Merged education bills pass the Nevada Senate

CARSON CITY — Sweeping education reform soon could be coming to Nevada — if Democratic and Republican policymakers succeed in finding compromise.

Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, and Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo have merged their once-dueling education bills together, though negotiations continue into the last hours of the legislative session.

“The Office of the Governor continues to negotiate education priorities in good faith with legislative leadership,” Elizabeth Ray, spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement.

Cannizzaro’s Senate Bill 460 has absorbed parts of the governor’s Assembly Bill 584, and a 154-page amendment was released Sunday, just a day before the end of the 83rd Legislature. It passed the Senate unanimously Sunday evening and will now go to the Assembly.

“We’ve shown it’s possible to achieve bipartisan agreement surrounding greater transparency, accountability, and efficiency in our schools while still protecting public education as a core American institution,” Cannizzaro said in a Friday statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Expanding tools for accountability, raising standards, increasing pre-K options, and ensuring our teachers have more instructional time in the classroom are all parts of a bill that will ultimately result in better educational outcomes for our kids.”

Accountability still the goal

The latest version, which could still change, combines Cannizzaro and Lombardo’s efforts to increase accountability and oversight over school districts while maintaining Cannizzaro’s goals for expanded Pre-K and Lombardo’s priorities for expanded open enrollment.

SB 460 includes Lombardo’s original proposal for a statewide accountability system for school districts and his pitch to rate school districts as underperforming or low performing. When a school fails to show adequate student growth, the bill allows a superintendent to intervene over an administrator. It also allows the state to impose corrective actions, such as replacing school or district leadership and assuming state control over management.

The amendment keeps Cannizzaro’s proposed evaluation procedures for educators, and it tightens consequences for ineffective staff, including dismissals.

It also maintains her bill’s creation of an oversight board that would be impaneled if a complaint is filed alleging a school district is failing to comply with state requirements. The board would also approve or disapprove of interventions proposed by the superintendent.

Recruitment and retention efforts continue

On teacher recruitment and retention, both of which were Lombardo and Cannizzaro’s goals, the bill includes the Senate majority leader’s Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program and the governor’s salary incentive programs for educators and administrators. The bill also forms the Commission on Recruitment and Retention, originally proposed by Cannizzaro.

Cannizzaro originally proposed requiring a 17-to-1 teacher to administrator ratio, but the bill was amended to only have it apply to Clark County. Cannizzaro’s office said the ratio will be coming out of the final amendment.

Charter school changes

The new version also includes more of the governor’s goals for school choice and charter schools. It implements a statewide open enrollment system and requires the Department of Education to create a grant program to assist students in obtaining transportation to a school they attend outside of their zone of attendance. Lombardo’s proposal to allow counties to sponsor a new charter school also was included.

The combined bill keeps some of Cannizzaro’s calls for additional transparency on opportunity scholarships. Scholarship organizations must register certain information with the Department of Education to participate in the Nevada Educational Choice Scholarship Program, such as its tax exempt status. Each organization must also report annually other information, such as students’ demographic information, how much money each scholarship was and whether the student received any other scholarship.

Other adds

Cannizzaro’s other big priority was expanding pre-kindergarten programs. Her amended bill maintains that goal, calling for grants for both pre-K programs and early childhood literacy and readiness programs and expanded eligibility for children, increasing the household income threshold by 25 percent.

Lombardo proposed phonics-based integrating STEM into early literacy instruction, and that policy proposal was carried over to the amendment, as well as his calls for phonics-based instruction in English Language Arts for K-3 and immunity from civil and criminal liability for teachers who intervene in fights on school property.

The governor also proposed eliminating redundant or duplicative paperwork with some modifications such as allowing a teacher to submit a petition to modify or eliminate a requirement to report information.

Cannizzaro’s minimum qualifications for district superintendents remain in the amendment, as well as Lombardo’s creation of the Education Service Center to support underperforming districts.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.