Re-stacking the deck

The staff at five schools — Elizondo and Hancock elementary schools and Chaparral, Mojave and Western high schools — must reapply to keep their jobs next year under the terms of School Improvement Grants.

These five schools are limited to hiring back only 50 percent of their staff. Employees who are not re-hired can apply for jobs elsewhere in the Clark County School District.

So if teachers are simply being reshuffled around the district, how is this supposed to improve education? Students at Chaparral have been protesting the breakup of their staff and the disruption this will bring to their campus.

At a press conference Friday (March 12), Superintendent Dwight Jones said “opportunities for results go way up” when a new principal can chose his or her team and unite the school employees around a common vision.

Lauren Kohut-Rost, the deputy superintendent for instruction, said these schools should be thought as starting over as “new schools.”

Other district officials noted that the new employees will bring “new eyes” to the problems at these schools, which have been classified as “needing improvement” for at least the last five years under No Child Left Behind, the federal school accountability law.

School Board President Carolyn Edwards likes that action is being taken to confront long-standing problems. She said Jones was hired for his sense of “urgency.”