By DR. LARRY MOSES
No one asked me but… It is time to stop hoping the Clark County School District will follow the reorganization law codified in NRS. 388G.500-810.
The Superintendent has conveyed to the Board of Trustees that his administration cannot and will not abide by the law. In fact he has presented various regulations to the Board that he is aware violates the law. After explaining one of his financial decisions was in violation of the law, he asked the Board to approve it anyway. In a 6-1 vote the CCSD Board of Trustees voted to support this violation of the law.
The State Board of Education, that has oversight of School Districts throughout the State, has refused to force the District to comply with the law that was passed to head off a move to break up the Clark County School District. This was a move designed to improve the educational standing of the entire State of Nevada.
One might ask is it fair to equate the poor ranking of Nevada with the poor performance of the Clark County School District? The answer to that question is yes. Since nearly 75% of the public-school students in Nevada attend a CCSD school the state’s abysmal educational standing will not improve until CCSD improves. Therefore, as I speak of the improvement needed in CCSD specifically, I am speaking of the educational standing of the State in general.
It is time for those who care about education in Nevada, and who have the political power to do something about it, to step up and break up the giant bureaucratic monolith that is the Clark County School District. When the Superintendent says his administration cannot comply with the law, he is correct. Therefore, it is time for either the CCSD Board of Trustees to find a Superintendent who can comply, or for the legislature to pass a law allowing for the break-up of the District into smaller, more manageable Districts.
You might remember this is the Board that fired this Superintendent. Then just a few weeks later, they not only rehired him, but they extended his contract. Not only that, they paid approximately $80,000 for the attorney that the Superintendent hired when he filed a $2 million lawsuit against the Board for creating a hostile work environment. I am sure that the firing of the Superintendent indeed created a hostile work environment for him.
Less than six months after firing and rehiring the Superintendent, with Nevada still rank as the 49th in the nation for educating children (Those are the Superintendent’s figures not mine), the Board alleviated the hostile work environment by giving the rehired Superintendent a “Highly Effective” rating and a $97,000 per year raise. Common sense would tell me that you don’t go from being fired to being “Highly Effective” in six-months.
One might assume that since this happened, Nevada (i.e. CCSD) is no longer in the bottom quadrant of educational effectiveness in the United States. But one would be wrong. Though I guess one could argue that a man who could turn a firing into a $97,000 raise and an extended contract is “Highly Effective” at keeping his half a million-dollar job.
No one asked me… Being an Educational wonk, I tuned into a recent CCSD Board of Trustees meeting. I was surprise to see on the dais at the side of a Board member what appeared to be a child of no more than six years of age. Now this is a judgement call, the child may have been younger or older but in that range. A board member apparently could find no child care for the meeting and, therefore, brought her child with her. That is an assumption on my part.
Actually, the child may have been there to give expert testimony to the Board members as the Clark County School District is rapidly developing into a very expensive day care business. You may be saying ‘So what!’ This, my friends, is an elected Board made up of seven ladies that have control of a $7.5 billion budget provided by the tax payers of Nevada. One might think that all of the Board members would give their undivided attention to the issues at hand.
Years ago, when the CCSD was respected throughout the nation, the School Board was made up of some of the most prominent men and women in the community. But those days are long gone. I guess I should not blame the clowns for acting like clowns. But I should blame myself for watching the circus.
In the mid-1950’s the State Legislature determined that the multitude of small school districts thoughout the state were inefficient. Their solution for the problem was consolidating the small independent districts into county-wide school districts.
While this solved a problem of that day, the problem has now changed. Today, the problem is that one district has become so large that it is no longer able to meet the diverse needs of its constituents.
I do not believe those who championed the consolidation of school districts in the 1950’s ever envisioned a school district of over 300,000 students with a budget of over $7 billion.
It is now time to rethink the organization of the public schools in Clark County. The “one size fits all” does not apply when the “all” is as diverse as the Clark County School District.
In the 1950’s when the Districts were consolidated, the CCSD Board of Trustees was made up of three representatives from the city of Las Vegas, one from Henderson, one from North Las Vegas, one from Boulder city, one from Moapa Valley/Mesquite, and an at large representative for the rural schools. An organization that was once controlled by representatives of the various diverse communities within the CCSD is now operated by seven board members who represent seven non-descript political zones rather than diverse communities. There is no rural representative, nor is there a representative who is directly responsible for the education of the children of the Moapa Valley/Mesquite parents.
Thoughts of the week… “Through lack of education, we’re not teaching kids to read and write. So there is the danger that you raise up a generation of morons.”
-Ray Bradbury
“Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.”
-John F. Kennedy
