Petition to break up school district filed

Terry Webster

Friday, Oct. 20, 2000 | 10:21 a.m.

Eight years and 62,000 signatures later, an initiative to break the Clark County School District into smaller districts is ready to come before voters.

Assemblywoman Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson, placed the finishing touches on her Community Schools Initiative by filing signed petitions Thursday at the Clark County Registrar of Voters. Petitions also were filed in 16 other Nevada counties.

North Las Vegas produced the largest number of signatures, Tiffany said.

"They were the most active," she said.

The initiative's intent is to change a state law so that voters will be able to decide whether the Clark County School District, the nation's sixth largest, should be divided. The law currently allows only one school district per county.

It all began eight years ago, Tiffany said, when parents from Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City began complaining that the district had become too large and unresponsive to community concerns.

Superintendent Carlos Garcia does not favor Tiffany's plan and is instead proposing that the school district be divided into smaller zones. That, he says, will provide a neighborhood focus at schools. Other school officials also oppose Tiffany's plan.

But the initiative will now go before state Legislature. If the Legislature rejects it, the initiative will be placed on the 2002 ballot.

The Legislature could opt to approve it and immediately change the law, but Tiffany doubts that will happen.

She bases that belief on "who supports what and who pulls the strings."

In either scenario, Tiffany predicts it will take about five years before any changes come to fruition.

"A complete plan for how it would be drawn up would have to be done," she said.

By that time the district, which now has 231,000 students, could have over 300,000 students if the current growth rate continues.

Carol LaCosta, a retired teacher, said the initiative is long overdue.

She feels it would help address overcrowded schools, a lack of needed textbooks and a lack of efficient administrative planning.

Tiffany also said improvements are needed in the district.

"It's not doing a good job," she said. "Reading and math scores are low and the dropout rate is the highest in the country. Our children are numbers and not names. Over half of the operating budget never gets to the classroom teacher or the students, but is spent supporting bloated bureaucracy of countless assistant superintendents, area superintendents, consultants and support staff."

One of the arguments against the initiative is that it will create districts of "haves and have nots," and increase taxpayer costs by hiring superintendents to oversee the new districts.

"We've got 23 superintendents now," Tiffany counters. "Which ones do we want to pick to run the new districts? When they say it will create haves and have nots I tell them that's what we are doing now. This will change that."