By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Education advocates in the rural communities of northeastern Clark County continued their offensive last week against Clark County School District (CCSD) on the issue of rural school funding. Faced with austere school budget cuts, members of the local communities have been pushing back against the district over the details in state law specifically governing the funding of rural schools in larger school districts.
Threat of Lawsuit
On Tuesday, September 12, the Mesquite City Council approved a resolution instructing the city attorney to sue the CCSD on behalf of Virgin Valley Elementary School and Joseph L. Bowler Elementary School.
Mesquite city attorney Bob Sweetin said that the district had effectively proposed to cut $127,000 from the budget of Virgin Valley Elementary and $141,000 at J.L. Bowler.
Sweetin pointed out that state law, passed as Assembly Bill 469 to reorganize the CCSD, included a provision preserving funding of rural schools to keep it proportionally the same as how the schools were funded before the reorganization. According to the statute, the district must provide an explanation for any changes to that proportional rural allotment, Sweetin said.
“What they have failed to do is to post that information online, both on the school websites and the district website, as to what the reasoning is for reducing the rural budget,” Sweetin told City Council members. “That is a statutory requirement.”
Sweetin said that he had brought the matter before State Superintendent of Instruction, Steve Canavero, who has enforcement authority over implementation of AB469. Canavero sent a letter to CCSD Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky asking for the required information to be submitted by September 8. But as of last week, that information had not been received.
Sweetin said that he had been contacted by Skorkowsky with assurances that the schools would be funded at 100 percent of last year’s budget when the final budgets were released early this week. But Sweetin encouraged the Council to move forward with the lawsuit as an assurance.
“Mr. Skorkowsky is a man of his word and I believe that he is going to do that,” Sweetin said. “But he answers to a board of trustees. And that board may see things differently when they are dealing with the high deficit they are claiming to have.”
The resolution’s sponsor, Councilman David Ballweg agreed that the lawsuit should move forward despite verbal assurances.
“We need to give Mr. Sweetin the authority to act immediately if we don’t have a resolution to this,” Ballweg said. “We can’t continue to drag this out for another three months while the kids are in school.”
Before State Legislators
On Thursday, education advocates for Moapa Valley schools testified at length in Las Vegas at a meeting of the Legislative Advisory Committee in charge of implementation of AB469.
Dr. Larry Moses of Logandale, who spent a year as rural representative on a Technical Advisory grouped formed to assist the Legislative Advisory Committee in its work, went into detail on the language of AB469 as it pertained to rural schools. He outlined the ways it was not being followed by the CCSD central administration.
He cited one of the main goals of the legislation was to bring funding and decision-making down to principals and School Organizational Teams (SOT) at the local level. But local decision-making is impossible, if SOTs and principals don’t have a clear accounting of the school’s per pupil funding, including the rural allotment, Moses said.
“To figure the weighted funding for rural schools, the SOTs need to know the district’s base per pupil funding in relation to the specific rural school’s per pupil funding for the 2016-17 year,” Moses said. “Then a proportional difference can be calculated to apply to 2017-18. That proportional difference must not be less than 2016-17, according to the statute.”
But though repeated requests had been made to the district for the 2016-17 numbers, they had not been given to the local schools, Moses said.
“The district refuses to release this information,” Moses said.
Education Equity For Rurals
In another testimony before the committee, Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board member Lindsey Dalley gave an account of how the cuts to rural allotment affected things at the ground level.
He pointed out that rural schools don’t generally qualify for specialized funding programs such as federal Title I funding, state funding for needy students, social services funding and more.
In addition, rural students don’t have access to Magnet School programs, Career and Technical academies, victory schools and other educational opportunities available to urban students.
“There are really only two sources of funding for Moapa Valley schools,” Dalley said. “That is the base funding per pupil, and the rural school allotment. It is that portion above the base that allows us to function and gives some sort of equity to rural students.”
Dalley said that rural schools get the base per pupil funding to get bare minimum requirements for graduation, and then use the rural allotment to fund programs that their students don’t have access to, living in remote areas.
One example cited by Dalley was credit retrieval programs put into place to help students who are struggling to meet grade level advancement requirements.
“Our middle school no longer has a credit retrieval program,” Dalley said. “So when those students fail those classes we don’t have the ability to bring them back up to grade level.”
In addition, similar credit retrieval programs at the high school had been cut back to the point of offering only one class. “The class size for that one class is unmanageable, there is not enough room for all the students to take it,” Dalley said. “As all this moves down the pipeline it is going to become a real problem.”
Problems At Rural Schools
Dalley said that there was a perception that rural communities were privileged and well-to-do. But the reality on the ground is quite different.
“We don’t want to take away from the problems of urban schools, but rural schools have problems too,” Dalley said. “For example, we actually have homeless students in our community.”
He listed more than a dozen examples where homeless children lived in impoverished situations like abandoned trailers without windows or doors, outside in marsh areas, along the river channel and at the Moapa Indian Reservation. Dalley said that there was a lack of services in the rural community to help these students.
“We know these kids by their individual names and, because of the nature of our communities, we are not going to let them starve,” Dalley said. “But we don’t have the educational resources to provide an equitable education. Our rural school allocation has always been used like Title I money would, for these disadvantaged students.These kids need a reason to come to school. The rural allocation has given us those programs.”
Dalley said that he and local school administrators had spent much of the year trying to engage the CCSD on the issue of quantifying and clarifying the rural allotment.
“We need to have a frank discussion about what rural school funding means,” Dalley said. “We have tried to get that with the district central administrators but haven’t been able to get it. We have been asking for that for six months.”
After the testimony, Legislative Advisory Committee chairman Senator Mike Roberson (R-Las Vegas) applauded the efforts of those who testified.
“Testimony like we have heard today reminds me of the key motivation for the legislature to pass this law,” Roberson said. “It is the historic lack of responsiveness by this school district bureaucracy to the community. As painful as (this reorganization process) may be at times, we are changing that. This school district will respond to the community.”
