No One Asked Me But… (March 1, 2023)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… As a retired educator I always find the actions of the Clark County School District of great interest.
The CCSD Superintendent, and others, are calling for the State Legislature to increase funding for the schools in the state.

When you talk about the schools in the State of Nevada you are for the most part talking about CCSD. Of the over 400,000 public school students in the State of Nevada, approximately 300,000 are found in CCSD.

Here are some interesting facts based on the Final 2023 Budget document for CCSD.

There are two major budget categories: 1. The General/Special Ed./Debt Service totaling $4,935,546,845. (Yes, that is almost 5 billion dollars!) 2. Other funds budget totaling another $3,350,489,620 for a total of $8,286,036,465. Interfund transfers cuts this total fund by $596, 640,665. That leaves the District with a mere $7,689,395,810 to operate during this 2022-23 school year.

The cost to the Nevada taxpayer per student educated, or at least attempted to be educated, is $25,631 per year. This rivals the yearly tuition of the most elite private schools in Las Vegas.

Let me assure you that those private schools do NOT have 70% percent of their students showing a non-proficiency in Math and English. If they did, they would no longer be in operation.

The real question is where does that $25,631 per student go? It is time for a real audit of the CCSD and an open discussion about where the money is being spent.

Does the school district really need to run a bakery that makes the 4,000,000 cinnamon rolls that the Superintendent spoke so proudly of in his State of the District speech? Maybe someone needs to explain that he is not running a bakery, he is running a School District.

While I will grant that there are some youngsters that need a free breakfast, I am not willing to accept the fact that the vast majority of CCSD students are under fed. Nor do I accept, as does the District, that every child must be fed three free meals per day, seven days a week. Is this really a valid solution to the problem of those students who come to school hungry? Just a question: Where is the money that impoverished families receive for food from the state and federal government going?

While I believe there is a need for social workers to help meet the needs of some students, when did it become the responsibility of the schools to provide those social workers? Our school social workers are great people doing a great service. I merely question why this service is not provided by other agencies of government rather than tapping into education dollars.

I will admit that I never rose above the rank of a school principal and, therefore, may never understand why the office of Superintendent requires over $3,000,000 dollars to run. One must ask if you have competent personnel in the local school administrative positions, why do you need a myriad of Deputy Superintendents, Assistant Superintendents, Area Superintendents, etc.

There are over 40,000 employees in the Clark County School District. Less than 17,000 are classroom teachers which means that more than 23,000 of the employees never see the inside of a classroom.

Do we need bus drivers? Of course we do!

Do we need legal services? Yes, we do! But do we need to maintain our own law firm at the tune of $5,000,000 a year?

There are more than two support personnel for every classroom teacher, the most of which never see a child.

Again I am not saying that many of those are not necessary. I am saying that one suspects that we would be better off if those numbers were reversed.

Without a doubt, one of the major problems is the sheer size of the CCSD. The District is made up of over 350 inner-city schools, suburban schools, and rural schools. While each of these have unique characteristics, they are being operated under centralized “one size fits all” system designed to produce a uniform education for all the students. The problem is that suburban students present different unique educational needs than do the inner-city students. In turn, the needs of the rural students are entirely different than of either the suburban or inner-city student.

It is time to consider the possibility of turning education over to the citizens of each of these areas and allowing them to develop programs to meet the unique needs of the students in each of these areas.

The county-wide School District concept long employed by the state of Nevada may function well for small rural counties where there is a commonality within the communities. However, the CCSD is not only the largest inner-city School District in the state, it is also the largest suburban school district. It is also one of the largest rural school districts in the state.

While the District has centered its attention on the suburban and inner-city schools, it has pretty much ignored the fact that its rural schools have unique needs to be addressed in a unique manner.
The State has also ignored this fact. The State allots a greater per pupil funding for rural schools, but it fails to recognize the rural schools of CCSD in a like manner.

Let me suggest that if Clark County were to be divided into smaller units allowing for local control of the funds and programs needed for each unique school, we might see an increase in the number of proficient students in the overall education programs of Clark County.

I wonder why the District is not willing to at least try a new approach to solving the problems that have resulted in nearly 70 percent of their students being deemed non-proficient in math and language arts. Why not let the local school administrators, teachers, and parents control the education of their unique students? What do we have to lose?

Of course, that was the purpose of NRS 388G.500-810, the reorganization law that CCSD has chosen to violate with a vengeance. When The Superintendent declared the reorganization plan a failure, it made me think of my mother’s reply when I stated; “I did not like broccoli.”
She asked, “How do you know? You never tried it?”

Thoughts of the week…“It is fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
– Bill Gates

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.”
– Abraham Lincoln