CCSD ends year with no budget deficit, pays $60k for compliance monitor

After a tumultuous few months over a potential budget deficit, the Clark County School Board approved its amended final budget on Thursday evening.

The district’s presentation of the 2025 budget, which sets out the board’s finances from July 1 until June 30, 2025, showed the district with no deficit, and ended with $9.9 million less in its unassigned funding balance, which are the funds left over year to year. The funds in the balance remain above the required four percent of funds.

In past written statements and presentations to the school board, district officials said that its potential deficit would be covered by its unassigned ending balance.

After receiving its largest amount of funding — $4 billion — in the last legislative session, the district announced in September that it was facing a potential budget deficit. The school district blamed the deficit, which it initially estimated at $20 million before eventually lowering it to $10 million, on having spent $53 million on litigation and $15 million in cybersecurity costs.

In Thursday’s presentation, district officials also emphasized their goal of transparency and teamwork with the budget, including with individual schools. Interim Superintendent Brenda Larsen-Mitchell has previously blamed the budget issues on divisions and a lack of communication.

“We’ve never had a more well-rounded, shared understanding of the work,” Chief Strategy Officer Kellie Kowal-Paul told the board.

The board also unanimously approved Gov. Joe Lombardo and Nevada Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert’s appointment of a compliance monitor for the district. Yolanda King of King Strategies LLC was appointed on Nov. 25 after both Lombardo and Ebert had expressed concern over the district’s financial woes.

The district will be required to pay King $160 per hour, with a cap of $60,000, according to the contract that the School Board’s General Counsel Jon Okazaki presented to the board on Thursday.

Aside from individual student information and attorney client meetings, she will also have broad access to all resources, and Larsen-Mitchell said she already has an office set up for King.

The state did not provide an end date for King, who will produce monthly reports about the district.

King will work with the district to submit a corrective action plan to fix its financial issues to Ebert by Dec. 27, and the district will be required to implement the plan by Jan. 9.

Thursday’s meeting was the last in a long series of meetings about the budget, which had caused public uproar, the ouster of CCSD’s chief financial officer and increased attention from the governor’s office and the Nevada Department of Education.

Clark County Education Association executive board members Jessica Jones and Kristan Nigro urged the board to consider the stakes as the district would ask for money from the Legislature when it begins in February.

“This is not just about policies or budgets, it’s about the future of education here in the state of Nevada, and most importantly, the lives of the students we serve every single day,” Nigro said, advocating for them to present as a “unified front.”

It also marked the last meeting for Board President Evelyn Garcia Morales and Trustees Lisa Guzmán and Nakia Jackson-Hale, who expressed gratitude for the opportunity to serve.

At the School Board’s Jan. 6 meeting, four new trustees will take their seats on the seven-member board and change how the board — which had previously been dominated by a 4-3 majority voting bloc — votes.

Contact Katie Futterman at kfutterman@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ktfutts on X and @katiefutterman.bsky.social.