No One Asked Me But… (September 7, 2016)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… The thirty-one pages of regulations proposed by the Legislative Advisory Committee to Reorganize the Clark County School District was accepted by State Board of Education and has been sent to the twelve member Legislative Commission for final approval before Governor Sandoval signs it into law.

While AB 394 has been hailed as an overhaul of the CCSD. But it really is not even an oil change. The check engine light has been on for decades and the Board of Trustees of CCSD have ignored it.
It was once explained to me by a central office administrator that the district policy of upkeep for its facilities was one of “deferred maintenance.” Rather than regular maintenance of things like air conditioners, they wait until something breaks and then they fix it. Apparently, the Trustees buy this same nonsense when it comes to educating our children, except they cannot seem to recognize when something is broken so very little gets fixed.

For over ten months, the CCSD trustees ignored the fact that a legislative committee was developing a plan to reorganize the district. Now that AB 394 appears to be a fact, the trustees are in an uproar.
They rallied the support staff union; whom they have stiffed in the area of salary increases over the last ten years; with threats of layoffs. Both the board and the support staff union were no-shows for over ten months only to appear at the last meeting of the Legislative Advisory Committee crying they had been left out of the process.

My only question for them is: “Where have you been?” There were nearly 20 committee meetings between the Technical Advisory Committee and the Legislative Advisory Committee with hours of testimony from various groups. The President of the Board of Trustees sat on the Technical Advisory Committee and never once offered an alternative to the regulations proposed by the Legislative Advisory Committee.

When I see that the Board of Trustees is objecting to the regulations as presented, I begin to wonder if school board trustees know how to read.
I further wonder what their million dollar legal firm does for a living. I would challenge anyone of them to point out where in the regulations anything of significance has actually changed. All decision-making power still remains with the superintendent and his associate superintendents who are directly under his control.

For some unknown reason, the ACLU, shilling for the CCSD Board of Trustees, is also crying foul. They worry that resources will not be equitably distributed among the inner city schools and those in the suburbs.
Where was the ACLU when the magnet school model was accepted? Here is a system that depletes inner city schools of their scholars and leaves the less academically inclined in comprehensive high schools with less funding, less experienced teachers, and lower expectations. Only those with certain GPA’s and with the means of transportation are allowed out of the comprehensive high schools into the elite magnet schools. Since seating is limited, the ability of a student to get a quality of education is left to the luck of the draw.

The only concession to local control of schools in AB 394 is the legislatively protected School Organizational Teams. These teams are advisory only and any decision they make is subject to the approval of the principal, school associate superintendent, and the superintendent.
There is in fact nothing in AB 394 that gives any power to anyone besides the superintendent of schools who is hired and fired by the trustees.

Our local trustee was quoted in the regional media last week as saying that this all costs money and that it all comes from the kids. She apparently isn’t concerned with the fact that presently; and under AB 394; well over half the district’s net funding of $5,237,796,765 for 2016-17 will never see the classroom.
She is concerned that AB 394 would require 80 percent of the school district funds be spent at the school level in the first year and 85% every year thereafter. AB 394 has a provision allowing the superintendent to declare some funds as restricted and these are not included in the 80 percent reserved for the schools. In AB 394 those areas of restricted funds are: negotiating with staff, transportation, food services, risk management, financial services, employee appointments, equity and diversity services, SPED, legal services, maintenance and repair of buildings, maintenance of grounds, custodial services, plan for English Language Learners, internal audits, technology services, police services, emergency management services, state mandated assessments and accountability, and capital projects.

The superintendent has indicated after all these things are paid for, he can then look at funding the education of the students of CCSD with the remaining 2.2 billion dollars.
For some reason Trustee Garvey believes that spending over $3 billion of $5,237,796,765 outside the schools is fair and equitable. Keep in mind that central administration not only takes more than $3 billion dollars off the table by using the term restricted funds, they also get to keep 20% the first year and 15% of the $2.2 billion dollar general operating funds set aside to run the local schools. That amounts to approximately an additional $440,000,000 the first year and $330,000,000 after that. These figures are based on the latest published budget figures of CCSD for the 2016-17 school year,

There are those in the central office and on the board of trustees who do not believe local people are smart enough to control the education of their children. Since 1956, a central top-down school board has decided what is educationally sound for the children of Clark County.
How has that worked out? The State of Nevada has become an educational wasteland. We used to make fun of education in Mississippi. Now Nevada is the new Mississippi.

If you want to improve the educational standing of the State, you must improve the educational settings in CCSD. CCSD makes up over 70 percent of the students of the state and the Board of Trustee’s failures are the failures that drag down the State’s educational ranking among the 50 states.
Will the reform inherent in AB 394 change things? Not really, because there is no change.

Had AB 394 brought local control, could one unconditionally guarantee great improvement in education? No! However, one can guarantee if we keep doing what we have been doing, we are going to keep getting the results we are getting.

Thought of the week…Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
– Albert Einstein