Lloyd Waller / CCSD
Irene Bustamante Adams takes the oath of office for the Clark County School Board. Elected in November as the District F representative on the board, Bustamante Adams is no stranger to elective office; she was a member of the Nevada Assembly from 2011 to 2019.
Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Brenda Zamora is sworn into office as the District D School Board representative. Both she and Bustamante Adams will be attending their first regular session board meeting today.
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The two new members of the Clark County School Board say they are eager to connect with their constituents on day-to-day issues and advocate for CCSD before state lawmakers as they begin their tenure.
Irene Bustamante Adams — who will sit for her first regular School Board meeting today alongside Brenda Zamora after both were sworn in this month — said the board’s first task should be to set priorities.
Although student outcomes remain the overriding priority, CCSD is complex and has “hundreds and hundreds of things that need to be addressed.”
“It’s easy to be distracted and to lose focus. We’ve got to pick two or three (topics) and stay on that,” Bustamante Adams said. “It’s hard to say what the group will determine what those two or three things are… However, in order to move forward, we have to be focused on two or three things to make strides.”
Bustamante Adams represents District F, which includes Spring Valley, Mountains Edge, Southern Highlands, and Sandy Valley.
Zamora said she planned to keep her campaign platform of improved, direct communication, a promise that she said reinforced itself as she walked the neighborhoods of her east valley district last year seeking votes.
“I used to do a lot of civic education,” said Zamora, who by day works as a multimedia producer for Make It Work Nevada, a progressive social justice organization that advocates for women and working families of color. “I would always push for folks to be reaching out to their elected officials. Being in the field and knocking on these doors and folks telling me that they were doing that and they were really frustrated that they weren’t getting a response back… it was upsetting.”
Zamora said better communication can be as simple as acknowledging that she received an email, and that can go a long way.
“I had a lot of moms share their stories, guardians that were sharing their stories that they were just trying to get in contact with just someone in the district just to be heard more than anything,” she said. “I think sometimes we forget that people, when they feel a passion about something, they just want to be heard.”
Bustamante Adams, who works in workforce development, said that during her own campaigning in the southwest valley, voters told her they wanted a focus on safety and mental health in schools, more decorum and civility at board meetings and closer relationships with the area schools and residents.
She said the School Board can always improve its relationships and partnerships — including CCSD’s relationship with lawmakers, which can be more proactive and transparent, she said. So Board members and CCSD government affairs staff recently met with several legislators, especially those with an interest in education.
Bustamante Adams knows well how legislators think. She was one. From 2011to 2019, she was a Democrat in the Nevada Assembly.
“The lawmakers are the ones who approve the money that goes into the different counties,” she said. “So it would behoove us to make sure that they have what they need in order to make decisions that affect 80% of the population in the state, which is Clark County.”
Zamora is a political newcomer but has plied her persuasive skills in the capital as a community organizer. In 2019, she helped everyday Nevadans tell lawmakers how a law guaranteeing sick leave for workers would positively affect them.
Zamora represents District D, which encompasses downtown Las Vegas and most of the northeast valley.
She said the testimony of real, regular people made arguments more personal and relatable. She’d like to see more of that to benefit education.
“In the world I want to live in, it’s definitely more (about) seeing how we can even include our students to just go up and share their stories,” she said.
