Paying for school construction in rural Nevada is tough. A Nevada lawmaker might have a solution
Like most centenarians, two public schools built more than 100 years ago in the small eastern Nevada community of Ely have seen better days.
Although David E. Norman Elementary School (built in 1909) and White Pine School Middle School (1913) hold a special place in the hearts of the thousands of students who passed through their doors, school district officials say the buildings have many issues that make them a legal liability and hindrance on students’ ability to learn.
Both facilities have asbestos within the walls, floors, plumbing and ceiling. The elementary school lacks reliable heating and cooling and a sprinkler system, putting its 300 students and staff at risk if there was a fire.
There’s no elevator in the middle school that serves more than 200 students, making the upper floors of the three-story building inaccessible for students and staff who can’t easily go up flights of stairs, which goes against the Americans with Disabilities Act.
This recently forced student Ty Willman to temporarily attend school online because he couldn’t go up the stairs after he broke his leg, which he said took a toll on his education and mental health.
“My condition may be temporary, but not everyone’s is,” he said during a March 3 legislative hearing. “I’m here to speak for everyone, but White Pine Middle School is not built for everyone.”
District officials estimate getting the schools up to code would cost just as much as building a replacement K-8 school, something they’ve been wanting to do for almost three decades.
But with a county population just above 9,000, their limited tax base and quirks in how school construction is funded in Nevada puts them and other tiny rural districts in the state at a grave disadvantage when it comes to building and updating school facilities.
“The bottom line is our school district, the way the tax structure is and the way schools are funded, we will never have a new school built here in our community ever, unless the state provides some assistance,” the district’s Chief Financial Officer Paul Johnson said in an April 23 interview.
White Pine County is one of 11 Nevada counties at or near the edge of the state’s maximum property tax rate, leaving it with few options to generate revenue or secure bonds for capital projects such as school construction, according to a report by the Commission of School Funding. Though some districts have found workarounds (Washoe County voters passed a sales tax increase in 2016 to fund their capital needs), commission Chair Guy Hobbs said that approach won’t have the same effect in counties such as White Pine with a smaller tax base.
To help address the issue, Assm. Erica Mosca (D-Las Vegas) has introduced a bill this session ( AB224 ) that would allow the state to step in and help secure the financing rural districts need.
“The whole point for me is I don’t want to just help one district or one place,” Mosca said during the March 3 hearing. “I want to come up with an actual solution that will work for the state.”
Statewide solution
Nevada is one of 15 states that doesn’t provide state-level financial support for school construction, according to the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit that tracks educational policy.
Instead, district facilities are funded at the local level, typically through a mix of property tax revenue and bonds, a type of loan that requires voter approval and is repaid through increased property taxes.
Johnson, the district’s chief financial officer, said the county has tapped out standard options for raising revenue. White Pine County has the third-highest sales tax rate in Nevada at 7.725 percent, and its property tax rate is at the ceiling set under state law, $3.64 per $100 of assessed property value plus an additional 2-cent state tax levy. Of that $3.64, 25 cents goes to school district facilities needs.
Johnson estimates that this tax levy could help the district secure a $10 million bond, but even coupled with its $3 million in reserves, the district falls well short of the estimated $100 million cost for a new K-8 school.
“The math just doesn’t work out,” he said. “The bottom line is unless we have extreme tax rates to raise sufficient revenue to secure bonds, it’s just not going to happen.”
Mosca’s bill would require the State Board of Finance to issue approximately $100 million in general obligation bonds to provide grants for school districts to finance capital improvements, including school construction, using the existing Fund to Assist School Districts in Financing Capital Improvements, which hasn’t been funded since 1999, according to the Education Commission of the States. It’s similar to recommendations from the Commission of School Funding.
The state’s treasurer’s office said the bill would not have a fiscal impact on the office, but in a statement, called the $100 million in bonds a “significant request.”
This assistance would be open to the nine school districts in counties with a population of less than 15,000 and that meet the following conditions:
1. Has a property tax rate at the ceiling set under state law
2. Has a facility that has been condemned, is in unsuitable conditions or has a facility with renovation costs that would exceed 40 percent of the cost of construction of a new school.
Of those nine school districts, five are in counties that are at the property tax cap.
If an application is approved by state officials, the county commission must impose a sales tax of up to 1/8 of 1 percent, if it has not already been enacted, dedicated to school capital improvements. White Pine County put this sales tax in place in 1999 when the fund was first created.
Proponents say the state general obligation bonds would be paid back through existing property tax revenue, so districts can get the help they need without any additional state-level taxes, budget cuts or new appropriations.
“We’re trying to make an argument that when schools are this old and we don’t have the tax base locally, it could possibly be on the state to help it — but not give appropriations, give bonds that will eventually be paid back,” Mosca said during the March legislative committee hearing.
This isn’t White Pine’s first time asking the state for help.
In 2021, the district submitted an application to the Fund to Assist School Districts in Financing Capital Improvements, but Johnson said the district never received a response. That same year, the district worked with former Sen. Pete Goicoechea (R-Eureka) on a bill, SB395, that would have allowed White Pine County voters to go beyond the tax cap in order to help finance a new school. But the bill died.
In 2023, Goicoechea sponsored another bill, SB100, that would have appropriated $100 million to the White Pine County School District to build a new facility to replace the schools, but it also died in committee.
Assm. Bert Gurr (R-Elko) and other Republican lawmakers are sponsoring a similar bill this year, AB288, that would appropriate $60 million to build a new elementary school; he suggested at a March 3 hearing that that bill is going nowhere, and it hasn’t gotten a hearing since it was introduced in late February. Gurr and others have signed on to co-sponsor Mosca’s bill.
Mosca’s bill is now in the Assembly budget committee. While the bill doesn’t call for a direct state appropriation, Mosca told The Nevada Independent in a Tuesday text that she’s unsure about her bill’s prospects after last week’s Economic Forum forecast indicated state lawmakers have about $191 million less than they originally expected for the upcoming two-year budget.
In 2023, lawmakers approved a bill ( AB519 ) which appropriated $64.5 million to the Elko County School District to build a new school on the reservation of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley. That bill also created a $50 million fund to assist rural school districts finance capital improvement projects, $25 million of which is dedicated for tribal schools.
The bill allows counties with fewer than 100,000 residents to go over the state’s property tax ceiling by up to 25 cents. Johnson said that’s not something the school district is interested in pursuing because the additional tax would only generate a little more than $1 million per year, not nearly enough to fund the school’s construction cost.
With each year that passes, Johnson said the school district’s goal of building a new school gets further out of reach.
Two years ago, the estimated cost to build a new school was $60 million. This year, it’s estimated that the new school could cost close to $100 million to build because of rising construction costs. The size and scope of the project hasn’t changed.
“We want to have the state partner with us to find a solution because it matters,” he said.
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This story was originally published by The Nevada Independent and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.