EDITORIAL: Show him the money: Lombardo pursues audit of education spending

Many have talked about it, but Gov. Joe Lombardo is finally doing something about it.

This month, Gov. Lombardo issued an executive order requiring school districts and charter schools to submit all external audits to his finance office. This includes both financial and performance audits. The governor’s finance team will review the information. Before the end of the year, it will issue a report “summarizing the findings of its review, identifying any deficiencies and providing recommendations to remedy the identified deficiencies.”

There have long been calls to audit the Clark County School District. They grew loud when the district was in dire financial straits a few years ago.

Last fall, legislative Democrats decided they, too, wanted an accounting of the district’s finances. They vowed to seek a bill directing the Legislature to examine the books. Then-Assemblywoman Maggie Carlton noted that such a review hadn’t been conducted since 2004. She thought an audit would help lawmakers “more proactively engage with CCSD,” especially when it came to understanding how the new funding formula is working.

Accountability is vital, especially when it involves billions of dollars spent by a consistently underperforming system. Taxpayers question what they get for their money when so many children lack proficiency in reading and mathematics. Members of the educational establishment bang the tin cups on an annual basis, blaming a lack of “investment” for the poor outcomes. When lawmakers pour more money into the system — as they usually do — education officials are inevitably back asking for more.

That’s why it’s good to see Gov. Lombardo take the lead. At a minimum, this executive order lets education officials know there’s a new sheriff in Carson City, and he isn’t satisfied with the status quo.

The governor should direct his auditors to dig deep. It’s unlikely they will discover overt fraud, although special attention should be paid to how schools spent their coronavirus cash. Pre-COVID, the Clark County School District was routinely low on money because it awarded hefty pay hikes to teachers and other staff. State-imposed prevailing-wage requirements made construction projects more expensive.

Gov. Lombardo needs to focus on the effectiveness of education spending. Does blindly paying the same people more improve student achievement? How can collective bargaining be reformed to eliminate a union’s ability to hold up programs such as incentivizing teachers to move to low-performing schools? Why do current evaluation metrics conclude that the district has only 11 “ineffective” teachers when more than 60 percent of third graders can’t read at grade level? Class-size reduction is politically popular, but 30 years later, where’s the evidence that it helps?

Gov. Lombardo has proposed spending an additional $2 billion on the state’s public schools. A deep dive into the system’s finances is vital to ensure any new funds aren’t squandered. A comprehensive audit is a much-needed endeavor.