The numbers behind Nevada’s school funding

In his July 18 column, Victor Joecks did make two accurate statements about education funding worth acknowledging. He said, “Education spending in Nevada keeps going up, but the Clark County School District keeps complaining it doesn’t get enough.” Both of these are true statements.

According to state reporting on NevadaReportCard.com, per-pupil expenditures in the Clark County School District increased from $6,031 to $8,520 from 2005 to 2015, outpacing inflation by almost $1,200. Still, the district — with all of the needs of a large, urban district — receives less per pupil than any other district in Nevada.

Unfortunately, the headline and opening sentence were misleading and only a small part of the real story.

The real story is that, while progress has been made through categorical funding approved by the 2015 and 2017 legislatures and the governor, Nevada and the Clark County School District still have a long way to go toward adequately funding education. According to the most recent national data from 2015, of the 50 largest school districts in the United States, only Wake County, N.C. ($8,205) and Alpine, Utah ($5,724) receive less per pupil than Clark County ($8,254). Similarly, the national average funding per pupil in 2015 was $11,392. That’s a difference of $3,138 per pupil for Clark County and $2,816 for Nevada. That’s a lot of ground to cover just to qualify as average.

Some might say that we just don’t have the resources in Nevada to adequately fund education. Unfortunately, that is also not accurate. Ranked according to spending on education per $1,000 of personal income, Nevada is No. 40 in the United States at $37.80. Nevada has the ability to adequately fund schools, but chooses not to.

All of this adds up to Nevada being close to the bottom in education in another key metric. We are ranked No. 45 in per-pupil spending. It is nothing short of miraculous and a testament to our strategic priorities that Nevada is ranked No. 18 in teacher salaries. At least we know to spend the little money we have to attract quality instructors to the classroom where it matters most.

The Clark County School District has a money problem, as Victor Joecks quipped, but it is a revenue problem. Let’s be clear and fair about that. We don’t know if money will fix Nevada’s education problems. We have never really tried.