CCSD braces for enrollment, staff decline in tentative $3.8B budget

The Clark County School District estimates it will have thousands of fewer students and employees by the end of next school year in a tentative budget unanimously approved by the Clark County School Board on Thursday.

School district projections predict weighted enrollment to drop by more than 2,000 students by the end of June 2027, according to the tentative budget.

The school district’s tentative budget also estimates it will have over 5,000 fewer employees by the end of next school year. That projection includes having over 1,000 fewer classroom teachers in the school district.

Decreased employee positions can be tied to falling student enrollment, a trend which has caused the school district to get less money from the state under Nevada’s per-pupil funding model.

In all, the $3.8 billion general fund tentative budget for next school year is more than $60 million smaller than the amended final budget board members approved in December.

Justin Dayhoff, chief financial officer for the district, told the board the tentative budget was made with enrollment losses in mind.

“This does include, already, many, many hard decisions. Hard decisions our principals have made, hard decisions that our communities have been making through these last couple of months as they build their budgets,” Dayhoff said. “We did this based on those projections for next year, in part, knowing the reliability and accuracy of those (projections) historically.”

School police revenue included in budget

The tentative budget included an estimated $15 million in revenue from school police citations through a newly-established special fund.

Trustees in January voted unanimously to establish the special fund to collect revenue from traffic citations issued by school district police officers. Dayhoff told the Las Vegas Review-Journal the $15 million figure was reached by estimating potential future revenue based on current monthly school police citation rates, but noted it could change once revenue starts coming in.

The resolution to create the special fund included language allowing the district to earn revenue from fines collected using school bus stop-arm cameras. But efforts to equip the district’s fleet with cameras came to a halt in February after an item to award a contract to a bus-camera vendor was abruptly pulled from the meeting agenda.

“As we have continued to evaluate the implementation models and the experiences of other jurisdictions across the country, several complex operational and administrative questions have emerged,” Superintendent Jhone Ebert said in an emailed statement sent during the February meeting.

No bus-camera vendor contract awards have been proposed in board meeting agendas since. The school district previously said the stop-arm camera program would assist in generating an estimated $40 million in annual revenue.

A Review-Journal investigation published before the bus-camera contract item was pulled raised questions about jurisdictional limitations and the efficacy of stop-arm camera programs in preventing student pedestrians from injury.

Dayhoff said the tentative budget’s estimated revenue from the special fund does not include money that could be generated if the school district established a stop-arm camera system.

The school board must approve a final budget for fiscal year 2027 by June 8.