by Sondra Cosgrove

This legislative session, Assemblyman Elliot Anderson and state Sen. Joyce Woodhouse are co-sponsoring Assembly Joint Resolution 5, which proposes to amend the Nevada Constitution by removing a reference to the University Board of Regents from the Nevada Constitution.

When Nevada became a state our founders needed to comply the federal Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which required each state to establish a land grant college.  They did this by embedding a directive to have a university system governed by a Board of Regents in our state Constitution.

Over the course of history, however, conflicts over power and autonomy have developed between the Board of Regents and the Legislature because of this constitutional status.  The Nevada System of Higher Education has gone as far as claiming it bestows legal immunity from legislative oversight and accountability measures.  These conflicts have escalated since the 2008 economic collapse as the state struggles to better align public education outcomes with a more diversified economy.

An interim study in 2011-12 to create an easier to understand and performance-based funding formula led to accusations that the regents and chancellor were less than honest and manipulated the process to derail real change.

And during a 2013-14 interim study of community college governance (SB391) the chancellor and regents threw down the gauntlet by challenging the legislature’s power to directly reform governance of Nevada’s community colleges.   This power-play backfired, however, when the SB391 committee requested a legal opinion on the regents constitutional status and that opinion confirmed a legislative prerogative to remove the community college out from under Board of Regents control.

These are just two examples of Nevada System of Higher Education leaders and regents promising to work with our legislature to improve higher education outcomes, but then being accused of stonewalling.

Consequently, a bipartisan loss of legislative trust produced AJR5.  Legislators in both parties have expressed exasperation over the regents' unwillingness to operate under full disclosure and to accept the type of oversight that ensures accountability.  Assemblyman Anderson summed up this sentiment during a Senate committee hearing when he said: If you are different and succeeding, there is no reason for change.  But if you are different and failing, you must change.

What might that change look like if AJR5 passes?*  Over the last interim a legislative committee studied reorganizing the Clark County School District and made recommendations to help all students, but especially low-income and disadvantaged students.  At the K-12 level, quality teaching will now be positively encouraged and rewarded and money intended for Title I schools, which have a majority low-income student population, will be guaranteed to stay with vulnerable students.

NSHE community colleges need similar help, but right now the regents and system officials are unwilling to engage with legislators to go through the process of over-turning rocks to clear out old assumption and practices.  This is especially true when it comes to revitalizing teaching, professional development, and assessment.  If attention and resources continue to flow mainly to research, while the role of teaching remains undervalued, NSHE will continue to under-perform as a partner in remaking Nevada’s economy.

Having personally struggled for close to 10 years, from the inside, to reform my slice of higher education, and seeing no real interest in focusing on teaching and assessment, I am ready to cancel my bet that NSHE will be able to reform itself and move my chips over to AJR5.  We need some type of disruption and nothing that’s been tried so far has worked.

*In Nevada, amending the Constitution is a five-year process.  The legislature must approve the amendment in two consecutive legislative sessions and then the public must approve the amendment as a ballot question.  Even if AJR5 fails at some point along this long road, the discussions its generating are still useful.  Airing dirty laundry can be painful, but eventually it must happen one way or another.

Dr. Sondra Cosgrove is a 30-year resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, where she is a tenured history professor at the College of Southern Nevada. Sondra earned her Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2004 with an emphasis in the U.S. West. At CSN Sondra also Chairs the Native American Alliance and Co-Chairs the Women’s Alliance. Sondra’s also serves as the President of the League of Women Voters of Las Vegas Valley, is an ACLU NV board member, a City of Las Vegas Historic Preservation Commissioner, and a member of the Nevada Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Feature photo: Students gather at the College of Southern Nevada Charleston Campus on Wednesday, March 22, 2017. Photo by Jeff Scheid.