Editorial: Scaling back Clark County School District worth studying

Sunday, May 10, 2015 | 2 a.m.

There’s a lot to be said for the attention customers receive at small businesses, whether it’s a fashionable boutique, a mom-and-pop restaurant or a family-owned repair shop. Staff and owners get to know their patrons and how best to serve them.

But sometimes small businesses grow larger, either as a function of population growth or because of mergers and acquisitions. At risk is losing the personal connections that marked the good old days.

This is, in a sense, what happened to school districts in Clark County.

In 1956, there were 14 school districts in Clark County, educating about 20,000 students. But that year, those small, independent districts were consolidated into one by the state Legislature, which decided that each county should have its own unified school district.

Today, the Clark County School District is the fifth-largest in the nation with 320,000 students and, as we’re often reminded, generally abysmal academic performance. State lawmakers are pondering whether the district has gotten too big to deliver a quality product — or even just an average product — and stay connected with its patrons.

Republican state Assemblyman David Gardner, a contract lawyer who represents the west side of our valley, thinks he may have an answer. He suggests the district be subdivided into five or more “precincts,” which would remain under the umbrella of the Clark County School District but enjoy autonomy in deciding how to deliver education.

CCSD still would play a vital role in providing the superstructure. It would, for instance, be in charge of all school buses and other transportation services, operate a central kitchen and round up substitute teachers as needed. Specialty programs offered by the district still would be provided by CCSD, and it would be the recipient of state funds that are funneled to Clark County for schools. CCSD officials would divvy up the same amount of money per student for each of the precincts, so no one precinct would have a financial advantage over another.

Could this sort of deconsolidation work? Who knows?

In its current iteration, Gardner’s bill, Assembly Bill 394, calls for a full study of how such a scenario could play out, an undertaking that could cost as much as $1 million. Gardner hopes that after sufficient analysis, the quasi-breakup could go to the 2017 Legislature for action.

An obvious concern, Gardner acknowledges, is that in the creation of subdistricts, one or more might be disadvantaged in resources or disproportionately populated by students in greater need of academic services. That would be morally wrong and likely would earn the attention of the Justice Department.

Such a concern would have to be addressed during the study period, which would include representatives from the Clark County Commission, the School Board, the various municipalities and rural regions, the teachers union, the governor and the Board of Education.

Gardner is hopeful for two outcomes should his plan come to fruition. First, that parents and grandparents will have greater access to administrators and precinct trustees and have confidence that concerns, complaints and suggestions will be heard and respected.

“Studies show that smaller districts are more responsive and have better outcomes,” Gardner said. “In big districts, parents struggle to get their voice heard.”

Secondly, Gardner hopes principals and teachers in nimble subdistricts will feel emboldened to pursue initiatives to raise student performance. With a sense of greater freedom to explore teaching strategies will come greater accountability of principals and teachers, Gardner says.

Pat Skorkowsky, superintendent of the Clark County School District, suggests the Legislature instead authorize greater school-by-school autonomy to principals. For example, money now earmarked for textbooks might be better spent on technology or professional development, he said.

“We need to be allowed to make local choices and then be held accountable for those results,” Skorkowsky said.

We agree with Skorkowsky, but we support Gardner’s call to study the idea of subdistricts. It seems we’ve tried just about everything else, and we’re still flailing for a solution.