Will Rulffes be feeling empowered?

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Sunday, March 11, 2007 | 7:40 a.m.

Here's the problem: If the Clark County School District wants to allow more schools greater autonomy in the coming academic year, the planning must begin now. But it won't be known until June how much money, if any, the Legislature will approve toward such an endeavor.

So Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes has a few choices. He could allow as many as 10 campuses to join the four elementary schools in the empowerment pilot program even though he's not sure where he would get the money - $600 per student - to pay for them. Or he could limit the program to the four existing empowerment schools and wait to see what the Legislature decides to do.

Rulffes doesn't want to wait. But he doesn't have a couple of million dollars to spare, either.

What's a superintendent to do? One possibility, he said, is to ask the School Board to approve dipping into the district's reserve funds to cover some costs of additional empowerment schools, in the event lawmakers vote against the initiative.

"We could go ahead and gamble and assume the funding is going to be there, but that's risky," said Rulffes, who expects to broach the subject with the School Board during next month's work sessions to discuss the budget. "I'd rather have consensus from the trustees ahead of time that we would have the reserves as a fallback."

Gov. Jim Gibbons said last week he wants the state to provide $60 million, beginning with the 2008-09 academic year, to pay for about 100 schools statewide to implement the empowerment program. Gibbons also recommends that Clark County receive money for its four existing empowerment schools for the 2006-07 academic year. That money would be welcome, Rulffes said, but it would be approved too late for the district to count on when deciding how many empowerment schools it can support next fall.

A handful of districts nationwide have experimented with empowerment schools, in which principals are given greater autonomy in exchange for stricter accountability, with varying levels of success. New York City, the nation's largest school district, recently expanded its empowerment program to more than 300 campuses and intends to expand again in the fall.

Gibbons said the money for his program would come from an existing initiative that provides retirement bonuses to teachers who work in high-need schools. The Legislature's Democratic leadership has vowed to fight such a move, and has urged Gibbons to find the dollars somewhere else.

Terry Hickman, president of the Nevada State Education Association, said his organization was dismayed not to have been consulted by Gibbons before the plan was released. Clark County's empowerment model is off to a good start because all of the unions, representing administrators, teachers and support employees, took part in the design, Hickman said.

"The key ingredient is collaboration, and that's sadly what the governor's plan is missing," Hickman said.

Gibbons' plan calls for teacher input, albeit at the district level.

Each district would form committees of educators, parents and others to devise their empowerment models, provided the governor's requirements were incorporated - including that principals have autonomy and students would be allowed some choice in which schools to attend. Local school boards would approve or reject a principal's empowerment plan, and schools would be evaluated by the state Education Department.

On Wednesday Gibbons spent about 45 minutes at Paul Culley Elementary School, one of Clark County's four empowerment schools, and said he was impressed by the improvement in students' midyear test scores in reading, writing and math compared with the same point last year.

The school redesigned its instructional programs to specifically address the needs of its students - a flexibility that is one of the key elements of empowerment - and involves teachers and parents in the decision-making process.

"For being one of the earliest empowerment schools in Clark County, it's doing a remarkable job of putting together the kind of unique environment that children really need to learn," Gibbons said. "I'm impressed that the superintendent of schools allowed them to do this."

Principal Lisa Primas told Gibbons that critical to the school's success was her ability to hire her staff. As at the other empowerment schools, all employees were required to reapply for their jobs.

Without the ability to form a faculty from scratch, Primas said she would have "been stuck with 60 people with no buy-in," - meaning they might not be committed to the empowerment concept.

Also essential was the extra funding the school received, Primas told Gibson. The money paid for five additional work days for employees, higher salaries and the equivalent of 29 additional instructional minutes each school day. The time is divided among early-morning tutoring sessions, extracurricular activities and staff development. As the school's corporate partner, MGM Mirage contributed classroom supplies and helped pay for after-school enrichment programs.

Primas said other parents regularly ask how to enroll their children at Culley.

Under Gibbons' plan, students living outside an empowerment school's attendance boundaries would be allowed to apply for any available seats - but would have to ar range their own way of getting to the school.

Rulffes said he expected that the transportation issue would dissuade some parents from sending their children to empowerment schools.

The district wants to experiment with open enrollment in its northeast region next year, and has asked the Legislature for funding to help offset the transportation costs.

"We have to provide transportation in order to make it fair and equitable," Rulffes said.

A year ago principals were showing only minimal interest in Rulffes' empowerment experiment and just six people applied to run the four empowerment schools. But now, Rulffes said he has heard from at least 20 principals who want to participate.

Keith Rheault, Nevada's superintendent of public instruction, said the additional dollars make the empowerment model tough to turn down.

"If I were a principal, I would look at it and say, 'When else am I going to get a chance for $550 more per student? With that much extra money I can make a difference,' " Rheault said. "That's probably enough incentive."