As a new school year starts, we explore how a new law intends to hold Nevada schools more accountable, plus... (Patrick Cummings) They are the iconic state animal, and there's not that many of them.

-Protecting the desert bighorn sheep.

Why wildlife officials move dozens of the state's animal out of state, that's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪ -Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

With Nevada consistently ranking low in education when compared to other states, Nevada lawmakers passed a bill to hold schools accountable.

The collection and reporting of data play a pivotal role in accountability.

So what's the state's plan in these areas?

The Guinn Center made specific recommendations that the state is implementing.

And Anna Colquitt, Director of Education Policy at the nonpartisan research center, joins us now.

Anna, welcome back to Nevada Week.

(Anna Colquitt) Thank you so much, Amber.

-We are also going to talk about AI in schools and chronic absenteeism, but those recommendations that the Guinn Center made that are part of this law, what were they and what led the Guinn Center to making those recommendations?

-Yeah, so last fall, we published a report on school funding with the new Pupil-Centered Funding Plan and our new way of funding schools.

We wanted to look at how it's being implemented across the state.

And findings from that research resulted in two key findings on reporting and accountability.

And both of those made their way into SB 460, which was our huge education bill that was passed this last session.

And those two recommendations, as I noted, center around reporting and accountability, so really looking at how we can create uniform guidelines for reporting so that we're eliminating redundant reporting.

We are reporting school-level expenditures so we know not just what amount is being allocated to schools, but what schools are actually spending those funds on.

And then the second one was on centralizing a data system to make sure that that data is accessible for all people to look at how those funds are being spent.

-And how did you determine that those were needed?

-So when we interviewed through this research project, we interviewed district-level administrators and then school principals, and we asked a variety of questions around how this new funding model is really playing out.

And the way that really these two recommendations came about was in our difficulty obtaining the data to know how these funds are being both allocated and spent.

And so the data accessibility piece stemmed from that of our inability to access the funding information.

And then in terms of reporting, that came up several times of just district burden in the amount that's required of them to report and then the frequency in which they were required to report.

-And this was an issue that we came across when we did a story on exclusionary discipline and found that how that's recorded across schools in this state is different.

It's hard to compare when you don't have that uniformity.

So funding accountability, how can you determine whether a school's use of money is appropriate?

-Yeah, great question.

So it's a common thing that we talk about with, you know, Nevada funding is-- school funding is much lower than the national average, about $4,000 per student below the national average and the expert recommendation for what is adequate funding, and we talk about that a lot.

But then the follow-up question is usually, What are we doing with the funds that we do have, and are we ensuring that we are making the most of those funds?

And both questions are worth asking and worth exploring.

And so from the accountability standpoint, I think there's kind of two-fold pieces of accountability.

One is the fiduciary accountability piece to ensure that we are spending the funds in the most effective way.

So when-- And when one piece of this that kind of shifted with the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan and the introduction of it is that we are now allocating funds to different things than we were before.

So now we have this at-risk population of students where funds are being specifically allocated for these students.

We need to make sure that that money is reaching those students, and our way to do that is through reporting and accountability metrics, so really rethinking that and ensuring we have that structure in place to hold our schools accountable for that funding.

And then the other side of that, or the second piece, is that school and student success piece.

So how are we defining that?

Are we broadening our definition of school success beyond kind of those standardized metrics, standardized tests that we typically use as kind of our metric for school or student success, and what are the, what are the other things that we can consider in that equation to say, yes, this student is successful, or, yes, this school is successful?

And those definitions are changing.

-Can you paint a picture of, let's take graduation rates, for example, and students who are determined to be at risk of not graduating.

How are you going to figure out if funds are being appropriately used to address that issue?

-Great question.

And actually, through our research, that was something that came up quite often as principals or district administrators feeling this sense of uncertainty on how those funds should be spent: How should we be spending these funds?

What are good interventions?

How do we target this population of students and actually see an increase in their success, however we're defining that, and a reduction in, you know, the amount of students that are at risk of not graduating?

And so I would say most of the programs are pretty synonymous with student engagement, chronic absenteeism interventions.

They're pretty synonymous with that.

But in addition to that, it's looking at what are the actual metrics that we want to say, yes, these things lead to increased graduation rates?

And I don't think we're quite at that place yet where we have a solid, solid set of those metrics to equate the two.

-You mentioned chronic absenteeism.

The Guinn Center just released the third part of a three-part series on that, and that has recommendations from principals across the state as to how they have fought that issue.

What was surprising to you in your research on that topic in what leads to a student becoming chronically absent?

-Yeah, so as you mentioned, we recently released the third part in a three-part series on chronic absenteeism.

We looked at national trends, what's happening in Nevada, innovative practices, as you mentioned, from across the state.

We always love to highlight when schools are doing something innovative and new and different to tackle issues.

And so that was the goal with that.

With chronic absenteeism, we know it's a huge issue in education.

The national average is about 23% of our students are chronically absent.

In Nevada, it's significantly higher at 25.6% of our students that are chronically absent.

-Why do you think that is?

-It's a huge issue.

And what we learned in that research is that there are a lot of factors that contribute to a student being chronically absent.

And maybe an interesting finding to me is the way that those factors interact with each other.

So you take a factor like food security, and a student who is food insecure is 57% more likely to be chronically absent than their food secure peer.

Then you take a student with a disability that is-- Students with disabilities are, 36% of them, are chronically absent.

You look at a student who is both food insecure and has a disability, what is their likelihood of being chronically absent?

It is very high.

And so you look at the way that these layers really-- or these factors really compound when you start to add them up and how can we tackle those at the school level?

-I believe I read in your report that AI is being used to identify chronically absent students and start to address it.

AI in schools across the country, you're examining that.

And what have you found?

-Yes.

So we released a report on AI in higher education earlier this year.

We are also report-- releasing a report on AI in K-12 in the fall, which will hopefully capture kind of the risks, benefits, what's happening on a national basis with AI.

In general, from a, from a national perspective, 81 bills were introduced in the last two years for AI and K-12 initiatives.

That was across 28 states.

And then 15 of those bills were enacted.

In Nevada, we had one bill related to AI and K-12, now is AB 406, which prohibits AI from replacing mental health professionals in schools.

And so we know that this a federal priority with AI literacy and professional development in schools.

Most of the bills that were introduced and passed related to things like governance, so making sure that we have some human oversight and task forces, potentially, over AI initiatives, curriculum, and digital literacy initiatives, and then, of course, privacy and security and those things.

-And that bill that you mentioned in Nevada, it did pass.

What was the argument for it?

-Really thinking about the need to have the human interaction and human connection with students and ensuring that AI was not taking over that human interaction when students need it most in the mental health area.

So that was, that was the primary motivation behind it.

-There is a need for more mental health resources-- -Absolutely.

- --yet AI, don't yet know if that's a good response to it.

Anna Colquitt, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you.

-We move now to drought.

The federal government is forecasting alarmingly low water levels at Lake Mead.

We'll learn more about that ahead, but, first, a look at how drought is impacting Nevada's state animal, the desert bighorn sheep.

Historically, pneumonia has acted as one of their fiercest enemies.

But more recently, drought in the Muddy and Black Mountains near Valley of Fire State Park forced the state's animal to be moved out of state in a process known as translocation.

[helicopter whirring] Inside each of the bags you see dangling from that helicopter is a desert bighorn sheep.

(Joe Bennett) They probably feel like they're abducted by aliens.

-They're Nevada's state animal.

And on a hot morning in June, the day's long process of capturing and translocating more than 100 of them got underway at Valley of Fire State Park.

-You know, we do it in the summertime because it gives these sheep time to acclimate to their new home.

We're moving them to a latitude of Elko or Salt Lake City.

It'd be like me, throwing me in Canada in January.

-That's Joe Bennett, a Nevada Department of Wildlife staff specialist.

-They're flying around from that helicopter with the doors off.

What they'll do is they'll identify a group of sheep, and then they'll actually shoot a net gun over that sheep, and that wraps them up, and then the mugger will jump out of the helicopter, hobble them, blindfold them, take a temperature, inject, you know, a sedative.

- Nevada Week first spoke with Bennett near this same location in February.

That's when, for an unprecedented third year out of the last four, the state's wildlife department hauled water to the bighorn sheep here, depositing it in man made water developments called guzzlers.

-And I'll tell you, the worst day of my career was when we were flying bighorn sheep surveys in 2020.

And we flew over a guzzler in the West Muddys a few miles from here, and there were dead sheep at that water development because the guzzler was dry.

I hate saying that on camera, but I don't want to see that again.

-Which is why Bennett says this translocation is necessary, because even though the water hauls help, rainfall is still required to sustain the vegetation the sheep eat.

-The biggest issue is forage at this point.

So what I would say is, by removing sheep, you're actually going to see a positive response from the other sheep because there's less competition for resources or groceries.

-And Bennett says the 139 sheep that were removed stand to benefit as well.

-They're going to be in lush belly-high grass.

Like I wouldn't be surprised if in a year these sheep don't put on 30, 40 pounds.

-After the helicopter released the sheep, recording their weight was the first step these teams took before carrying them inside this tent for thorough evaluation.

In here is where veterinarians, volunteers, and biologists are all working together to collect samples--blood samples, fecal samples, nasal swabs, toncil swabs--all of this to determine whether these sheep have any diseases.

(Virginia Stout) The biggest risk factor for mortality or death is pneumonia.

A lot of herds have declined due to that bacteria, and we're trying to repopulate those areas.

-Virginia Stout is a wildlife veterinarian for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

Once she and her staff determined that these bighorn sheep did not have pneumonia, they transported a portion of them back home.

-It's exciting to actually have the opportunity to have more sheep on the landscape and be able to move them around Utah.

-The other sheep went to the Tobin and Cortez Ranges in Northern Nevada.

Patrick Cummings was part of the crew that loaded them in the trailer to be towed there.

Let's start off with the scratch on your face.

-The scratch on my face?

-What happened?

(Patrick Cummings) I didn't-- It would have been, probably, in the trailer.

We've got some older rams.

They're heavier.

They can have an attitude.

-Cummings also serves as the president of the Fraternity of the Desert Bighorn, founded in 1964 in Las Vegas.

The nonprofit donated $100,000 to this capture and translocation.

The hunting company KUIU contributed $200,000.

(Brendan Burns) We only donate to projects that are creating or solidifying hunting opportunities.

The state's wildlife department estimates that this project cost $1.2 million in total.

Donations, excise taxes on guns and ammo, and hunting tags made up its funding.

-It's a lot more than just the hunting opportunity.

It's, it's potentially-- You know, I have a son who's 12 years old.

You do projects like this so someday he could potentially draw a tag.

-And while it may seem strange, wanting to hunt an animal that you're also trying to save-- -So conservation is a complicated thing.

- --subjecting it to stressors that could kill it-- -The rigors of capture.

It is an experience that is very difficult for any animal to endure.

- --Cummings says it's about resource management and population control.

-I do not like what the sheep have to go through.

I really don't.

But I think, in a broader sense, what it's going to do for the eastern segment of this desert bighorn population in the Muddy Mountains, on balance, it's a good thing.

-Cummings said this knowing that some of the sheep captured here would likely die.

-Capture myopathy, which is a catch-all term, really, that describes all the rigors of capture, can rear its ugly head when the animals are released weeks later.

So in other words, they're compromised.

They may not really look like it.

They may actually even get out of the trailer and run to everyone's satisfaction, but the animal has already sustained enough damage that it will succumb or be predisposed to where it can't evade predation.

-You're looking at video from the bighorn sheep's release in the Cortez Range.

The Nevada Department of Wildlife says two sheep ended up dying there, one from the repercussions of a broken leg, while a mountain lion killed the other.

In total, the department says 6 of the 139 sheep captured passed away.

That's a mortality rate of just 4% and the cost of conservation, says Cummings-- -They are special.

They are the iconic state animal, and there's not that many of them.

- --in order to stabilize the bighorn sheep populations that pneumonia has ravaged and prolonged drought now threatens.

The Nevada Department of Wildlife says it may haul more water to the guzzlers near Valley of Fire as soon as this month.

Our drought coverage continues with the US Bureau of Reclamation projecting historically low levels of water at Lake Mead, what that means for local water restrictions.

Alan Halaly, Water Reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, joins us now.

Alan, how low are these levels?

(Alan Halaly) Yeah.

I mean, that's the hot topic right now.

Down in 2022 we had the historic low of 1,040, which is when all those national headlines were generated, when the bodies came up to the surface, you could say, literally.

So, yeah, I mean-- -We shouldn't laugh.

-And you know, this most recent projection is in-- You know, there's a high, middle, and low that is always released every month, and the middle one that's the most probable did show us going below that 1,040 level again.

And that has big implications for us here in Southern Nevada.

Lake Mead is our main water source.

It's where we source 90% of our entire water supply.

So it should be something that we pay attention to, especially as it pertains to how we're implementing these water restrictions locally.

-And those projections are over two years?

-Correct.

-So when is it projected that it will-- -I believe it's June 2027.

-2027, okay.

As for watering restrictions right now, they will be determined in August if they change, correct?

-Correct.

-How do they stand to be impacted by this?

-Right.

So if you talk to the Southern Nevada Water Authority, they're going to tell you that we are completely prepared for any level of shortage that is put forth by-- within the law.

And I think that that's true.

We've done a lot of water planning to make sure that we have water in reserves.

We put water into the ground to bank it, for example, into our aquifer.

And, you know, there's reservoirs throughout the valley.

So we're well prepared and-- -But do you foresee those restrictions changing?

-I don't.

We're going to probably see what is known as the Tier 1 restriction, which is pretty par for the course for where we've been.

We dipped down into a Tier 2 projection a couple years ago.

But, yeah, it's interesting to think about, you know, Nevada is afforded the smallest amount of the river of any state, and we're kind of lumped in with California and Arizona in the Lower Basin.

So it's interesting to see how that plays out here locally, as we are a relatively smaller community compared to California or Arizona.

-Who is hurting the most from the water restrictions that are currently in place?

-Right.

So there's been a lot of controversy, I think, about how we're really apportioning these water restrictions.

The Las Vegas Valley Water District has since 2023 charged its users what they call excessive use charges.

That means that above a certain rate that changes every month, you know, they are charged this flat fee that is meant to rein in those top 10% of the water users, you know, your casino bigwigs or folks that are living in these large lots.

But there has been some criticism of that because it's affecting families as well, folks that have these larger lots.

They're saying that it isn't quite, I guess, calculated in a fair way in their opinion.

There's this group called the Water Fairness Coalition that has been kind of championing some of those reforms and going to those public meetings and making their voices heard.

There's actually a lawsuit that was filed yesterday where a Summerlin lawyer went back and forth with the Water Authority, and it's really one of the first legal challenges we've seen to these excessive use charges that have been so controversial.

In a way, it's like these, this controversy is boiling over.

And they're even considering a class action suit to get some of that money back, because they don't think that these restrictions are being enforced in a fair way.

-And that lawsuit is some of your most recent reporting.

What is this person claiming?

What is the basis of of this lawsuit?

-Well, I mean, according to this lawyer, because there is no appeals process to-- a formal appeals process to these excessive use charges, he thinks it's a violation of the Nevada constitution and a-- -So if I am charged an excessive use fee, I have no way of appealing it?

-No, you don't.

I mean, what the Water District will tell you is that they'll come out to your property, assess your property for leaks, and will want you to change it.

But somebody like this, this lawyer, Sam Castor who, you know-- Really, the answer was he had a lot of grass on his property, which, you know, in many people's opinion, does have benefits to combating heat islands and making sure that we're staying cool in the desert.

So, yeah, I mean, it was a lot of back and forth, and there are remedies that the Water District does offer to, you know, fix leaks on your property and they will help you, but it does seem like some residents do get stonewalled when they really do try and in good faith fix what's happening on their property.

-And the Water Authority has made it seem like top 10% of water users within the state, that's who they're going after.

And who fits into that category?

-It really runs the gamut, I think.

You know, there are folks that regularly grace the top 10 water user lists that comes out every year, one of them being, for instance, Dana White.

And you know, there's even the Sultan of Brunei has a home in Las Vegas.

-I'm so glad you brought that up.

Who is the Sultan of Brunei?

-He's a royal that is from the country of Brunei, and he does have a home here in Las Vegas that really does top that list every year when it comes out.

So it's really those folks that the Water Authority is trying to target with these fees, trying to-- They do acknowledge that they're punitive and that they're not meant to be something that they charge over and over again.

But for those really high water users that don't seem receptive to other measures, you know, it's just another way to generate revenue for conservation in their opinion.

-You brought up Nevada's role in the Colorado River.

The current operating guidelines for all seven states that utilize that river, it expires at the end of next year, end of 2026, so negotiations have been underway.

Where do they stand?

-It's not looking good, Amber.

You know, I think there's a lot of factors at play here.

All of these meetings happen behind closed doors, and for those who don't know, every state in the Basin, there are seven of them, their governor appoints a czar who is responsible for negotiating on behalf of that state's interest.

That for us is John Ensminger, the general manager of the Water Authority.

And you know, it is hard to really get a peek into this process.

It seems like, you know, there has been a general sense of receding from the public.

All the negotiators, generally, will meet at the conference in Las Vegas, the Colorado River Water Users Association.

They declined to do that for the first time in decades, as I understand.

-That's an indication it's not going well.

-It's not going well.

And the same thing happened in Colorado with the Getches-Wilkinson Conference.

They didn't even go to that one.

-And some of your most recent reporting about this topic mentioned a divorce.

What do you mean by that?

-So, as I understand it, this proposal, which the details are still being ironed out, but it's something that they're all considering is the Lower and Upper Basin would essentially only tie-- Their only tie would be releases from Lake Powell, which is based on a three-year average from Lees Ferry.

As to what that looks like in practice, it's really unclear until we see some numbers; but essentially, it's being painted as this divorce, conscious uncoupling, where the Lower Basin and Upper Basin can't agree on what to do in the face of climate change and declining water availability.

So in many ways, they would be really only tying themselves by these releases from Lake Powell, which, of course, do end up in Lake Mead and are important for the Lower Basin.

-Which would be a monumental shift, as our viewers can read from your reporting.

Thank you so much for joining Nevada Week.

And thank you for watching.

I'll see you next week on Nevada Week.