Moapa Valley group releases plan to move community out of CCSD

By Ian Whitaker

Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2015 | 2:04 p.m.

Moapa Valley community leaders today unveiled a plan to form an independent school precinct designed to move the rural community out from under the thumb of the Clark County School District.

They told a technical advisory committee formed earlier this year to help lawmakers study a reorganization of CCSD that life under the school district has been plagued by inefficiencies and a lack of responsiveness to the concerns of the rural community, which sits 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

“I think the CCSD can force people into difficult, no-win situations,” said Lindsey Dalley, a Logandale dentist and longtime education activist there. “These children need a voice.”

The calls come from a task force of Moapa Valley residents who received the backing of the community to bring the plan forward. The 11-page plan, written by a retired CCSD teacher, outlines a desire to form a local 5-member school board that would hire its own superintendent to run Moapa Valley’s schools and oversee its roughly 1,700 students.

Moapa Valley, a 40 mile stretch that includes the unincorporated towns of Logandale, Overton, and Moapa, currently has four schools. They are two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school.

Dalley, who has served on the Moapa Valley’s education advisory board for around 15 years, said that communication between CCSD’s central office and rural residents has been less than stellar, and that the community would benefit from being able to make decisions on its own.

He cited examples of the district foisting policies designed for urban schools onto the rural community, such as overcharging for field trips and taking a long time to repair old buildings and build new ones. Residents of Logandale have also been highly involved in the debate over the district’s sex ed curriculum, and at times have felt that the school board has turned a cold shoulder to their concerns.

“The time has come to make adjustments,” Dalley said.

Today’s meeting was a first for the 24-member technical advisory committee, called the TAC. Both it and the TAC’s parent body, the Advisory Committee made up of nine state lawmakers, were formed after the Legislature voted to approve AB394. The bill, largely pushed by Republicans in the assembly who feel as though CCSD has grown too big and inefficient, calls for the committees to decide on a plan to reorganize the district by 2017.