By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
Nevada State Assemblyman-elect Toby Yurek visited Logandale on Thursday, Aug, 25 to learn about ongoing efforts in both the Moapa and Virgin Valleys to improve public education. Yurek met with about a half dozen area residents who have been long time advocates of reforming education in Clark County School District (CCSD), specifically as it pertains to outlying rural schools.
The group included Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB) chair Wendy Mulcock, Virgin Valley Community Education Advisory Board (VVCEAB) chair Jodi Thornley, VVHS principal Riley Frei, and Logandale residents Lindsey Dalley and Larry Moses.
Yurek told the group that, as a new legislature, he was devoted to being engaged with his constituent communities and becoming well-versed on the issues important to them. This was especially true for the communities in the northeastern portion of his district, he said.
“I don’t want to be that guy that just shows up every two years asking for votes,” Yurek said. “I want to be here and engaged and to be involved. And I really do mean that.”
With that said, Yurek noted that one of the top concerns expressed by voters while he knocked doors in neighborhoods on the campaign trail, was improving public education.
“This was a massive issue,” he said. “Especially because I was knocking doors on the heels of COVID. I asked people what is the most pressing issue in their mind. And anybody that had a child in the background was saying ‘education.’ It is a huge issue.”
Yurek acknowledged that members of the local group had been deeply involved in the 2017 legislation to reorganize the CCSD. This bill sought to reform the district by bringing more decision-making autonomy and funding down to the local school level. The group had a lengthy discussion about how the reorganization law had met failure because the CCSD central administration and board of trustees had refused to implement it.
“I am behind the reorganization (law),” said Dalley. “I believe that theoretically it would work. The problem is that there has been no enforcement of the law. And there is no incentive for CCSD to do it. So the reality has been that the district is not reorganized, reform is not happening, and we have screwed around for six years now. Too many kids are being injured by this.”
Yurek asked each member of the group to share their proposed solution to this problem. Each member of the group expressed support for some form of the Community School Initiative, a proposed ballot initiative currently gathering signatures. The Initiative would allow for the CCSD to be completely broken up into smaller community school districts.
“If it was my happy day wish list, our community would be allowed to have its own district,” said Mulcock. “The closer the money is, the closer the power is, the more productive you can be to meet the needs of everybody involved. That is just a fact.”
Thornley agreed with this. She talked about situations during COVID, when the Virgin Valley community was asking for support and the district was unable to move to solve the problems.
“We were trying to get Wifi connections to allow distance learning for kids that didn’t have internet at home,” she said. “They kept talking about Cox offering service for free. But we don’t get Cox out here. They just couldn’t work with us. That was a situation where local governance could have taken care of things quickly.”
Thornley said that in the end the community banded together, marshalled local resources and solved the problem for the kids on its own.
“But that was a success made largely in spite of the district, not from any support we received,” she said. “We have encountered that kind of thing again and again in different situations.”
Yurek asked if there had been anything done to determine whether there were enough resources to support a local school district which included both the Virgin Valley and Moapa Valley schools.
Moses said that he had put together some rough numbers based on current per pupil funding amounts projected over the number of kids in the local schools.
Moses pointed out that most small rural school districts in the state run on a budget of from $50-$75 million. If a local school district were to stay within the confines of the Clark County tax base, the per pupil rate would be around $25,000 per student, Moses said. With about 3,756 students in the two valleys, that would give a budget of around $93 million, he said.
“We could surely function with that,” Moses said.
Frei, who has previously worked as Superintendent in small school districts in Arizona, said that there is power in local autonomy and problem-solving. This would certainly be true in a local school district, he said.
“If you get the right group of local people around the table, with no red tape to bother with, there is nothing that you can’t solve,” Frei said. “It is really just about getting smart people together who are passionate about something and the sky’s the limit!”
“All we are saying is let us control what we do out here,” Riley added. “CCSD doesn’t need the headache anyway. Just let us do what we do and we can take care of our own needs.”
To conclude the meeting, Dalley suggested two possible objectives to present to the State Legislature next year. The first was to change the state law to allow for more than one school district in a large county. This would open the door for the possibility of changes in Clark and Washoe county districts, he said. Specifically it would allow smaller community districts to break away from CCSD, he said.
The second legislative objective was to seek approximately $250,000 in funding to conduct an independent feasibility study to see if a Virgin Valley/Moapa Valley school district would have adequate funding to function independently.
“Those are the first two necessary steps to even look into this,” Dalley said. “If we have these things in place, then we could explore possibilities and look at how to solve some of these problems.”
Dalley suggested that such a process of using the Moapa/Virgin Valley schools as a pilot program might be beneficial to the entire state.
“Until you solve the Clark County education issue, you are never going to solve the state education issue or even the state budget issue,” Dalley said. “Because education takes so much out of the state budget, there is nothing left. It is Clark County that is the biggest vortex that sucks the money out. And we are not getting any value for all that money at all. Something has to change.”
Yurek expressed appreciation for the open discussion. He also expressed support for these ideas and said he was willing to continue working with the local group on these things as the legislative session commenced next year.
“You guys in this group have been able to accomplish so much,” he said. “And that is not because of the Clark County School District, but rather in spite of it. It is awesome to see what you have done thus far. You have inspired me to work even harder to try to figure out what we can do to help you here.”
