Bill would let Nevada Department of Education buy statewide Infinite Campus license to reduce duplicate reporting and improve data access

Assemblymember Selena Torres-Fawcett presented AB389 to the Assembly Committee on Education, a measure intended to modernize and centralize Nevada’s student-record reporting by authorizing the state to license and operate Infinite Campus statewide. The sponsor said the change would allow the Nevada Department of Education (NDE) to pull student data weekly, reduce duplicated quarterly reporting, and make financial and academic reporting more accessible.

Research background: the Gwinn Center (a nonpartisan education research center at the University of Nevada, Reno) summarized October research on the people-centered funding plan and the state’s reporting gaps, telling the committee missing or fragmented data and redundant reporting were persistent problems. The Center recommended a two-pronged approach: (1) centralized Infinite Campus data collection to streamline reporting without added district burden, and (2) a publicly accessible financial reporting platform that maps funding down to the school level and ties spending to accountability metrics.

What the bill does: AB389 would require the state superintendent to adopt standardized procedures to collect, validate, maintain and transfer electronic people records; permit NDE to pull data automatically rather than rely on repeated manual uploads; allow the department to use PCFP (people-centered funding plan) allocations to cover part of the statewide license cost by withdrawing funds from districts’ PCFP portion; preserve districts’ ownership of their local data and allow districts to retain custom add-ons; and shift some reporting requirements (including some class-size and accountability reports) from quarterly to annual submission as recommended by the Commission on School Funding report.

District and system comments: Peter Zutz from NDE explained that a state “edition” and district “editions” of Infinite Campus already exist in different forms and that large districts (for example, Clark and Washoe) have customized local editions; under the state license model, districts would keep customizations while the state provides a common backbone and routine weekly pulls. Many district and education associations testified in favor: Nevada Charter School Association, Washoe County School District, Nevada Association of School Superintendents, self-managed charter leaders and others described the potential to reduce staff time spent on repetitive reporting tasks.

Opposition and concerns recorded: the Nevada State Education Association (teachers’ union) opposed AB389 largely because the bill would change class-size reporting frequency; they argued classroom teachers and members use quarterly reporting to monitor class-size trends and that class-size data should remain at the fore of legislative oversight. Other public callers raised privacy and data governance concerns around a large statewide student database; one caller said parents had difficulty accessing or correcting records and urged caution about centralized systems. NDE and the sponsor responded to privacy concerns by noting district ownership of local data and technical arrangements that allow districts to keep customizations while the state pulls required information.

Status: committee heard testimony and closed the hearing on AB389. No committee vote on the bill was recorded in the provided transcript.