Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 | 2 a.m.
In any given week in Nevada you can find a horde of politicians, school district administrators and state officials gathered in board rooms with the aim of tackling the state’s perennial education problems.
But one group has been absent from the conversation — teachers — which is curious given that numerous education-related committees, programs and initiatives have been established since the end of the 2015 legislative period, which became known as the "Education Session."
Case in point: the state’s new Spending and Government Efficiency (SAGE) commission, approved by the Legislature in 2015 to study waste in public schools. The group includes six appointed representatives from the private sector but only two school district employees, both of whom are retired. The first meeting of the committee was Dec. 1, a Tuesday morning, when most teachers were working.
Things like that are why Erika Barber, a special education teacher at Iverson Elementary School in east Las Vegas, decided to speak up.
“Teachers need to be helping make those decisions,” she said.
But educators around the state have been hard-pressed to find a seat at these tables.
Other examples include a first-ever Education Summit held earlier this month at UNLV, which featured a marquee appearance by Gov. Brian Sandoval and a panel of speakers but not one full-time teacher, even though much of the discussion centered on how education could be improved.
Similarly, members of Clark County School District Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky’s executive advisory board include top officials from companies like Switch and NVEnergy, while a small number of principals and teachers are scattered among subcommittees.
“It’s all businessmen,” Barber said. “Which is great except we’re talking about education.”
Barber, who had never considered herself an activist, decided to reach out to SAGE commission members to arrange a time when teachers could present their own ideas for making schools more efficient.
When she detailed her efforts on a Facebook page dedicated to CCSD staff, comments began to pour in from fellow teachers detailing examples of school waste.
A recurring target of complaints: the money the school district spends on outside consultants to come into schools to train teachers.
“We have how many Ph.D. educators here?” Barber said. “We spend thousands of dollars on consultants when we can have in-house focus groups of teachers.”
That's one of the issues Barber and other teachers are trying to bring to the committee, which meets again in February.
And they aren’t asking for much. Barber said it would be enough if the commission carved out a few minutes during a couple of meetings for a small group of teachers to offer their perspective.
The commission’s task is to draw up a list of recommendations on ways to cut costs and make public schools more efficient. A final report is to be sent to Sandoval by February 2017.
Glenn Christenson, chairman of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance and SAGE appointee, has been in touch with Barber and said the group was still in the early stages of its discussions.
“If they’ve got some good ideas, then I want to be the first one to hear them,” he said.
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