Accountability.

It’s a word that Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo has repeatedly used for the Silver State’s bottom of the barrel education system, including two years ago when he approved the largest K-12 education funding increase in state history and said there was no longer an excuse for underperformance.

And it’s also a common refrain for Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas), who called for ensuring “schools are more transparent and accountable to deliver for students, parents, and our community.”

Those efforts this year culminated in SB460, a compromise between the two that established numerous accountability standards for schools, including a rating system for districts and giving the state the ability to place struggling school districts or sponsors of charter schools under probation or even under state control, with the power to remove principals or other personnel.

Spearheaded by party leaders, it passed with only four Assembly Democrats — all of them current or former teachers — against. 

Nevada’s two major teachers unions, the politically powerful Clark County Education Association (CCEA), which had a hand in SB460, and the Nevada State Education Association (NSEA), a frequent rival of CCEA, were divided on the bill. CCEA said it “stands in support for higher standards of accountability,” while NSEA said the measures “could set up schools with high concentrations of poverty up for failure.” 

But some of the leaders of the state’s 17 school districts worry that the bill and its new requirements will put in place standards impossible to meet without more funding, especially as district budgets are hammered by student enrollment declines, increased costs and federal funding uncertainties.

During a June 17 interview, Carson City School District Superintendent Andrew Feuling and the superintendents for the Eureka County and White Pine County school districts said while they support accountability, “models of fear and compliance” aren't effective.

Lombardo’s spokeswoman said in a Saturday statement that “all Nevada students deserve to be career and college ready upon graduation,” which requires “school districts, teachers, and administrators serve students at the highest level.” 

Cannizzaro did not immediately respond to The Nevada Independent’s request for comment on the superintendents’ concerns.

Compounding the issue, superintendents said, is that lawmakers again failed to advance any legislation that would increase state revenue to improve school funding — despite years of recommendations from school finance experts on how to raise the state’s per-pupil funding to the national average.

“We do not have the resources to provide the level of service to kids that the state actually is requiring us to do,” Feuling said. 

Funding

Lawmakers ended the 2023 legislative session celebrating a historic $2.6 billion increase in K-12 education funding without any new taxes — propelled by an increase in projected tax revenues attributed to post-pandemic inflation. 

This session, lawmakers were constrained by lower-than-expected projected tax revenues and eventually approved a modest increase of $300 million for the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan over the next two years, bringing the statewide base per-pupil funding amount to $9,416 for the 2025-26 school year. That increase marked only a $2 increase from the previous school year, though it will go up to $9,486 per pupil (a $70 increase) for the 2026-27 school year. 

But critics, including Educate Nevada Now, say that the relatively flat funding levels effectively amount to a reduction in funds when accounting for inflation.

It also comes as school districts’ budgets are being strained by federal funding uncertainties, lower student enrollment — driven by declining birth rates and more students shifting to charter schools and private schools — and cost increases, notably the 3.25 percent rate increase to the Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS), the state’s retirement plan, which kicked in July 1. 

“The cost of everything, literally everything, has gone up substantially and I think the increase in PERS is really, really a detriment on top of this,” said Eureka County School District Superintendent Tate Else. “So I think that being able to keep teachers whole is going to be a really, really large challenge for school districts.”

The Clark County School District, the state’s largest school district with about 300,000 students, is projecting an enrollment decline of more than 7,000 students for the next school year, which it estimates could cost $38 million.  

At the Washoe County School District, the PERS rate increase translates to a $975 reduction in take-home pay for an employee making $60,000 a year and a $1,592 net cost increase for the district for that employee. In total, the net cost to the district’s general fund is $4.6 million. 

Last year, the Clark County School District experienced an unexpected $11 million budget deficit last school year, but didn’t report any funding issues in its latest $4.1 billion budget for the upcoming year. Other school districts confronted budget deficits through a combination of position freezes or tapping into their reserves to hold off on staffing cuts. 

Washoe County reduced its budget deficit down from almost $10 million in February to about $2 million through cost-saving measures such as consolidating, freezing or eliminating certain positions, restructuring some departments, reducing traveling and training for central office staff and fee increases. The deficit now represents less than 1 percent of the district’s total budget ($700 million) and the shortfall will be absorbed by the district’s ending fund balance, officials said. 

White Pine School District Superintendent Adam Young said his district avoided cutting any staff positions despite facing a deficit of $675,000 (primarily driven by enrollment decline), citing a desire to keep essential services such as social workers in place for the district’s 1,200 students. 

“We've got a little bit of reserves to kick the can down the road for a couple of years, but not for long,” he said. 

Young, Feuling and Else lamented that the Legislature hasn’t fully embraced recommendations from the Commission on School Funding to get Nevada’s per-pupil funding closer to the national average. The recommendations primarily center on expanding the state’s sales tax base and reforming the state’s property tax system — ideas that have fallen short in recent legislative sessions.

“We've spent probably hundreds of thousands of dollars making this happen, and in two sessions now with this information, nobody has the will to do anything with it,” said Feuling, who previously sat on the commission. 

During a February IndyTalks event, Lombardo downplayed the commission’s recommendations. A resolution by Assm. Natha Anderson (D-Reno), AJR1, that would have tweaked the state’s property tax structure and sent more revenue to local governments and schools passed out of the Assembly but died in the Senate.

Feuling argues there will never be an ideal moment to implement these measures.

“It really comes down to, do we want to make this happen or not?” he asked. 

Lawmakers this session did renew $250 million for school district raises originally adopted in 2023, and another bill by Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) allocated $90 million to provide additional compensation for certain hard-to-fill teacher positions. 

Clark County Superintendent Jhone Ebert, who previously served as the state superintendent of public instruction, said these additional funds will be crucial for upcoming union contract negotiations and will help address a long-standing problem.

“This funding helps with closing that gap,” she said in a separate, June 27 interview.

The Washoe County School District wasn’t immediately available for an interview by publication time.  

Accountability 

The compromise education bill from Lombardo and Cannizzaro calls for a new statewide system of accountability that will rate school districts and sponsors of charter schools based on their performance and whether they are meeting targets set by the state — similar to the existing star rating system for individual schools. 

Struggling school districts or sponsors of charter schools would be placed under probation and subject to other interventions, including state takeover, if they fail to show improvements. Schools found to be persistently underperforming could have their principal or other key personnel removed. 

The new statewide accountability system will be developed this upcoming school year, with the low-performing schools being placed under probation as early as the 2027-28 school year, and districts by the 2028-29 school year, followed by targeted interventions for those that continue struggling. 

Ebert argued that districts can already remove principals when they feel it's necessary. 

“The bill now, though, specifically targets student achievement data,” Ebert said. 

Other superintendents are skeptical as to whether the bill will result in better student outcomes. 

Young said he’s opposed to rating systems that reduce the complexities of everything that goes on in schools to a single star or letter grade. 

“If we're not supporting them with resources, then how dare we label them?” he said. 

He also worries that the new accountability system will have a chilling effect on districts’ recruitment and retention. 

“I think that we run the risk of exacerbating the teacher shortage that already exists in the state, because no teacher, no principal wants to be dragged through the mud when they feel like they're already doing the best that they can do,” he said. “I don't think that this type of fix is actually a fix. I just think it kind of emphasizes things that have already been shown not to work.”

Young, from White Pine, took issue with the bill’s new Public School Oversight Board. The board would be impaneled if a complaint is filed alleging a district is failing to comply with state requirements, and it would have the authority to approve interventions for persistently underperforming schools or systems that involve “significant changes.”

Young said he thinks the new board undermines local control and can potentially take decision-making power away from locally elected school board members closest to the situation.

“We all really believe strongly that innovation and positive change is best hatched at the local level,” he said. 

Ebert, however, embraces the new accountability aspects, and said her district will benefit from being clear and transparent about where schools are at.

“I think what we need to do as a school system is get better at getting better,” she said. “We need to move faster than we currently are with our students for academic achievement.”