KVIG Informative

Nevada funds its schools based on how many students show up each October. CCSD’s chief financial officer says that formula is exactly what’s forcing mid-year layoffs — and he’s asking the Legislature to change how the math works before it happens again.

Clark County School District Chief Financial Officer Justin Dayhoff said the district is proposing legislation that would base individual school budgets on enrollment counts from Oct. 1 of the prior school year, or a three-year rolling enrollment average — whichever figure is higher.

The proposal directly targets the mechanism that triggered this fall’s $51.6 million mid-year budget cut: CCSD’s current funding formula ties each school’s budget to projected enrollment, and when actual enrollment comes in lower than projected, as it has for multiple consecutive years, the district has to claw back funding from individual school budgets after the school year has already started.

Dayhoff said the district is simultaneously working to prevent further mid-year cuts beyond the ones already announced this fall, even as it continues to lose state funding tied to its ongoing enrollment decline.

CCSD’s general fund budget has declined from roughly $4 billion to $3.8 billion for the 2027 fiscal year, according to figures cited by school board candidates and confirmed by district budget documents, a drop driven primarily by the enrollment-based funding formula responding to seven consecutive years of declining student counts.

A three-year rolling average, as Dayhoff’s proposal envisions, would smooth out the year-to-year swings currently built into Nevada’s funding system, giving individual schools more budget stability even as the district’s overall enrollment continues trending downward.

The proposal would require action from the Nevada Legislature, which does not reconvene in a regular session until 2027, meaning any formula change Dayhoff is seeking would not take effect in time to prevent further mid-year volatility during the current school year.

CCSD’s own budget chief is telling lawmakers the funding formula itself is the problem, not just this year’s enrollment numbers. Until the Legislature changes the math, every October enrollment count will keep landing the same way it has for years — as a number individual schools find out determines their budget only after the school year has already begun.