Dive Brief:
- Under a bill signed into law last month, Nevada is poised to form committees that will be tasked with splitting up its Clark County school district, which includes Las Vegas and is the fifth largest in the U.S.
- The committees tasked with overseeing the division include representatives from local governments, the state board of education, the local teacher union, and a local parent.
- The deconsolidation into smaller districts will take place in time for the 2018-19 school year.
Dive Insight:
Nevada is not the first state to contemplate splitting up a behemoth school district. Jordan School District in Salt Lake City split back in 2009, and Minnesota legislators also tried to pass a bill similar to Nevada’s this year. The idea has come up at some point for nearly every major school district in the country, from Los Angeles to Dallas to Seattle. It’s not even the first time the idea has been raised for Clark County schools.
It’s rare, however, for the idea to come to fruition. Research on the effectiveness of divvying up districts is few and far between, though Nevada lawmakers pointed to a study that found students in smaller districts perform better than those in larger ones. On the other hand, the bill has raised fears of de-facto segregation between districts.
The bill has some safeguards against that, including language that any splitting must “ensure equity” for districts and divide resources, including capital projects and school-based programs, fairly. But that hasn’t totally allayed the fears of some observers and officials. "It seems like it's going right back to pre-Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, KS,” Nevada state Sen Pat Spearman, a Democrat opposed to the bill, told Education Week.
