School district pay cut: Symbolic, but important

New Clark County School District Superintendent Dwight Jones reversed a decision of his predecessor to award a pay increase for six of the district's top administrators.

It was a smart move for a district facing a number of problems, not the least of which is a dwindling revenue source.

Regular readers of this humble blog know that I am not one to heap piles of criticism on the school district. In my experience, there's more good to say about the Clark County School district than bad. But there are some problems that seem to have lives of their own, despite the best intentions of management and the school board.

It's one of the reasons I'd like to see the district split, even on an experimental bases, to see if we can identify better ways of educating our children. For example, I'd like to see a union-free district set up to see how that works. My bias is that it would work better if for no other reason than principals would be better equipped to "weed the garden" so to speak of substandard teachers.

The inability of the district as now constructed to do that is one factor that holds the district back from excellence. When the Clark County School District rarely, if ever, fires a teacher for substandard performance, you know there's a problem. My guess is that the poor teachers are far and few between. But they are there. Good teachers know who they are. Good principals know who they are. But the district has no effective mechanism of doing anything much about it, especially with teachers with a substantial time with the district.

And that's a morale killer in any organization.

Superintendent Jones showed some common sense in rescinding those management raises. I'd like to think that style might carry through to some of sticky problems that never seem to go away with the district. Like "weeding the garden". The union wouldn't be too happy about it, but teachers, students and parents would thank him.