LETTER: The Clark County Education Association is running the show

Who controls the Clark County School District and its budget? It obviously isn’t the elected School Board, the Legislature or Superintendent Jesus Jara and the district’s administrative staff and budget planners. It is the Clark County Education Association and its Executive Director John Vellardita.

The association is not just a teachers union. It is among the largest political and lobbying entities in Nevada. Through campaign contributions and lobbying efforts on the taxpayer dime, union officials control the school district. Union campaign contributions largely determine who will be elected to state government and the School Board. Once elected, they are beholden to the CCEA and its lobbying arm. There are no checks and balances on the union’s power.

Public employee unions should be illegal. They have long created a substandard educational system for our students with no accountability. Charter school funding was a light at the end of the tunnel, but even that has been largely shut down by the CCEA through its proxies in the Legislature. Education in Nevada will continue to suffer until we take public-sector union bosses out of the equation.