Smaller school districts would benefit community

Terry E. Peele, Las Vegas

Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011 | 2:03 a.m.

I have just finished reading the book “Waiting for ‘Superman:’ How We Can Save America’s Failing Public Schools,” and although I agree with its premise that our public educational system is in dire shape, I do not view the book as the Holy Grail. Many individuals in “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” express positive ideas, but I’m not sure those ideas will work in the system as it is today.

Our school districts are way too large. We have bought into the idea that “bigger is better” and its convenient byproduct: The operation of a large school district may be cheaper. However, what we have lost in the process is the atmosphere that schools are local.

Today each local community in the Clark County School District has only one voice on the seven-member School Board. While a local community may see a need within its local schools, it has but that one voice on the board to address that need. Smaller school districts and their board members would be much more sympathetic to those needs.

I acknowledge I haven’t dealt with financing. That’s another subject for another day. Right now I just want parents and taxpayers without children in our public schools to think about school districts better representing the local communities they serve. The Clark County School District today has so many needs facing it, but many of those needs get relegated to the back burner. Smaller districts, in contrast, translate into more front burners.