Programming note: Now that summer is in full swing, we are scaling back this newsletter to every two weeks.

Gov. Joe Lombardo put down his veto pen Friday with his new total of 87 vetoes surpassing his record-breaking number from the previous session. Here are some of the latest education-related bills that were axed last week: 

• Ban on book bans: The governor rejected AB416, a bill from Assm. Brittney Miller (D-Las Vegas) that would have prohibited school and library boards from banning books and instead required challenges to petition a court to get a book removed.
  • Lombardo said in his veto message that “decisions about what library materials are appropriate for students should be made locally,” and punting those calls to the court would make the process “slow, costly, and adversarial.” 
  • This came after Lombardo vetoed a similar bill against book ban efforts, AB445, which would have given immunity to librarians providing access to materials in “good faith,” as they face threats from conservatives objecting to books with sexual themes. 
• Opportunity Scholarship administration:AB441, sponsored by Assm. Daniele Monroe-Moreno (D-North Las Vegas), would have added new guardrails and deadlines for organizations administering the state’s Opportunity Scholarship program — which grants private school scholarships to low-income students.
  • Lombardo said the bill would have weakened the program’s “ability to provide consistent, equitable access to education, especially for students from low-income families.”

You can find our veto tracker, which summarizes all 87 bills Lombardo turned down, here. 

I want to hear from you! Send questions, comments or suggestions on what I should be covering to [email protected]. 

News briefs

💲Clark County School Board hires new chief financial officer — The Clark County School Board voted unanimously on Thursday to hire Justin Dayhoff, an education research director from Maryland, as the district’s new chief financial officer, more than eight months after it fired its previous CFO, Jason Goudie, after it discovered an $11 million budget shortfall. Dayhoff will receive an annual salary of $210,000, according to his contract, which ends June 30, 2026. 

During the school board’s Thursday meeting, Superintendent Jhone Ebert told the board Dayhoff was vetted by internal and external staff, including a CFO at another Nevada school district and the district’s compliance monitor, who was appointed by the state after the district’s budget issues.

The votes came after lawmakers passed a bill this session, SB460, that will add new qualifications for new superintendents and CFOs for the Clark and Washoe county school districts and give the Nevada Department of Education the opportunity to review the candidates before they are hired. 

The board also voted to appoint Kirsten Searer, president and chief strategy officer of the Public Education Foundation, a local nonprofit that frequently partners with the district, as the district’s new chief community engagement officer. Searer, who spent years as a spokesperson and community engagement staffer for the district, will receive an annual salary of $190,000. Her contact expires June 30, 2026.

School Spotlight

Nevada children’s health, economic well-being drop as state holds on to low ranking

Nevada children’s health and economic well-being dropped for a second year in a row, as the Silver State continues to rank 47th out of 50 states in children’s well-being in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2025 Kids Count Data Book. 

The report looks at 16 indicators of children’s well-being in four categories: economic well-being, education, health and family and community. 

This year’s data book notes some bright spots across the country in the latest data for 2023 compared to 2019, including a slight reduction in child poverty, fewer teen births and more children with health insurance. 

But the foundation said serious challenges remain as 16 percent of children still live in poverty, and nearly 1 in 3 children live in households struggling with high housing costs. 

In Nevada, that equates to 108,000 children living in poverty and almost 250,000 children living in households with a high housing cost burden. 

Nevada did worse overall in education. The state experienced a decrease in the percentage of children ages 3 and 4 not in school — 67 percent between 2019-23 compared with 64 percent between 2014-18 — and saw drops in the percentage of fourth graders not proficient in reading and eighth graders not proficient in math. The percentage of high school students not graduating on time also slightly increased from 16 percent during the 2018-19 school year to 18 percent in 2021-22 school year. 

This year’s data book came out June 9, a week after the conclusion of the legislation session. 

Tara Raines, deputy director of the Children’s Advocacy Alliance of Nevada, a local nonprofit, said the data book is meant to be a guide on what areas the state should focus on improving. 

“There are little ways in which we as a state can build an infrastructure to ease the burden of families and improve family and child well-being overall,” she said. 

One of the ideas is expanding access to pre-K in Nevada to improve student achievement. 

She said pre-K not only prepares young children socially and academically to enter the K-12 school system, but it also helps parents by freeing up their time so they can go to work. 

Before the session, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) had proposed funding universal pre-K in her education omnibus bill, SB460. The Children’s Advocacy Alliance estimated the state would need to spend an additional $117 million per year on pre-K above its 2024 funding level, which was about $107 million, to get there, according to the nonprofit’s analysis. 

But the universal pre-K proposal fizzled out during the session after economic uncertainty at the state level. Cannizzaro’s bill’s funding for early childhood education was reduced to $21 million. 

It also included provisions to expand state-funded pre-K programs to 4-year-olds from families with incomes below 250 percent of the federal poverty level, an increase from the previous level, 200 percent. The expansion also adds in children whose primary language is not English or who are from a historically vulnerable and underserved population. 

“By having programs that are targeting the kids who are less likely to have access to it … it’ll be a game changer because it’s so expensive,” she said. 

In Nevada, pre-K can cost between $700 to $1,000 per month for families who don’t qualify for the state-funded programs, according to Raines.   

Raines said she was also concerned about the slight uptick in low birthweight babies in Nevada. She said a bill proposed this session, AB340, would have mandated insurance companies cover screenings and assessments for developmental disorders, which would have allowed families to access early intervention services. 

“We know those babies are at the highest risk for the development of various developmental disorders and middle-class families are going to have to come out of pocket to pay for that testing and likely the interventions,” she said. 

But Raines is optimistic that legislation that did make it through that could benefit children in the near future, including SB165, which would establish regulations and licensing opportunities for behavioral health and wellness practitioners. Those providers are trained to identify early warning signs of mental health disorders, trauma and emotional distress, and can offer kids and families strategies on how to mitigate those issues. 

“I'm excited about the addition of this new profession to Nevada, because I think it really will help in education, and it could help in other areas as well,” she said.

Have a student or staffer who we should feature in the next edition of School Spotlight? Share your nominations with me at [email protected].

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🦈 Looks like summer is off to a fin-tastic start!