Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

In hotly contested school board race, teachers union backs surprising candidate

Adam Johnson School Board Candidate

L.E. Baskow

Adam Johnson (right) with friend David Blodgett ready a few yard signs while on a canvas of a N. Las Vegas neighborhood on Thursday, June 9, 2016. Johnson is with Teach for America and challenging an incumbent school board trustee in this year’s elections with the union’s backing.

School board members never really got around to visiting Shiobhan Henderson’s neck of the woods.

That is, until last Thursday, as last-minute campaigning for today’s primary reached a fever pitch, when the fourth-grade teacher at Lois Craig Elementary finally got a knock on the door. It was Adam Johnson, a candidate for District C, which includes Henderson’s low-income neighborhood along a dusty road east of the North Las Vegas airport.

School Board Candidate Adam Johnson

Adam Johnson works in his home office before starting another neighborhood canvas of a N. Las Vegas neighborhood on Thursday, June 9, 2016.  Johnson is with Teach for America and challenging an incumbent school board trustee in this year's elections with the union's backing. Launch slideshow »

“Right now my health care is just expensive,” she said as they stood on her porch, chatting about school and work. When he left to grab a yard sign from his truck, Henderson took a moment to think. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone from the school board come to my house, much less ask for me by name,” she said.

Races for the school board usually don’t attract much attention from anyone other than insiders, but this year is different. The wave of discontent that has vaulted outsiders like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders into the limelight has trickled down into local races. And in the case of the school board, it’s not hard to see why. Though lawmakers recently enacted a bevy of education reforms in Nevada, state schools have consistently underperformed, and officials in charge tend to come off as unprepared in the face of pressing issues like the teacher shortage.

Into the breach have leaped more than 15 candidates for just four school board seats, marking this year as one of the most hotly contested in recent history. Previous elections have typically seen around 10 or fewer challengers for a similar number of seats.

“It’s time for some new blood,” Henderson said, watching Johnson struggle to place a sign in a patch of hard desert soil. “We can’t keep trying the same thing over and over again.”

Johnson, who canvasses in shorts, long white socks and a custom T-shirt bearing his name in soft blue lettering, has forged some unlikely allies. He’s a Teach for America director who has gained the support of the teachers union. He’s a union pick who has also been endorsed by the Metro Chamber of Commerce. He’s a soft-spoken guy being propelled by the public’s anger at the status quo, and in any other school board election, unholy alliances like these would be unthinkable.

“People are really tired of hearing, ‘We’re getting there,’” he said, walking up someone’s driveway to leave a flier.

Among his top priorities are addressing the teacher shortage in Clark County, which he says can be solved through “improving conditions in schools and classrooms.”

But his opponent, school board President Linda Young, is particularly fond of emphasizing that progress comes slowly.

It’s an approach that has ruffled feathers, like when she told an audience at a candidate forum earlier this month that it’s “not really uncommon” for schools to go without air conditioning in the summer due to maintenance issues, and that it was something the board was working on.

Click to enlarge photo

Clark County School Board trustee Linda Young speaks during a visit by U.S. Secretary of Education John King, right, at the Las Vegas Academy Thursday, April 14, 2016. King spoke on the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) which was signed by President Obama on December 10, 2015.

She happens to be correct: The school district does have a hefty backlog of maintenance projects that it doesn’t have the money to fix all at once, but the attitude among some is that the school board has lacked the leadership to go above and beyond to find solutions.

At the same forum, Johnson suggested the district could look to national groups for the funding, according to the Review-Journal, though he didn’t get into specifics.

Young, who became a trustee in 2008, ran unopposed in 2012. She has ties to local Democrats and has received money for her 2016 campaign from state Sen. Kelvin Atkinson’s political action committee as well as from unions.

The teachers union isn’t one of them anymore, however. The union representing the district’s roughly 18,000 teachers has taken a hard stance against Young and her District A counterpart, Deanna Wright, who also faces a handful of challengers. Union-produced attack ads called Wright “a story of failure,” and Young’s leadership the “same old story.”

“We’ve supported her not once but twice,” said John Vellardita, executive director of the Clark County Education Association. “She’s had eight years. It’s a divorce that had to happen.”

Young, contacted multiple times through the school board secretary and her cellphone, declined to comment.

The union has instead thrown its support behind Johnson, who has raised an eye-popping $48,000 for his campaign, with most of it coming from teachers unions, business groups and large contributions from private donors (including Myra Greenspun, the wife of Las Vegas Sun publisher Brian Greenspun).

Much of that money has gone into advertising and consulting. The campaign itself is pretty spartan. Johnson works most days from his laptop in his sparsely furnished home near University Medical Center west of downtown. He’s been phone-banking and canvassing every day since April, but he’s “long lost track” of how many hours he’s spent.

While out knocking on doors in Henderson’s neighborhood, he uses a smartphone app that stores voter information for canvassers. Campaigning for school board is a tough business. Not many people even know who you are, or who your opponent is.

“Turnout is going to be low, and you have to reach the people who are actually going to vote,” he said.

After an hour of walking the neighborhood, Johnson deems it a success.

“We got six ‘yesses,’” he said. “And two people let us put up a yard sign.”

Later, while traveling in his friend’s truck to canvas another street, he passes a campaign sign with Young’s face on it sandwiched between a handful of others alongside the road.

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