Key Nevada lawmakers are ratcheting up the pressure on Superintendent Jesus Jara to no longer helm the Clark County School District.
Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas, called on the CCSD School Board on Monday to “take whatever steps are necessary” to begin the termination process, days after his public request for Jara to resign was met with a defiant reply that Jara would serve as long as School Board members would have him.
Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, entered the discussion Tuesday, with a call for “significant administrative reform” that she said could include a district restructuring.
“As elected trustees, I know you have heard serious concerns about CCSD’s leadership time and time again. And you have witnessed firsthand the frustration and anger about CCSD’s lack of progress,” Yeager, a Las Vegas Democrat, said in his letter. “I believe we are at a time of crisis that calls out for a change in leadership and a fresh start for CCSD. And I know I am not alone in this belief. Our students, parents, teachers, administrators and Nevadans of all stripes are counting on us to get this right.”
Legislators pass funding and may enact policy for Nevada’s school districts, but school boards — which appoint and oversee superintendents — are their own governing bodies and do not report to the Legislature.
However, in an interview, Yeager said he “felt a moral obligation” to demand Jara’s exit.
When he called for Jara’s resignation, Yeager listed several legislative actions this spring meant to improve education around the state and particularly in CCSD: a teacher training pipeline bill to address CCSD vacancies, the addition of appointed members to the CCSD School Board and record financial investment in all Nevada schools through general funding and by setting aside an additional $250 million for raises for teachers and support professionals across all of Nevada’s school districts.
Yeager is also critical of how CCSD has communicated a widespread, and briefly crippling cyberattack.
This week, Yeager said that it was clear that Jara was not going to resign, which he said he wasn’t hopeful Jara would do anyway.
“So the logical next step was for me to reach out to the (School) Board and formally ask that they consider terminating his contract,” Yeager said.
“I certainly hope that they’ll see this for what it is,” he added. “This is not a publicity stunt.”
Yeager said there was no last straw, but a growing frustration on his part and anger and demoralization in the community that built up over the legislative session. He said he had not expected overnight change — the Legislature adjourned in June — but he had hoped there would be some progress by now.
“To see none of that happening, and not a vision for how it was going to happen, I think it just was supremely disappointing,” he said.
A district spokesman deferred comment on the termination request to the School Board. School Board President Evelyn Garcia Morales did not respond to requests for comment.
In a response to Yeager’s initial statement seeking Jara’s resignation, the district said that “no bullying, pressure, harassment or coordination with the leadership of the (Clark County Education Association) will deter him from his job to educate our 300,000 students and protect taxpayer resources from those who wish to harm the District or its finances.”
CCEA and the district have been bitterly feuding all year. New teacher contract negotiations soured months ago, and the slugfest that has taken them before courts, the state government relations board and the court of public opinion. The contract officially stalled when CCSD declared an impasse in September, with no clear date for arbitration to begin.
Union backs legislative leaders’ PACs
Yeager — whose Nevada Strong political action committee last year was one of the union’s largest campaign donation beneficiary — denied coordinating with the union on calling out Jara’s continued employment. He said he spoke for himself, as the speaker, and did not run his statements by anyone else; connecting his statements to CCEA is “myopic” and a failure to understand the community’s feelings.
“Am I sympathetic to the fact that… the folks (CCEA) represent don’t have a contract? Yeah, of course I am,” he said. “But I’m not in the midst of those contract negotiations and this is not some sort of coordinated plan.”
As to the donations, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Nevada secretary of state, CCEA and its associated PAC, known as Strategic Horizons, gave Nevada Strong a combined $200,000 leading up to the 2022 elections. Nevada Strong received a total of $462,500 in monetary donations from all donors last year, making CCEA responsible for close to half of the PAC’s haul.
Similarly, campaign finance records show that CCEA and Strategic Horizons combined for $100,000 of the $215,000 that Cannizzaro’s PAC, Battle Born and Raised Leadership, raised last year.
“I guess what I would say is, folks should ask CCEA, why did they give me those contributions?” Yeager said. “If you look at the fact that those contributions were given before the last legislative session, I think they believed in me and my leadership and being able to get some really significant education funding and reforms through the legislative session.”
Cannizzarro, also a Las Vegas Democrat, said in her Tuesday statement that “Dr. Jara’s administration is a failure, and under any reasonable circumstances, he should resign or be terminated.”
“Unfortunately, a majority of the CCSD Board of Trustees has created an environment where Dr. Jara and his senior administrators are never expected to produce results and are never held accountable for their arrogant, intransigent leadership,” she said. “A large urban school district like Clark County will always face a diverse array of challenges, and the students, teachers, and staff deserve leadership that is focused on actually addressing those challenges. Instead, we have been subjected to a never-ending stream of petty drama that only feeds the aspirations of bad actors seeking to privatize public schools and sell them off to for-profit corporate interests.”
Cannizzarro said that she would be convening advocates for public education over the next few months to consider policy and governance changes in CCSD. These could include “a possible administrative restructuring of the district.”
“This cannot be how we operate. We cannot be drug into these fights of name-calling and blaming each other for how it is that this has occurred,” Cannizzarro said in an interview. “I think it's well within the Legislature’s prerogative to step in and talk about how we can make sure that the school district is working to provide a good education to all of its students.”
Cannizzarro did not elaborate on what the changes or restructuring would entail but said, “This cannot be how we operate. We cannot be drug into these fights of name-calling and blaming each other for how it is that this has occurred. I think it’s well within the Legislature’s prerogative to step in and talk about how we can make sure that the School District is working to provide a good education to all of its students.”
Jara has led CCSD since 2018. A split School Board extended his contract last year through June 2026, giving him a $75,000 raise to bring his annual salary to $395,000. The contract extension also included new clauses should Jara resign or be fired, following a 2021 attempt by the similarly split School Board to fire him for convenience, or without a specific reason, before reversing course less than a month later.
According to his current contract, if Jara is fired for cause or resigns voluntarily, he would not get a payout of what he would have earned through the entirety of the agreement. And if he is fired for convenience, he would be entitled to a payout of salary and cash equivalent of benefits until his contract end date. With 31 months remaining in the agreement, that equals about $1 million in salary alone.
Cannizzarro said she wouldn’t address the specifics of what a termination by the School Board could look like.
“I think that what they need to do is recognize that there is a significant issue, and that we need a change in the district's administrative culture,” she said. “It's increasingly out of touch and arrogant. And it's just not serving students, it's not serving families, it's not serving the district employees well. And that has to be our focus. If we are not providing that (focus) to students and to parents and to teachers, then we're not doing our job.”
In its criticism last week of Yeager’s request, the district said the speaker had not reached out to Jara to discuss the issues he cites as failings. Yeager acknowledged that he did not, aside from leaving him a voicemail right before he released his resignation request.
Yeager said the district response leveled personal attacks against him. He said he did not do the same against Jara, and has no ill will toward him.
Yeager says he often hears complaints from constituents about CCSD, and lawmakers have little ability to do anything about it.
“I don’t know what else I can do other than to personally ask Dr. Jara to resign, which I did. And then when he said, ‘I’m not going to do that,’ to ask the governing body to take up that issue,” he said. “I think it’s risen to a level that if we’re going to have community trust back in the district, there has to be a change. And I didn’t feel like I could continue to be silent about that.”