North Las Vegas City Councilman Isaac Barron speaks during a city council meeting at North Las Vegas City Hall Wednesday, August 3, 2022.
Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023 | 2 a.m.
The North Las Vegas City Councilman and Rancho High School teacher who was set to be the city’s appointee to the Clark County School Board has agreed to turn down the assignment following the school district’s concerns over seating him because he is a district employee.
In his place, the city apparently plans to appoint Dane Watson, a staffer from the Clark County Education Association, the teachers union.
The North Las Vegas City Council in October unanimously selected Isaac Barron, a councilman since 2003 and a district teacher for more than 25 years, to fill the city’s newly created nonvoting seat on the board. The appointment came after the passage this spring of Assembly Bill 175, which transformed the School Board in Clark County from a seven-member elected panel to a hybrid of seven elected members and four nonvoting members appointed by the municipal governing bodies of the county and its three largest cities.
That gave the Clark County Commission and the city councils of North Las Vegas, Las Vegas and Henderson each an appointee.
However, School Board President Evelyn Garcia Morales met with Barron last month to express concern about his appointment. In a follow-up email to the councilman, which the Sun received from the city through a public records request, she told Barron that his appointment was in conflict with the School Board’s regulation on employee public board service. She asked that the city of North Las Vegas' legal team review the regulation and communicate directly with the School Board’s attorney.
On Wednesday, that’s what North Las Vegas City Attorney Micaela Rustia Moore did. In a six-page letter to School Board attorney Nicole Malich, Rustia Moore argued that AB 175 did not prohibit CCSD employees from being appointed. She also quoted lawmakers’ comments while the bill was in committee suggesting that they hoped the appointment slots would serve as opportunities for teachers to join the board.
The city attorney encouraged Garcia Morales to accept Barron as the city’s representative, as state law tops school board policy and regulation, and because legislators “specifically intended to give teachers the ability to serve in the nonvoting positions on the board.” The regulation Garcia Morales relies on was last revised in 2009 and was never intended to apply to the city’s new nonvoting appointee, Rustia Moore said.
“The Legislature provided local jurisdictions flexibility on who they could appoint to the Board and expressly envisioned the appointment of teachers,” Rustia Moore wrote, arguing that teacher appointees’ inability to vote with the elected members mitigated ethical conflict of interest concerns. “Their stated intent demonstrates that they sought to move away from the status quo and add new voices to the Board.”
“In the city’s view, there is no one better-suited to represent the interests of the City in Board education matters than a teacher, duly-elected to represent the citizens of North Las Vegas. The Legislature expressed similar sentiments when passing AB 175,” she added. “The Board cannot infringe on the state law or on the powers of the City by refusing to seat a nonvoting member, duly-qualified and appointed as a matter of law to serve on the Board.”
The only restriction, Rustia Moore told CCSD, is that the appointee be a resident of the city.
However, the Dec. 6 North Las Vegas City Council meeting agenda shows that the city has acquiesced — somewhat.
“AB 175 permits the City to appoint a resident of its choosing and preempt CCSD Board policy,” the agenda item reads. “Nevertheless, in an effort not to distract from the Board’s stated mission, to improve student learning, Councilman Barron has requested appointment of a new representative to the Clark County School District Board of Trustees.”
That potential representative is Watson, who is listed as a field coordinator on CCEA's website.
“What CCSD is doing is shameful. They are putting politics above children and education, and thumbing their nose at the thoughtful reforms our Legislature enacted,” North Las Vegas Mayor and retired CCSD educator Pamela Goynes-Brown said in a statement. “As a former CCSD vice principal, I know firsthand how valuable teachers’ input is, and for CCSD to try to silence that voice — both at a grassroots and at a municipal level– is reprehensible. It is no surprise why our out-of-touch district is unable to work productively with its own teachers where they continue to deny them fair pay and do everything within their power to try to prevent a respected teacher and mentor in the North Las Vegas community from taking a seat at the table because they want to keep him and our other teachers on the menu.”
CCSD and CCEA are in a bitter fight over a new teacher contract that has gone to arbitration and has involved multiple lawsuits, including attempts by the union to stage teacher strikes.
None of the other three appointees are current CCSD employees, although they are in education — one is a retired CCSD principal, another is a former CCSD administrator who is now a charter school administrator, and the third is a former local charter school director who is now with an education nonprofit.
