Council Members Express Support For AB420

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

Mesquite City Council members expressed unanimous support last week for a measure, currently before the State Legislature, that would form an independent school district out of the eight schools in the northeastern Clark County communities. At a meeting held on Tuesday, April 11, the council voted to instruct city staff to draft a resolution in support of Assembly Bill 420 (AB420) and to direct Warren Hardy, the city’s lobbyist at the legislature, to work towards the bill’s passage.

The council first heard reports from members of an ad-hoc committee of area residents that have worked over the past year on drafting, presenting and garnering support for AB420.

Former Virgin Valley Elementary School principal Cathy Davis said that she had gotten involved in the effort because she wanted to “ensure that children in Virgin Valley and Moapa Valley have the best educational foundation that can be provided.”

She added that local schools, under the urban-centered CCSD have begun to see that foundation crumbling. “Over my 16 years as VVES principal, I received budgets from Clark County that allowed for staffing and paper and not much of anything beyond that,” Davis said. “Again and again we had to generate funding through local businesses and other sources.”
“I always wondered if we would do better if we were in an independent district and our individual schools could control our expenditures,” Davis added.

Davis summarized a study by the Nevada Police Research Institute which found that small school districts with student population counts between about 1,600 and 6,000 were most effective at focusing resources on education.
“Here we would be looking at a school district a little over 4,000 students; right in that sweet spot where we could actually benefit,” Davis said.

Logandale resident and long-time education advocate Lindsey Dalley was the next committee member to address the council.

Dalley addressed the commonly asked question of whether an independent northeast Clark County school district would come at additional cost to the city.
“The answer to that is no,” Dalley said. “Funding for education in Nevada is the state’s responsibility and not the county’s. The State Department of Education manages, ensures funds are adequate and directs all Nevada school districts. They would be the controlling authority on this. There would be no added responsibility placed on the city to keep the new district viable.”

Dalley explained that a 2017 bill to reorganize the Clark County School District (CCSD) had also created a new education funding formula for Nevada. This dispenses state-wide revenues for education to school districts on a per-pupil basis and not a share of that district’s local property tax. That change is what made the presentation of AB420 possible, Dalley said.

“Education funding is no longer based on your tax base,” Dalley said. “All the education funding from the state goes into one pot and then it is divided up according to how many students you have in your schools.”

Dalley explained that, with a locally controlled school district, a larger percentage of funding would come directly to the schools where the principals and School Organizational Teams (SOTs) would determine its best use. Currently, the schools see only about 60 percent of the funding through CCSD, Dalley said. The goal with the new district would be that 90 percent of the funding would go to the schools.

Dalley said he had three budget figures for the council to remember. Firstly, $26,000 is how much the CCSD has to spend on each student. That is the total CCSD budget of $7.8 billion. “That includes everything: the buildings, the bonds, the capital projects, the teachers and staff salaries everything,” Dalley said.

The second number, $12,800, was the amount per student dispensed by CCSD for running the schools, Dalley said. This is what CCSD officials call the “general budget.”
The third number Dalley presented was $8,500, which is what the actual strategic budget per student that actually comes to the schools in Virgin Valley and Moapa Valley.
“Where do the other $4,200 go per student?” Dalley asked. “Well, they go to magnet school programs, specialty schools, wraparound services and a lot of other great things that urban students have in Las Vegas; and kudos to them. But we don’t have those things and there is a huge inequity there.”

“If we get our pro-rata share of what we should be getting as a per pupil basis, we will have enough money to do this,” Dalley insisted.

AB420 begins by funding an independent feasibility to determine whether a northeast Clark County school district would be financially possible. If the study comes back positive, the second phase would be to begin organizing the new district: electing a board of trustees and hiring a superintendent and other central staff members.

The proposal envisions a five-member board of school trustees including one elected from each of the three unincorporated townships in the district and two trustees elected by the City of Mesquite, Dalley said.

Virgin Valley Community Education Advisory Committee (VVCEAB) chairwoman Jodi Thornley, also a member of the ad-hoc committee, ended the presentation by summarizing all the committee had done to educate the public on the proposal and to receive community input. She said that input meetings with school support staff, teachers and parents had been held in both Virgin Valley and Moapa Valley where each of these groups had been generally supportive of the bill.
City council members all expressed solid support of the idea.

“I am pretty excited about the opportunity we have to fund our kids at 100 percent instead of 50 percent,” said Council member Brian Wursten. “I hope we get the rural funding that we absolutely need.”

Council member Paul Wanlass inquired about the real property of schools and other facilities and asked whether CCSD would relinquish those without a struggle.

Dalley responded that the facilities would pass along to the new district. “Those properties are owned by the taxpayers of Nevada,” Dalley said. “It is not owned by CCSD. So they would roll right back into the new district and we would take responsibility from there.”

Councilwoman Karen Fielding asked about the timeframe for implementing AB420 once it is passed. Committee members responded that the target is for implementation in the 2024-25 school year.
Councilman Wes Boger pointed out that the bill has the potential to actual relieve the city’s budget.

That is because the city has been subsidizing education with grants for programs and initiatives that the schools currently cannot afford. In addition, the city has funded school resource officers for each of the Mesquite schools because the CCSD had refused to do so.
“I would think that some of that would not longer be necessary,” Boger said. “Maybe not the first couple of years, but once the ball gets rolling. So this could have a positive impact on the city and that is another reason to bring it to the council.”

Boger made the motion to draft a resolution in support of AB420 to be approved at the next meeting.

The motion was adopted with a unanimous vote.