Lombardo eyes opening to ram school choice bill through Nevada’s Democratic-controlled legislature

In 2023, he tried and failed to push key components of school choice through the legislature. But Lombardo and his allies are more optimistic that he can ram at least aspects of the Nevada Accountability in Education Act he introduced last month through the Democratic-controled legislature.

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“He has leverage, because if there are gonna be certain things that the Democrats want to pass, and the governor has a veto power, so they have to figure out how to work with him so like, both sides can get what they want,” Valeria Gurr with the American Federation of Children told the Washington Examiner. 

“Maybe not everything will pass, but certain pieces certainly will pass,” she added.

Lombardo’s strategy is simple.

He’s already given Democrats their pet priority: more money for teachers and schools. And when the academic results came back a year later, the governor said they showed little for the billions in new funding — Nevada’s schools remain some of the worst in the country. After the dismal results were published, his affiliated super PAC conducted polling on school choice, concluding earlier this month that the policy is solidly popular with the state’s electorate.

Now, the governor is arguing that the “excuse” of more funding has been ruled out and it is time to give parents more options about where to educate their kids, taking his pitch to a greater extent than the last time he tried to ram school choice through the legislature. With midterm elections looming, Lombardo has a pivotal pressure point to convince lawmakers on the other side of the aisle to sway on a politically popular item before they attempt to get voted back into office. 

John Burke, the spokesman for the Lombardo-adjacent Better Nevada PAC, hopes the strategy will pay off. 

“Democrats have an opportunity to work across the aisle with the Governor, as they have in other states, to make reforms that will help students, teachers, and parents across our state,” he told the Washington Examiner. “We hope that they will do the right thing. If they stand in the way, they will have to explain to their constituents why they are on the wrong side of history.” 

Lombardo already fought the battle once and lost. In 2023, the legislature passed portions of AB 400, the governor’s key education bill, but removed provisions related to expanding school choice, including Opportunity Scholarships, which are funded by tax credits.

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What he did end up signing in 2023 was a bill heavily focused on funding teachers. Senate Bill 503 shelled out more than $2 billion in new funding to K-12 schools. With its passage, per-pupil funding, a Democratic wish-list item, increased by 25%. The law doled out an additional $23 million in funding to several tiers of students, increasing rates by $4,035 per pupil for English language learners, $3,137 for at-risk students, and $1,075 for gifted and talented students, per the Nevada Current. 

But last year, the state published academic data from the 2023-24 school year that Lombardo said warranted expanding educational options for families he argued continued to be trapped in failing schools. Nevada’s public school districts ranked dead last in the country, per the National Education Association. Although chronic absenteeism rates improved slightly and fourth graders across the state showed favorable increases in math and a minor improvement in reading, eighth graders saw their average scores in both subjects drop since 2022, according to the Nation’s Report Card. In Clark County, Nevada’s largest school district, reading scores remained stagnant in the last two school years while math scores showed only slight improvements, per the state’s Department of Education.

Lombardo highlighted the data during a recent appearance on the Alan Stock Show, arguing that since Nevada’s K-12 academic performance hasn’t seen critical improvements from increased funding, the state needs to explore the solutions that he’s been advocating for since he took office, including expanding opportunity scholarships and open enrollment.

“Last session, the teachers were our priority, and how we can get teachers into the pipeline, how can they be appropriately paid? How can they be held accountable for lack of performance?” he said. “Now we’ve moving into the other tier or the other leg of the stool, and that’s the kids, and that’s the intent of this Accountability and Education Act during this session.” 

And this time around, Lombardo isn’t trying to fight legislators alone. He’s taking his message to voters, lining up ads and embracing the bully pulpit to put pressure on reluctant Democrats to line up behind school choice.

“They’re bringing this case to the people. The governor is mobilizing the entire community,” Gurr said.

That included a recent press conference to introduce his legislation, where, surrounded by fidgeting schoolchildren, Lombardo pressed lawmakers to support the bill’s “kids first agenda.” 

“Let us be clear, we can no longer accept lack of funding as an excuse for chronic underperformance,” he said. “My attempt is to be bold and remove that excuse as part of the process… that’s why I’m introducing the Accountability and Education Act—legislation built on one of the guiding principles [that] no child in Nevada should be trapped in a failing school because of their zip code or held back because how much their parents or guardians earn.” 

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“We have got to do something different, something different so we can achieve the goals that we’re we’re attempting to achieve,” the governor later told Alan Stock. “We know that what’s been provided in decades past is not working. We continually be rated at the bottom here in the nationwide measurements.” 

Lombaro is riding on polling conducted by his campaign earlier this year that showed 85% of Hispanics and 76% of Independents in Nevada support school choice. School choice was supported across the spectrum by 71% of all Nevada voters, per the governor’s polling. 

There’s also the matter of political timing that could help the governor’s case. Nevada runs on a biennial legislative session where lawmakers only meet every two years. When the session ends in June, lawmakers won’t meet again until after the 2026 election, which could force Democrats to the negotiating table ahead of their midterm campaigns if they want to avoid a sticky political situation by alienating voters upset that the state’s educational performance is still in tatters.

And he’s a determined governor.

“I have worked here [in Nevada] for like, my whole career,” Gurr reflected. “And in 2017 it was the only time that bills were getting hearings for a school choice until we got this governor in 2023.” 

The Nevada Accountability in Education Act is awaiting formal introduction in the legislature, where the governor’s team hopes it will be pulled through this week. It targets expanding school choice, accountability, and incentives for higher academic performance in the educational system. The Accountability in Education Act expands open enrollment policies, which means students will be able to transfer to a school that is not designated based on their zip code, including charter and innovation schools; provides transportation support for students attending low-performing schools to attend higher-ranked schools, including charter schools or state-approved private schools; gives financial incentives of up to 10% of salaries to high-performing teachers; calls for the equitable funding for charters schools; creates the Nevada Integrity in Academic Funding Program to increase accountability for educational funding; and implements a “tiered intervention system” that puts chronically under-performing schools under the microscope.

There are aspects of the governor’s bill that could overlap with accountability language in an education bill state Democrats are pushing. Gurr hopes Lombardo can negotiate with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro to include pieces of her Education through Accountability, Transparency, and Efficiency Act if her colleagues relinquish opposition to critical school choice components in his bill. 

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“There are going to be things, you know, Democrats are going to say ‘absolutely not’ and there are going to be things that they’re going to be like, ‘hey, you know, these are these are common,’ and in order for both of them to to get this passed, like, both have to find a compromise,” Gurr said. 

At the end of the day, Lombardo is “a strong negotiator,” she continued. “I do believe there’s always compromise, and he is trying to work with the Democratic leadership to get something done.”