Wednesday, March 12, 2025 | 7:08 a.m.
The three candidates for Clark County School District superintendent shared a variety of goals for student achievement, staff experience and internal and external engagement if they get tabbed to be the next chief.
In their final interviews Tuesday with the school board, the candidates said what they would want to see in CCSD’s strategic plan, a medium and long-term vision for the district. The last strategic plan expired last year.
Jhone Ebert, a CCSD veteran who is Nevada’s superintendent of public instruction, wants to put a special focus on competency-based learning, which allows students to advance based on what they know versus how long they spend in a grade or course.
American high schools generally follow a concept known as the Carnegie Unit, where students must spend 120 hours a year in a class to earn credit. That breaks out to an hour a day, five days a week, which is the length of a class period in a typical high school schedule.
The concept dates back to 1906.
“We need to look at our entire school system differently — not about the amount of time that our children spend in a seat but what they know and what our children are able to do,” she said.
It’s a major shift, she said, but some local schools experiment with it.
Western High School, for example, has Warrior Opportunity Wednesdays, where students have the flexibility to work independently or pursue remedial, accelerated or elective classes.
At Northeast Career and Technical Academy, students who were on the edge of failing a course took five more days of classes at the start of the summer to cross the finish line, rather than spend the next full semester or year repeating all the material.
This is a good return on investment, lets students know they’re successful and gives teachers comfort that they’re moving children on when they’re ready, Ebert said.
Ben Shuldiner, the superintendent of the Lansing School District in Michigan, wants to improve CCSD’s graduation rate, improve the high number of schools that score only one star on the state’s performance framework, fill teacher vacancies and increase communication and transparency.
He said he would want to take ownership of all of that.
“The whole purpose of being a superintendent is to make sure that there are goals that the district believes in, and my job along with everybody else is to believe in those goals and focus on those goals,” he said.
Jesse Welsh, the CEO of the charter Nevada State High School chain and a previous CCSD educator, wants to look at academics, climate and culture among staff, finance and district operations, and community engagement.
“Sometimes you have to go slow in order to go fast,” he said. “If we build that plan with our stakeholders and with everybody that’s a part of that work, we have a clear path moving forward as an organization, as a community, where we know exactly where we want to go and how we’re going to get there, and it makes that work so much faster.”
The wide-ranging interviews let each of the 11 school board members ask at least one question. Every candidate answered the same base set of questions, with chances for bonus questions if time allowed.
Other topics included solutions to challenges within special education, recruiting and retaining teachers, crisis management and public scrutiny, and listening to student voices.
Including the interviews, debriefing and technical questions, the meeting took roughly five hours, capping a lengthy final push before the board announces its pick on Thursday evening.
On Monday, the three finalists responded to questions from students, staff, parents and the general public at a forum at Rancho High School. Feedback forms for the event showed a strong preference for Shuldiner.
Attendees gave him the highest marks for “relational, culturally responsive, transformational leadership,” “data-driven decision making for improved academic achievement,” “financial acumen and stewardship,” and “effective communicator.” Ebert scored the highest in “political acumen and knowledge of CCSD.”
The board has been planning and searching for a permanent superintendent for the last year, off and on, since Jesus Jara resigned in late February 2024 after nearly six years at the helm. Forty-six people applied for the job.
The next superintendent’s start date is still to be determined.