What’s at stake in this year’s Clark County School Board election?

When Superintendent Jesus Jara was brought on to lead Clark County schools in 2018, he said he wanted to have a “team of eight,” with seven trustees and a superintendent who would work together collaboratively.

Trustee Linda Cavazos recalled Jara’s words just before the Clark County School Board moved to fire him last fall in a 4-3 vote.

The board subsequently moved to rehire Jara, but it still has not fulfilled Jara’s vision of working together as a team, Cavazos told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

If anything, the relationship between the seven trustees and their lone employee has continued to flag as schools in Clark County continue to contend with declining enrollment, teacher shortages and efforts to break up the district.

And on Tuesday, voters will decide whether to uphold the status quo or flip the balance of power on a board where decisions have been regularly decided along that same 4-3 margin.

“Can we get to a place where it’s not a divided, parallel board, but one cohesive board working toward common goals?” Cavazos asked.

The School Board has seven members who adopt policies and set the agenda of the district, in addition to overseeing the performance of the superintendent. The superintendent in turn has oversight over the daily operations in what is now the fifth-largest school district in the country.

Three board seats are up for re-election on Tuesday, when incumbents Irene Cepeda, Danielle Ford and Cavazos will face off against Brenda Zamora, Irene Bustamante Adams and Greg Wieman respectively.

What’s at stake?

For Cavazos, the future of the School Board — and whether it will be able to work together in making decisions for the district — is the issue most at stake in the upcoming election.

Her opponent, longtime educator and former Eureka County School District Superintendent Greg Wieman, did not return a request for comment.

But Ford called Tuesday’s election one in which voters will have the opportunity to elect community-focused candidates who support public education and who will work to correct the direction the district has been going in for the last 15 to 20 years.

She said parents no longer want a district that is largely focused on its performance on standardized test scores, and instead want later school start times and highly effective educators in their children’s classrooms.

“Parents are tired of standardization and these kids’ futures being put into a computer and being graded on the average,” she said.

But for her opponent, Bustamante Adams, the election comes at a critical transition point for the region’s economy.

Bustamante Adams served for eight years in the state Assembly and now sits on a workforce development board that helps people find employment in Southern Nevada.

As the business community continues to advocate for diversifying Southern Nevada’s economy, the district needs to work strategically with higher education institutions and with businesses as it educates the “pipeline of talent” that’s available in this region, Bustamante Adams said.

“If we are not in alignment between education, workforce and economic development, we don’t stand a chance in improving the well-being of our community,” she said.

Bustamante Adams said student performance must be at the top of the list of the district’s priorities, as well as providing teachers the resources they need to handle the diverse population of students in Clark County.

Superintendent Jara’s future

The board voted to remove and subsequently reinstate Jara last fall on the heels of concerns over a hostile work environment and his handling of district operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The move to reinstate him hinged on the swing vote of Trustee Cepeda, who now serves as board president, while Cavazos and Ford voted against reinstating him.

Cepeda is running for re-election against challenger Brenda Zamora, who has been vocal about not supporting Jara’s leadership. Neither Cepeda nor Zamora returned a request for comment.

The board also was split along the same 4-3 margin last month when it came time to renew Jara’s contract.

Cavazos called the process rushed, and one that did not have an established methodology for how the board should evaluate the superintendent.

“We could have done better. This could have been done in a much more conducive way and avoided poor optics,” she said.

Jara’s renewed contract will give him an annual salary of $395,000 and will run through June 30, 2026. If the board wishes to terminate Jara’s contract before 2026, it would have to pay out the remainder of that contract.

Despite voting against renewing Jara’s contract, Cavazos said it is “the superintendent’s ballpark now,” and how he acts and chooses to proceed moving forward will ultimately color her decision on whether to fire him.

Ford has repeatedly clashed with Jara and been vocal in her criticism of the superintendent, saying it is her No. 1 priority if re-elected to find a new superintendent to lead the district.

She said Bustamante Adams was “hand-selected” by Jara to replace her and said she guarantees voters that her opponent will not move to fire Jara as superintendent.

Jara sits on the board of Workforce Connections, Bustamante Adams’ workforce development board.

“I guess people should consider, this person who’s making all of the operational decisions every single year? Do they align with that person’s viewpoints and ideology or not? If they do, maybe they should support my opponent,” Ford said. “But if they don’t like the way the district has been going the last few years … then they should support me, because I intend to find new leadership that can support that.”

While Bustamante Adams acknowledged that she has interacted with Jara through the course of her work, she said she has never had a conversation with the superintendent about running for the School Board.

Bustamante Adams said she doesn’t know all the factors that the board took into account before deciding to renew Jara’s contract, but said she wishes there had been more communication with those affected by the decision.

If elected, she said, she would focus on data and review the accountability measures in place in evaluating the superintendent’s performance before making a decision about firing him, including the accountability measures for board members.

“As an employer, are we giving our one employee what he needs in order to get the job done?” she asked.

Breaking up the school district

The election also follows an effort that was recently endorsed by area chambers of commerce to break up the school district.

The Vegas Chamber has donated $2,500 each to the campaigns of Bustamante Adams, Cepeda and Wieman, but Bustamante Adams said she still has questions about whether a breakup is the right move for the community.

“There is pain. There’s no denying that the business community is demanding more and wants to be part of the conversation,” she said. “One of the things I want to focus on is being that ambassador of communication and transparency so we can make well-informed decisions.”

Ford and Cavazos said they weren’t surprised about the support for breaking up the district, but they aren’t supportive of splitting the district at this time.

Cavazos said her biggest objection was the issue of equity and what a board of trustees would look like in a district like Summerlin or Green Valley, compared with one in east Las Vegas.

“I think what needs to happen is we need to take accountability for making things better and do it in an expeditious manner,” she said.

Ford questioned the logistics of a breakup and whether individual districts would be competing for the same pool of funding, only now with five different superintendent, administrative and school board salaries to support.

She said she still believes there’s a way to fix the Clark County School District while having more accountability, including by supporting a legislative audit of the district’s finances that can address some of the spending issues or prove to the community that there aren’t spending issues.

“We need to fix it for everybody,” she said.

Contact Lorraine Longhi at 702-387-5298 or llonghi @reviewjournal.com. Follow her at @lolonghi on Twitter.