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March 29, 2024 5:05 am
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CCSD Cuts Dean Positions

By CHARLENE PAUL

Moapa Valley Progress

Clark County School District (CCSD) Superintendent Jesus Jara caused a stir last week when he announced on Monday, June 10 that the district will eliminate all 170 dean positions in all district middle schools and high schools. Jara explained that the action was necessary to close a projected $17 million deficit for the 2019-20 school year. It is also projected that the 2020-21 school year will see the same $17 million deficit.

“This decision was not made lightly,” Jara told the principals last week. “And I believe all the advocates for education and those elected leaders who are fighting for change would like to avoid this from occurring.”

Reaction from school administrators was almost immediate. On Tuesday, Stephen Augspurger, the Executive Director of the Clark County Association of School Administrators and Professional-Technical Employees, said that he was stunned that Jara’s video was released without any prior communication regarding the cuts.

In a statement on Tuesday, Augspurger said that the union was “not consulted nor informed in advance of the superintendent’s decision to take this action. No guidance was sought. It is evident that the superintendent has no desire to work positively nor professionally with administrators or the bargaining group.”

On Wednesday, secondary school principals across CCSD passed a unanimous no-confidence vote in Jara in response to the video announcement. In doing this, principals expressed concerned that the cuts would jeopardize school safety since it is the deans who are primarily responsible for discipline at the schools.

Then at the CCSD School Board meeting on Thursday, many people in attendance, including parents and teachers voiced their concerns about what cutting dean positions would mean to the safety of schools.

Approximately ninety percent of principals who attended the Wednesday meeting for the no confidence vote said they planned to cut teaching positions in order to create another position to help cover administrative duties.

“It’s not right for us to have to go back into our budgets and increase class sizes and eliminate teaching positions to be able to keep our schools safe,” Eldorado High School principal Dave Wilson said as quoted in the Review Journal last week. “It’s just – it’s unconscionable.”

Those deans whose positions have been eliminated will have the opportunity of returning to the classroom as teachers. “We have 900 vacancies right now in our classrooms,” Jara said.

At Thursday night’s Board meeting, Jara apologized for the way the reductions had been announced. “This decision was difficult,” Jara said. “It was not a cavalier, quick ‘this is what we do.’ In hindsight, I think the message was clear. I think what I would have done is send the video out at the end of the day once everyone was notified. I felt with the video, everyone hears from the superintendent.”

Education advocates in the Moapa Valley were concerned that the problem went deeper than just a cut to the dean positions. Moapa Valley Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB) member Lindsey Dalley said that the announcement eroded the autonomy of local principals and School Organizational Teams (SOTs) to make budgeting decisions for their schools.

“The fact is that it is the principal and SOT that should be determining how their individual schools absorb a funding cut,” Dalley said. “That is what the law says. That local group is best positioned to decide what is the best direction for their school.”
Dalley also observed that if the cuts were equitably distributed, it would have much less impact on the local schools’ budgets. He pointed out that the $17 million deficit is actually less than 7/10 of one percent of the overall CCSD operating budget of $2.8 billion.

“So if, say, the middle school is asked to cut .7 percent of its budget it is going to be more like $12,000-15,000, not the $85,000 that would be the dean’s salary,” Dalley said. “That would be do-able for the principal and the SOT to work out. I think that, once again, there is a problem of equity here.”

Local principals spent last week assessing what the cut would mean to their schools. They planned to meet in consultation with their SOTs to determine what the response and next steps would be.

“We will be meeting with our SOT this week to discuss these issues,” said Mack Lyon Middle School principal Ken Paul. “Fortunately, our dean, Aimee Lewis, was just hired as our assistant principal so we won’t lose her.”

Moapa Valley High School Principal Hal Mortensen also stated he would be meeting with the School Organizational Team this week to discuss the affect on the high school staff and operations.

“We have no additional funds to hire a teacher on special assignment, so the timing was not good,” Mortensen said. “But we had to operate without a dean for the first three or four months of this past school year, so that helped us know what we have to do in this situation.”

Hughes Middle School Principal and Virgin Valley acting Principal Maurice Perkins said, “We will work with our SOT to come up with a plan. I had hoped it would be different this time, but money continues to be taken from the schools in order to balance the budget. We will roll with the punches and do our best to make this work.”

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