LAS VEGAS — The new Las Vegas-area schools chief wants to use donated funds to hire former associates from Colorado and Kansas to propose reforms for the nation’s fifth-largest school district.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Thursday that Clark County Superintendent Dwight Jones is asking trustees of the cash-strapped district to let him pay $250,000 to Ken Turner as an adviser for a year. Turner was Jones’ deputy in Colorado.
Turner, a former superintendent of Academy School District 20 in Colorado Springs, served as Colorado’s deputy education commissioner for learning services and results when Jones was commissioner of education.
Jones would hire Larry Vaughn and Doris Fassino of Quality Leadership Resources in Wichita for $80,000 and “Tough Love for Schools” author Frederick M. Hess for $25,000.
In 2010, Vaughn served three months as interim deputy commissioner at the Colorado Education Department.
Jones said the Lincy Foundation is letting him hire consultants with $400,000 of a $13.5 million gift it gave for Las Vegas-area schools.
