Republican Governor of Nevada Joe Lombardo shared a photo of him posing with a large group of children in a school gymnasium. He captioned it: “These are the kids who Democrats will be forcibly removing from their schools.”
The former Sheriff of Clark County who became Governor in January 2023, with the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, claims the children in the photo (and hundreds more) “will be kicked out of their schools because Democrats refuse to fund their scholarships.”
These are the kids who Democrats will be forcibly removing from their schools.
— Governor Joe Lombardo (@JosephMLombardo) August 10, 2023
These are real kids — and just a few of the hundreds who will be kicked out of their schools because Democrats refuse to fund their scholarships.
This is an unimaginable injustice. pic.twitter.com/vN6ztx58sB
The children Lombardo refers to — there are approximately 700 in Nevada — are enrolled in private schools and receive state funded “Opportunity Scholarships.”
In 2015, the Nevada legislature established the Educational Choice Scholarship Program (a.k.a. the Opportunity Scholarship) which provides “need-based scholarships for students who live in households whose income level does not exceed 300 percent of federal poverty guidelines.” (The federal poverty guideline for a family of four is $30,000.)
The maximum Opportunity Scholarship amount per-student for the 2023-2024 school year is $9,424.00. There are 97 schools registered with the Opportunity Scholarships program in Nevada: approximately half (at least 49) are Christian schools.
Campaigning for Governor, Lombardo promised to secure “a record amount of funding” for the program, ideally raising it from below $7 million to hundreds of millions.
Finding resistance to his plan among lawmakers who want to prioritize public school funding, Governor Lombardo proposed during the 2023 Nevada Legislative Session to use unallocated federal money ($3.2 million in federal coronavirus relief funds) to maintain existing scholarships for children who choose to go to a private school. The Interim Finance Committee rejected the proposal.
The Nevada Assembly Democratic Caucus said in a statement: “Lombardo’s staff could not explain why $18 million in available reserve funding in the Opportunity Scholarship private school voucher program was not being used to cover an alleged $3 million shortfall in the program.”
The Nevada State Education Association’s president, Dawn Etcheverry, argues, “When Congress passed these pandemic relief packages, they never contemplated using these federal funds for voucher programs.” She added: “These federal funds should not be used to fund vouchers to attend unaccountable private schools.”
According to the Associated Press, “Nevada ranks toward the bottom of national rankings in per-pupil funding.”
After the proposal was rejected, Lombardo announced that (at his bequest) the AAA Scholarship Foundation, a private scholarship organization that also serves low-income families applying for private schools in Florida, Georgia and Arizona, has offered to use its reserve funds to cover the scholarships for students who qualify this school year.
Important news.
— Governor Joe Lombardo (@JosephMLombardo) August 12, 2023
At my request, AAA Scholarship Foundation has volunteered to utilize reserve funds to ensure that no students lose access to their scholarships this year. I’m grateful for their eagerness to create a short-term solution.
We have to keep fighting for our kids. pic.twitter.com/iABpnKGI4F
The AAA Scholarship Foundation, which is based in Tampa, Florida, reported $63,392,863 in total revenue in 2021.
Lombardi acknowledges that the participation of AAA is a short-term solution and continues to reiterate: “Unless legislative Democrats work with us on a long-term solution, children will be forced out of their schools and back into the very schools that failed to meet their unique educational needs.”
