Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Clark County School District overhaul gets final approval

Updated Friday, Sept. 9, 2016 | 1:49 p.m.

Starting next year, the Clark County School District as known will cease to exist.

After a final review this morning, state legislators voted unanimously to approve a sweeping plan to reorganize the fifth largest school district in the country.

The plan, when it goes into effect at the start of next school year, will see the school structure flipped on its head. Principals, teachers and parents will take a greater role in the day-to-day decision-making at schools, while administrators at the district’s central office will play a supporting role.

Today’s vote was the final step in a yearlong process that began with the passage of a bill during last year’s legislative session.

The GOP-backed bill created a panel of state lawmakers headed by Republican Sen. Michael Roberson and tasked them with figuring out how to reform what some have viewed as a top-heavy district.

“Today is truly a historic day in education in Clark County,” Republican Assemblyman and bill author David Gardner of Las Vegas said in a statement. “Every school has different needs. This plan will bring the community back into the decision-making process of our public schools and finally allow money to follow the student.”

The new model comes with a few major tweaks to how business is done at local schools. Chief among them is a requirement that schools be in charge of at least 80 percent of their budget, with more funding allocated to schools with large numbers of special education, low-income and English-language-learning students.

The plan, authored by Canadian education reformer Michael Strembitsky and subjected to months of public vetting, has the support of many of the county’s movers and shakers.

The local teachers union and administrators union back the plan, as do the mayors of all three major county municipalities — Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas.

A number of county residents, including some from far-flung rural communities like Moapa Valley, have been enthusiastic in their support for the change and lobbied for it through a group called Break Free CCSD.

“For the first time ever in this state, money will truly follow the child,” Roberson said. “This is dramatic change. It truly is.”

But the concept has its critics, many of whom were on hand today to voice concerns that have plagued the plan almost from its inception.

Local civil rights groups have argued the plan will disadvantage minority and low-income communities, and the Clark County School Board, which will now share power with hundreds of school-level committees, reiterated concerns that it will be difficult to hold the system accountable when each school is run by a different group of parents and staff.

A major hurdle will be getting parents involved in schools where community participation has always been an uphill battle.

“We remain concerned that parents, especially from low-income neighborhoods, are still not involved,” said Amanda Morgan of Educate Nevada Now, an advocacy group focused on the new system’s impact on at-risk students and their families.

That daunting task will likely fall to the principals of each school. But Stephen Augspurger, head of the administrators union that represents principals, assured lawmakers that “they are ready for this challenge.”

The plan now goes into the implementation phase and will be rolled out in time for the next school year.

“This is the first step in a process that will likely require fine tuning,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Steve Canavero said.

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