School district reorg is now the law

To call 2015’s Assembly Bill 394 controversial would be a gross understatement.

The bill — which aims to reorganize the Clark County School District into a number of smaller “school precincts” — was debated in the Assembly all session long before being passed at the eleventh hour of the final day of the session over the shouted objections of Democratic state senators.

And that was just the beginning.

An advisory committee charged with implementing the reorganization ultimately decided that each of the district’s 357 schools was to be its own “precinct,” with principals and parents given more charge over local campuses.

The committee drafted regulations that the state Board of Education later adopted over the objections of district officials, who claimed the move imposed unfunded costs, exceeded the authority of the legislation and was missing a required financial study.

And now, the district is suing the state to stop the reorganization, which is supposed to go into effect next September.

I asked the district this week if its Board of Trustees had voted to authorize the litigation, but spokeswoman Michelle Booth said that was confidential under attorney-client privilege. A request to speak with district counsel Carlos McDade was rejected.

But one trustee — who spoke in general terms and not about the suit specifically — acknowledged that the board typically discusses legal issues in closed session with its lawyer, and develops a consensus about how to proceed.

It’s fine for elected officials to deliberate about legal strategy with their counsel in closed session — the state’s Open Meeting Law allows for that. But when a government agency decides to sue another over a public law, elected officials owe it to taxpayers to take an open and public vote on the issue and to reveal their motivations.

Then again, the lawsuit speaks loudly on its own about the district’s views of the reorganization.

The lawsuit claims the Legislature can’t delegate its powers to a committee and that lawmakers should have taken a second vote on the final regulations. But the bill’s author, then-Assemblyman David Gardner, R-Las Vegas, intended the reorganization to go forward without such a second vote in order to head off the possibility that the bill would be killed upon its return. And while the committee and its consultant decided to speed up the implementation to avoid stalling the process, the bill says only that it must be completed “no later than” the 2018-2019 school year.

Ditto for the allegation that the reorganization will interfere with the district’s administration. In fact, it was the intention of the law to change radically the way the district is administered.

Other arguments have more merit, including the need to establish a weighted funding formula to ensure poor, special education and English language learner students are treated fairly. And, the district argues, the reorganization effort creates additional costs for training, new management systems and other programs that the Legislature didn’t provide additional funds to cover.

It’s clear some trustees are hostile to at least some aspects of the reorganization, if not the concept itself. And it’s yet to be proven that 357 empowered campuses will do a better job of boosting student achievement than the previous, top-down model at work in the nation’s fifth-largest school district.

But clearly the bipartisan majorities in both houses that passed AB 394 were skeptical that inaction would boost student achievement. Reorganization may not turn out to be a panacea, and some of the issues raised in the lawsuit must be addressed. But if nothing else, reorganization is now the official policy of the state and it should go forward.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.