Children who want to excel in school should have that opportunity regardless of their ZIP code, their skin color and the level of their family’s income.
But in a sobering new report, an advisory committee studying equity and access in the Clark County School District found that children of color who live in lower-income areas of the district often don’t get the same ladder to success as their white peers in affluent neighborhoods.
The authors of the report refer to it as a call for action, which is exactly how the community should view it. We need to urgently resolve the problems identified by the 13-member community panel, including:
• Major disproportionality in the ethnic makeup of students enrolled in the gifted and talented education program. The study showed that 48% of children in that program are white, 34% are Hispanic and 6% are black. But overall, 24% of the district’s students are white, 52% are Hispanic and 16% are black.
• Disparity in the availability of rigorous, honors-level courses. For example, only 35% of the district’s middle schools offer an honors geometry course, and the vast majority of those are in the suburbs.
• Despite a district requirement for high schools to offer at least 16 advanced-placement courses, 14 schools fell short of that standard in 2018-19. The report did not identify those schools by name or location.
Another major shortcoming identified by the panel is a shortage of pre-kindergarten enrollment, with only 42% of eligible children attending those programs.
Superintendent Jesus Jara, who assembled the panel in July, said after the report was released that the district was already working to address some of the issues identified. For instance, the district has adopted universal testing for second-graders for the gifted and talented program.
As far as tackling the other issues, the district has yet to announce how long it will take or how much it will cost. But Jara pledged not to let the study go on a shelf, and a task force comprising panel members and CCSD trustees has been formed to monitor progress toward making improvements.
For funding, Jara said options included reallocating school district resources or possibly taking advantage of an eighth-of-a-cent sales tax increase approved by the Clark County Commission last fall for education, social services and other needs in the community.
We trust these equity and access issues will be addressed urgently.
In Jara’s year and a half as superintendent, he has done an admirable job of identifying the district’s problems and developing plans to fix them.
A case in point was the top-to-bottom study of district operations he ordered shortly after arriving in Las Vegas. That examination, which was conducted by an independent consultant, revealed a slew of issues that ranged from alarming to absurd. Among the former was the lack of a plan for predictive, preventive or routine maintenance, which has led to a staggering $6 billion in deferred maintenance needs. As for the absurd, the consultant found that in several departments, there were supervisors who oversaw only one person.
The examination was bracing, as is the report from the equity and access panel.
But in both cases, it’s to the credit of Jara and the CCSD leadership team that they identified the problems and brought them to the community’s attention.
This is the right approach. In revealing the district’s problems for the entire community to see, Jara is holding himself and his administration fully accountable for putting Southern Nevada’s school system on the right track.
To get there, CCSD needs the community’s help. We can provide it by supporting our schools and the administration, and by encouraging the board members who represent us to keep pressing for progress.
These reforms are a must. We owe it to every child in our community to make sure they receive a fair and equal chance at thriving in our schools.
Note: The Sun would like to recognize and commend the members of the committee for their work. They are: Irene Bustamante Adams, deputy director and chief strategy officer of Workforce Solutions; CCSD Board Member Linda P. Cavazos; Brigid Duffy, director of the juvenile division of the Clark County District Attorney’s Office; Ken Evans, president of the Urban Chamber of Commerce; John Guedry, CEO of Bank of Nevada; Peter Guzman, president of the Latin Chamber of Commerce; Lisa Morris Hibbler, chief community services officer for the city of Las Vegas; Ryann Juden, North Las Vegas city manager; John Jack Martin, director of the Clark County Department of Juvenile Justice; Punam Mathur, executive director of the Elaine P. Wynn and Family Foundation; Mary Beth Sewald, president and CEO of the Vegas Chamber; Javier Trujillo, director of public affairs for the city of Henderson; and Sonny Vinuya, president of the Asian Chamber of Commerce.