The Clark County School Board meets Oct. 5, 2022, at the CCSD Greer Education Center. Two pieces of legislation — one in the Nevada Assembly, the other in the Nevada Senate — would change the makeup of school boards in Nevada.
Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Education in Nevada
The Nevada Legislature is considering two proposals to change the makeup of the state’s school boards, one of which mirrors a bill that failed during the most recent 2021 session.
Assembly Bill 175 was introduced in the Assembly Education Committee last week, calling for school boards in Clark and Washoe counties to become a hybrid of elected and appointed members. It’s identical to a Democrat-led bill from 2021 that died in committee.
This time it has bipartisan support with Democratic Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod of Las Vegas co-sponsoring the proposal with Assemblyman Toby Yurek, a Henderson Republican. In the upper chamber, Senate Bill 64 proposes hybrid boards statewide.
Under the Assembly bill, the seven-member, all-elected boards in Clark and Washoe counties instead would seat four elected members, one member appointed by the county commissioners, and one member appointed by the city councils of each of the county’s two largest incorporated cities.
For Clark County, that would mean a member each from Las Vegas and Henderson; for Washoe, from Reno and Sparks. Nevada’s other school boards would remain constituted as-is.
Bilbray-Axelrod, who is the chairwoman of Assembly Education Committee, said school governance came up in the Southern Nevada Forum —where local civic leaders establish their legislative priorities — to make the topic of school boards a worthy conversation for lawmakers.
“Clearly, a lot of people think that there needs to be major changes on the school board, so why not have that conversation?” Bilbray-Axelrod said. “What’s it hurt talking about things —and if we get to something that we can agree on, that we feel like can pass and get signed by the governor, and it will help student achievement and outcome, great.”
The Senate bill, which retired CCSD educator and former Lt. Gov. Lisa Cano Burkhead teased in October, would expand boards in all 17 of Nevada’s school districts in making them elected-appointed hybrids.
Under that proposal, the Clark County School District would have an 11-member board: seven elected members, as they are currently, plus four appointed. The county commission would appoint the school board president, and each incorporated city with a population of at least 75,000 would appoint a representative.
Locally, one member each would come from Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson, along with the county-selected president. These four members would join the seven elected members, who represent geographic areas that aren’t drawn along city boundaries.
Meanwhile, Washoe County would get three appointees, with city representatives from Reno and Sparks. The state’s other 15 school boards — which are in rural areas where no cities meet the 75,000-resident threshold — would each get one appointee, the county-appointed board president.
No hearings have yet been scheduled for either proposal.
Elementary administrators may get bonuses
Principals and assistant principals at some elementary schools are in line for recruitment, retention and performance bonuses of $10,000 to $20,000.
The incentives, which the CCSD School Board will consider Thursday, are the administrators’ analogue to proposed bonuses that were one of the subjects of a recent letter from the Clark County Education Association’s executive board to the rest of the teachers union.
In that January memo, the district’s largest teachers union firmly pledged to seek improvements to base pay, not one-off bonuses that do not contribute to long-term salary stability or count toward pensions. The union also blasted bonuses as undermining collective bargaining.
The administrators appear to be warmer to bonuses for staff at what the district calls “Transformation Network” schools, a cluster of 23 schools where students have generally performed at the bottom of CCSD’s 231 grade schools on state reading exams.
Under the proposed terms between CCSD and Clark County Association of School Administrators and Professional-Technical Employees, Transformation Network administrators would get flat recruitment or retention bonuses of $10,000, according to School Board meeting materials.
They could also earn $5,000 or $10,000 more if their schools improve their star rating or “index” score — which is how the state Department of Education rates overall school quality — by certain amounts.
The district has set aside $1 million for these bonuses, about the amount it would need if every principal and assistant principal earned the maximum $20,000 each. (All elementary schools have one principal and one assistant principal each. A few have two assistant principals.)
As with the proposed teacher bonuses, these bonuses would only apply to the 2023-24 school year and be prorated for staffers who joined a school after the midyear mark. They differ from the teacher package in that they are smaller and less incremental.
If the administrators union were to agree to the terms outlined in an unsigned draft of an agreement obtained by the Sun, Transformation Network teachers would receive a lump sum payment of $20,000 after the 2023-24 school year ends.
Teachers, including some specialists, could also receive “student outcome incentive” payments of up to $100 for every child who met certain proficiency levels on next year’s standardized reading tests, depending on grade level or if the child is in special education.
