‘Cloud of fear’: CCSD budget issues return, Summerlin math program cut

Fifth-grade students emerged from their early bird math program at Rogich Middle School in tears on Wednesday morning after being handed a sheet telling them their class was canceled.

The program, which serves close to 60 students, will end on Friday. Parents received no notice before their children were told of the news, according to Sam Castor, whose son was in the class.

In an email to Assistant Principal Laura Alford, a parent wrote: “The parents and our children, deserve a better explanation than ‘budget concerns’ going into the 2025-2026 school year as the decision to terminate the 5th Grade early bird classes, especially given the immediacy of it.”

The developments at Rogich come just four months after the district faced what many called a “budget crisis.” In September, the school district fired its chief financial officer, Jason Goudie, after announcing a potential budget deficit. The district also had miscalculated individual school budgets, which led to schools making cuts to both staff and programming a few months into the school year.

It is unclear what is causing the current budget issues, but Rogich is not the only school affected. Most elementary schools are short anywhere from $750,000 to more than $1 million, according to National Education Association of Southern Nevada President Vicki Kreidel.

“I don’t know how this is happening, but if we don’t figure this out, it is going to crush the district,” Kreidel said at last week’s Clark County School Board meeting.

‘Cloud of fear’

At the meeting, Kreidel mentioned a “cloud of fear” in the district. She said that some schools were losing up to 10 licensed educators.

CCSD officials did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Kreidel also said that 4,000 licensed educators are not in a classroom because of issues in the school district. She predicted that educators would continue to leave, even if they did not lose their job, and warned that at some point, it would get to a point in which schools would not be able to be open anymore.

Castor, also a managing partner at the law firm Lex Tecnica who represents people in issues of both gifted and special needs students, questioned whether the removal of the class could violate state funding for gifted children.

The elementary school students in the class had tested as gifted and had arrived at the middle school by 6:50 a.m for the class. After taking the class, Castor said, children could not go back to previous math programs.

He also did not know what the impetus was for the budget issues.

“The math doesn’t add up either,” Castor said. “There’s plenty of money.”

CCSD familiar with budget issues

CCSD is no stranger to budget issues. The district ended the fiscal year without a central budget deficit after making up for it in leftover funds.

But it was the miscalculations, which were unrelated to the central budget, that had the largest effects on individual schools. Last year’s projected budget failed to include the 8 percent raises the CCSD and the Clark County Education Association had agreed to in December, and it used the incorrect formula for at-risk funding, the district has said.

CCSD under-projected the average cost of a licensed educator by $5,700, which, when multiplied by the 16,500 educators it budgeted for, meant almost $100 million spread across schools. When the issue was corrected in the fall, schools found themselves with higher costs for teachers because they had been budgeted improperly.

Another error in the January 2024 budget was the at-risk funding calculation. CCSD had calculated the amount of money schools would get for at-risk students based on the formula for free- and reduced-lunches as opposed to the GRAD score.

The newer formula, introduced last year, reduced the amount of students eligible for at-risk funding across the district by 3,035 students, which meant that, across the district, schools received $928,747 less than expected, according to documents provided by CCSD.

As a result, Gov. Joe Lombardo pledged to investigate CCSD, and Nevada Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert assigned a compliance monitor to oversee the district’s finances.

The budget has been a discussion as the district goes into the 2025 Legislature, where it will need to lobby for increased funding. The regular legislative session begins Monday in Carson City. The 2023 Legislature and Lombardo increased statewide public education funding by 25 percent, or $2.6 billion.

Castor wondered if current budget cuts were a play from CCSD to put pressure on the Legislature for more funding.

“It’s a dumpster fire on top of a nuclear waste reactor,” he said.

Contact Katie Futterman at kfutterman@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ktfutts on X and @katiefuterman.bsky.social.