Phil Regeski owns P.R. Engineering, a civil engineering and construction services company in Las Vegas. One of Regeski's clients, the Pioneer Saloon, located in the small town of Goodsprings, Nevada, has waited 5 years and spent over $500,000 trying to get construction permits approved by Clark County.
Revised analysis of district's School Performance Framework shows 12 five- and four-star schools earned F's
By
Kyle Gillis
|
Friday, March 8, 2013
| Updated: Monday, April 15, 2013
LAS VEGAS — Is the Clark County School District School Performance Framework weighted to make schools look better than they actually perform?
That’s what six new Transparent Nevada charts suggest, using the district’s own data but employing traditional letter grades.
The new charts, for the 2011-12 school year, graphically portray CCSD’s relative performance rankings of all district elementary schools, middle schools and high schools, as well as the district’s relative growth rankings for its elementary, middle and high schools.
The Transparent Nevada presentation shows that when CCSD’s actual data scores are translated into traditional letter grades — rather than the district’s “star” ranking system with its automatically free five “focus goal” points — 198 of the district’s 329 schools, or 60 percent, scored “D” or “F,” while the 131 remaining schools, or 40 percent, scored “C” or better.
LAS VEGAS — As Nevada lawmakers weigh different ways to attract new industries to the state, analysts on both ends of the political spectrum agree that one policy that shouldn’t be attempted is film subsidies.
“I don’t think they’ll create any useful industry in the state,” said Joe Henchman, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation, a right-leaning organization that published a highly publicized study on film subsidies.
And in Louisiana, a report from a left-leaning watchdog organization, the Louisiana Budget Project, calls film tax credits “Costly Giveaways to Hollywood” that “Louisiana lawmakers ought to rein in.”
LAS VEGAS — New evidence bearing on allegations that Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and her top deputies engaged in repeated and systemic prosecutorial misconduct to indict two Lender Processing Services employees is scheduled to go before Nevada’s Eighth Judicial District Court today.
Defense attorneys for the employees say photographs now submitted to the court provide “potent proof” of the falsity of sworn testimony by Masto’s former chief deputy and head criminal prosecutor in the case, John P. Kelleher — as well as the falsity of assurances that Masto’s office gave to the court.
Gary Trafford and Gerry Sheppard, two LPS title officers, were indicted by a Clark County grand jury in November 2011 on charges of so-called robo-signing “forgery,” having authorized certain LPS employees they supervised to sign the title officers’ names to legal documents.
LAS VEGAS — The National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, also known as the Mob Museum, fell well short of its original 300,000-to-600,000 visitor projection, but did meet revised attendance projections with over 250,000 visitors in its first year of operations. It fell dramatically short of former mayor Oscar Goodman’s optimistic 800,000 projection.
“They tell me not to say that I believe 800,000 people will be down here, that I’m only supposed to say 500,000 or 400-to-800,000 people will be here,” said Goodman during last year’s grand opening.
The museum, which received $42 million in tax money from various local and federal funds, has a $3.5 million operating budget, according to Jonathan Ullman, the museum’s executive director. The average ticket price is $14.96, so 250,000 visitors allows the museum to make and surpass its breakeven target.
LAS VEGAS — The Teachers Health Trust may not be going “belly-up” in 60-90 days, but if it doesn’t get a premium increase from the Clark County School District, it will “at some point” run out of revenue, says CEO Peter Alpert.
“Can I tell you when, exactly?” asks Alpert. “No. There’s lots of moving parts in this business. If we don’t receive [premium increases], will we be faced with some tough decisions? Yes.”
In a wide-ranging interview with Nevada Journal, Alpert discussed the trust’s financial health as well as its relationship with the Clark County Education ...
While Nevada law and CCSD-PD general orders require that school police “shall” contact parents “without undue delay” and must release a student to his parents, CCSD police did neither.
Instead, according to district records, they used high-school Principal Kimberly Bauman as their agent in an official police investigation that detained the Northwest Career and Technical Academy student for over three hours …. without ever informing his parents.
LAS VEGAS — Sarkis Arshakuni opened Hookah Masters lounge in April 2012, hoping to establish a new nightlife spot on Las Vegas’ west side.
Eight months later, the City of Las Vegas realized it had made a mistake in Arshakuni’s licensing process and pulled his special use permit, denying his business its nightclub and thousands of dollars in revenue.
“[City officials] checked one box instead of the other,” said Arshakuni. “Without any warning, they told me the license was being pulled. Not for something I did wrong, but because they had made a mistake and they finally found their mistake after eight months.”
He was a high-school honor student, a senior and a member of the Army National Guard.
Nevertheless, say his parents, Clark County School District police and a high-school principal who didn’t like his Facebook page detained him, illegally, for over three hours.
The family’s ordeal began two days before Christmas break when the father received a phone call from Northwest Career and Technical Academy’s Dean Karen Galindo, informing him the school was concerned about pictures posted on his son’s Facebook.
LAS VEGAS — The main insurance provider for Clark County School District teachers, the union-run Teachers Health Trust, has lost over $17 million since July 1, 2010 and is struggling with cash-flow problems, according to numerous union documents and sources.
Multiple union sources confirm that Clark County Education Association officials told members that the trust will be “belly up in 60 to 90 days” during a Jan. 29 union meeting. The Teachers Health Trust (THT) is operated by the CCEA.
