Clark County teachers union may back breakup bill

CARSON CITY — The Clark County Education Association, the union for Las Vegas’ teachers, might get behind a bill to break up the Clark County School District, if a pair of amendments to the bill are adopted, the union’s president said Tuesday.

Assemblyman David Gardner, R-Las Vegas, said Tuesday that he was going to amend his Assembly Bill 394 to include a comprehensive study of state funding of education, and to extend the date for breaking up the district from the 2017-2018 school year to the 2018-2019 year.

The Clark County Education Association has opposed the bill up until now. But John Vellardita, executive director of the union, said that if those amendments were adopted, his organization would at least consider changing its position.

“We wouldn’t walk away from that concept without discussion,” Vellardita said. “We would be open to the discussion.”

Vellardita said he was concerned that there was little discussion about changing the state’s overall funding formula for schools, and that a simple breakup of the district would not fix that problem. Schools in North Las Vegas, for example, are not the same as those in more prosperous suburbs, and funding should be weighted toward areas with greater needs.

Gardner’s amendment would address that issue by having a committee of nine lawmakers examine overall school funding with an eye toward those kind of issues.

Not only that, but postponing the implementation date for the breakup would allow the 2017 Legislature to modify the plan, or even kill it outright. But Gardner noted that the underlying assumption of the bill — that the nation’s sixth-largest school district should be broken up — would remain a fundamental assumption of the bill, and could only be changed by a subsequent vote of the Legislature.

Vellardita said the role of local governments and their interplay with local school precincts still needs to be addressed as well.

Under Gardner’s bill, a committee of nine state lawmakers and a second committee of local government officials, the state Department of Education, the Clark County Education Association, and minority community representatives, would examine issues about how best to break up the district during at least six meetings held in Clark County. The groups would report their findings on the funding issue to the 2017 Legislature, he said.

After the breakup, the Clark County School District would continue to exist, and serve as an administrative agency to handle things such as purchasing, transportation, food service and oversight of substitute teachers. But education would be handled by five new local school precincts, which would each hire their own staffs. That means that the Clark County Education Association would have to negotiate salaries, benefits and other working issues with five entities instead of one, the way they do now.

But Vellardita said that issue isn’t a deal breaker for his union. He said he had a meeting scheduled with Gardner for Wednesday to discuss the bill further.

Currently, the bill is in the Assembly Ways & Means Committee. It must still pass the committee and the Assembly before being sent the Senate, where it will undergo more scrutiny. The bill is exempt from the deadlines, and can pass at any time before the end of the session.

In addition to the teachers union, the bill has been opposed by lobbyists for the Clark County School District.