New Clark County School District board member Dane Watson speaks after he was sworn in at Las Vegas City Hall, downtown, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024.
Thursday, May 23, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The cities of Henderson and North Las Vegas have enough of a vested interest in education to sue the Clark County School District Board over its policy barring the municipalities’ recently appointed school board members from making motions at meetings, lawyers for the cities say.
As part of its response to the cities’ ongoing lawsuit challenging CCSD’s new rule restricting making or seconding motions to elected members, district lawyers said the municipalities had based the lawsuit on public interest but not direct interest.
The cities took issue with this, citing their own skin in the game alongside separate state legislative efforts to decentralize administrative authority in the massive district.
Both cities have staffers dedicated to local education initiatives. Both have advisory boards that give input to the city councils. Both have applied to the Nevada Department of Education to sponsor charter schools. Both have an array of partnerships and funding streams to benefit neighborhood schools.
“The actions by the Nevada Legislature over the past approximately 10 years clearly show more power being granted to the cities in order to address the specific educational needs of the students who attend public schools within their communities,” the cities said May 16 in a joint filing in the ongoing suit in Clark County District Court. “Based on this legislative priority and the large degree of investment the cities have made in public education, it is clear that the cities have a stake in board proceedings and standing to pursue this action.”
Henderson, for example, co-founded the Premier Schools Partnership, which is managed by the local nonprofit Public Education Foundation, several years ago to collect charitable donations for CCSD schools in the city. The separate Henderson Public Schools Education Account, funded with a portion of business license fees collected from the city’s marijuana dispensaries, has given $1.3 million directly to schools since 2017. Henderson hosts an annual “school summit” for campus leaders, runs its own preschool program, and funds a youth suicide prevention program in several schools.
In North Las Vegas, a grant program has given more than $400,000 to teachers and administrators in two years to address chronic absenteeism, family engagement, student achievement and teacher retention. North Las Vegas hosts a yearly student mariachi contest, gives out an annual “Mayor’s Innovative Teacher Award,” and partnered with the College of Southern Nevada to offer practical Spanish lessons to English-speaking teachers so they can better interact with Spanish-speaking families.
The two cities sued the school board in March, saying the policy against their appointees making motions violates the state law that put them in office in the first place. Last year’s Assembly Bill 175 — a bipartisan effort to add four advisory members to the seven voting, elected members of CCSD’s often-fractured school board — explicitly said the appointed members cannot vote or serve as board officers. But, although motions and seconds are predicates to voting, the bill did not say anything about making or seconding motions; it said that aside from not voting or serving as officers, appointees “shall have the same rights and responsibilities as voting members of the board of trustees.”
The Clark County Commission, along with the city councils of the county’s three largest cities — Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas — each appointed one member to the board. They took office in January.
CCSD lawyers have defended the policy by saying that voting has two integrated procedural components — proposing a vote, which means making or seconding a motion, and casting the vote — and that if the Nevada Legislature meant for nonvoting members to be able to make motions, the law creating those positions would have explicitly said so.
In addition to advancing votes, motions may be needed to place an item on the board agenda. Under existing policy, if a board member requests an item be included on a meeting agenda and the board president declines, the appeal process requires the requesting trustee to make a motion during a meeting that the item be included on a future agenda. If an appointee’s request to place an item on the agenda is denied on the first attempt, there is no recourse.
The case is scheduled to be heard May 29.
[email protected] / 702-990-8949 / @HillaryLVSun
