Make no mistake, outside the parents, teachers are the most important person in students’ education. Too many administrators do not understand the simple concept that the programs they purchase are only as good as the teachers using them.

This has been a problem in Clark County since Superintendent Jones, and his buddies Martinez and Turner, were in charge of the district and it continues today with Superintendent Jara. The Jones-Martinez-Turner team decided they could reallocate funds by using the “moneyball” philosophy. That is, they could hire less qualified teachers at a reduced rate, often from candidate groups that would only make a two-year commitment, and reallocate the funding to pet projects that had nothing to do with classroom education.

People who were paying attention back then might remember that while Jones was laying off classroom teachers and stopped reporting semester exam results, the money he “saved” was reallocated to hiring a 12-person public relations department. Their idea was simple, and dumb: that the less experienced are just as good as the experienced. (Tell that to Tom Brady and coaches in the NFL.)

Research suggests it takes approximately seven years to become a master teacher. The hiring of brand new two-year replacements was not only not ideal, it led to a lot of waste — because all of the professional development training provided to them meant nothing when they left the district at the end of the second year.

Now, with an exacerbated teacher shortage, another cost is rising quickly: the cost of disruptive students in classrooms and corresponding needs for addressing that and school safety. Anyone with any experience in education knows that when students experience teachers who don’t have a good grasp of the subject they are teaching and/or teachers that can’t explain the material successfully, students become frustrated and some act out.

That fact, along with some of the largest class sizes in the nation, results in increased bad behaviors. Then we add in the no-consequence policies of the Jara administration, and we can now readily see why we are in the situation we are in today. Jara has only addressed “violent” student behavior - not threatening or intimidating, bullying, or chronic bad classroom behaviors etc. Do we really have to wait till someone gets physically hurt before there are serious consequences?

Not valuing good, experienced teachers – teachers who know their subject content, know how to explain it in understandable terms, have resources to support their teaching, know successful assessment strategies, can manage a classroom and can encourage students to continue their study – is not just short-sighted. It’s crazy.

Administrators trying to teacher-proof education by buying expensive programs or throwing warm, inexperienced bodies at it will never work. If you want your kids to have a good education, we can’t play moneyball. We have to recruit and retain the best possible teachers – because experience matters. Any program, if even needed, is only as good as the classroom teacher using it.

In closing, the Legislature needs to finally break up the Clark County School District and fund schools properly so we can attract and retain experienced teachers, address class sizes of 40 plus students, and fix the health insurance issues that plague the district. The Legislature also needs to stop administrators from funding their buddies in special interest groups with valuable educational dollars at the expense of our students and teachers.

Bill Hanlon served on the Nevada State Board of Education, Regional Director of the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) and as a member of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) States Partnership Board.