Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) are calling for greater school accountability and consequences for failing to meet state expectations in their separate, long-anticipated education bills that received their first hearings last week.

On the heels of a 2023 legislative session when lawmakers approved a historic $2 billion (26 percent) increase in K-12 education funding and a $250 million matching fund to support teacher and support staff raises, the two bills this session look to set up state-led interventions for schools and districts that aren’t meeting standards set by the legislation. 

It comes as Nevada student proficiency in math and English language arts are not yet back to pre-pandemic levels, and in some cases below the national average as schools continue to struggle with elevated chronic absenteeism. The state’s annual per-pupil funding continues to lag behind the national average by $4,000 — and per-pupil funding is poised to remain relatively flat under the 2025 education budget bill, SB500. 

Cannizzaro’s bill comes with a $105 million price tag above what’s already appropriated in the K-12 education budget bill, and includes funding for charter school raises, early childhood education and a state teacher apprenticeship program. 

Cannizzaro’s SB460 also seeks greater transparency around two initiatives championed by Republicans — charter schools and the state’s Opportunity Scholarship program, which offers needs-based private school scholarships for low-income students. It’s funded by donations from businesses in exchange for tax credits.

Democrats have criticized the program since its inception, and the program was a political flashpoint in 2023 over efforts to expand it and scrutiny over how it is managed.  

“We as a legislative body owe it to the people who have elected us, to the taxpayers, to make sure we're making good use of those dollars and allow us to have some insight into that data to make those determinations,” Cannizzaro said during the bill’s Monday hearing in the Senate Education Committee.

Lombardo’s bill, AB584, proposes creating mechanisms to help students leave a school they are zoned for if it is considered to be low performing, including providing state funds that could be used to pay for tuition at an eligible private school. It also adds transportation funding for charter schools to the state’s Pupil-Centered Funding Plan formula. 

“This bill delivers on a core commitment and belief of mine: Every Nevada student deserves access to a high-quality education regardless of their ZIP code or their family's income,” Lombardo said during the Assembly Ways and Means Committee’s Thursday meeting. 

Lombardo’s bill seeks a total appropriation of almost $11 million, including $8 million to develop and implement a school district performance framework. The bill doesn’t specify how much could be appropriated in the future for charter school transportation or to cover educational expenses for students leaving low-performing schools. 

The top Democratic lawmaker and governor both began discussing their education priorities before the session began in early February, though some of their more ambitious plans have since been scaled back as the state faces an economic slowdown.  

Interim State Superintendent of Public Instruction Steve Canavero couldn’t provide lawmakers with an estimate of how much the state would need to spend in the future on charter school transportation funding and other programs included in Lombardo’s bill — an uncertainty not appreciated by Democratic lawmakers. 

“It may be a next biennium issue, but it's a this biennium conversation that we have to have so we're not putting the Legislature and the state on a fiscal cliff,” said committee Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno (D-North Las Vegas). 

School district accountability and governance

Cannizzaro’s bill would create a state oversight board to address issues at school districts, including school boards not following state law. 

Following issues in Clark County School District (CCSD) with wide community dissatisfaction with former Superintendent Jesus Jara and a recent budget crisis after his departure, her bill establishes minimum requirements for new superintendents and chief financial officers for the school districts in Clark and Washoe counties. Cannizzaro said the bill requires superintendents at those school districts to be removed at any time if they aren’t meeting the expectation set in their annual evaluation or refuse or fail to comply with and carry out the requirements of their titles. 

It also gives the Nevada Department of Education final say on their hiring, and the authority to remove a Clark or Washoe superintendent if at least a third of district schools are not demonstrating academic growth. 

School boards would also be allowed to remove principals if a school doesn’t meet goals outlined in new plans to improve academic achievement. 

Lombardo’s bill goes a step further and sets up a mechanism to remove principals and superintendents at schools and districts statewide rated as chronically underperforming — based on their students’ academic performance, performance of their leaders and organizational health. The bill also calls for state takeovers of chronically underperforming school districts and possible transfer of management to a local government or a conversion to a charter school. 

Canavero estimates more than half of schools in the state are underperforming academically. 

“While some schools are excelling, too many students remain underserved,” Lombardo said during the Thursday meeting. “This legislation aims to change that.”

The idea of converting low-performing schools into charters is not new. The mechanism was passed into law in 2015 under Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, but abolished in 2019. 

But Democratic lawmakers such as Assm. Selena Torres-Fossett (D-Las Vegas) criticized the new bill for proposing punitive measures against struggling schools before providing them with support.

“What I would like to see instead is that school leaders receive support early on, so that they're not receiving disciplinary action,” Torres-Fossett said. 

Education advocate Ed Gonzalez questioned a provision in the governor’s bill that would potentially limit or suspend the authority of individual CCSD schools granted under the 2017 so-called reorganization bill, AB469, which shifted more budgeting and decision-making power to school organization teams that consist of principals, school staff, parents, community members and students, if their principal does poorly in their evaluation. 

A proposed amendment to Cannizzaro’s bill goes much further, overhauling the law for all CCSD schools and shifting more control over staffing and funds back to school district leadership. 

Clark County Education Association Executive Director John Vellardita, who was part of an advisory committee that helped develop the reorganization framework, said during the Thursday hearing that the reorganization has not produced the results it was designed to, citing the school district’s low math and English language art proficiency rates. 

“If SB460 is passed with this amendment, this will give the new board of trustees and the new superintendent, who are now being held to a higher standard of accountability for student outcomes, the ability to intervene and help manage a student's education,” he said.

School choice options

Cannizzaro’s bill aims to expand reporting requirements for private schools that enroll students using Opportunity Scholarships, including tracking scholarship recipients who end up being expelled from or withdrawing from private schools, and requiring recipients to take the same standardized tests as their district counterparts. 

“If, in fact, those students are learning better and if, in fact, they are excelling, we should be able to see that data so that we can then make assessments about whether or not that is a program that we should continue to fund,” Cannizzaro said. 

Democrats opposed Lombardo’s pitch to expand the program during the 2023 legislative session, and became even more critical of it after they determined there was insufficient data on the students in the program and found that a single organization, the Florida-based AAA Scholarship Foundation, had claimed all the tax credits available for that year — leaving the other organizations who had previously issued scholarships in a bind.

"We didn't know how many students, we didn't know where they were. It turns out that there was just not a lot of that information. So this bill is seeking to remedy them," Cannizzaro said.

Cannizzaro’s proposed changes were met with backlash from students, parents and supporters of the charter schools and the Opportunity Scholarship who waited at the Legislature for hours to oppose the bill, though many were unable to get a chance to speak before lawmakers. 

“We don’t need more regulation,” wrote school choice advocate Valeria Gurr in testimony submitted to the committee. “We need more support for school choice so more students can access the education that works for them.”

Cannizzaro assured them this would not take away existing charter schools’ ability to operate or restrict the Opportunity Scholarship program, though her bill does include a provision to block a private school that doesn’t comply with the reporting requirements from receiving the scholarship funds.

Meanwhile, Lombardo seeks to expand school choice, especially for students at low performing schools. His bill would expand open enrollment policies to make it easier for those students to transfer to another school within the district, and expects districts to provide some kind of transportation support. CCSD estimated in a fiscal note that this could cost the district between $5 million and $7 million.

His bill also sets up a new program, the Nevada Integrity in Academic Funding program, which would allocate money to parents to cover qualifying educational expenses such as private school tuition and fees and specialized services for students with disabilities. The bill appropriates $850,000 to set up the program, but doesn’t have additional funding.

Democrats on the Assembly Ways and Means Committee didn’t seem open to Lombardo’s attempts to provide state support for students to attend private school. Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) likened it to the voucher-style Education Savings Account program that the Nevada Supreme Court ruled had an unconstitutional funding mechanism and was strongly opposed by legislative Democrats. 

Teacher pay

During his State of the State address, Lombardo pledged to make the funding for school district educator raises permanent and extend those raises to charter schools. Lawmakers are advancing a budget that includes those raises for educators in traditional schools, but have kept the charter school raise proposals separate.

Cannizzaro’s bill appropriates an additional $38 million to support charter school raises. Yeager recently proposed an amendment in his bill, AB398, that would also allocate about $38 million for that purpose. 

Still, Republicans have complained that the charter raises are not in the main education budget bill, and have voted against it. It’s the latest chapter in the feud between Democrats and Republicans over charter school raises that began during the 2023 legislation session and led to a budget impasse that resulted in a special session. 

“Cannizzaro’s bill has so many bad things in it that I am not going to support her bill,” said Sen. Minority Leader Robin Titus (R-Wellington) told The Nevada Independent on Friday. “If she really wanted accountability, she could have had a separate policy bill, without the money, and put it back in the governor’s budget.”

Titus added that she’s crafting an emergency, standalone bill on funding for charter school raises so Republicans can have something to point to in case Democrats call them out for not supporting Cannizzaro’s and Yeager’s bills. 

Key bills also propose tapping into reserves, such as Yeager’s bill, AB398, which would transfer $90 million from the state’s rainy day fund, which has a balance of $1.3 billion, to provide additional compensation for certain hard-to-fill teacher positions. 

The education budget bill, SB500, proposes pulling more than $242 million from a rainy day fund dedicated for education, the state Education Stabilization Account — representing about a fourth of the $850 million in reserves, to make up for education funding gaps after lower-than-expected revenue forecasts. 

Lombardo’s bill would establish a mechanism to draw up to $30 million in surplus dollars from the Education Stabilization Account, to provide bonuses to some high-performing teachers. 

“I may not be in agreement that that would be the best … use of those funds,” Monroe-Moreno said. 

Reporter Tabitha Mueller contributed to this story.