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OUTCLASSED: How does Nevada rank in student funding, how much does marijuana add?


U.S. News ranked Nevada's Pre-K through 12th public schools 48th in the country.
U.S. News ranked Nevada's Pre-K through 12th public schools 48th in the country.
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It starts in the classroom at the youngest grade levels but your child's public education got some low marks recently.

U.S. News ranking Nevada's Pre-K through 12th public schools 48th in the country.

The pandemic has only added to the challenges that schools face leaving some families and educators feeling outclassed.

Las Vegas and the money that pays for a state and its people, much of it from gaming.

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Some say, not enough of that cash is finding its way to our kids. Parents like Barbara Vesci say the pandemic, is only making existing problems more pronounced.

"Parents are hurting because their kids are hurting. They're falling behind," she said.

Barbara has lived in Las Vegas for 35 years and doesn’t like the state's year after year low rankings.

We also rank low when it comes to money.

It’s not that we don’t have it. It’s that the money isn’t allocated to pay for pupils like in other states.

"If you look at per-pupil funding across the nation, Nevada ranks, towards the very bottom," said Dr. Kenneth Retzl, education policy director for the Guinn Center. "When you run a correlation across the United States, and you look at the per pupil funding and their achievement result, there is a positive correlation."

How much lower is the funding in Nevada?

"We're funded at a little over $9,000 a student. The national average is about $12,000," said Michelle Booth of Educate Nevada Now, a K-12 public policy organization. "That means that you cannot provide tutoring, after school services, updated textbooks."

She says, "we need around $1.8-billion to get our schools funded at the level they need to be."

Policy experts say the power is in lawmakers' hands. They voted to change the funding formula for state schools in 2019 but advocates say there are still issues.

"The problem is we have a shortage of funds and we're not able to fund the formula as we have promised back in 2019," said Booth.

This leaves many wondering why highly publicized marijuana money is not making a larger dent in Nevada's school budget shortfall.

"Truthfully, it's only about $100-million a year at the state level," said Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom. "And so that money is going to the district."

The $100-million is a shared pot between districts statewide and it makes up less than five percent of CCSD's budget.

So where else can the money come from?

"What I'm proposing is to tax alcohol which is a major other problem in the state," said Segerblom. "And have it - something similar to marijuana."

"They've been looking at things like property taxes, other types of taxes," said Booth.

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