Tiffany finds breaking up is hard to sell

By Emily Richmond

Thursday, Jan. 6, 2005 | 8:59 a.m.

A proposal by state Sen. Sandra Tiffany to break up the Clark County School District found little support Wednesday as community leaders, educators and elected officials urged the assistant majority whip to instead tackle inequities in the quality of public education.

At a breakfast meeting of the advocacy group Hispanics in Education, Tiffany outlined her plan for a legislative study of the potential impact of breaking up the district, which is currently the nation's fifth largest with more than 280,000 students.

"There's no question about the monstrous growth this district has experienced in the past 10 years," said Tiffany, R-Henderson. "But when we look at academic standards, the dropout rate, the graduation rate, we haven't grown ... the statistics are still pathetic."

Breaking up the district shouldn't be an expensive venture as the offices and staff are already in place, Tiffany said.

"The infrastructure is there," Tiffany said. "But you'll have a school district that's community based, your own school board and you'll decide where to spend the money."

Tiffany's proposal left some of her audience, including Rancho High School teacher Isaac Barron, unimpressed.

Instead of planning to divide the district, lawmakers should be focusing on how to provide more students with the type of intensive career training Rancho's magnet programs offer, Barron said. Rancho's seniors can graduate with the certification required to pilot a plane, be a substitute teacher or work as a paramedic, Barron said.

"We need to look at fundamental change across the board, not a simplistic solution," Barron said. "Otherwise all we'll have is five smaller districts with all the same problems."

Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams suggested Tiffany tackle the state's education funding formula, which she said is not as equitable as some people might believe.

Each of Nevada's 17 school districts is guaranteed the same minimum amount of funding per pupil. The state makes up the difference between that minimum and what counties collect locally through sales tax and property tax revenue. Of all the districts, Clark County typically receives the smallest percentage of its minimum guarantee from the state.

Williams said parents living in wealthier communities in Northern Nevada make sure their students have what they need to succeed academically, an advantage families in Clark County's inner-city neighborhoods can't provide.

"The formula needs to be revised so that the 75 percent of Nevada living in Clark County gets the same money that the other 16 counties get," Williams said. "Their kids get perks our kids don't get."

D.J. Stutz, president of the Nevada PTA, asked Tiffany if she had considered the potential impact of a break up on the district's magnet programs.

"Kids are pulled in from all over the district; there's a real cross-section," Stutz said. "There's Vo-Tech, the Leadership and Law Academy at Canyon Springs (High School). Are you looking at ways of keeping those benefits to students?"

That issue, as well as how to ensure diversity is maintained at individual schools, would be addressed in the legislative study, Tiffany said.

"How many districts should we have? How do we do it (break the district up) with zero cost?" Tiffany said. "I'm asking that the tough questions be answered."

Nevada Supreme Court Justice Michael Douglas, who attended Wednesday's meeting, said the debate about how to improve the quality of public education has to go deeper than breaking the district up.

"She (Tiffany) didn't say the district should decrease the number of administrators or increase the number of teachers or spend more or less money any particular way," said Douglas, who in November became the first black elected to the state's highest court. "So far what she's proposed is just redistributing existing assets."

If a break-up happened, the newly created smaller districts might have trouble replicating the programs and services previously available to students across geographic and socio-economic boundaries, Douglas said.

"Each off the new districts might get equal funding, but that doesn't ensure equitable educational opportunities," Douglas said. "The critical issue we need to look at is how do we best educate our children, all our children."

Fernando Romero, president of Hispanics in Politics, said he has seen firsthand the disparity between the district's schools.

When his stepson attended Harmon Elementary School in 1997, Romero said, the boy's class was allotted two visits, each 15 minutes, to the campus computer lab. When the family moved to Green Valley and the boy was enrolled at Cox Elementary School, Romero found two computers in each classroom.

"This is a real problem and it's still going on," Romero said. "I don't know that breaking up the district will be a guarantee that people of color have good teachers and administrators and enough textbooks, but I believe we should be very open-minded and listen to all the ideas."

A legislative study would be welcomed, said Agustin Orci, deputy superintendent of instruction for the district.