Carlos Garcia has things to do and John Kerry is holding him up. It's noon on a Tuesday, and Garcia, superintendent of the Clark County School District, is patiently waiting for the Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential nominee. Kerry's beginning a two-day swing through Southern Nevada with an anti-Yucca talk at Cadwallader Middle School; later that night, he'll deliver a Democrats-good/Bush-bad, swing-vote-targeting stump speech to thousands at the Thomas & Mack Center.
As of now, he's an hour late. And it's lunchtime.
12:05. Tick ...
Garcia's on welcoming duty. He's usually alerted when visiting bigwig politicians want to use a school. His tends to be a low-key presence—show up, shake hands, say a few words, recede into the background. Did the same when First Lady Laura Bush visited in February, and when her husband came previously. Same thing today. Only Kerry's not here.
12:10. ... Tock
Garcia's not overly restless, agitated or tense—he talks in an even tone, soft, like he's incapable of yelling. He's wearing a dark suit, his thick black hair impeccably combed, speckles of white-gray sprouting around his mustache, then growing into thickets around the edge of his mouth and into a forest in his goatee. The superintendent is reserved, patient and understands these things happen: Kerry is nothing if not busy.
But comparing the itineraries of the 52-year-old head of the nation's fifth-largest and fastest-growing school district, and that of the Man Who Might Be President, Garcia comes off favorably. Kerry's got two items on his official agenda: the Cadwallader and T&M speeches. Garcia's got umpteen: regular staff meeting, caucusing with Edison Schools' principals, previewing the new website, studying the coming year's budget, handling personnel issues, boning up on legal matters, sorting through some of his 300 daily e-mails, prying open snail mail.
And this is after he leaves the Kerry gathering. His pre-Kerry morning included appearing on a talk-radio show, participating in a conference call with out-of-state school officials and hosting a cabinet meeting with his top officers. You can almost hear the old Army mantra—he does more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day.
"When people say you're lucky to have summer off, I laugh," Garcia says. "I'm just as busy in the summer as I am regularly."
Sometimes that means a late lunch or, as it's shaping up now, no lunch.
12:15. Tick ...
Summer's in Session
Friday, July 9
The Clark County School District is a 270,000-student, 300-campus behemoth the size of Newark, New Jersey, in terms of population, with enough employees (36,000) to staff nearly all the Wal-Marts in California. Were its five, 50,000-student regions broken up, each would be among the 40 largest school districts in America. Most students began summer on June 4. Administrators and some teachers worked into early July. Garcia's summer hiatus will likely come in, oh, December. For him, there is no off-season.
"I usually try to take a week off once or twice a year," Garcia says by phone. "I took off a week last year and went to Cabo San Lucas."
The one-story Clark County Education Center certainly isn't Cabo. Command Central is more apt. Garcia's typically there by 7:15 a.m. Meetings, and there are usually a flood of them, start at 7:30, tidal-waving toward midday. Some last 15 minutes, others hours. There are parent meetings, employee meetings, idea meetings, meeting with out-of-state visitors, with vendors, school board meetings, meetings on food service and transportation issues, school construction and renovation progress, status checks on legal affairs and matters involving curriculum, meetings on hiring and firing people and on operational and maintenance issues and, sometimes, plain-old bitch sessions.
And that's just the meetings. Add visits to schools—he tries to hit campuses two days a week, making this part of his job an all-year gig, since one-fourth of the schools run on year-round schedules.
Because the Legislature meets every two years, with education always a top issue, Garcia and others are in a perpetual state of lobby. Gotta try to plug the gaggle of holes in the state's public education system—underfunding (statistics vary as to how far per-pupil funding falls below the national average; some estimates range as high as 20 percent), overcrowding, crumbling campuses, supply-less classrooms, book-deficient libraries, scant kindergarten programs, low pay for new teachers.
That fingernail-on-the-chalkboard sound coming from Carson City? It's from lawmakers fearing 2003 redux. State school superintendents plan to re-up their InVest plan, which called for properly funding education—the plan that called for $879 million over 2003-04, mostly to keep pace with enrollment growth, fund teacher raises and create full-day kindergarten throughout the state. Schools got about one-sixth of the request. The same plan that generated Crip-vs.-Blood enmity between school officials and lawmakers.
The same plan that inflamed passions and helped gridlock the Legislature.
The same plan some mudslinging politicians are now using to paint political foes who voted for the subsequent tax increase (the largest ever) as plunderous tax-and-spenders.
With a teachers' union-backed ballot measure asking the state to fund education to the national average, the upcoming session should be ... interesting.
Then there are continual inquisitions from parents and the media about problems micro (Why was my kid expelled?) and macro (why the high dropout rates and low rates of going to college?).
Sometimes, Garcia has to douse fires of his own making, his ideas and mouth turning him into a dartboard for controversy. His reorganization of the district into five regions drew cries of "too much bureaucracy," a claim repeated earlier this year when he wanted to add three assistant regional superintendents with salaries of $100,000 apiece.
At one point in time, whether fairly or unfairly, he or the district has been chided for: greed (the $879 million funding request); poor cash-management tracking for federally funded programs; OK'ing a multimillion contract for private Edison Schools, whose record is spotty at best, to manage seven campuses; racial insensitivity (during a radio show on KCEP-88.1 FM in 2000, Garcia used the N-word to attack racism). Assemblyman Wendell Williams, citing the epithet and Edison controvesy, promised in 2001 to "bury" Garcia and send him back to Fresno, where he previously served as superintendent. Black activists have also claimed school officials are opposed to building a high school in predominantly black West Las Vegas.
The past two summers, Garcia's had to cope with fallout from the cans of worms opened by the No Child Left Behind Act, which calls for academic proficiency from U.S. public schoolchidren by 2013, and which seems to have had a quizzical impact. Garcia says it's highlighted problem areas but hasn't necessarily provided funding to address them. In essence, it requires school districts to aim higher but doesn't provide money for a bigger gun.
So diverse are his job duties, Garcia says when pressed, a Harvard intern who trailed him for six months couldn't summarize the superintendent's responsibilites.
"We're like a gigantic corporation, and we deal with the most important things in people's lives—their children," Garcia says.
Which means a continually ringing phone, rapidly filling e-mail inbox, tons of postal correspondence and the need for an assistant to help Garcia wade through it all.
"I spend an hour just answering e-mails."
The end of the nine-month school year marks the beginning of Garcia's second season. From there, it's on to high school graduations (June 7-10, he attended 14 commencement ceremonies), back to school-board meetings (June 14) and into preparations for the next year.
Three months—three months to approve dozens of administrators who'll oversee thousands of new educators who'll teach some of the 15,000 new students, some in one of the handful of new schools. Three months to assess what works, what doesn't and why. Three months to set the course for improvement. It's like building Rome, every summer. The married father of two gets $208,000-plus for his troubles.
In many ways, this summer, Garcia's fourth in the school district, was his busiest, no thanks to No Child Left Behind. A record number of schools landed on the needs-improvement list—82, up from 18 last year. Fair or not, the onus is on Garcia to explain why we're in this mess and how to get out of it. It helps to think of NCLB as a potholed road. Avoid one and there are dozens more waiting to do damage. NCLB measures schools on 135 factors. Pass numbers 1 through 134, but screw up on 135, and on the list a school goes. Seventy-seven schools landed on the list, in part, for failing to have 95 percent of eligible students test in each and every one of the six assessments given; it was the sole reason for the inclusion of more than 20 schools.
But the summer hasn't been all NCLB gloom.
"For our 10th-graders who took the proficiency in math for the first time, we had a 9 percent gain in pass-rate on the first try, and this is because we implemented algebra in eighth grade. Up to 70 percent of kids will be taking it by the end of eighth grade. ... Summer gives you a chance to stop and reflect on what worked and didn't."
Another project involved re-evaluating programming for the district's 55,000 English Language Learners, whose dropout rates and failure rates on proficiency exams are among the district's highest. Their test scores showed the most improvement, but are still lagging. Since most states don't provide additional resources for ELL students, Garcia says education officials will approach the Legislature for funding.
Ah, the Legislature.
You'll recall the last go-round between educationistas and lawmakers: the partisan pugilism, the gubernatorial refereeing, the lawsuits, the historic $833 million tax increase, the Supreme Court superceding the Constitution, the promises of political retribution. Ugly. Get ready for part 2.
Garcia and Nevada's 16 other superintendents want education adequately funded; the system received $140 million, one-sixth of the request. So InVest is back. To those who say throwing money at the problem isn't going to solve it, here's Garcia: "How do we know? We've never tried."
Field Trip
Monday, August 4
This morning begins at Mendoza Elementary in the northeast part of town. The school is 50 percent Hispanic, 30 percent white, 10 percent black and 10 percent other, numbers Garcia says are reflective of a demographic shift begun 15 years ago. In 1989, white students comprised 72 percent of the population. Today, it's 47 percent. Three-quarters of Mendoza's 1,083-plus pupils are on the free- and reduced-lunch program, almost double the district average. Principal Dolores Evans greets Garcia with gifts, including a purple Mendoza shirt he'll don later for several photos, and leads the tour.
Two days out of the week, he hits schools to see the education process in action. "It's such good therapy, given what you have to put up with. When I go to schools in Searchlight or Goodsprings, some people cry because they never had a superintendent visit their schools."
He's at high schools by 7 a.m., middle and elementary schools by 9 a.m., and usually heads there from home. "If I went in to the office first, I'd never make it out."
Holly Rowley's fifth-grade art class is today's first stop. Evans introduces her boss, then steps aside.
"Is this a great school?" Garcia asks, eliciting a chorus of yesses.
"Do you like it?"
Lots of raised hands.
"What would you change?"
The food.
The scene repeats itself throughout the school: Kathy Lee's fifth-grade computer class; a first-grade class in which five languages are spoken (Filipino, Indonesian, Spanish, Hawaiian and Tagalog); a music class. Garcia asks Evans if Mendoza was on the No Child Left Behind List.
"No. We made adequate yearly progress," she says. "Usually when someone asks if we made AYP, we do a little dance, but I'll spare you the dance. Even if we didn't make AYP, parents would still want their children to come here. There were zone variances we had to turn down because we're overcrowded."
"Most parents want their children to stay in the neighborhood school," Garcia adds, "because it's convenient, and they think their schools are pretty good. We've only had a couple hundred parents use the transfer option." (No Child Left Behind lets parents remove their children from struggling schools.)
As he heads to a second-grade class, a literacy specialist stops Garcia. She's wearing a Colgate smile.
"I actually sent you an e-mail, and you wrote back to me and right away, very quickly."
"We're pretty good about getting back to people," Garcia says.
"I was really surprised. It wasn't a little man, it was the big man that wrote back to me. I was so excited."
Garcia makes clear to the Weekly that he didn't pay for the good publicity.
"We like the fact that you've come to the district and see what you've done to improve the district," Evans says. "I worked in education in Chicago for 26 years and never saw my superintendent. We're your biggest fans."
The tour continues. Pupils either wave or say hi to Evans and she introduces her boss. Unable to remember everyone's name, Evans often responds with "sweetie." Mendoza is triple the size of a normal elementary. Garcia concedes that schools can't be built fast enough. Nor are work-order requests always filled in a timely fashion. Mendoza needs new carpet. In several places, it bubbles like sagging skin.
The tour ends with an assembly. Garcia thanks parents, in English and Spanish, for their commitment to their children's education. One middle-aged Latina whispers that he's cute.
Dog Day
Tuesday, August 10
Asked to recast his day, Garcia pauses, then unleashes...
7:30 a.m.: On the radio, answering questions about the upcoming school year. People want to know:
Why does the Clark County School District allow illegal aliens to get an education?
Garcia responds that it's a legal issue. "We take any student," he says over the phone, "and if someone has a beef with that, they can take it up with the Supreme Court. It's the law of the land."
Why all the high taxes to fund schools? Nevada's already one of the most-taxed states.
The announcer answers for Garcia: Not true.
A fair amount of questions hint at a general ignorance of the enormity of his job.
"People don't understand how big the school district is," Garcia says. "They're amazed by the number of students and the number of employees."
9 a.m.: Back to the office to participate in a conference call with urban school officials on the East Coast; talk is generally of crafting and passing pro-education legislation. It also doubles as a progress report on the Council of the Great City Schools conference that the district will host this fall. The council is comprised of the 62 largest urban districts in the United States.
9:30 a.m.: Meeting with administrators, regional superintendents, department heads, 20 folks in all, to address matters of the day.
Later that morning, Garcia talks with principals of local Edison Schools-run campuses about their trials and triumphs and what's expected of them in the upcoming year. Five of the seven Edison campuses are on the needs-improvement list.
"There's some good data, and they're doing some good things. A lot of people are expecting instant results, but improving schools takes time," Garcia says. "The contract goes for a couple more years, but we can end it if Edison doesn't meet our standards."
Next is the 24-mile trip from his offices on East Flamingo to Cadwallader, near Elkorn and Buffalo, for Kerry. The candidate is just a blip in Garcia's schedule. He used the lag time to chat with all the familiar educational faces.
"I actually got some business done," he chuckes. As for Kerry: very nice, friendly. And the conversation: short, congenial. "He said he wanted to chat about the impact of NCLB on the school district." They didn't get the chance.
Upon returning to the office, Garcia holds a staff meeting before submitting the final Weekly interview for this piece.
2:30: Has he eaten lunch?
"No chance."
Should the school district consider deconsolidation?
"No. If you break up the district, it will create the haves and the have-nots, poor districts and rich district, and you'll have schools that are racially isolated. We barely have enough funding to run this district and to break it up means everyone will start fighting over funding."
Last year, due to a budget crunch, there was consideration of instituting pay-for-play with regard to sports. Is that still on the table?
"Too many of our kids can't afford it. We'll just have to absorb the cost."
What about perennial concerns that the district is administration heavy?
"That's the myth out there. We're still one of the lowest in the country in terms of administrators to students."
Is enough being done to screen teachers given the spate of sexual misconduct arrests—19 in three years?
"The only way we are going to know about histories of people is through FBI fingerprinting and use that system. The public needs to understand the chances of these things occurring are high. I don't like it, but if you took any city with 30,000 people, you're going to find someone with something with them. There is a positive way to view this: we are now catching them when maybe they got away before." (Currently, teachers must submit to fingerprinting and answer 16 questions related to arrests and convictions).
It's nearing 3 p.m., the stretch run of Garcia's day. He still has to preview the district's new website, peruse and sign reams of paperwork (budgetary items, enrollment projections, funding), sign documents (certificates, "and sometimes walking papers"), do his daily reading ("about an hour on local and national education issues, law cases ... I usually do it first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon") and sort through his mail and e-mail.
Then, finally, it's time to head home, only to start the marathon all over again. It's enough to sap a presidential candidate.
"But being worn thin," Garcia says, "is the best part of the job."