A tale of two hearings: How bill to break up CCSD made comeback

By Ian Whitaker

Friday, April 17, 2015 | 2 a.m.

It was a tale of two hearings.

When Republican Assemblyman David Gardner first testified in favor of his bill to give incorporated cities the option to form their own school districts, the Democrat minority in the Assembly Education Committee spent more than an hour poking holes in it.

Washoe Assemblywoman Amber Joiner said deconsolidating would take the state back to failed policy of the past.

“A hundred years ago we had deconsolidated schools. It was incredibly inefficient,” she said.

Elliot Anderson, D-Las Vegas, felt AB394 would put the city’s best schools up for grabs.

“I think that there is going to be a fight over those programs,” he said.

Democrat Harvey Munford said his constituents in the historic West Las Vegas area wouldn’t approve of the plan.

“I can almost tell you that for certain,” he said.

Two weeks later, those same Democrats signed on to a much more aggressive version of the bill. An amendment submitted by Gardner last Friday would no longer make it optional for cities to form their own districts: It explicitly requires that Clark County School District be broken up.

It passed the committee unanimously, with a handful of Democrats and Republicans saying they might change their vote if the bill came to the Assembly floor.

If you’re wondering why Democrats suddenly signed on to what previously seemed an unpalatable bill, you’re not alone.

“I think people were surprised because [the amendment] was such a dramatic change,” said Joyce Haldeman, chief lobbyist for CCSD.

What started as a way to give individual communities more control over their schools has morphed into a no-holds-barred effort to wrest control from the state’s largest school district.

Gardner said that was his plan all along. Republicans, taking advantage of their newfound majority, want to break up CCSD — and they want to do it quickly.

“If we push it to another session they’ll be able to kill it,” Gardner said. “They’ve been able to kill it for 40 years.”

Republicans see CCSD as inefficient, underperforming and not likely to change anytime soon. Gardner first proposed splitting up CCSD in December but said he watered it down to try to make it friendly to those across the aisle.

Democrats didn’t go for it. They felt leaving the decision up to each municipality would complicate the process and result in a messy, piecemeal breakup. So Gardner went back to Democrats with his original idea.

“CCSD still fought it, and then I started talking to Democrats and they liked the original bill better,” he said. “I’m somewhat shocked by it.”

He said Democratic Assemblywoman Heidi Swank even gave him the name of a company that specializes in breaking up school districts.

The Democrats reportedly like it because the process is cleaner. Instead of creating a committee for each municipality, the amended bill would create a single, nine-member committee composed of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. With the help of an independent consultant, the committee would decide on the best way to divide CCSD into five separate precincts.

Of the six Democrats on the committee, only Munford responded to multiple requests for comment.

“I think the idea of a third-party, independent consultant doing it is really reassuring to Democrats,” said Seth Rau, policy director for education think tank Nevada Succeeds.

He also suspects there is growing sentiment among state Democrats that CCSD is just too big and could benefit from more community involvement.

Munford said he voted for the amended bill because he felt it was going to pass anyway. But Gardner’s amended requirement for a series of public hearings, a concern Munford brought up at the outset, was key to changing his mind.

CCSD officials maintain they’re OK with the district being broken up, but have found little in the amended bill to be happy about.

They don’t think the time frame proposed by Gardner is feasible. The appointed committee would have a year to come up with a plan to break up the district and then another year to implement it. Gardner’s plan is to have the entire process done in time for the 2017-2018 school year.

“It puts it into the political realm,” said Haldeman, the CCSD lobbyist. ”No one on the commission will have any experience running schools.”

Under Gardner’s bill, only one member of the committee would be someone “who represents the ethnic diversity of Clark County.”

“It’s going to be tough to find someone who is 46 percent Hispanic and 13 percent African-American,” she said.

The district wants the proposal converted into a legislative study on the feasibility of a breakup. Gardner said that’s not happening.

“That’s legislativese for ‘Let’s kill the bill,’” he said.

Because the bill calls for paying an outside consultant to study the issue, the next step for AB394 could be a referral to the Ways and Means Committee. Republicans are confident it will pass the Assembly, but it could face tougher opposition in the Senate, where Democrats have slightly more control.

“We’re trying to make this as fair as possible for both sides,” Gardner said. “I think we’ve got the votes. And with these adjustments we have even more votes than we had before.”