FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK: It just shouldn’t be so difficult

By VERNON ROBISON

Positive news came from the Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB) last week. After all, it isn’t every day that our small town schools receive a visit from Clark County School District Superintendent Jesus Jara. And it’s even rarer for Dr. Jara to actually sit down for more than an hour and engage in a conversation with local education advocates. But that is exactly what happened on Friday afternoon, Nov. 17 in the Moapa Valley High School library.

It was a good meeting. All of the essential players were together in the same room. As Dr. Jara said himself at the meeting, “when we get enough smart people in the same room, we can find a solution.” This proved to be true.

The MVHS School Organizational Team (SOT) was well prepared. With only one brief shot at it, the SOT members hit the center of the target with their presentation. It conveyed the educational impacts that have occurred at the school because of the loss of the 8-period block schedule; which, at its root, was caused by a decade of CCSD underfunding the school. It was a complex subject which is reported more fully in an article published in this edition. But the SOT was able to make its point within about 25 minutes – quite an accomplishment.

The MVCEAB also played its part perfectly at the meeting. Board chairwoman Wendy Mulcock ran the meeting brilliantly and efficiently. making very economic use of time. Though frustrations with Dr. Jara in the local community have run high over the past year, Mulcock and other MVCEAB members reigned in the meeting keeping the rhetoric respectful and constructive.

It was also essential that key members of the Virgin Valley CEAB be represented at the meeting. This meeting was held at the request of Dr. Jara to serve as a venue to discuss MVHS concerns. But many of these issued mirrored concerns also felt by stakeholders at Virgin Valley High School which suffered a similar loss in block schedule this year. The presence of VVCEAB members reflected a united front to Dr. Jara – and also reinforced an ongoing desire for the eight outlying schools of northeastern Clark County to be given more autonomy from the urban-centric CCSD.

Another essential visitor at the meeting was Assemblyman Toby Yurek of Henderson. Last spring, Yurek earned at least an honorary place among the ranks of local education advocates when he presented a bill to carve out the schools of Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley from CCSD, and form an unprecedented new regional school district of its own. The bill didn’t get a formal hearing at the legislature, but Yurek fought hard for it all the same. Being present at last week’s meeting, Yurek kept that landmark attempt fresh in memory and made it clear that the battle for local autonomy is far from over. In very subtle ways, his presence was key to the meeting’s success.

Finally, the most essential player in the room was Dr. Jara himself. No doubt a very busy man, he carved out space in his schedule to travel to Moapa Valley and spend this significant block of time listening to local concerns. It took bravery on his part, knowing the tensions that had developed in Moapa Valley over the past year. But he proved to be cordial, understanding and solutions-driven.
With this brain trust of experts all in the same room, it didn’t take long for an understanding to be reached. Good solutions were proposed and a positive path forward was established. This was encouraging.

But if these solutions were so easy to reach, what a pity it is that it took 11 months for the local concerns to be truly heard, and simple remedies proffered!

The MVHS SOT has been trying to communicate with Dr. Jara about this matter since last March, when CCSD central sent the first letters declaring the school out of compliance in its schedule. The SOT tried many times to engage in a dialog to get their questions answered and to propose solutions. All that they got back was silence.

In May, when the State Department of Education was called in to do a full attendance audit, it found MVHS in full compliance with state laws and regulations. So the SOT tried again to engage with CCSD on the matter. Even then there was still time to avoid the train wreck of educational opportunities that has occurred. Once again, there was only silence – a silence which continued all through the summer when something constructive could have been done.

Finally, with no further guidance from CCSD on the matter, MVHS administrators were forced to burn the midnight oil. At the last minute. they crunched the school’s 8 period block into a 6-period day; and the damage was done.

The greatest victims in this whole episode has been the students. The educational losses have been devastating to them. There were plenty of accounts of those losses, testified in detail by the students themselves, at Friday’s meeting. These were kids who had ambitions to continue their studies in art, music, ceramics, Ag mechanics, theatre – whatever had become their passion. But they had been denied these opportunities because the class sections could not be jammed into the school’s new schedule.

To Dr. Jara’s credit, once the problem was identified, the solution was quick and simple. But if that was all it took, why was it not dispatched quickly last April. Why were the SOT’s pleas not heard and addressed when something could still be done to avoid the devastation that has been wrought on local students? With the stakes so high for the kids, why did it take 11 months to have this simple conversation?

These disturbing questions lie at the very heart of what MVCEAB has been trying to accomplish for over 20 years now. Our outlying schools are a square peg in the round hole of urban CCSD. However well meaning they may be, CCSD central administrators simply can’t hear our cries for help over the cacophany of needs in the inner city schools. The eight little schools in our outlying northeastern Clark County communities need local decision-making so that our unique needs can be heard and met in a timely and efficient way.

If the decisions could have been made locally, the confusion about the block schedule would never have been allowed to fester as it has. If there was ever a compliance problem at all, a local authority could have found the simple solution and implemented it quickly for the sake of our students. It just wasn’t that difficult! The kids never would have been required to suffer what has happened this year.

To be sure, we are encouraged by the course charted by last week’s meeting with Dr. Jara. But what a monumental year-long effort was brought to bear to solve such a simple problem! If education is really all about the kids, it should never be that difficult!