VICTOR JOECKS: CCSD needs to heed McMahon’s warning

She may not want to, but new Clark County School District Superintendent Jhone Ebert should listen to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

On Friday, McMahon visited Las Vegas. Among other things, she participated in a roundtable with local leaders at FuturEdge Charter Academy. If McMahon gets her way, she won’t have her job for long. President Donald Trump wants to close her department.

Trump “entrusted me with a peculiar job — to fire myself,” she said. The department has spent “$3 trillion, and our performance scores have continued to decline.” She then drew the obvious conclusion: “What we are doing is not working.”

That’s worth remembering when leftists spin scary stories about closing the department.

But while the U.S. Department of Education remains open, McMahon wants to ensure public schools are following federal law. This month, the department sent a letter asking school districts to certify that they don’t discriminate based on race. That includes diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that favor one race over another. The deadline for a response is Thursday. In an email, the Clark County School District said it is still working on a response.

In an interview, McMahon reaffirmed the seriousness of this effort. She noted that the deadline for complying was extended and said, “We’re going to enforce it.”

I asked if noncompliant school districts should expect a freeze in federal funding. “There’s certainly going to be the opportunity that we would exercise that option,” she said.

Ebert has said that the district will follow the law but didn’t detail any changes she would make to the district’s equity and diversity department. That’s a problem. As readers of this column know, the district’s website lists the job description for an assistant superintendent, equity and diversity. One job responsibility is working with human resources to “assess the adequacy of the diversity of candidates in the screening and hiring process.” That’s just the tip of the district’s critical race theory iceberg.

Though the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association now bans boys in girls’ sports, the district’s transgender policy remains flawed. It allows boys who claim to be girls to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. Those boys are even allowed to room with girls on overnight trips.

Allowing things such as that is “still a Title IX violation,” McMahon said. “That’s against the law.”

That’s another area the district needs to change if it wants to avoid potentially losing federal funding.

I asked McMahon about the her department’s position on schools working with ICE on deportations.

In my talks with ICE and Homeland Security officials, “what I have been told is that parents do not have to have any fear that their child is going to be hauled out (of) a classroom,” she said. She continued: “Because there is a humanitarian aspect to this. They want to be very respectful of that.”

Finally, I had to ask a silly question. Given her connections to WWE, to what wrestler would she compare Trump? She named Andre the Giant, because Trump is “a giant among a lot of presidents in the things that he’s trying to do.”

Nevada education leaders take note: That includes stopping Civil Rights Act violations in public schools.

Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.