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March 28, 2024 3:27 am
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EDITORIAL: The Fault In The CCSD Plan On Full Display

In October, Clark County School District (CCSD) Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky appeared before a special Legislative Advisory Committee, formed by the recently passed Assembly Bill 394. This committee had been tasked with nothing less than changing the very paradigm on which CCSD exists.

In that meeting Skorkowsky presented the CCSD response to AB 394. His plan would have instituted a whole network of local advisory boards across the district. These boards would be formed and appointed by CCSD in order to engage the broad public; in a myriad of different communities and neighborhoods; about the education going on in their local schools.

In many ways the Skorkowsky plan looked a lot like the Empowerment School concept which had enjoyed signficant success at Moapa Valley High School in recent years. So it was not all bad. But one really didn’t have to look very hard at this plan to see its shortcomings and failings. Indeed, the plan’s major fault was put on full display last week by CCSD Trustee Chris Garvey right here in Moapa Valley at a meeting of the Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB).

The MVCEAB is a group of citizen volunteers that was organized by former Trustee Ruth Johnson in the late 1990s. Since then, it has been active in advocating for improvements to education for Moapa Valley schools. This group might be viewed as THE ideal model for what the Skorkowsky plan envisioned in its establishment of advisory boards throughout the district. Indeed, the Superintendent himself, in his October presentation, specifically mentioned MVCEAB to the legislators as one of the district’s great success stories in interacting with citizen groups. That is an interesting point to keep in mind hereafter.

In any case, the main focus of MVCEAB over the years has been to bring more education decision-making down to a local level. The board has had many measured successes in that goal. But none have completely filled the bill. More importantly, with the short institutional attention span of CCSD, none of them have been lasting. So the passage of AB 394 brought tremendous hope to MVCEAB members. In it they have seen an opportunity to form a Moapa Valley precinct; a separate and local governance structure that would operate autonomously from the CCSD urban-centered bureaucracy. In short, AB 394 offered a permanent fulfillment of the MVCEAB’s long-held wishes.

So, MVCEAB members sprang into action. In the last few months since the bill’s passage, they have formed a task force, researched the bill in depth, collected data, spoken to lawmakers and sketched out detailed proposals. Earlier this month they presented their ideas to a Technical Advisory Committee formed to assist the AB 394 legislative group in its work. The presentation impressed many of the committee members. It truly caught their attention; and the legislators are now listening attentively and fully engaged!

But not everyone was impressed. Those who hold power are not often willing to let go of the status quo. The CCSD Board of Trustees have made no qualms about their vehement opposition to AB 394. So even as the efforts of MVCEAB were building steam, CCSD Trustee Chris Garvey was viewing this rogue effort as something that had to be stopped at all costs.

This was fully confirmed by the lengths that Garvey was willing to go on Friday morning to shut the MVCEAB efforts on AB 394 down. By engaging the CCSD legal staff (working at top dollar, no doubt) she had dug up a decade-old procedural irregularity which, in effect, dissolved not just the MVCEAB, but every other citizen advisory board like it in the district. Thus, the very concept of CEABs was sacrificed wholesale, just because this one CEAB wasn’t content with coloring within the CCSD lines and with doing what it was told.

And so, that brings us back to the major fault in the Skorkowsky plan. As long as power and funding flows from the top down at the CCSD, this is the way things will always be for Moapa Valley. What’s more, if these types of issues are popping up in Moapa Valley; where our CEAB is being held up as a shining success story for the district; what’s preventing similar issues from popping up in every other community within the district whenever the wishes of those communities happen to differ from the wishes of the district or its trustees.

In the end, no matter how many advisory boards Mr. Skorkowsky forms in the proud image of MVCEAB, none of them will mean anything if CCSD central and the Board of Trustees are able to dictate, limit, or set perameters on the advice they can give.

If the trustees have the ability to shut down a volunteer citizen board like this, just because its members are not telling them what they want to hear, then there is absolutely no need for the advisory boards to exist in the first place. Surely volunteer citizens have much better things to do with their time than reflect back an approval of the inequities, inefficiencies and failing policies of CCSD central. For example, it would leave plenty of time for them in advocating vigorously for a whole new order of things at CCSD.

And, if that’s the case, we would certainly wish the citizen volunteers of “the former” MVCEAB the greatest success in their quest!

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1 thought on “EDITORIAL: The Fault In The CCSD Plan On Full Display”

  1. This CCSD reorganization is such a farce and Skorkowsky’s ideas are so flawed. It’s just a new layer of bureaucracy with CCSD still calling the shots. Why can’t new, real districts based upon town/CDP lines be the norm? Why can’t the people of Moapa just tell the district where they can go? Why does anyone keep taking orders from top down in education? Why do we even need the USDOE? So many questions, but no answers.

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