The CCSD School Board of Trustees listen to public comments during a meeting at Clark County School District Education Center Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021.
Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County School Board is commissioning a “climate and culture study” of the district with a focus on the board itself.
“The health of an organization really starts at the top — the top being for us here, the Board of Trustees,” said board member Evelyn Garcia Morales, who suggested the study. “It’s up to the board to fix itself.”
It’s unclear when the study will start or how much the district will spend on it, as the board only voted, on a 4-3 split Wednesday, to seek requests for qualifications from potential firms. No firm has been chosen yet.
Garcia Morales’ pitch for the study, characterized as “an introspective analysis,” said that CCSD had “experienced public challenges at the board level” over the last 10 years: three superintendents in 10 years; budget woes; a threatened teacher strike; decisions to open and close schools; board infighting and “inconsistent policy practices.”
The superintendent oversees all district employees, while the School Board only directly supervises the superintendent.
Superintendent Jesus Jara’s relationship with the board has been notably rocky. A split board voted to fire Jara last October without articulating a specific reason but reversed its firing a few weeks later after now-President Irene Cepeda sought to change her vote. In between the firing and reversal, Jara accused some board members of harassment and asked for $2 million to settle his claim. He settled last month for $95,000 in attorney’s fees.
At the time of the reversal, the members who voted to erase the firing also voted to have an outside consultant follow up on Jara’s harassment claims, but that investigation never happened. Garcia Morales said the would-be investigation was a knee-jerk reaction to “behavior that had led us to a specific place a year ago.”
“A year ago our board was in an extremely challenging place and while there are still challenges ahead, I’d like to find another way to move forward,” she said.
Board member Linda Cavazos said she agreed with the need for an introspective analysis but said it was not entirely true that the seven-member School Board set the culture for all of CCSD, which includes more than 40,000 employees and about 300,000 students.
“We have informed oversight, but we do not have operational authority. The superintendent, our one employee, has most of the power and the operational authority over schools and employees,” Cavazos said.
“We need to be realistic here,” she added. “When you make a broad, sweeping statement – the board sets the culture and climate of the organization – that is not what we’re hearing from our staff and our students and our community right now.”
Board member Danielle Ford said there had been enough recent attempts at policing the board.
Consultants from the Nevada Association of School Boards coached the board this spring on governance. State legislators discussed the possibility last month for hybridized school boards made up of elected and appointed members, with CCSD’s largest teachers union endorsing the switch because of its current relations with the board. And the School Board is using one of its two bill requests for the upcoming legislative session to ask for a proposal to establish standards and qualifications for education-related oversight boards.
“I feel like we’ve spent enough time and money on the climate and culture of the school board, and it’s not going to get better until we put that same amount of effort into understanding the climate and culture of the schools and the administration that works with the employees of the schools,” Ford said.
Board Member Lola Brooks said culture was defined by both the superintendent and the board. She said a study was not meant in a negative way.
“I think some board members are interpreting this as a different way to investigate the hostile claims from above. I view it as more of a broad assessment that absolutely needs to be done,” she said. “We hear all the time about how CCSD has a culture of retaliation. We all know that, we’ve all heard it, right? I think we all think that the culture needs to be investigated, right?”
