Southern Nevada legislators, stakeholders talk school-funding formula, infrastructure

Special programs in Nevada public schools, including those for English language learners, would get a permanent funding solution if lawmakers follow up on a top policy issue raised at this year’s Southern Nevada Forum.

The event Wednesday brought about 200 community leaders, including many lawmakers, together to discuss top priorities for the Legislature when it reconvenes in 2019. Attendees of the forum met in small groups to discuss needs in health care, education, economic development, governance reform and transportation and infrastructure.

Sen. Mo Denis, D-las Vegas, helped lead the education discussion, and said that making a weighted funding formula permanent for schools would likely be a bipartisan issue moving forward. Weighted funding could mean more dollars for students who are learning English, require special education services and those eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. The Legislature approved a onetime weighted funding formula in 2017, and Denis said lawmakers need to find a long-term solution.

“The funding formula ... is one that Sen. Joyce Woodhouse, D-henderson

everybody’s going to want, that we need to fix and it’s definitely a high priority for Southern Nevada,” Denis said, noting that most of the state’s ELL students are in the Las Vegas Valley.

Lawmakers and stakeholders who signed up for the focus groups during the event will meet to discuss ideas before the forum as a whole picks priorities to become bills. Sen. Joyce Woodhouse, D-henderson, said the forum’s groups met about once a month in prior off-session years before presenting their top ideas for the entire forum to consider.

“This has been one of the most positive things that I think we’ve done over the last four or five years,” Woodhouse said. “By having the Southern Nevada Forum bringing us together, Assembly, Senate, Republicans, Democrats, business, education and then, of course, the other committees with economic diversification and transportation and good governance, we can better represent what Southern Nevada needs, because we are the majority of this state.”

Fuel indexing, which helps pay for infrastructure projects, the commerce tax, which supports education, and the creation of behavioral health regions are some of the policy ideas hatched at past forums, became bills and then were signed into law. Woodhouse said regional mental health centers were discussed in