‘Remove that excuse': Gov. Lombardo's education bill aims at performance, accountability
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo introduced his plan on Friday to remake education statewide, with a big focus on holding local school leaders accountable for poor student outcomes.
Lombardo unveiled what he labeled as the Nevada Accountability in Education Act at Pinecrest Academy – Sloan Academy. But his bill faces challenges from the Democratic controlled Nevada Legislature.
'We can no longer accept lack of funding as an excuse for chronic underperformance,' Lombardo said. 'My attempt is to be bold and remove that excuse as part of the process.'
According to the governor, his bill would make it easier for the state to take over underperforming schools and to restructure a school board if student performance lags. But it's unclear how much his bill would cost.
Senate Majority Leader Cannizzaro, D-Clark County, told 8 News Now on Tuesday she will introduce a wide-ranging education bill next week. Back in December, she laid out her vision for it.
'[Cannizzaro's] bill is coming out the same time as mine, hopefully, fingers crossed. And then we'll have the opportunity to sit down and do the checklist, and determine what is of importance to both me, and the state of Nevada, and the legislative process,' Lombardo said.
Cannizzaro also spoke with 8 News Now in February in Carson City and said her bill would include giving the four non-voting members on the Clark County School District Board of Trustees voting power.
'We can't have our school board of trustees just constantly embroiled in different fights with each other. We have the business of educating students to get to and I think those new trustees are bringing that, so part of my bill is giving them voting rights,' Cannizzaro said on Feb. 7.
But that is one of the few similarities the Cannizzaro and Lombardo bills have right now.
Lombardo's speech on Friday at Pinecrest Academy highlighted one of his prime concerns — providing more funding for charter schools, which as a whole are the second-largest school system in Nevada.
'We're getting into the last four weeks of the [legislative] session, and you want to make sure that you have a complete evaluation of policies of this size and that everybody has a voice in the process,' Lombardo said.
The governor will release more information next week on his bill, which includes money to provide school bus travel for charter school students. Another element is providing more money for the Read by Grade 3 program.
Lombardo said his bill would also give teachers, staff, and administrators immunity from criminal and civil lawsuits regarding 'good faith' efforts to stop violence in the classroom.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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2 hours ago
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Its finances are a wreck and its people are hostile to their rulers. For that matter, anyone who has served in uniform in the Middle East during the past few decades knows that Iran has consistently conducted low-level war against the United States through its proxies. Could Iran attempt to attack shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz? Yes—and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy would die in large numbers in their speedboats or in their bases as they prepared to do so. The United States and its allies have prepared for that scenario for a long time, and Iranian sailors' desire for martyrdom has been overstated. Could Iran try to launch terror attacks abroad? Yes, but the idea that there is a broad silent network of Iranian terrorists just waiting for the signal to strike is chimerical. And remember, Iran's nuclear fangs have been pulled. True enough, not permanently, as many of the president's critics have already earnestly pointed out on television. But so much of that kind of commentary is pseudo-sophistication: Almost no strategic problem gets solved permanently, unless you are Rome dealing with Carthage in the Third Punic War, destroying the city, slaughtering its inhabitants, and sowing the furrows with salt. For some period—five years, maybe 10—Iran will not have a nuclear option. Its key facilities are smashed and its key scientists dead or living in fear of their lives. Similar complaints were made about the Israeli strike on the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981. The Israelis expected to delay the Iraqi program by no more than a year or two—but instead, the program was deferred indefinitely. As things go, crushing the facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, following a sustained Israeli campaign against similar targets, was a major achievement, and a problem deferred for five years may be deferred forever. As for Iran, in 1988 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini agreed to 'drink from the poisoned chalice' and accept a cease-fire with Iraq. He did so because the Iraq war was going badly, but also because he believed that the United States was willing to fight Iran: Operation Praying Mantis in 1988, following a mine explosion that damaged an American warship, involved the U.S. Navy sinking Iranian warships and destroying Iran's military installations. In 2003, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran reportedly paused its nuclear program. When American forces in Iraq finally picked up five elite Quds Force members in 2007, the Iranians pulled back from their activities in Iraq as well. The killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020 elicited only one feeble spasm of violence. The bottom line is that Iran's leaders do not relish the idea of tackling the United States directly, and that is because they are not fools. The president is an easy man to hate. He has done many bad things: undermining the rule of law, sabotaging American universities, inflicting wanton cruelty on illegal immigrants, lying, and engaging in corruption. With his fractured syntax and diction (including the peculiar signature 'Thank you for your attention to this matter' at the end of his more bombastic posts on Truth Social) he is easy to dismiss as a huckster. The sycophancy and boastfulness of his subordinates, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth when briefing the attack, are distasteful. But contempt and animosity, justified in some cases, are bad ways of getting into his mind and assessing his actions. Trump has surprised both friends and critics here. The isolationist wing of the MAGA movement was smacked down, although its members probably include the vice president and top media figures such as Tucker Carlson. Trump has confounded the posters of TACO ('Trump always chickens out') memes. He has disproved the notion that he takes his marching orders directly from the Kremlin, for the strikes were not in Russia's interest. He has left prominent progressives, including a dwindling band of Israel supporters, confused, bleating about war-powers resolutions that were deemed unnecessary when the Obama administration began bombing Libya. We live in a dangerous world, and one that is going to get more so—and indeed, in other respects worsened by the president's policies. But Trump got this one right, doing what his predecessors lacked the intestinal fortitude (or, to be fair, the promising opportunity) to do. He spoke with the brutal clarity needed in dealing with a cruel and dangerous regime. The world is a better place for this action and I, for one, applaud him for it.
