State funding proposal benefits Clark County schools, decreases money for others

A legislative committee supported a new funding formula Tuesday that would increase dollars to Clark County schools and decrease funding for all others in Nevada.

It recommended that Gov. Brian Sandoval and the Legislature replace the current 45-year-old formula with a new system giving more per-pupil funding for the poor, English language learners and other kinds of students who cost more to educate.

The Clark County School District, which is the state's largest school system, has most of these students.

"We always had a sense there were inequities in the funding formula," said Joyce Haldeman, the district's associate superintendent of community and government relations.

She noted that more than 90 percent of Nevada students were Caucasian when the current formula was created in 1967 to make per pupil funding consistent across the state. But demographics have changed, and the district now has 68,281 English language learners and
60 percent of its students living in poverty. "Those are tremendous odds for us to overcome."

Research shows that poor students cost twice as much to educate as the average student, and English learners cost a third more, according to Jay Chambers, investigator for the American Institutes for Research, which the committee hired for $125,000 to diagnosis problems with the current system and propose a solution.

The institute's solution would increase Clark County's state and local funding from $5,068 to $5,390 per pupil if adjustments are made, but other county districts would experience cuts, from $96 less per student in Washoe County to $4,408 less per student in Esmeralda County. The rural county northwest of Clark County receives the most funding under the state's current formula, getting $17,508 per student.

The committee will forward this formula to the Legislature but didn't want to recommend the extra funding weights given to student groups as the institute did, leaving that open-ended.

Although Clark County schools would benefit from the new formula, Haldeman said the district doesn't want to "take money from other counties."

But the Legislature charged the committee and Institute with re-slicing the existing pie because additional state funding isn't expected. For Clark County to get more, others would have to be given less. To soften the blow, the institute recommended slowly taking from the 16 counties.

Sen. Greg Brower supported the "measured approach," noting that his Washoe County and rural counties would take a hit.

Another reason the rural counties would receive less is labor costs.

Nevada's consultant has found that the state gives more money to "districts that in actuality have lower than average labor costs." It determined that by looking at the National Center for Education Statistics' Comparable Wage Index, comparing the cost of all workers that can demand higher wages in areas with a higher cost of living or lack of amenities. Using this index would favor urban Clark and Washoe counties but take money from all the rural counties.

With the new formula, the committee will ask Sandoval to recommend a new method for counting students. Districts perform one head count on the last day of September and receive funding for that number of students, no matter what happens over the course of the year. Other states instead provide funding based on average daily attendance.

Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.