Gov. Joe Lombardo is proposing to use more than $3 million in federal COVID-19 aid dollars to help backfill funding for the state’s Opportunity Scholarship program, setting up another battle with Democratic lawmakers over the program’s future after they rejected a proposal for increased funding for the private school scholarship program in the 2023 legislative session.

In a Friday afternoon news release, Lombardo’s office said it would submit an item to the upcoming meeting of the Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee — which makes decisions about state spending when lawmakers are out of session — to maintain existing funding levels and avoid hundreds of children receiving scholarships from potentially losing them, a fear school choice advocates have noted in recent weeks.

The issue has also been the subject of a social media campaign from a Lombardo-aligned PAC, which is accusing Democrats of “defunding” the program, a claim that Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) has pushed back on. 

The proposed spending would need to be approved by the Democrats who make up a majority of the committee, and who in the most recent legislative session remained skeptical of Lombardo’s calls to expand the program.

“I have been fighting for these children since I took office,” Lombardo said in a statement. “The Democrats in the Legislature refused to fund these scholarships, and the result is that unless we take action now, these children will be forced out of their schools for the upcoming school year. It’s unacceptable to me to let that happen.”

Formally known as the Nevada Educational Choice Scholarship, Opportunity Scholarships use a limited pool of private donations exchanged for tax credits to provide private school scholarships for students under 300 percent of the federal poverty line. Created in 2015 during Republican control of the Legislature, the program has often become a sticking point of legislative negotiations in past sessions, with Democrats seeking to starve the program on the basis that public resources should be saved for public schools and Republicans seeking expansion.

Read the rest of this article, which was shared with Noticiero Móvil, over at The Nevada Independent. This story was reported by Riley Snyder and Rocio Hernández and originally published on July 28, 2023.