Tiffany drops plan to split district

Cy Ryan and Terry Webster

Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2001 | 11:16 a.m.

An initiative petition to break up the Clark County School District has been scrapped by its author, Assemblywoman Sandra Tiffany.

An alternate plan by Superintendent Carlos Garcia to subdivide the district into regions achieves substantially what Tiffany's petition would have, therefore rendering the petition unnecessary, she said Tuesday.

The Sun reported two weeks ago that Garcia proposed subdividing the district into regions with each having its own semi-autonomous superintendent.

Clark County School Board President Mary Beth Scow said she had supported Tiffany's initiative but is now looking forward to seeing how Garcia's redistricting plan will work.

"I think that what Garcia is proposing will be helpful," Scow said. "We need to do something. Legislatively, Tiffany's plan wouldn't have happened until about five years from now."

Garcia's redistricting plan should provide "a good road map for where we should go with this," Scow said.

"I'm happy she's going to give us the opportunity to demonstrate that by doing our plan, we are in the same spirit of what she was trying to accomplish," Garcia said this morning.

Tiffany gathered 48,980 verified signatures on her statewide petition to allow a vote in Clark County to deconsolidate the school district, the sixth largest in the nation. But the petition qualified in only 12 of the 17 counties. The Nevada Constitution requires it must pass muster in 13 of the 17 counties.

Tiffany appealed the count to Secretary of State Dean Heller, saying she believed she had enough signatures in Mineral County. The first count showed she needed 219 signatures but got only 191. Then she presented affidavits by people who said they were voters and had signed the petition, but their signatures were disqualified.

The secretary of state's office also said she presented additional signatures in an effort to get over the top.

Deputy Secretary of State Susan Morandi traveled once to Hawthorne, the county seat of Mineral County, checking the validity of the signatures.

Morandi was to make a second inspection of the signatures Thursday and Friday to make sure the signers were actual voters.

Tiffany said questions about the validity of the signatures had nothing to do with withdrawing her appeal to Heller's office.

Her petition, she said, "got the superintendent's attention." Tiffany said she now wants to sit down with Garcia and talk about how the district will be divided into regions.

Her initiative petition, if successful, would have been presented to the Legislature on the opening day, and lawmakers would have had 40 days to act. If they disapproved or changed the plan, it would have gone on the 2002 election ballot.

The plan called for changing state law to permit another school district in Clark County. If the statewide voters had approved, there would have been an election in Clark County to see if the citizens here wanted to break up the district.

Tiffany had been trying unsuccessfully since 1993 to get the Legislature to approve a break-up of the district.

Her petition drew criticism from those who felt it would create greater disparities between wealthy and poor neighborhood schools, even though Tiffany maintained that would not have happened.

"My whole concern with it was equity," School Board member Shirley Barber said. "I just didn't go for it at all. Plus, all we are hearing about now is the budget and that we don't have enough money to operate the schools."

Barber also is waiting to see Garcia's redistricting plan, which is expected to be unveiled in February.

"He has given us nothing yet," she said.

Tiffany, meanwhile, intends to go back to the 2001 Legislature with a different strategy.

Her new plan calls for setting a threshold of 275,000 students. When that total is reached, a committee will automatically be formed to hammer out a deconsolidation plan.

The school district now has 231,000 students and is growing at a rate of 12,000 to 15,000 pupils a year. At that rate, Tiffany's student population threshold would be met in three to four years. The committee would then have a year to draw up its plan, which would be presented to the Legislature for approval.

The five years in her new strategy is about the time it would have taken to put the initiative into place, she said.

Breaking up the school district into smaller units will bring more accountability and accessibility, she said. There would still be one School Board under the Garcia suggestion of regionalism, she noted, but her eventual goal is to have separate boards.

"The whole purpose is to improve the quality of education," Tiffany said.