Now, friends, if you’ve ever eyed a map of Nevada, you’ll notice that Henderson is not within hollerin’ distance of the state capital. No, it’s a long hitch from Carson City, and one might reckon that to make the journey, you’d either need a stout horse, a strong will, or a political reason mighty important. As it turns out, Governor Joe Lombardo had just such a reason when he saddled up and rode down to Pinecrest Academy Sloan Canyon—a charter school nestled deep in the southern desert, far from the legislative lamp-posts of Carson.
The Governor came bearing a bill to overhaul Nevada’s ailing education system—an enterprise that has shown more spirit than structure. The “Nevada Accountability in Education Act,” as it’s so grandly named, is a kind of medicine meant to cure what ails the Silver State’s schools, and, judging from the figures tossed around, the patient is in a bad way.
Mr. Lombardo’s proposal is as wide-ranging as a prairie horizon. It aims to raise student performance, flatten funding inequities, and give troubled schools a proper shaking by the collar.
“We’re going to measure results,” the Governor said, with a tone that suggested the days of blind hope and soft grading were drawing to a close.
His plan includes restructuring school boards, transferring school control to local governments if needed, and doling out surplus state funds like biscuits at a barn-raising—provided folks are willing to work for ’em. Still, it speaks nothing to the act of teaching.
Now, don’t mistake this for empty talk. The Governor means to put coins behind the curtain. With a $2.3 billion commitment to the cause and a $30 million pot for rewarding high-performing teachers and administrators, Lombardo seems set to back up his promises with proper pay. There’s also a plan for “open enrollment,” which, to the uninitiated, means parents can shuffle their children away from schools that teach arithmetic like it’s witchcraft and into ones where a pupil might learn something before graduation.
Dr. Steve Canavero, the interim state superintendent and likely a man with more graphs than gray hairs, explained that our eighth-graders are battling arithmetic like it’s a foreign invader—only 23.7 percent are proficient in math. Reading ain’t much better, and the students who took a beating during the pandemic are still trying to stand upright.
“Systemic issue,” he called it, a polite way of saying the whole shebang’s been sagging for some time.
But the plan doesn’t stop at charts and cash. It also offers something educators might like–legal immunity when they step in to break up student scuffles. Teachers, at long last, may defend one child from another without fearing a suit into early retirement.
Still, the bill hasn’t even cleared the Legislative Council Bureau, and no one knows what the final tab will be. Lombardo acknowledged as much and declared it’s high time we hold the system itself to the lofty standards we keep foisting on our children and teachers.
In sum, the Governor brought his big ideas a long way south to a town that usually sees more sun than statecraft. Whether this bill gallops through the Legislature like a Mustang or gets stuck in the mud like a stagecoach in a spring thaw remains to be seen.
But one thing’s certain—when a Governor rides far from the capital to talk schoolbooks and statistics, he either means business or needs the scenery.
The Old Blog in the Desert 