Bigger isn’t always better. And in the case of the mammoth Clark County School District, the sheer size of it is hurting students more than it’s helping, says Sen. Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson.
“There is simply no valid argument to keep a super-sized district,” Tiffany says. “Credible research strongly suggests the negative implications of large districts on poor students, disadvantaged students and minority students. Large district size has a consistent and negative influence on student performance.”
Shrinking the school district is a battle Tiffany has been waging since 1992, but her efforts have, thus far, been unsuccessful. In 2000, Tiffany’s initiative petition to present the issue to Nevada voters was disqualified on grounds that have since been ruled unconstitutional. Another attempt to get the question on a future ballot has not been ruled out, she said.
Tiffany introduced another bill this session that would have started a process to fracture the district. It passed the Senate but was killed in the Assembly. Tiffany said she was disappointed, but not surprised. She blamed Democrats for pandering to the teachers union and school administrators.
“If there is one educational issue that all legislators, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative should agree on, it is the deconsolidation of Clark County schools,” says a frustrated Tiffany. “Our students, their families and Nevada can no longer wait to institute a rational system of smaller districts.”
Some Democrats and those who oppose dividing the system say breaking up large districts can result in the segregation of poorer students and escalate administrative costs.
Some feel it would create a large disparity in funding, favoring wealthier communities such as Green Valley and Summerlin.
“I oppose splitting up the district unless it’s done like slicing a pie so that every new district gets its share of new and old schools, affluent and modest neighborhoods,” Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, wrote in an e-mail. “Otherwise, you will only exacerbate the problems caused by differences between the haves and have-nots.”
Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, criticized those opposing the deconsolidation, saying they don’t have the community’s best interest in mind. She says implementing a voucher system allowing parents to choose the schools their children attend would solve the haves and have-nots issue.
“It’s amazing,” Cegavske says. “The Democrats just don’t believe in breaking it up. They think it cuts into their power base.”
She added that smaller districts would be beneficial to parents who, in some cases, have to fight through layers of bureaucracy to get problems solved. It’s an issue that Cegavske says leaves parents frustrated with the feeling of being lost in the shuffle of a big, unruly district.
“We have built a system that is not accessible or user-friendly for parents,” Cegavske says. “It can take weeks, or months, to get answers to a question. We need to remedy this.”
There was some good news, however, this session. Tiffany was able to get $250,000 allocated to fund a plan to decide how the district should be broken up. The money will be used to hire a third-party consultant to formulate the plan.
The Clark County School District is the nation’s fifth-largest school system. In 1955 Nevada lawmakers passed legislation that said “one county, one district” and while it may have worked well then, Tiffany calls the law “arcane.”
In April, the Manhattan Institute issued a report indicating that if Nevada was to reduce the size of its schools districts, it would, among other things, improve its high school graduation rate — now one of the worst in the country.
Bob Schmidt, a researcher and adjunct professor at UNLV, has studied the big-district-versus-small-district issue for years. In his opinion, it’s a slam dunk to deconsolidate.
“Kids in smaller school districts do better. That’s a fact. It’s not a matter of debate among researchers,” he explains. “If you want to improve kid’s grades, you have to get back to the basics and that means smaller districts and smaller schools. Because it’s gotten so large, everything we’ve done in the past to improve the quality of our schools hasn’t worked. The school district is so big now at 300,000 students, what are we going to do when it hits 450,000? And it will.”
Schmidt says to divide the school district effectively will take time and planning, but could be done relatively quickly by following the examples and models other cities across the country have used.
“We need to see what makes the most sense both in the short and long term,” Schmidt says. “And do it.” LW
