By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Members of the Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB) were shocked and outraged last week when they were told that their organization doesn’t really exist, and hasn’t for more than 14 years.
They were informed of this by Clark County School District (CCSD) Trustee Chris Garvey at the beginning of a MVCEAB meeting on Friday morning at Moapa Valley High School.
The issue had reportedly come about due to a procedural mix-up which occurred on the Board of Trustees back in September of 2001, Garvey said. At that time the board was looking at establishing a new governance structure throughout the district. They had apparently deleted the CCSD policy authorizing CEABs with the intention of replacing it with a revised policy. But the replacement policy was never actually enacted, Garvey claimed
“I am assuming that it got lost when they revamped all the policies under governance,” Garvey said. “But it was never established back into policy.”
Members of the MVCEAB were incensed by this announcement and its timing. They said that hunting down and revealing this obscure procedural issue had been done because Garvey wanted to derail the board’s recent efforts regarding Assembly Bill 394, which was passed in the last State Legislature.
“I think that there is a lot more to the story here,” said MVCEAB member Lindsey Dalley. “And I imagine we will get to that. But to come in here and to announce, ‘Well, you know, you guys don’t really even exist; even though we have been treating you all along like you do; I just feel like there is an intimidation factor going on here.”
Dalley was appointed last month to head a special MVCEAB task force to advocate for a new Moapa Valley precinct under AB394.
The bill, passed in the final moments of the 2015 State Legislature, sets up an advisory committee to develop a plan that will reorganize the CCSD into a number of local school precincts. The intent was to de-centralize power in the CCSD and bring decision-making about education closer to the local school level.
A second Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) was also formed by the bill; made up of about 20 representatives from incorporated cities, Clark County, a CCSD trustee and many other community organizations; to help in the complex process.
In a special meeting of MVCEAB held October 27, Dalley had presented a report of his task force’s research into AB394. He outlined various options that the community might pursue. He then sought direction from MVCEAB on how the task force should proceed.
At that time, the board voted unanimously to direct the task force to make a presentation in the upcoming meeting of the TAC to plead the cause for formation of a Moapa Valley precinct under the bill. Their hope was that a new Moapa Valley precinct would someday be governed by a locally elected board. CCSD central would still exist for bonding purposes and as a service agency to the precinct governance.
On the agenda of Friday’s meeting, Dalley was expected to give another report, this time of his presentation to the TAC. The TAC had been very open to hearing the ideas of the task force and considering them, he said.
“We made the point to them that the principles (of AB 394) could be broadened to any scale, even including very small, like Moapa Valley,” Dalley said. “I think that we were clear on that and they were open to hearing it.”
In attendance at Friday’s meeting were several state legislators who had been particularly interested in the task force’s ideas. These included Assemblymen James Oscarson and Chris Edwards, who represent portions of the Moapa Valley. Also in attendance were Assemblyman Stephen Silberkraus who serves on the Legislative Advisory Committee for AB 394, and Assemblyman David Gardner who authored the bill and serves on the TAC.
TAC member and local resident Larry Moses was also in attendance at the meeting and planned on making a brief presentation to the board.
Garvey and other CCSD Trustees have been vocally opposed to the passage of AB 394. This opposition had arisen in communications with MVCEAB Chairwoman Shari Lyman in recent weeks. Lyman had received a number of telephone calls from Garvey who claimed that MVCEAB was overstepping its bounds by making presentations to a legislative committee.
“If you go to the legislature, you can talk about how you feel about 394,” Garvey said Friday in summing up those phone conversations. “But you can’t go to the legislature and say that CEAB, which is advisory to CCSD, is going to move forward with this. Because you are advisory to us and if you don’t tell us as a board, it puts us in a place of liability; because now you are going with the face of an advisory board representing CCSD and making a statement before the legislators.”
In the wake of those phone conversations, Garvey said she had been doing research trying to find out what the perameters of the CEABs are; and what liabilities the district takes on for those boards in general. That is when she found the 2001 incident where all CEABs had been disbanded, she said.
“So that leaves us with what do you want to do now about it?” Garvey said.
Garvey expressed willingness to present the item to the Board of Trustees and set the issue right. If she did, though, she said it would mean that the MVCEAB would have to operate only on issues where the trustees have control. State legislative matters would be outside of that realm, she said.
Alternatively, the board could re-form itself as a parent group and not have official status as a CEAB under district policy, Garvey said. In that case, the board could pursue whatever it wanted, she said.
“So right now you are saying we are not a legal entity?” Lyman asked.
“Unless you have got something else, documentation that shows something different,” Garvey said. “We researched it and everything, our legal did, and we can’t find anything past this.”
Lyman asked whether this should end the meeting. Garvey responded that the meeting could continue, just not as a CEAB. And it would thus not have to operate under Open Meeting Law.
“But what I need to know from you is, do you want me to bring back an item to the trustees to address re-establishing an official CEAB, advisory to the trustees; which then gives you that status,” Garvey said. “But it also means that you have to be only advisory to things that the district has control over. Not things that the district does not control.”
MVCEAB members objected to these limits being placed on a citizen board.
“One of our big things from the beginning is that we do not work for CCSD,” said MVCEAB member Cindy McMurray. “We work for our community. We have been able to advise and counsel, write letters and petition for certain things. But we do not feel that we are hired, or are under, CCSD which is what has helped us to do what is best for our kids and not what is best for CCSD.”
Speaking as a local resident only, Dr. Larry Moses pointed out that, with Garvey’s revelation, the MVCEAB had been dissolved. He suggested that the meeting be adjourned as the board was left with no legal standing.
“The CCSD, and your trustee, has the authority, since you are advisory, to discontinue you,” Moses said. “And I have just heard that you are discontinued. I find this absolutely abhorrent. I find it intimidating. I find it an attempt to shut your voices down. It is despicable. But you have heard it. According to board policy there is no such thing as CEAB.”
But MVCEAB member Teresa Holzer stated that the actions of the CCSD over the past 14 years supersede this obscure administrative issue.
“Since 2001, CCSD; including you, other trustees and all the various superintendents along the way; have ratified the actions of this board,” Holzer said to Garvey. “If this board were repealed in 2001 I think that it would not be legally effective; because your actions have dictated a de-facto approval of this board all along the way. Futhermore, if there were some kind of internal meeting where the CEABs were repealed, there would have been a duty to give notice to this board. No notice was ever given.”
MVCEAB member Dianna Walker addressed a comment to the legislators in attendance.
“I am actually glad that this is happening here today,” she said. “I love that we have our legislators here today and so many of them. You can see right now, can’t you, just what we are up against with the CCSD. Here we have our own trustee; that word ‘trust’ is so important to us here; yet she researches this and has been in contact with our board president all along, and has not ever let her know that this is something that she has gotten wind of, or that she has been researching it. Instead, she waits and brings it to a public meeting and does this. This is exactly why we need help from you, our legislators.”
In the end, McMurray made a motion that the group continue to function as the MVCEAB.
“If the Trustees should so choose to disband us at this point, they would need it talked about and discussed in an open meeting and give us written notice of that,” McMurray said. “Until that time, I move that we continue forward as we are.”
This motion was passed unanimously and the meeting continued.
In interviews following the meeting, the legislators in attendance also expressed outrage at what was done.
“I think that it was absolutely the worst way to start a meeting if you want to have something productive happen,” said Assemblyman Chris Edwards. “She should have been ashamed of herself for doing that.”
Assemblyman James Oscarson said that he found the timing very suspicious. “Suddenly when this board is working on something that might be contrary to what the trustees want, all of a sudden she finds an 11 year old document that shows ‘Oh, well you really aren’t a group anymore,’” Oscarson said. “That just confirms for me everything that the community has been saying about their frustrations in dealing with the CCSD.”
Assemblyman David Gardner said that he was also shocked with the way that the issue had been handled. “If I found that this group that I have been working with for years is now gone; we got rid of it 14 years ago; I would have called the chairperson and said that I was going to hold a vote in the next day or two with the board to fix the problem,” Gardner said. “I wouldn’t come to a meeting and say, ‘Hey, you guys have to shut up about this AB 394 or else.’ That is pretty much what I heard here today and I was shocked. It sounded to me like a strong attempt to censure.”
Assemblyman Steve Silberkraus left the meeting with just two words of advice for the MVCEAB members.
“Keep fighting!” he said.
