Clark County public schools getting $15.6 million surprise

Clark County public schools will receive $15.6 million more than predicted in the 2012-13 school year, mostly because of an increase in enrollment and Nevada’s per-student funding rate, according to the district’s amended budget adopted Thursday.

With 311,238 students, the Clark County School District reached a record enrollment this year although it is just a slight increase of 0.9 percent over last year and 3,664 students more than projected. Also, the Nevada Department of Education announced Clark County schools will receive $8 more in per-student funding, for a total of $5,257 per student.

An extra $12.5 million will be provided under the state’s education funding formula.

The district will not receive the full $5,257 for each of the 3,664 unexpected students – which would amount to more than $19 million – but just the state’s contribution to per-student funding. The remainder comes from local school support taxes and property taxes.

Although these two changes and other sources will provide millions, that is a drop in the bucket for the nation’s fifth-largest school district, which receives $2 billion in annual revenue. It doesn’t come close to evening the playing field in the eyes of many.

Although the district receives far more in total state funding than any other school district, it receives far less per student than most others, such as Esmeralda County.

The rural county to the northwest of Clark County receives more than $17,000 per student, the most of any county under Nevada’s funding formula and more than three times that of Clark County.

“We always had a sense there were inequities in the funding formula,” said Joyce Haldeman, the district’s associate superintendent of community and government relations.

A reworking of the 45-year-old formula, proposed by a legislative committee, would reslice the pie in Clark County’s favor, if approved by the Legislature and Gov. Brian Sandoval.

Clark County’s amount would increase to $5,390 per student, but other county districts would experience cuts, from $96 less per student in Washoe County to $4,408 less per student in Esmeralda County.

The rationale of the new system is that more funding would be given for poor students, English language learners and other kinds of students.

Research shows that poor students cost twice as much to educate as the average student, and English learners cost a third more, according to Jay Chambers, investigator for the American Institutes for Research, which the legislative committee hired this year for $125,000 to diagnosis problems with the current system and propose a solution.

About 60 percent of Clark County students live in poverty, and 68,000 are English language learners. It remains to be seen if the proposed formula will gain traction this session.

Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@review journal.com or 702-383-0279.