-The midterms will help decide who represents Nevadans in the 2027 legislative session, and that is where lawmakers are expected to consider reworking how the state funds schools.

The Clark County School District is calling for changes after enrollment fell by more than 10,000 students this fall, a drop the District says cost it more than $100 million in state funding.

Governor Joe Lombardo approved emergency funding to provide temporary relief, but it expires early next year.

Nevada Week spoke with Justin Dayhoff, Chief Financial Officer of the Clark County School District, to find out what CCSD plans to ask the legislature for.

(Justin Dayhoff) So one of the challenges we have right now with the way that the state funds schools through, it's called the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan, or the PCFP, is that it uses four different quarters of enrollment to fund the school system.

And that means that during the middle of the year we're constantly getting changes to our revenue because enrollment changes throughout the course of the year.

Where that presents a challenge is in a situation like we're facing right now, where we have declining enrollment.

And when, even with our best projections, if we're off by 1 or 2%, that could be thousands of students in a school district our size.

And that's what we saw this fall.

It's a really close projection, but not quite close enough.

And so what that means for us as a district is that, in realtime in the fall, we have to make some really challenging decisions to make adjustments.

And that means disrupting classrooms in the middle of the school year, rather than allowing us the opportunity to plan ahead.

So what we're asking the legislature is to adjust the way that the state funds schools so that way it's adjusting to the previous year enrollment, which means instead of having four quarters and having to update that first quarter, snapping it to the previous year October count, which would allow us to release our budgets in January and start planning, knowing what we're going to be funded at for that entire next school year.

So that way we can make decisions that we have to make.

We're not trying to kick the can down the road.

We still have to make tough calls, especially with declining enrollment in the spring.

But it means we wouldn't have to do that in the middle of the school year in October.

We would be able to use the previous year's counts.

-And so I imagine the purpose of having the counts during the school year, the quarterly counts, is so that you are accountable to the state for how much funding you should get.

So if this were to happen, you may get funding from the state for students that don't end up existing.

And I wonder, is this fiscally responsible?

-It's a great question.

But, you know, it's not a deviation from current law.

So, in fact, there are two different funding mechanisms that we have in the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan when we think broadly speaking.

One is our adjusted base, which is what comes quarterly, but then we also get funded for weighted student counts.

So those are counts of students who have additional special needs and who require additional resources in order to educate.

And under existing law, that's actually already the previous year, October 1.

So what we're asking the state to do is just to conform that to make sure that the way that they fund the adjusted base is the same way that they already fund those other students.

And I mean the other thing is, you know, any time you take a snapshot of enrollment, two minutes later it's already wrong.

You know enrollment is always moving, so best it's always a proxy or an estimate for what we have.

It's never going to be truly live enrollment.

And so we're sticking to that and conforming to existing state practice.

-What are the reasons behind the declining enrollment?

-So birth rates are the biggest driver, you know, and it's not unique to Las Vegas and Southern Nevada.

This is something that we see nationwide right now across the country.

In fact, and even statewide.

So not even within Southern Nevada.

You know, statewide this year they had more than 12,000 fewer students statewide.

And some of that is choice, but the majority that we see right now are really birth rates.

This past year we graduated more than 24,000 students, but we only have just over 16,000 kindergartners coming in.

And so you can see what that means for the cohort, and it's families just not having kids at the same rate as they used to.

-Within the school choice sphere, there are public charter schools.

And according to the State Charter Authority, I believe those schools actually had growth compared to what they projected last fiscal year.

And so, then, if you apply this funding formula that you are proposing, would those schools lose out on money?

-That's a great question.

And, no.

So one of the things we put in our bill draft request, which is the legislative ask, essentially, for action, is a mechanism that allows for situations where districts are increasing in enrollment or the state public charter schools increasing in enrollment.

Because, ideally, someday these trends will reverse, right?

And you don't want to just address the now; you want to try and be as future-proofed as you can.

So one of the things we do is it's actually "greater of" calculation.

So it's a greater of your prior year October 1 or your three-year, your prior year plus three years of your average increase.

So if a charter school is increasing in enrollment or a district is increasing in enrollment, that will be addressed in the formula as well.

-Okay.

Mark Mathers is CFO of the Washoe County School District.

He sits on the Commission for School Funding alongside you, right?

-Yes.

-There was a meeting in February where he expressed concerns about funding based on historical averages, partly because he thinks it might delay districts from adjusting their staff to what it should be.

I mean, potential layoffs--preventing layoffs.

He didn't say that exactly, but that's what could happen.

What do you think about that point?

-Well, so it's actually our last commission meeting.

Just last week, we voted to align our recommendation to CCSD's bill draft request.

So the commission has changed its position to actually recommend that October 1 date as well.

One of the reasons for that is, considering that, yes, it does allow us to provide some sort of soft landing to school districts, but it's not getting districts off the hook in any way.

At the end of the day, we're still going to be held to account for the students that we enroll.

It's just the timing.

It's really about the sequence.

So that way, again, you know, we're still-- The onus is on us as a district in January to do the hard work to make projections for that next school year so that way we're not in a position where we're overfunding or overallocating resources to schools or making class sizes in an unsustainable way.

Those decisions still have to exist.

It's just the sequence of it makes it less disruptive to the classroom and to instruction.

-So the emergency measure that the Governor signed, that lasts, that funding lasts until, I believe, right when the legislative session starts in 2027.

-That's correct.

-So how soon do you need the legislature to come up with something?

-Well, we're hoping that they'll continue to take action right as soon as the legislature starts, and the Governor of the legislature suggested that this will be first up for them when session begins to continue to address this.

And when you think about it, the emergency action is actually akin to what we're proposing in our legislation.

The emergency action held the district to legislatively estimated enrollments.

And so they are really providing in an emergency action that same soft landing that we're suggesting that they take through permanent action through the bill.

So I suppose it's a two, two answers to that question: one that they move quickly to continue to sustain the funding for the rest of this school year and then also move with action on the bill to make sure that they can address this in perpetuity.

-Well, I imagine that would require another emergency measure of funding so that they can have the time to go through that bill and decide whether to make that change.

-That's correct.

-Okay.

So you are anticipating that or will perhaps be asking for that?

-We are certainly optimistic, and we'll be asking for that.

-Okay.

There is another ask from you, and that is in regards to special education funding.

What are you going to be asking the state for in 2027?

-Thank you for that question.

You know, we want the state to evaluate the way that it funds special education for school districts and considers that in its funding allocation.

One of the things that we, as a district, have to do is we have to fund students with special needs, right?

An individualized education plan, which is what constitutes a student with special needs, it's really a contract.

There's no question of if we provide those services.

We have to provide those services, and those come at a cost.

And so one of the things that we've noticed as a district is that the cost to provide those services well exceeds what the state gives us by more than $170 million a year.

So what we do is we have to take that out of our general fund and then move that into our special education fund to supplement what the state gives us.

And so it's a little bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to do that.

And so we're asking the state to take a look at that to see if there's a way that they can offset that transfer because that has an impact both on our special education students, our students who oftentimes need the most support and who critically need that, but also on our general fund students.

-Justin Dayhoff with the Clark County School District, thank you for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you.