Good work, if you can get it

To all those who've argued that public school spending can't possibly sustain further cuts, that the bleeding from the past year's budget reductions will result in the equivalent of amputations to district operations: The Clark County School Board just blew your bluff.

Despite a $93.7 million revenue shortfall in the district's general fund, trustees on Thursday came up with $77,000 to pay two out-of-state "education consultants" to spend a couple of weeks in schools that haven't met the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act. In exchange for their advice on which practices aren't helping children learn basic proficiencies and which might help, Roberta Hennigan and Jeri Balick will be paid $2,200 per day, each.

That's about twice what Superintendent Walt Rulffes makes.

Given the size and splendor of the district's various administrative offices and the millions of dollars poured into "curriculum development" each year, you'd think Clark County might have just one well-compensated educator, one instructional superstar who could provide advice to struggling campuses on a full-time basis. Absent that, you'd think one administrator in the school district's regional bureaucracy would have the common sense to review the programs and practices of its most successful and most improved campuses, copy them and mandate their introduction elsewhere.

Associate Superintendent Karlene McCormick-Lee told trustees that administrators could do the work if they weren't so busy with their other responsibilities.

What a joke. By shoveling largess on former educators who don't answer to the taxpayers, administrators create a scapegoat for whatever failures might follow and ensure the district's own aspiring "consultants," eyeing retirement, one day get their turn at the trough.

What tasks could possibly be more important than improving the district's most underachieving schools? Only in government are imperative assignments dropped in favor of routine duties. Only in government do staffing complaints justify the abdication of responsibility.

What was especially awful about the School Board's vote, however, was the willingness of trustees to approve the appropriation despite not having all their questions answered. Staff could not provide the board with information on average market compensation for consultants. Did the district conduct an adequate search? Was the district getting good value? Were the consultants truly qualified to deliver results?

District officials said the consultants' work was difficult to quantify, the value of their services not easy to define, their skills hard to find. This after Ms. McCormick-Lee told trustees that plenty of administrators were capable of doing the job. Why didn't any one of the trustees stand up and demand that Mr. Rulffes and Ms. McCormick-Lee identify two qualified administrators and re-assign them?

Rather than kill the contracts or delay an up-or-down vote on them, trustees approved them on the condition that they get more information after the fact.

Huh?

In the absence of good information, the correct vote was "no." Trustee Carolyn Edwards deserves the public's thanks for delivering the lone nay.

Sadly, parents and taxpayers have come to expect a lack of accountability within the Clark County School District's administration. The School Board just lowered the bar.