LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — As she sat on a North Las Vegas park bench recently, Claudia Lomeli thought about why she decided to pull her two boys from a Clark County public school two years ago.
"When they were going to public school, it wasn't meeting their needs," Lomeli said. "They weren't getting the attention they needed."
Lomeli was able to qualify for some different types of scholarships to help her put the boys in a private Christian school for the 2022-23 school year. The main funding source she found was through the state of Nevada's Opportunity Scholarship program. It works by allowing tax credits to be sold to Nevada businesses in exchange for donations to the program. Last school year, the tax credit cap was over $11 million. However, the formula was set to lower for the current state fiscal year by nearly half.
Nevada politicians failed to act to beef up funding, which they had done in past years, and a bill championed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo died in the last Legislative session.
What it means is that hundreds of families are in limbo. They don't know how they're going to pay for private school tuition.
Of course, these parents could always send their children to public schools in the valley. However, many left the Clark County School District because of what they said is a poor learning environment.
"Generally speaking, these families are wanting to escape public schools because of things like violence, bullying, overcrowding, or low expectations for their children," said Valeria Gurr, a senior fellow with the American Federation for Children, a school choice advocacy organization.
She notes that most of the families that take advantage of the Opportunity Scholarships program are low-income minority families. According to state records, 54% of the roughly 1,400 students who received scholarship money last school year were identified as Hispanic, African American or mixed race.
Last school year, tax credit sales were capped at $11.4 million for the program but this year, the ceiling is only $6.6 million.
That's largely because a bonus mechanism used to help fund the program expired and Nevada Legislators didn't act to reauthorize or replace it.
Democrats, who control both houses in the Nevada Legislature, didn't want to use public funds for private schools. Republicans have long championed alternatives to public schools, often aligning with religious-based schools like Mountain View Christian Schools, where Lomeli's kids go.
In a statement, Lombardo's chief of staff, Ben Kieckhefer, told Channel 13 that Democrats are to blame for the drying up of the scholarship funds.
"Our office will continue to look for a solution for the upcoming school year," the statement read in part.
But time is running out. The new school year starts soon, and many families are still in limbo. Michele Morgan runs a nonprofit called Silver State Scholarships, one of the organizations that works to sell the tax credits.
"There's not enough money to go around to continue the program for all the children we have enrolled," Morgan said. "We now have more than 400 children who will be devastated beyond their wildest dreams. They won't be able to go to private school unless we get more funding. The Clark County School District is already short about 1,300 students. It can't handle the students it already has."
Lomeli hopes to send her kids back to Mountain View, where about half of the school's 190 students take advantage of scholarship funding to help pay for tuition but she's not sure she can.
"If I keep them in that school, financially, I don't know if I'll be able to make it," she said.
Channel 13 made attempts to reach Nevada Assemblyman Steve Yeager, who served as the Assembly's Speaker during the last legislative session, but those attempts were unsuccessful, as of the time of this article's publication.
"I blame the legislators," Lomeli said. "Sometimes a child needs more, whether that's for safety or whatever needs the child has. It's been decades that the (public) school system in Las Vegas has been the way it is."
