Meanwhile, closer to home

Recently, Clark County School District (CCSD) caught a bit of rare good press in touting their near spot-on enrollment estimates. The district, of course, reported the data in the aggregate (that is, the district-wide numbers). The natural temptation is to assume that because the aggregate projection was correct that the school by school projections were as well. This is something that is known as the ecological fallacy and it is an analytical no-no.  This is the reason why.

Say that there were two high schools in the southeast region and one school, which we'll call school C, has an enrollment of a little less than 3,200 and the other, which we'll call school L (and that has a staff member married to the writer of this space) is at 1,850.  It might strike you as odd that two high school less than a few miles apart would have such vastly different enrollments.

And then suppose you learned that CCSD projected that school L would have an enrollment of over 2,100 and staffed accordingly. But because only 1,850 students showed up, seven teachers were surplussed from school L to schools throughout the district with vacancies. This means that these teachers are forced to jump into unfamiliar classes and environments over a month into the school year, and the schedules and teaching assignments of the remaining students and teachers at school L needed to be changed to adjust for the staff losses. One might just chock this up to the normal hits and misses of the projection game.

But then what if you learned that while school L is shedding teachers, school C is adding two additional portable classrooms to its existing eight? You might begin to scratch your head and wonder if this is the best use of tax dollars particularly when government revenues continue to decline precipitously as Nevada faces the worst economic downturn since the 1980s. But hey this is CCSD after all, the cash cow of the education consulting racket. So what’s a little love for the portable classroom boys?

Now suppose that you uncovered the fact that over 200 students who were expected to show up to school L didn’t. And then let’s say that these same 200 plus students did not request a zone variance; the normal procedure for applying for a change of schools. One might figure that these kids and their families were victims of the great foreclosure melt-down of '08 and simply split town until you noticed that these kids were still enrolled at a CCSD school. But instead of school L, the school they were zoned for, they were enrolled at school C. Now one might begin to think that something is amiss in southeast Clark County.  

A little more suspicion might creep over you if you were to learn that because of the added enrollment of these 200 or so students, which bumped school C’s enrollment to 157% of the enrollment of L, school C gets even more resources than school L. So while school C continues to build its fiefdom up on the hill, school L struggles to enhance its academic offerings – a consequence that further exacerbates the discrepancies between schools C and L. But as they say, the rich get richer.

And then given all of these shenanigans, you might find yourself asking how did these 200 or so kids end up at school C anyway if they did not submit zone variance requests? Well as it turns out, instead of applying for zone variances as the masses are expected to do if they want to pursue a school change, they used something called residential affidavits. Some sort of procedure done on the down low that allows the paperwork of those in the know to bypass the school that they would otherwise be zoned for and enroll at the school of their choice by an accommodating administration.    

One might then wonder, given all of these strange goings on, if the families and kids making use of these residential affidavits to attend school C were a random mix of valley residents or some chosen few? My guess is that it is probably the latter, but who knows for sure since all we have to look at is the aggregate data?

At the very least, it might be a good idea after the election for the Clark County School Board took take a look at rezoning and get their hands around what is causing the discrepancies between schools L and C that allows some students to move en masse from school L to school C without ever notifying school L that they are doing so. The school board might also want to investigate why in a period of budget cuts school C is getting additional portable classrooms at $50K a pop while school L has empty classrooms.

Speaking of the school board election, one thing we know for sure is that there will be new blood in District A, the home of school C. Maybe despite my earlier criticisms to the contrary, something good will result from the Nevada Supreme Court’s term limits ruling.

David Damore is a political scientist at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.