Leadership Changes in School Districts

By The Northwest Press Editorial Staff        Published January 30, 2020

School districts all over the United States have different systems in which they get their leaders. Clark County is one of the school districts in which the School Board selects the superintendent. 

CCSD is one of the worst-performing school districts in the United States. We have consistently had a low graduation rate, and rank 43 in overall highschool graduation rate. 

Many administrations believe the school district should maintain the system they already have implemented. In that system, the principals are asked what they wanted in a superintendent, but not allowed a specific say on the actual person hired. This allows for the opinions of the administrators to be heard generally, but not a specific application on who was hired. 

Familiarity with the school district is an important concern to many of the district staff; believing that it is most wise to have someone who understands the situations and complications of how CCSD interacts with the city of Las Vegas and the state of Nevada. However, there are many pros and cons associated with an outsider looking in. Positives include having a fresh perspective and being able to start completely over without having to respect the standing organization. Negatives include possibly jeopardizing the efficiency of policies already in place, that could throw off the proficiency of what was already occurring. 

Disallowing staff to have input on the superintendent causes mistrust, disconnect, and miscommunication between the staff at the school level and district level. An example of this is in June of 2019, Superintendent of CCSD, Dr. Jesus Jara, announced that he would be eliminating the deans' positions in middle and high school in CCSD. Teachers and administration were outraged and 170 principles unanimously voted “no-confidence” in Dr. Jara’s plan. 

There are many proposed solutions to this problem; one being offered by Tina Statucki, Principal of Northwest Career and Technical Academy. She stated, “I actually think it should be a hiring committee with representatives from each employee group.” This idea would certainly make sense, especially because the district staff has a lot to gain (or lose) from a change in the way of hiring their leader.