Nevada legislation would overhaul school closure notification, review process

The Nevada Legislature during its next session starting in February will hear a proposal that would restrict how school districts close schools.

The legislation doesn’t specify any districts’ recent closure actions as the reason for the proposal, according to a draft last week from the Joint Interim Standing Committee on Education.

However, the preliminary language outlines the circumstances that put the tiny elementary school on rural Mount Charleston in limbo, and the sharp community pushback that ensued, after severe flooding swept down the mountain more than a year ago.

The bill would make the written notices of potential closure that state law already requires to be more detailed, with the reason for the recommendation to close, any documentation of costs associated with the closure, and the scope of work necessitated to keep the school open included in the notices.

All neighbors of the school would receive the notice of the potential closure.

An amended school closure law would also “clarify that under no circumstances may a school be recommended for closure if impacted by a fire or flood, or for any reason relating to enrollment.”

Furthermore, the bill calls for state law to specify that if no action is taken by a school board on an administrative recommendation to close a school, or if it votes to not close the school, the school must remain open.

School boards’ decisions, after any reconsideration hearing, would also be subject to review by the State Board of Education prior to any legal challenge to the local school board’s decision.

Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod, D-Las Vegas, pitched the education committee on the bill last month. The committee moved along the proposal and 14 other legislative concepts that will either lead to standalone bills or be combined.

Assemblywoman Alexis Hansen, R-Sparks, and state Sens. Marilyn Dondero Loop, D-Las Vegas and Carrie Buck, R-Henderson, had concerns about local school boards’ autonomy.

Hansen represents a vast swath of Northern Nevada that covers six rural counties. In one of them, Lander County, three of the four schools are in the population center of Battle Mountain — an elementary school, a middle school and a high school.

The fourth school is an all-grades school in Austin, a remote community of less than 200 residents 89 miles from Battle Mountain. Austin Combined School enrolled 11 students last year, according to the Nevada Department of Education.

Hansen said the Lander County School District has struggled over its enrollment challenge in Austin but the board ultimately decided to keep the school open.

“I need to have some conversation with the superintendents in my (school) districts,” she said. “Because we’ve dealt with this before, I don’t know if it’s broken. But I do get the reason for wanting to have that protection.”

Bilbray-Axelrod said she included the enrollment provision to protect rural schools. She said that though the Lander County board didn’t close the Austin school because of low enrollment, it could have.

“To me it’s really clear,” she said. “It’s access to education for children.”

District administrators can recommend that a school be closed, but current law puts the ultimate power in school boards’ hands.

Before the board votes, districts must give 30 days’ written notice to the principal, teachers and parents of enrolled students at the affected school, plus publish a notice of the meeting where the vote will take place in a newspaper at least 10 days ahead of time.

The boards’ decisions are subject to a reconsideration hearing if a member of the public requests one in writing. These reconsiderations are subject to judicial review.

Locally, the most recent heartburn over possibly closing a school came in the past year with Lundy Elementary School on Mount Charleston.

Lundy closed suddenly in August 2023 after Tropical Storm Hilary soaked the mountain, bypassed historic runoff channels and created a new drainage path through campus. Engineers said the rushing water carved out an 11-foot-deep crater in the parking lot that threatened the building’s foundation and destroyed its septic system. In the interim, the district assigned Lundy students to Indian Springs Elementary some 40 miles away.

District officials say Lundy is unsafe and estimate it would cost $5.5 million to $6.5 million to repair. Mount Charleston residents and their allies say CCSD kept them in the dark on the proposal to permanently shutter the school, which often served as a community center. About a dozen children attended Lundy in the 2022-23 school year.

In June, separate school board votes on rejecting and accepting closure failed, so the board ultimately took no action on administrators’ recommendation to permanently close the school.

Children who would have attended Lundy are still being bused to Indian Springs, unless they pursue another option like homeschooling or transferring schools.

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