STEVE SEBELIUS: School district breakup? CCSD unwittingly makes the case

The Clark County School District is lending its hearty support to those who want to break the district up into smaller pieces.

Well, sort of.

While officials haven’t exactly endorsed a breakup plan, or lent taxpayer resources to a ballot measure that would let local governments form their own districts, the district itself has come to represent the best argument in favor of the idea.

Call it “inverse endorsement.”

Start with the district’s Board of Trustees. The constant infighting among members, who are relentlessly focused on petty squabbles, argues powerfully for taking a look at subdividing the district into smaller, more manageable units.

The most infamous example recently was the firing, and then re-hiring, of Superintendent Jesus Jara in the space of less than a month. Both votes were 4-3, with trustee Irene Cepeda casting the deciding vote both times.

Oh, and while he was in employment limbo, Jara handed out raises to his top staff.

His reward? A new contract that runs through 2026, and a raise that could have paid the salary of a highly qualified teacher. Jara will now be making nearly as much money as the president of the United States.

In a recent interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Cepeda said that she believed stability in the district was more important than the political implications of her head-turning flip-flop.

So questionable leadership is better than new leadership? That’s next-level logic.

If any local government agency could use some chaotic upheaval, it’s the school district. From grading policies that offer generous credit for weak performance, to flagging test scores, to the need for graduates to take remedial courses when they arrive on college campuses, the district is a mess. And any attempt to impose even the lightest form of accountability is met with howls of protest.

The Review-Journal reported Thursday that, of the six states where all students take the test, Nevada students scored the lowest on the ACT. The nationwide composite score was 19.8, itself a pretty poor indicator of college preparedness.

But Nevada’s score? A mere 17.3. Even allowing for the “learning loss” that all districts endured in the pandemic, that’s still bad.

The district is chronically short of teachers and not just because of pay. Working conditions in many schools mean only a passion for teaching kids keeps a lot of teachers going, and that can last only for so long. Long-term substitutes often have to fill in for teachers, and the district recently allowed people who have only bachelor degrees to be teachers.

That’s got to make teachers who worked hard to earn their teaching certificates and master’s degrees feel valued, huh?

Then there’s the fact that many teachers don’t feel safe after an Eldorado High School teacher was brutally attacked in a classroom in April.

And then there’s the Clark County Education Association, the teachers union, which decided last week not to endorse Gov. Steve Sisolak for re-election. Sisolak favors breaking up the district, and he said in interviews with the union that he would not raise taxes in the 2023 session to increase education spending.

Raise taxes again, he means: Sisolak did sign a mining tax increase that the union muscled through the Legislature in 2021, but the union is always asking for more.

Over the years, Nevada has tried to reform the Clark County School District. A reorganization effort tried to push more decisions to the school level, away from central administration. That went over like a cheesesteak in a vegan restaurant, and led to months of foot-dragging. The state just OK’d regulations to ensure the district finally complies.

The argument against a school district breakup is still a good one: Wealthy suburbs such as Henderson and Summerlin will have good, well-funded schools and kids with access to technology and tutors. Urban areas such as West Las Vegas, east Las Vegas and parts of North Las Vegas would have worse schools and less opportunity.

But with the Clark County School District’s performance and the antics of its trustees, it might finally be time to give a breakup plan a long, hard look. If the geographic and economic disparities can be addressed — weighted funding to lower-performing, higher-need schools, for example — things might get better.

And the biggest endorsement of the idea is coming from the district itself.

Contact Steve Sebelius at 702-383-0253 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com. Follow @SteveSebelius on Twitter.