Local Teachers Briefed on N.E. Education District Bill

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

A local group seeking to carve out an independent school district for the eight schools in northeastern Clark County held its first public meetings last week to begin receiving feedback about the process. Invited to this first round of meetings were all public school teachers in the Moapa and Virgin Valleys.

The first of the meetings was held on Monday, Mar. 27 at the Old Logandale School in Moapa Valley. The other was held on Tuesday evening, Mar. 28 at the Bunkerville Community Center gymnasium. Both meetings were attended by dozens of teachers who were curious about the effort and eager to offer feedback and input.

The Committee
The ad-hoc committee made up of residents of both valleys have been meeting with state legislators to investigate the possibility of splitting the local schools off from Clark County School District (CCSD) and put them, instead, under new local oversight.

Committee members include a number of retired CCSD administrators who had led local schools. These include former VVES principal Kathy Davis, former VVHS principal Riley Frei, former Hughes Middle School and Virgin Valley High School principal Clifford Hughes, former Perkins Elementary principal Phyllis Leavitt and former MVHS principal Larry Moses.

Several retired teachers from both valleys have also been involved in the work including Kim Delgadillo, Chad Jensen and Jack Nelson. Retired CCSD executive and business office administrator Eva White has also been a member of the committee.

Finally, the committee has had members who are local residents and education advocates. These include VVCEAB Chairwoman Jodi Thornley, MVCEAB Chairwoman Wendy Mulcock, Judy Metz, Shari Lyman, Lindsey Dalley and others.

“We put together a bunch of us who are interested in this happening and we have been working on it for over a year now,” said Moses in the introduction to the Moapa Valley teachers meeting last week. “We have developed a bill draft that would allow the formation of an independent school district within CCSD. That is what we are here to talk about now. We are at the point where we need your input.”

Assembly Bill 420
On Monday, Mar. 27, the bill draft Moses was referring to emerged from the Legislative Counsel Bureau. Assembly Bill 420 was referred to the Assembly’s Committee on Education. The bill was sponsored by Assemblyman Toby Yurek and State Senator Jeff Stone; both of whom represent the communities of northeastern Clark County.

The bill requires the Nevada State Superintendent of Instruction to create the Rural Northeastern Clark County Regional School District and hire a superintendent and administrative staff for the district. The State Department of Education is then tasked with conducting a feasibility study on the financial viability of the new district. A total of $6 million would be appropriated by the bill to perform the study and set up the new district.

In addition, the bill would also change the long-standing existing state law which currently allows for only one public school district per county. Instead, the bill authorizes the board of county commissioners in Clark County to establish by ordinance a regional school district that is independent of the county school district.

An independent school district
In the two meetings, Dalley talked about the reasons why the effort had begun. He said that he had vigorously advocated for the implementation of the CCSD Reorganization law, passed by the legislature in 2015. This law was supposed to decentralize control and funding away from the central CCSD administration in Las Vegas and towards local school teams and administrators. But Dalley said he had watched as the district administrators had diluted the law one piece at a time and then had finally not complied with what was left of it.

“Over twenty years of advocating for education in our community, I’ve realized that all I have done is just stopped our schools from decaying more,” Dalley said. “We haven’t played offense. We haven’t really improved education. It is just a constant battle to try and preserve what we had. We need to turn this around and bring the decisions home.”

Frei shared with both groups of teachers the vision of an independent school district. He noted that he had served as a superintendent of a small district in and around Bullhead City in Arizona. His district had been similar in size to what a Northeast Clark County district would be, he said.

“The whole thing started with the idea of putting the ball in our court,” Frei said. “If you were responsible for educating your kids, would you do it the same as it is being done now? That is the question. I think, looking at the education changes over the past 15 years or so, most people don’t really like the trajectory we are on. There are less programs, more restrictions and few opportunities for kids. So what if that was reversed and the funding for our students was put in our hands? What would we do differently?”

Frei said that the goal would be to bring the education funding away from central administration and devoted it more to the kids in the classrooms.
“This bill is drafted to follow the Reorg Law,” he said. “The idea is to get a skeleton crew in a district office that basically will feed and support the schools. The decisions on educating kids should be made at the school level. So the funding goes there and they can actually make those decisions.”

Proposed timeline
Frei gave a brief timeline on the possible implementation of the bill if it should pass the legislature.
The first phase on that timeline would be the feasibility study.

“The state is funding the study where a group of independent experts would come in and look at all the data, crunch all the numbers, put all the variables into play and come to a determination on whether it is feasible to do this,” Frei said. “Of course, the state would have oversight of that process.”

The study would ideally take about three months, Frei said.
The next phase would be the organization of the new district, he added.
“This would entail hiring the superintendent, installing the board of directors, recruiting the staff, getting an office space for the new district, starting to draft policy manuals and dealing with all the negotiated agreements,” Frei said.

The final phase would be to rollout the new district and begin operations, Frei said. “Essentially we are looking at maybe 15-16 months from now to get the new district in operation,” he said.

Funding a small district
The 2015 CCSD reorganization law paved the way for funding a smaller regional school district like what is being proposed in the bill, Frei said. Previous to that law, local property taxes were the primary source of funding for each school district.

“The reorg bill and legislation since then, has allowed the state funding formula to shift from local property taxes supporting local schools to a per-pupil funding mechanism,” Frei said. “So all of the property taxes for education go to the state and are redistributed on an equal per-pupil basis to every school district. The money follows the child. That changes the game significantly.”

In both meetings, Moses gave a rough example of funding. He explained that the number of students in the eight schools of Northeast Clark County School District are roughly 1.3 percent of the CCSD total student population. If one took 1.3 percent of the total CCSD budget it would be in excess of $100 million, Moses said.

This rough estimate falls generally in line with comparisons made to other small school districts in the state, Moses said.

“We would be the seventh largest school district in the state,” Moses added. “So if you compare us to the one just below us, they have about 1,000 kids less than us and they have $54 million to operate on. If you go to the district above us with about 1,000 kids more than us, they have a budget of about $100 million.”

Moses added that he couldn’t guarantee that a Northeast Clark County district would have more than $100 million to work with. But within that spectrum, there would be plenty with which to operate, he said.
“There would be a completely different focus on how those funds are spent,” Moses said. “If they are focused at the school level, they will go a lot farther.”

Teacher concerns
During extensive question and answer sessions at each meetings, local teachers expressed concerns and made inquiries about the plan.

Many expressed fears about being able to maintain their current salary levels, benefits, retirement plans, continuing education agreements and a host of other details wrapped up in the collective bargaining process with the teachers union. But the former principals on the committee gave assurances that these were top-of-mind for the committee as well.

“When I was principal, it was always my practice to put the teachers first,” said Kathy Davis. “That is where my heart is. So it is our goal to take care of you.”

“The first committee meeting that I was invited to, they asked me if I thought that the teachers would support something like this,” said Cliff Hughes. I said, ‘Not if they are not secure in their salary structure and benefits. They need to be assured of that.’ I will be the first one to say if those things are not in place, I won’t support it.”

Hughes expressed confidence, however, that the funding structure being proposed would allow for that security. “In fact, it has been our goal to become the highest paid district in this state for our teachers and staff,” he said.

When a few teachers became agitated in the Moapa Valley meeting about having this change suddenly pushed upon them by an unelected, ad-hoc committee, Moses tried to reassure them by reminding that the first phase was to determine feasibility.

“I will tell you right now, folks, when the feasibility study is done, if the teachers are not protected I will be fighting just as hard to defeat it as I would be to get it in,” Moses said. “This is not a done deal. In the end this will be a decision that has to be made after all the data comes in.”
“I would be the last person in the world to stuff something down your throat,” Moses added. “That kind of thing is what we are trying to get away from.”

Small vs. Large
Frei emphasized the paradigm shift in operations that would take place in going from a huge district to a streamlined small administration.
“I know it sounds foreign from where we are now, but the primary role of the district office is to support the school,” Frei said. “We get this backwards all the time in our big district.”

Frei said that collective bargaining issues would be negotiated by the local teachers with locally-elected people.
“This is really a big vs. small conversation,” Frei added. “We have very few things in common with anyone in Las Vegas and a whole bunch in common with each other.”

Next steps
Toward the end of both meetings, teachers began to ask about next steps and about how to help move the bill forward at the legislature.
Jodi Thornley, who has had some experience in guiding a bill through the legislature, said that the process of moving a bill through the legislature is a fast-moving and fluid process.
“You never really know until the votes are counted,” Thornley said. “Anything can happen.”

Thornley added that positive input and support voiced from various demographics in the community would be a help to the bill’s progress.
“The legislators need to hear from our communities on it as it goes forward,” Thornley said. “We will especially need testimony from teachers.”

Thornley suggested that a small delegation of teachers be selected to act as a delegation to provide testimony when needed.
“Then that group can set up an email or text chain and be able to get together and carpool down or get on your computers and submit testimony so that we are heard on the bill,” Thornley said.
The committee has set up a social media page on Facebook under “North East Educational District.”

Up to date information about the progress of the bill will be posted there.