Pre-filed education bills await Nevada lawmakers

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Wade Vandervort

Nevada State Legislature in Carson City, Nevada Wednesday, April 27, 2022.

Sun, Jan 29, 2023 (2 a.m.)

Several education-related bills have been pre-filed and are awaiting the attention of lawmakers in the Nevada Legislature. They include:

Class sizes (A.B.42)

This bill, on behalf of the Nevada Department of Education, sets new maximum student-teacher ratios for the state’s public schools — but leaves in place the ability to request variances.

Existing law, approved in 2013, sets maximum ratios of 16 students per licensed teacher in grades K-2 and 18:1 in grade 3 in general, nonspecial education classrooms. This proposal bumps that up to 18:1 in kindergarten and 20:1 in grades 1-3.

It also sets new ratios for grades 4-12, proposing that English and math classes have a maximum student-teacher ratio of 25:1 in grades 4-6 and 30:1 in grades 7-12.

Existing law also allows districts to get variances relieving them from meeting the ratio goals. Such variances are nearly universal in the Clark County School District.

For the first quarter of 2023, 94% of CCSD’s elementary schools sought a variance, according to a report filed this month with the Department of Education. The district cited “funding limitations, facility limitations, and difficulty hiring” for its variance justification.

It’s not just a CCSD problem, though. The same quarterly report shows that every school district in Nevada except for Lander County requested at least one variance.

The vast majority of requests cited difficulty hiring and limited funds as preventing them from meeting ratio goals.

Hybrid school boards (S.B. 64)

This bill, which retired CCSD educator and former Lt. Gov. Lisa Cano Burkhead pitched last fall before leaving office, would expand every school board in the state and make them hybrids of elected and politically appointed members.

For CCSD, that would mean 11 members: seven elected and four appointed.

Under the proposal, which has been revised since Cano Burkhead unveiled it in October, each incorporated city with a population of at least 60,000 would appoint a representative to the local school, and the county commission would appoint the local board’s president.

In Clark County, one member each would come from Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson, along with the county-selected president. These four members would join the seven elected members, who represent geographic areas that aren’t drawn along city boundaries.

Washoe County would get three appointees, with city representatives from Reno and Sparks. The state’s other 15 school boards — which are in rural areas where no cities meet the population threshold — would each get one appointee, the county-appointed president.

All of Nevada’s school district’s are countywide districts, with elected boards of five or seven members, depending on population.

State lawmakers have considered hybrid and appointed school boards previously, most recently in 2021, but never successfully.

School board candidate requirements (S.B. 65)

This bill, at the request of CCSD, requires background checks and governance training for school board candidates statewide – not just sitting members but would-be members too.

The bill proposes a law that requires that anyone who runs for a school board position has first submitted to a fingerprint and FBI criminal background check and completed at least six hours of state-approved training covering public education and school board-related statutes, public records and open meeting laws, laws relating to employment and contracts, local government ethics and employee-management relations, financial management and how to identify and prevent violence in schools. This training is already required of sitting school board members after they have been sworn in.

A would-be candidate can be blocked from running if their background check turns up arrest warrants; substantiated reports of child abuse or neglect; arrests for sex crimes against children; convictions of fraud, theft, embezzlement, fraudulent conversion or misappropriation of property; and other felony convictions of any offense involving “moral turpitude.”

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