Six weeks after he was appointed to a nonvoting role on the Clark County School Board, state and local leaders still don’t agree on whether there’s a problem with North Las Vegas City Councilman Isaac Barron simultaneously holding the role on the school board, a day job at the district and his council seat.
Barron is one of four new trustees who are joining the school board in January through appointments over the past two months by the Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson city councils and the Clark County commissioners as part of a 2023 bill, AB175. All have experience working in K-12 education as teachers and/or administrators within the Clark County School District or in a charter school setting.
But Barron is the only incoming trustee who’s a current CCSD employee (he teaches at Rancho High School) and sits on the city council that appointed him. It puts him in a gray area of state and CCSD policy.
A district regulation states that serving on the school board concurrently with employment presents an “unacceptable conflict of interest” under Nevada ethics laws and a violation of the separation of powers doctrine. Under the regulation, any employee of the district who is elected or appointed to a position on the school board must terminate his or her employment with CCSD before being sworn into the role.
It is against state law to hold two elective offices at the same time, but it’s not clear whether the appointed, nonvoting nature of the role is considered an exception to these policies.
A spokeswoman for the City of North Las Vegas has previously said the prohibition on elected officials holding more than one elected office does not apply to appointments, and pointed to Barron’s service on governing bodies such as the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada and the Clark County Regional Flood Control District.
But during the Clark County Commission’s Nov. 7 meeting, before selecting Lisa Satory as its appointee, Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick said many of the about 30 applicants interested in the position were disqualified because they worked for the district. Kirkpatrick did not respond to inquiries Thursday on whether her comment was an assumption she made or based on guidance from policy experts; a county spokesman did not respond to a similar inquiries over the last several weeks.
Clark County School Board Evelyn Garcia Morales said in a Nov. 17 emailed statement that the board’s concerns have been shared with the appropriate parties, but would not comment further on Barron’s appointment “in fairness to the City of North Las Vegas and their internal processes.”
In a separate Nov. 16 email statement, she cited a 2001 case in which a Douglas County teacher was elected as trustee but a judge ruled he couldn’t serve on the board while he was a district employee. Garcia Morales also cited two opinions from Nevada Commission on Ethics in which the commission determined that the state’s ethics law prohibits a school district teacher and a teacher at a district-sponsored charter school from simultaneously serving as a school board member.
The commission’s Executive Director Ross Armstrong said the nonvoting nature of the new trustee position isn’t something the commission has come across and he couldn’t speculate on what conclusion it would reach if it were asked to weigh in. He added it could come down to whether Barron, as a nonvoting trustee, would meet the definition of public officer under state statute. State law defines a public officer as a person who is elected or appointed to a position established by a state law, the state constitution or an ordinance by a local government and involves the exercise of a public power, trust or duty.
One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Assemblyman Toby Yurek (R-Henderson), couldn’t immediately determine whether he saw an issue with Barron’s appointment.
“My intentions were that any appointee would need to meet the underlying qualifications for the position to which they are appointed,” he said in an Oct. 26 emailed statement. “Again, any potential conflict of interest would need to be evaluated and clarified by the relevant authorities.”
Barron, who said he plans to retire from teaching at the end of the school year, said if his appointment comes into question, he will let attorneys work out the details while he focuses on preparing for his new position and getting to know his fellow trustees.
“I’m hopeful that I and the other appointments will be seen as assets and people who can bring a lot more to the table to help run our school district,” he said.
