Nevada per pupil school funding now over $10,000 a year

Members of the legislative Interim Finance Committee were told Thursday that total per pupil funding for K-12 schools in the state is now more than $10,000 a year.

The information was presented in an analysis by the LCB Fiscal Division to clarify that per pupil funding is significantly higher than the $6,200 the state provides in the Nevada Plan funding formula.

For fiscal 2020, state funding is $6,218 per pupil but when federal and what is considered local funding is added in, the total is $10,343. For fiscal 2021, the state formula share is $6,288 but the total is $10,426 per pupil.

When all the sources are added together, the analysis says total K-12 funding approved by the 2017 Legislature is $5 billion in fiscal 2020 and $5.1 billion in fiscal 2021.

Detractors have long argued Nevada doesn’t adequately fund K-12 education. To bolster that argument, they typically point to just the state funding. State Nevada Plan funding totals over $2.6 billion for the biennium. Categorical funding for specific programs outside the formula adds $1.43 billion for a total of just over $4 billion.

That, however, doesn’t include the Local School Support Tax and a significant chunk of locally collected property tax revenue as well as other smaller sources of funding. Local revenues total roughly $5.6 billion.

In addition, there is some $500 million over the biennium in federal funding.