Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo speaks during the 2023 State of the Schools address at Resorts World Las Vegas, Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.
Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023 | 2 a.m.
If there’s a blueprint to compromise in the upcoming session of the Nevada Legislature, lawmakers simply need to look at Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval’s eight-year tenure leading Nevada from 2011 to 2019.
In most of those years, Sandoval worked with Democratic majorities in both the state Senate and Assembly, and yet the branches were able to reach compromises and pass legislation into law.
Pre-filed education bills await lawmakers
Several education-related bills have been pre-filed and are awaiting the attention of lawmakers in the Nevada Legislature. They include:
Class sizes (A.B.42)
This bill, on behalf of the Nevada Department of Education, sets new maximum student-teacher ratios for the state’s public schools — but leaves in place the ability to request variances.
Existing law, approved in 2013, sets maximum ratios of 16 students per licensed teacher in grades K-2 and 18:1 in grade 3 in general, nonspecial education classrooms. This proposal bumps that up to 18:1 in kindergarten and 20:1 in grades 1-3.
It also sets new ratios for grades 4-12, proposing that English and math classes have a maximum student-teacher ratio of 25:1 in grades 4-6 and 30:1 in grades 7-12.
Existing law also allows districts to get variances relieving them from meeting the ratio goals. Such variances are nearly universal in the Clark County School District.
For the first quarter of 2023, 94% of CCSD’s elementary schools sought a variance, according to a report filed this month with the Department of Education. The district cited “funding limitations, facility limitations, and difficulty hiring” for its variance justification.
It’s not just a CCSD problem, though. The same quarterly report shows that every school district in Nevada except for Lander County requested at least one variance.
The vast majority of requests cited difficulty hiring and limited funds as preventing them from meeting ratio goals.
Hybrid school boards (S.B. 64)
This bill, which retired CCSD educator and former Lt. Gov. Lisa Cano Burkhead pitched last fall before leaving office, would expand every school board in the state and make them hybrids of elected and politically appointed members.
For CCSD, that would mean 11 members: seven elected and four appointed.
Under the proposal, which has been revised since Cano Burkhead unveiled it in October, each incorporated city with a population of at least 60,000 would appoint a representative to the local school, and the county commission would appoint the local board’s president.
In Clark County, one member each would come from Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson, along with the county-selected president. These four members would join the seven elected members, who represent geographic areas that aren’t drawn along city boundaries.
Washoe County would get three appointees, with city representatives from Reno and Sparks. The state’s other 15 school boards — which are in rural areas where no cities meet the population threshold — would each get one appointee, the county-appointed president.
All of Nevada’s school district’s are countywide districts, with elected boards of five or seven members, depending on population.
State lawmakers have considered hybrid and appointed school boards previously, most recently in 2021, but never successfully.
School board candidate requirements (S.B. 65)
This bill, at the request of CCSD, requires background checks and governance training for school board candidates statewide – not just sitting members but would-be members too.
The bill proposes a law that requires that anyone who runs for a school board position has first submitted to a fingerprint and FBI criminal background check and completed at least six hours of state-approved training covering public education and school board-related statutes, public records and open meeting laws, laws relating to employment and contracts, local government ethics and employee-management relations, financial management and how to identify and prevent violence in schools. This training is already required of sitting school board members after they have been sworn in.
A would-be candidate can be blocked from running if their background check turns up arrest warrants; substantiated reports of child abuse or neglect; arrests for sex crimes against children; convictions of fraud, theft, embezzlement, fraudulent conversion or misappropriation of property; and other felony convictions of any offense involving “moral turpitude.”
— Hillary Davis
The most significant occurred in 2012 when Sandoval became the nation’s first Republican governor to opt into Medicaid expansion, paving the way for more than 210,000 adults and 13,000 children in Nevada to join the program under former President Barack Obama’s landmark health law.
When Nevada’s first legislative session with Republican Joe Lombardo occupying the governor’s office begins next week, that collaboration and compromise from the early-to-mid 2010s may be on the minds of many in Carson City. Several lawmakers serving then are still in office today, meaning the spirit of working together is nothing new, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, told the Sun.
“In this building, we have a history of working in a bipartisan fashion, and we work regularly with our colleagues across the aisle,” said Cannizzaro, who was first elected in 2016. “Much of our legislation is done through compromise, discussion, negotiation, people bringing their different perspectives to the table and bringing the voices of their constituents when we’re discussing a piece of policy. So, I don’t expect that you will see anything different from that this legislative session.”
Lombardo has pledged unity with Democratic lawmakers while vowing to push conservative causes like school choice and repealing criminal justice reform legislation that he has called “soft on crime.”
Ben Kieckhefer, Lombardo’s chief of staff and a former lawmaker, said last week in a roundtable with reporters that the administration would “push aggressively” and find ways to work with the Legislature, where Democrats have a majority in the Senate and a supermajority in the Assembly.
But he also stressed, “We’re not giving up on our fundamental campaign platform before we even started. That would be a fool’s errand.”
Top priorities for Democrats, Cannizzaro said, are addressing affordable housing and codifying protections from outstate patients seeking abortions here. Democratic lawmakerss voiced some concern those issues weren’t talked about much Monday during Lombardo’s State of the State Address, but they also expressed a willingness to work with the governor on several common-ground issues.
“I think, overall, there are things in the speech that we very much agree with, and we’re excited about working on,” Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager told reporters after Lombardo’s address. “There are things in the speech that we don’t agree with and probably won’t be working on.”
That’s to be expected to some degree when different parties share control of the government, said Dave Damore, chair of the UNLV department of political science. But it also means any bill that makes it through the Legislature will almost certainly have bipartisan support.
“You can find pretty good evidence that Nevada is a good example where you have a Republican governor and Democratic legislature and they can work together,” Damore said. “Most bills coming out this session are going to either be extremely bipartisan or extremely partisan.”
He continued: “The far-right won’t have the chance to advance any legislation in the Assembly or Senate, and I think with Lombardo in office, Democrats will tell the liberal base their bills will have a long shot to becoming law.”
But Damore also noted there was always the possibility Lombardo and Democratic lawmakers may refuse to compromise.
“If there’s a standoff and they dig in, you just hope that a budget gets passed,” Damore said. “But I don’t see (a standoff coming). Lombardo has surrounded himself with an experienced team, and the legislators at the top know the process well.”
Among the places Democrats and Lombardo should be able to see eye-to-eye, Cannizzaro said, is on education. Lombardo’s proposed budget suggested fully funding the weighting levels of the state’s pupil-centered funding plan, which aims to increase outlays to public education by $2 billion over the next biennium.
Lombardo proposed increasing per-pupil funding by $2,116 to $12,406 per student in the 2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1. That’s on top of $728.5 million Lombardo is proposing to add to the state’s education stabilization account, a rainy-day fund for the state’s public school system.
That funding increase shows a huge investment Lombardo is willing to make in education, Cannizzaro said. And while the governor unveiled a teacher pipeline program meant to train and retain educators, more could be done to attract teaching talent from outstate.
“We owe it to every Nevadan to provide a quality education for our students, period,” Cannizzaro said. “We don’t have a qualified teacher in every classroom; we don’t have qualified teachers who can go in and teach every student.”
The governor in his speech also warned that if reading and performance scores don’t rise in the next two years, he’ll mull changes to the way public education is governed. What he meant exactly wasn’t clear, but Lombardo ran advocating to start a voucher program that would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars for private education. In his speech, he advocated putting aside $50 million for Opportunity Scholarships and related tax credits, which would allow parents to use public dollars on a private education, a cornerstone promise Lombardo made on the campaign trail.
Damore said providing public funds for private schools will be a hard sell to Democrats who say the state’s floundering education system is in dire need of funding.
Cannizzaro agreed.
“If you do not put a qualified teacher in every classroom, I do not know why you would ever entertain an idea to take public dollars away from those kids who deserve an education and put it toward a private corporation,” she said. “That to me doesn’t make sense. And it is a nonstarter for myself and my caucus.”
Another space lawmakers could strike a deal, Cannizzaro and Yeager said, would be addressing the state’s need to retain public employees. Lombardo said in his address he carved out provisions in the budget to give all state employees an 8% raise during the 2024 fiscal year and an additional 4% pay increase the following year. That’s in addition to $2,000 retention bonuses to be paid quarterly.
All of that is welcome, Cannizzaro said.
“I think there’s a lot of common ground there,” she said. “And, in fact, I’m working on legislation right now to help with how we pay state employees so they can actually make a living working for our state. … We know how valuable they are, and we want to make sure that we are recruiting and retaining them because they do good work for our state.”
Another “no-brainer” that will likely see Lombardo’s signature is proposed legislation that would enhance penalties for distributing and trafficking fentanyl, Damore said. The office of Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, has already filed a bill that would reclassify fentanyl possession as a category B felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
“Nobody wants to see fentanyl on the streets,” Damore said.
Cannizzaro said she was prioritizing work on a bill that would codify the executive order issued by former Gov. Steve Sisolak after the U.S. Supreme Court last summer overturned the landmark case Roe v. Wade abortion case. Sisolak’s order offered protections to any doctor in Nevada providing abortions and to safeguard patients seeking abortion care from outside Nevada from being prosecuted by their home state.
Lombardo waffled on his abortion stance throughout the campaign trail but said he would ultimately leave Sisolak’s order in place.
Whether Lombardo would sign a bill making those protections law is a different matter, Cannizzaro said.
Lombardo boasted the state would likely save $2.2 billion through various cost-saving measures throughout the biennium if his budget was passed as-is. That’s in addition to the state’s $1.7 billion cash-on-hand, which lawmakers should use to extend rent relief programs, Yeager said.
Many of the rent protections enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic are on the cusp of expiring, Yeager said. He warned if lawmakers don’t act again soon, the state could see a glut of evictions that would further exacerbate housing problems in Nevada.
“We obviously know we need to be fiscally responsible, but we’re very interested in whether that money can be used better elsewhere right now,” Yeager said. ”Could we use that for additional rental relief that is largely expiring for our people? Are there better ways to use that money? I think that’s the conversation you’re going to see, but there’s a lot of philosophical objections.
“Of course, we’ve got to save for a rainy day, but we just had the rainiest day we’ve ever had in the history of the state.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
