Education policy doesn’t have to be a choice between investing in public schools or increasing options for low- and middle-income students. Certainly, the state can do both at the same time, right?

Gov. Joe Lombardo’s administration seems to believe so — as is evidenced by his proposal to increase education spending by $2 billion and expand the state’s Opportunity Scholarship program. 

Democratic leadership in the Assembly, on the other hand, isn’t as convinced. 

During a hearing for AB400, Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) insinuated that any tax dollars spent on providing low- and middle-income families access to private educational alternatives is effectively an attack on public education. 

“We're having a conversation about school choice, but you're asking us to make the choice to take the state's money, the tax revenue, and not put it into the public education system that we all agree is underfunded,” Yeager said. 

Putting aside the fact that Gov. Lombardo has already proposed an “unprecedented” increase in public education funding, the idea that scholarships should be opposed simply because they represent money that is “not put into the public education system” doesn’t make much sense on its own merits. After all, if that were the standard for a program’s merits, virtually every other tax credit, spending bill or social welfare proposal that spends money on something other than public classrooms would face similar opposition — including tax credits for green-energy projects, budget proposals for road repair or even health care spending. 

Clearly, given the long list of spending priorities unrelated to public education, the state is quite capable of spending money — even in the form of tax credits — on things other than traditional public schools. Giving $50 million in tax credits to businesses that donate to scholarship organizations is certainly a more noble use of public funding than, say, spending $500 million in tax “incentives” to build a baseball stadium for a team from Oakland. Right? 

Nonetheless, on Twitter, Assemblyman Yeager went on to explain that he simply doesn’t believe there’s widespread support for such a scholarship program, saying, “When I knocked on thousands of doors during the last campaign cycle, nobody asked me how the state could use its tax money to subsidize sending their children to private school.” 

It seems quite likely no one asked him to “subsidize” sending their child to a private school — in much the same way that no one argues for housing assistance by asking lawmakers to “use tax money to subsidize” their landlords. But the truth is, there are plenty of constituents out there who support the idea of providing low- and middle-income families with financial assistance so they can access the sort of educational options currently available only to wealthier Nevadans. 

If Yeager were to begin asking families whether they believe the state should help disadvantaged families access educational alternatives, recent polls indicate he might be surprised by the political breadth of support for such a program. 

To his credit, the source of Yeager’s skepticism is grounded in a well-intentioned concern for public education — a concern that he rightly understands is widespread among Nevadans. 

However, investing in public schools — with more money, better administrative practices and other systemic reforms — shouldn’t preclude giving lower-income families the financial resources they need to seek out alternatives. An “either-or” approach to education policy is not only devastating to the families and students who could benefit from greater choice, but it threatens to inflame the inequality of our current system. 

After all, the status quo segregates families by ZIP code and income — creating an environment where the wealthy and connected are able to move to different (better) school zones, pay for private school tuition or hire private tutors to help their children. Disadvantaged families, on the other hand, are relegated to merely hoping lawmakers “fix” their zoned public school in time to save their child from academic failure. 

Certainly, fixing these schools must be a priority. However, even public education advocates should recognize that improvement won’t be instantaneous — and some families are in a situation where they need access to classrooms that work better now, not several years from now. 

Are opponents of Nevada’s Opportunity Scholarship program prepared to tell those struggling families they must sacrifice another one, two or five years of their children’s educational progress simply because we can’t be bothered to pursue more than one type of education reform at a time? 

Offering more flexibility, choice and opportunity to low- and middle-income families while we invest more resources into the public schools that are failing our children shouldn’t be an impossible compromise. Indeed, among parents, it is not. Both public school investment and expanding choice programs are popular with voters across the political spectrum. 

It’s really only in legislative buildings or among partisan activists that such efforts to combine these two priorities become a contentious tug-of-war. The partisan tendency to think of policy battles as an “either-or” battle between Team Red and Team Blue is injurious to the kind of comprehensive approach to reform that’s needed to help parents and students throughout the state. 

Certainly, adopting an “all-of-the-above” approach to educational reform will upset those who view “compromise” as a dirty word — but it will be far more likely to make a tangible difference in the lives of thousands of Nevada families. And, in the end, that’s all that should really matter to policymakers. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him at SchausCreative.com or on Twitter at @schausmichael.