Superintendent reaches out to retired administrator to boost struggling schools

By Emily Richmond

Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Karlene McCormick-Lee retired from her senior administrative post with the Clark County School District in June, but she could soon be back on the payroll as a consultant.

The Clark County School Board will be asked Thursday by district staff to waive the mandatory one-year “cooling off” period, a regulation since 1989. The intent was to guard against former employees using the inside track to win consulting jobs.

If approved by the School Board, McCormick-Lee would earn $700 a day for the projected 52-day contract, with her compensation not to exceed $40,000. She retired as superintendent of the Superintendent’s Schools region, and had been associate superintendent of research and accountability.

Skills of an individual occasionally are needed to complete a project, and it’s more cost-effective to hire the former employee for a limited contract, district officials say.

McCormick-Lee’s hiring is one of those situations, according to Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes.

Rulffes wants to assign McCormick-Lee to work with the district’s empowerment schools — previously among her duties — and also oversee applications for federal grant money to help states turn around their lowest performing schools.

Rulffes said as many as 15 district campuses might be able to share from $5 million to $10 million. McCormick-Lee has developed strong professional relationships with organizations that will likely be involved in the expansion of the empowerment program, such as the Lincy Foundation, Rulffes said.

“They all have the highest confidence in her abilities, as do I,” Rulffes said.

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With Gov. Jim Gibbons planning a special legislative session, agencies, including public education, are being asked to adjust budgets for cuts of 1.3 percent and 3 percent.

At Thursday’s College of Southern Nevada Board of Regents meeting, Chancellor Dan Klaich said, “We’ve met every single budget reduction expected of us and done it in a responsible manner.”

But Klaich said he plans to urge the governor to look beyond education for savings in state dollars, noting the hard hits endured over the past 18 months.

He noted that the registration surcharge students pay per credit hour — $6 at UNR and UNLV and from $3.50 to $4 at the state and community colleges — brings in $6.6 million annually. A 1.3 percent cut to higher education “wipes that out, plus another $400,000,” Klaich said, essentially canceling “the contribution the students thought they were making to their education this year.”

The system’s campuses need to do a better job getting the message to the public of how the cuts have hurt, Klaich said. He noted that UNLV has lost 100 tenure-track professors but is still teaching a record number of students.

Requiring professors to teach more classes means less time for research, which brought in $145 million in grants last year, Regent Steve Cobb said.

But not everyone will object to putting a heavier load on faculty, Regent Dorothy Gallagher said.

“Some will say, ‘It’s about time,’ ” Gallagher said. “They don’t think professors spend enough time teaching.”

“I think that’s anecdotal bunk,” Klaich countered, drawing loud applause. “If any of us think teaching is an easy job, let’s trade. I’m deeply indebted to the teachers and faculty of this state. When we hear things like that we should call it exactly what it is, and not step in it.”

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Clark County is one of nine school districts invited to a summit Monday with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in Washington. The topic: How can the partnership between districts and labor groups support and drive efforts to turn around chronically low-performing schools?

Ruben Murillo, president of the Clark County Education Association, which represents a majority of the more than 18,000 licensed personnel, and Rulffes will participate.

Rulffes told the Sun on Friday that Clark County was chosen because of its success with the empowerment schools program, the career and technical academies and the interest-based collective bargaining method used in negotiations with the teachers’ union.