After Democratic lawmakers voted last week to reject Gov. Joe Lombardo’s request to fund raises for charter school teachers, Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) is proposing a $38.6 million allocation for that purpose in his bill, AB398, and setting up a mechanism to ensure those dollars are used appropriately. 

The votes that omitted charters had triggered sharp words between Democrats and Republicans in hearings and statements to the press. But Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) signaled at a hearing last week that Democratic lawmakers were working to address charter school raises and bring them up to par with how other school district raises were calculated and approved. 

"It is obviously time that we recognize our charter school teachers and education support professionals and the good work that they do every single day in educating Nevada's future leaders," Yeager said at a Thursday bill hearing in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee. 

The proposal was well received by lawmakers and charter school advocates, including Gil Lopez, the executive director of the Charter School Association of Nevada, who called it a “meaningful step to ensuring all public school educators … are treated fairly.” Still, some were concerned about whether charters would be able to provide a match if they were required to do so.

Charter schools are publicly funded, but don’t get the same transportation funding and access to local tax revenue for facility needs that school districts receive.

“I want to say thank you so much for the charter school teachers raise, because I think you could tell I was skeptical. So I apologize for doubting you,” said Assm. Jill Dickman (R-Sparks).

The proposed amendment comes after charter school teachers were left out of a 2023 bill, SB231, that created a $250 million matching fund that school districts could tap into to provide raises for teachers and support staff.

Yeager said his proposed allocation is slightly higher than the amount that Lombardo had originally proposed in his budget to account for charter schools that are sponsored by school districts. 

It’s being added to a bill that would fund additional compensation to address certain hard-to-fill teacher positions. 

The amendment comes after Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans on a budget committee voted last week to exclude charter schools from extended funding for educator and support staff raises. Though Democratic lawmakers said they were working on the issue, the vote drew the ire of some Republicans, who voted against the education budget, and Lombardo, who said he would not sign an education budget without funding for charter school educator pay raises.

In response, charter school officials warned that without funding for raises, coupled with ongoing federal funding uncertainty and the state’s per-pupil funding expected to remain relatively flat for the next two years, they could be forced to make budget cuts. 

Democratic legislative leaders said they were blindsided by Lombardo’s statement that charter school raises were a red line for him, saying they didn’t have prior knowledge of his position. 

“That was never in any conversation that I had,” Cannizzaro said at Tuesday’s IndyTalks event. “That was something that we learned in a press release.”

Under the proposed amendment, charter schools will need to follow the process laid out in 2023’s SB231, which required school districts to get an interim legislative committee’s approval for their proposed raises before they could get the funding. They also had to show they were putting in some of their own funds toward the raises to show they had skin in the game. 

“We made it very clear in SB231 we wanted this to be ongoing,” Yeager said. “It wasn't just going to be bonus money. It needed to actually be in the base salary.”

Rather than having each charter school come before that interim committee, Yeager suggested only requiring charter school sponsors such as the State Public Charter School Authority make their pitch on behalf of their schools. 

Yeager said the proposed amendment is still in the conceptual phase and he’s open to going back and looking at the matching component. 

Ignacio Prado, the executive director of Futuro Academy, a K-5 charter school in East Las Vegas, suggested the bill give credit to charter schools that already gave out raises to stay competitive with their school district counterparts. 

“We did not need an [Interim Finance Committee] process to know that we needed to make those investments in teachers, and now our budget runs very lean, very much up to the brink of what's financially responsible, while balancing compensating our teachers,” he said. “So any kind of significant match is going to be challenging.”

Extra teacher pay

In addition to the charter school raises, Yeager proposes transfering $90 million from the state’s rainy day fund, which Yeager said has a balance of $1.3 billion, to provide additional compensation for certain hard-to-fill teacher positions at school districts.

It’s similar to an approach the Clark County Education Association (CCEA) and the Clark County School District took with a portion of the SB231 funds that they dedicated to provide extra pay to attract teachers to special education positions at Title I schools with several vacancies. CCEA Executive Director John Vellardita said this strategy was effective at reducing vacancies in the targeted schools and special education positions. 

Yeager acknowledged the seriousness of proposing to tap into that emergency fund but  argued it was necessary because “it is already raining and has been raining when it comes to filling hard-to-fill positions.”

“If we are being honest with ourselves, things are only likely to get worse when it comes to education and education funding given what's happening at the federal level at the moment,” he said. 

Yeager added that he was open to finding an alternative funding source, but reiterated that he believed it was critical to fund the program. 

Yeager said because of the limited state funding, his bill would exclude charter school teachers and support staff at both systems from the extra funding for hard-to-fill positions. Vellardita said it also leaves out administrators who “make enough money.”

The Nevada State Education Association, which represents teachers and support staff statewide and is not affiliated with CCEA, opposed the bill. 

Prado also advocated for extending the funding to Title I charter schools. 

Yeager said lawmakers could potentially look at adding charter schools teachers and support staff next legislative session, but didn’t think it was fiscally responsible to include them this session.

“I sure hope we're not in a situation where we have folks opposing a bill they otherwise like simply because they aren't included in it, especially since they may be in the future,” he said. “Think about the charter schools teacher pay raises from last [session]. Here we are making good on that commitment one session later.”