The Clark County School District paid consultants more than $60 million from January through June 2024, marking the largest payment across a six-month period since at least 2012.

The blinds were drawn and all was quiet when Ryan Smith and Cornell Williams scaled the steps to a white mobile home on a recent weekday morning. Despite exterior evidence suggesting otherwise, the two men had reason to believe someone might be home. That someone was a kindergarten girl who already had missed 11 days at nearby Manch Elementary School in northeast Las Vegas. So like hopeful solicitors, they knocked on the door.