COMMENTARY: Five-year plan will get the Clark County School District on the right track

In eight months as superintendent of the Clark County School District, I’ve visited at least 165 schools and spoken with more than 5,000 people at approximately 175 community meetings. Through all those conversations, a single theme came across: People aren’t satisfied with our schools.

Parents, teachers, students and community leaders all join in the belief that too many of our kids are missing their potential because our school system is plagued by fixable problems.

They’re right. None of us should be satisfied when the majority of our students are not reaching proficiency in math or English, when massive gaps by race and income persist in both achievement and discipline and when chronic absenteeism is widespread.

Education is everything in today’s economy — to prepare our children for a secure future, we must do better.

The response can’t be pretty words. It has to be a straightforward, disciplined plan to fix the problem — one that makes clear not just what we will do, but also what we won’t do. Because that’s what focus means.

It’s in that spirit that I’m pleased to share with our community a five-year plan to give our families the schools they need and deserve.

The plan, which can be found at ccsd.net, is comprehensive, as you’d expect. It won’t happen overnight — it took a long time to create the problems we face today, and it’ll take time to solve them. But it boils down to focusing on four key things and doing them exceptionally well.

First, we must establish a focus on instructional excellence that helps us actually deliver strong teaching and learning — connected to high standards for learning — to every single one of our kids. Part of that means supporting our terrific teachers better. Part of it is making sure all kids have challenging, engaging learning experiences and materials.

Second, we must drastically improve our operations to support rich and rigorous learning. If the bus is late, the air conditioner doesn’t work or the roof is leaking, that makes it harder for kids to learn. We’re decades behind in areas such as the efficiency of our facilities.

Third, we have to make sure we have the resources to do what’s most important. We absolutely need competitive pay for our teachers and smaller classes. I’m delighted, and appreciative, that we were able to finalize contract agreements with all of our employee associations this fall and give all of them one-time increases. But that’s not enough.

I’m committed to fighting for the capital we need and for a funding formula designed for 2019, not for 1967, when Nevada’s education funding formula was first created. But to make a compelling case to the Legislature and to voters, I can’t simply ask for more funds — that request must be accompanied by a plan to ensure students learn more and go on to their futures better prepared. This is that plan. And we must make sure every dollar we spend supports our goal of high-level learning.

Finally, we need to make it easier for our families and our community to play a deeper role in our schools. They are the people we serve. And we are better when they have the information, the access and the ability to play a larger role in their children’s education.

Talk is cheap; trust comes from following through with action. I hope you’ll read the plan and hold me accountable for the action it lays out. And while our goals are ambitious, it’s something I know we can do — because I’ve lived it and seen it in other major school systems.

As someone who came to this country as a poor immigrant speaking no English, I know what school can do to change lives. I saw it happen as a teacher, and I’ve seen whole school systems transform, from the Chicago public schools to Dallas and elsewhere. There’s nothing that happened in those places that we can’t do here. We have the talent, the teachers and staff — I’d put our team up against any.

Ultimately, we all want the same things for our kids. We want them to have great choices in their lives. We want them to have the fulfillment, the pride, and the security that come with using their gifts to create their own path, to serve and lead in the ways they choose, to make their mark on the world. We are working quickly because our kids only have one shot at school — one shot at preparing for success in college or a career.

It’s an ambitious aim and plenty of people have asked me if we can do it. To that, I ask them to look at my own experience. When I was a child — a kid from Venezuela speaking no English, in a family with little money, raised by a mother with a sixth-grade education — few would have looked at me and seen me sitting in a seat of leadership and responsibility.

But like so many people in this country, I set some big goals, put my head down, worked hard every day and achieved something no one expected. That is exactly what we will do in Clark County.

I’m confident we can get there — and we must, because it’s what our kids need us to do. And if we ever forget what’s possible, they will remind us.

Jesus F. Jara is superintendent of the Clark County School District.