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Students rally outside Chaparral High School on Wednesday, March 9, 2011, in protest of the district’s plans to reorganize the school.
By Kyle B. Hansen (contact) 
Friday, March 11, 2011 | 2:54 p.m.
Superintendent Dwight Jones speaks with the media with School Board President Carolyn Edwards about the district's School Improvement Grant application.
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The announcement that the Clark County School District wants to reorganize five low-performing schools and make staff reapply for their jobs brought anger from students, but district officials insisted Friday they are acting in the students’ best interests.
“We know that some are feeling uneasy about the change,” Superintendent Dwight Jones said during a Friday news conference. “We know that change is always hard, but we also know that it’s necessary, that students matter most, that we’ve got to take the necessary steps to ensure that kids get better results.”
The district said Wednesday that it was applying for a School Improvement Grant for Chaparral, Mojave and Western high schools, and Elizondo and Hancock elementary schools.
The grant is part of a federal program that awarded funds to eight states, including Nevada, with the goal of improving schools. Nevada received $9.4 million. The Clark County School District is asking for money to perform a “turnaround” program on the five schools beginning in the fall.
How much of the funding the district will receive won’t be known until the state Department of Education announces the awards in May.
Jones said the five schools have been low-performing for at least five years and the changes are past due.
Under the plan, school staff members must reapply for their positions and a maximum of 50 percent can be rehired. The rest of the staff will be shifted to other schools in the district.
In addition, principals at the schools who have been in their positions for more than three years will be replaced, leaving only Western and Hancock with the same principals next year.
The schools would then get extra money to reduce class sizes, offer longer school days or for other programs.
District officials emphasized that no one is being fired or laid off through the program, although layoffs remains a possibility depending on the state budget.
“This is not about the adults in our system, this is about the children and our children being successful,” School Board President Carolyn Edwards said.
The board members support Jones’ plan, Edwards said; “I share in his belief that this is the right thing to do and I applaud him for his courage to move forward in this way.”
The plan prompted protests Wednesday and Thursday from students at Chaparral High School, where some students say they don’t want to lose their principal.
Critics of the district's plan argue that it unfairly places blame on teachers instead of students, while some students worried that classmates might leave school if their favorite teachers were let go.
District officials said they have to replace school staff this way because of grant requirements from the federal government. They said students would benefit from the change.
“This is certainly not an attack on the school, but rather it’s a commitment to their success and we have got to be committed to getting better results,” Jones said.
The money also comes at a welcome time as other programs end and the state budget remains in question, officials said.
Chaparral, for example, is expected to lose as much as $2 million next year as funding for current programs expires, said Lauren Kohut-Rost, the district’s deputy superintendent of instruction. If the new grant is awarded, the school will have money to make up for those cuts.
Part of the intent is also to give schools a fresh start, where the staff has the “opportunity to hit the ground running as one cohesive unit,” Kohut-Rost said. “That’s the excitement of a new school.”
Hancock Principal Jerre Moore, who will stay next year, said she has been talking to parents who are worried about the changes.
“Any time you talk about change it’s different and you just have to keep reassuring them that a fresh look at things is OK and we’re here to make sure that these children are learning,” she said. “You’re just looking at things with a fresh set of eyes, and that’s OK when you mix things up.”
According to the Tea Party folks, any money from the federal government will just add to the federal deficit, so these 'grants' should be refused, and the local people will support the schools. Just ask Sharron Angle.
It's asinine to keep Western High School's principal, a micromanaging, highly disliked administrator who talks to her staff like they are dirt. Before she came to that school, the teachers had just completed training and were in the process of implementing some exciting changes to the school to benefit the students, which she promptly declared "stupid" and stopped. If the superintendent and the school board are truly interested in effecting change at Western, they need to replace this administrator because nothing good is going to happen at that school with her there.
Shannon, I know I've asked you this before, but are you a teacher? What's your take on the overall plan (outside of keeping those two principals)?
I'm not teaching currently. I think this game of musical chairs is not going to do anything much to improve test scores. It appears that the students at Cheyenne who care about the teachers and principal leaving are actually the ones who are doing well in the school...those who are taking honors and AP classes. Not a single bad word has been said about Principal McPartlin at Cheyenne and it appears that he has been pretty effective at changing the climate at that school. I do think that an administrator can make or break a school in terms of climate, whether the teachers and students enjoy coming to the school and getting down to the business of educating and learning.
Reading on another forum, someone made the suggestion of just swapping all the teachers from Green Valley with one of these high schools so that maybe, finally, people will realize that it isn't the teachers who are causing the low test scores. I thought that suggestion had some merit.
It would be nice if students who didn't want to be at school weren't allowed to drag down everyone else. On the other hand, the question then arises as to what to do with them. I can just imagine the crime rate exploding if they weren't at least in schools.
Perhaps a better idea would be to realize that not everyone is going to be proficient at everything, that not everyone needs to be on a college prep track and taking classes that they just can't imagine will ever do them any good in the real world. We should have much more in the way of technical training for those students not interesting in pursuing a college degree, where they can pick something that actually interests them and will provide them with an actual skill they can use when they graduate. Those on the technical track should be expected to be able to read, write, do basic math, understand history and government, etc., but shouldn't have to obtain the same level of proficiency that a college track student would need.
This is a "shotgun" approach. Anyone who has experience as a service tech knows what I mean.
Get rid of social promotion, make principals accountable to parents, and find a way to implement merit pay for teachers based upon objective standards and not just test scores. Beyond that, school staff *must* find a way to get a message out to our children that they should want to learn.
K-12 is very different today than it was when I attended in the late 50s - early 60s. It is also much worse, in my opinion. Bring back competitive advantage, it would do wonders, even among the problem kids. Can you imagine how much respect a gang-leader would retain if he was the only one who failed to advance among his followers?
Large doses of "unattainable goals" and routine "performance evaluations" was the K-mart organization's remedy nearly a quarter of a century ago in lowering labor costs -- the plan's objective was to reduce labor compensation and benefit costs which management personnel had accumulated over their loyal years of service -- with the certainty of termination, employee's performance evaluations indicated goals were unmet and the undesirably compensated personnel were swiftly and systematically replaced by those accepting lower wages and benefits -- objective met.
History has a habit of repeating its self -- only the names and faces change.
Machines will eventually replace the vast majority of today's classrooms and educators as they have in many other applications whose processes grew inefficient and economically non-viable -- a necessary element in modernizing the learning process -- a vital requirement in the progression of wide-spread intellectual growth -- a change which is not only in the best interest of the today's student but their ability to compete upon a world labor stage tomorrow.
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