licensed educators with pay raises of 21 percent to 28 percent depending on their level of education, along with separate cost of living increases. 

Despite those pay bumps, the school’s starting salary for first year teachers with a bachelor’s degree is still trailing the district. Last year, Chief Executive Director Rachelle Hulet said the school lost at least six teachers with master’s degrees to the Clark County School District, which offered them a roughly $19,000 higher salary. 

This year, the school also chose to provide an additional cost of living adjustment to offset the employees’ share of the increased contribution rate into the state retirement system, which cost the school about $333,000.

“It was like a big punch to the gut, but we ensured that all of our teachers going into this year wouldn’t make less money,” Hulet said.

This year, Prado is anticipating using the $115,000 set aside for Futuro Academy to offer a one-time $10,000 pay increase for teachers who further their education, and $5,000 in extra pay for educators working in special education. 

Meanwhile, Hulet plans to use the $623,000 her school is expecting to provide new pay bumps ranging from $1,000 for paraprofessionals to more than $6,000 for teachers with master’s degrees. 

But she is wary of how much funding her school will receive next year if there are more teachers and new charter schools that could potentially reduce their slice of the pie. Hulet said she’s told her staff even if their funds are approved this year, “it’s not guaranteed for next year.”  

“So we just try to be realistic about it and honest with them about it, so it won’t catch them by surprise,” she said.