Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

CCSD board hears vocal opposition to expansion plan

Superintendent Jara Termination Vote

Wade Vandervort

The CCSD School Board of Trustees listen to public comments during a meeting at Clark County School District Education Center Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021.

The Clark County School Board of the future could add two politically appointed members and a student representative, but the concept of a hybrid board isn’t warmly received by its current members.

Reformers cite the current seven-member board’s open fighting and suggest expanding diversity of thought. Opponents say the move stifles democracy and accountability, doesn’t address student achievement, and the local insiders among them say it’s a battle in a war between CCSD’s two teachers’ unions. To add to the conundrum, previous attempts, like one in 2021, have failed.

“It’s a heavy lift — we recognize that — and it’s a complicated process, so the bills have died or not had the support needed to change the rules of the game,” said Magdalena Martinez, director for the Lincy Institute, a UNLV public policy think tank.

Martinez was one of a handful of people to make the case for the hybrid board this week at a meeting of the Legislative Joint Interim Standing Committee on Education, where dozens more attendees firmly rejected the idea — especially in Clark County, home of the fifth-largest school system in the country and an all-elected School Board.

Kenny Belknap, a high school teacher and treasurer of the Clark County Education Association (CCEA), said a change was long overdue.

He said board meetings had no structure, and members attacked each other and rarely asked questions of value or reviewed student data and goals, giving no oversight to the district’s staff leadership. The board dynamic has eroded trust with teachers and the public, and the group “lacks any resemblance of a functional board.”

“If our electeds won’t be the adults in the room, we need to put someone in the room to ensure that our students get the best possible education with the funding that (the state) provides them,” Belknap said.

Martinez, speaking for a coalition of area organizations that includes CCEA, the Vegas Chamber and the local education nonprofit Opportunity 180, said about 90% of boards nationally are elected and that the coalition believes in the voice of the people, so a proposed hybrid board should be mostly composed of elected members. Because the hybrid board is in the conceptual stage, it’s unknown how the two appointed members would be selected or which jurisdiction would do the picking.

The coalition suggests that municipal governments select the appointees, and especially consider people with backgrounds in private industry, financial matters and business administration, alongside expertise in K-12 education.

Chicago, New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia — peers in the extra-large urban district category — all have appointed school boards, although Chicago is transitioning to an elected board.

“In most counties in (Nevada), a seven-member board may make sense,” Martinez said. “In a region such as Southern Nevada, where the school district serves a population over 2 million, it does not make sense.”

The legislative committee gathered input ahead of the next regular session, which convenes in February. The committee would have to propose the concept to lawmakers, and it would have to pass in both the Nevada Senate and Assembly and be signed by the governor for any change to be made.

CCSD School Board Member Danielle Ford, who is up for reelection this fall, said that direct popular election protects schools from being influenced by swinging outside politics, and that no data promotes hybrid or appointed boards over elected.

She said since she took office in 2019, the board had not been trained on effective leadership and communication, how to run a meeting, compliance with the state’s sweeping reorganization law aimed at decentralizing administrative authority in CCSD, or the board’s fiduciary duties. She suggested more training before adding nonelected members.

State law mandates six hours of training during a board member’s first and third years of their four-year term. The penalty for not completing the training amounts to posting the person’s name on their district’s website. This law was enacted in 2017.

“There are better solutions to consider before deciding to change from elected to appointed school boards and deciding to take away the people’s power,” Ford said.

Colleague Linda Cavazos, who is also up for reelection, had similar suggestions.

“Our present school culture, both locally and nationally, is in disarray,” she said. “Removing the diverse voice of the people will not solve the situation. I believe that it will exacerbate it.”

Board members who generally espouse progressive ideals and members of the public who forwarded at-times staunchly conservative views — one drew a line from appointing school board members to communism and governmental tyranny — reached the same ultimate decision: no appointees.

Most of the half-dozen legislators kept their views low-key, although Assemblywoman Alexis Hansen, R-Sparks, plainly said she didn’t support appointing school board members.

“That does not mean that I don’t think there’s a lot of room for improvement,” she said via video call from Carson City.

Alex Marks, communications specialist for the Nevada State Education Association (NSEA), another teachers union, said school boards could use increased professionalism, collaboration and accountability. Active educators, who are not currently allowed to serve on school boards, should be able to have seats, and other groups, like students and support staffers, could have advisory positions, he said.

During public comments that took up about half of Tuesday’s four-hour meeting, several opponents veered into culture war topics like sex education, election integrity and pandemic controls in broadly criticizing school governance.

This is part of what makes school board meetings so volatile and pulls them away from the core mission of classroom achievement, Marks said.

“This is a great example of what most CCSD meetings have been like over the last two years, but to suggest that one solution is to appoint all of you would not solve any of the issues we’ve seen tonight,” Marks said.

Chris Daly, NSEA’s deputy director of government relations, said the motivation to reform school board membership was a personal reaction to the 2018 election of CCSD board member Lisa Guzman, who is NSEA’s assistant executive director. The statewide teachers union competes with CCEA, though in Clark County it is the much smaller of the two.

Vicki Kreidel, a CCSD elementary school teacher and president of NSEA’s local chapter, called the reaction to Guzman and her typically like-minded colleagues Cavazos and Ford a “hatred” from the rival union that is fueling the continued reform movement, alongside a need for control.

Guzman registered other opinions about why she was opposed to appointed school board members. Appointees, she said, are shielded by the people who put them in authority, and the appointing bodies are rarely voted out over the actions of one of their appointees.

As a directly elected representative, Guzman said she was very much accessible.

“My constituents find me in Smith’s (grocery), and they tell me exactly what they want me to know,” she said.

The interim committee took no action during the meeting.