NSEA Public Comment: Senate Committee on Finance and Assembly Committee on Ways and Means

On Saturday morning, you will be hearing the report from the K-12 budget subcommittee. K-12 public education has been woefully underfunded for decades, ranking 48^th among the states in per-pupil funding. Nevada also has the largest student to teacher ratio in the country.

A $156M cut to class size reduction over the next biennium would mean a loss of about 1000 teachers across the state, meaning even more students packed into Nevada classrooms.

Common sense tells us—and research confirms it—that the number of students in a class makes a real difference for students and teachers alike. While rapid growth fueled the problem in previous decades, the lack of sufficient funding for school districts is the main reason Nevada ranks dead last in the country. We know smaller class size has real benefits. For students, smaller class sizes can help close the racial achievement gap, lead to earlier identification of learning disabilities, improve high school graduation rates, improve student behavior, and allow for more engagement in lessons. For educators, smaller class size improves educator morale as it allows for more individual and differentiated instruction, less time on paperwork, and stronger classroom management as teachers become more aware of individual students’ strengths or weaknesses.

NSEA is also very concerned about the proposed $33 million cut over the biennium to early literacy supports in the Read by Grade 3 program. A presentation from Data Insight Partners to the Education Committees earlier this session showed that for the first time ever, Nevada 4th graders are performing at the same level as their national peers and only 3 states made more progress than Nevada in 4th grade reading achievement over the last decade. This growth was tied to the strategic investment made by Nevada through the Read by Grade 3 Program along with investments in Zoom and Victory Schools.