Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Crowded race features 10 candidates
District in southwest LV serves 48 schools
Ten candidates will run for a seat representing District F on the Clark County School District Board of Trustees, the most crowded trustee race on the primary ballot.
District F, which encompasses southwest Las Vegas, has 48 schools serving approximately 40,000 students, according to numbers from the district.
Incumbent Danielle Ford, who was elected in 2018, is running against nine challengers, including a former state assemblywoman, several parents, current and former educators, and her opponent from the 2018 general election.
Danielle Ford
Ford was elected to her first term on the board in 2018 but says she hasn’t had the opportunity to do the job of a trustee fully.
“I feel like all of the things that I ran my campaign on still exist,” she said. “I just can’t walk away from it knowing how bad it is right now.”
A Las Vegas native, Ford attended eight schools throughout the district before dropping out of high school and obtaining her GED. She owns an online marketing company and has two children in the district.
Ford won her first bid for the board in 2018 as a first-time candidate with no endorsements, something she credits to parents in the community relating to her and trusting that she would represent them.
“It’s not my seat; it’s the people’s seat,” she said.
If re-elected, Ford says one of her top priorities will be to replace Superintendent Jesus Jara. Ford has repeatedly clashed with Jara during her first term on the board. She filed an ethics complaint against him in 2020 and was one of three board members who voted to fire Jara and vote against reinstating him.
Ford expressed a desire for a new type of leadership style, saying the district deserves a “heart-centered” superintendent who leads with integrity and knows the community.
“(Jara) has not been, and I don’t think he ever will be, the person to turn things around,” she said. “I think things have gotten worse under his leadership for a plethora of reasons.”
Irene Bustamante Adams
Former Democratic state assemblywoman Irene Bustamante Adams is running to improve equity and access for students of color throughout the district, and because her 2-yearold grandson will soon enter the public school system.
Bustamante Adams served as assemblywoman from 2011 to 2019 representing District 42. She was part of a group of women who were the first Hispanic female legislators elected in the state.
“I feel like I have a really good shot with my past experience to add some great value to the table,” she said.
See CCSD DIST. F 26
Bustamante Adams currently serves as the deputy director and chief strategy officer for Workforce Connections, a local workforce development board in Southern Nevada.
Workforce Connections was one of the community organizations that expressed support for Jara as some criticized his performance and called for his removal last year. Jara currently sits on the board of Workforce Connections, the first superintendent who has been a member of the organization’s board.
Bustamante also chairs Jara’s Equity and Access task force, which analyzes whether every child in the district has the same access to education.
“Through that effort I realized that there are systems that need to be put in place in order to give every child the same access,” she said.
Bustamante Adams said she supports Jara and that trustees should provide the superintendent with constant feedback and direction on how to improve.
Regarding the district’s handling of school violence on campuses, Bustamante Adams said it’s easy for people to play “Monday morning quarterback” about decisions made in the district.
Jaylon ‘Coach’ Calhoun
A former football and soccer coach, bus driver and computer technician for the district, Jaylon “Coach” Calhoun says he knows the ins and outs of the district.
“I’ve seen the things that were missing, I’ve seen the frustrations of the teachers, I’ve seen administrators not caring, and a whole lot of kids being passed on without getting the proper tools to go to college and be successful,” Calhoun said.
Calhoun ran as a Republican for Assembly District 35 in 2020, losing to Democrat Michelle Gorelow. As a father of four children who attend district schools, Calhoun said he considered another bid for state office but ultimately decided against it, instead hoping to effect change on a local level by running for school board.
“I see something that needs to change, and instead of waiting for the change, I want to be the change,” he said. “I want to make sure that my kids have the best education that they can get coming from a Nevada school. … I just want to be that change for kids.”
Calhoun said teachers and other district employees aren’t getting the proper tools and resources to do their jobs and they aren’t being heard by district officials and administrators.
He hopes to improve district communications with parents and even establish a parents’ bill of rights so that parents feel more empowered in their children’s education.
Calhoun said he doesn’t support Jara, saying nothing has changed in the district under his leadership. Jara was appointed to the board in June 2018 and has had a contentious year that saw his firing and subsequent rehiring.
Regarding the recent spate of school violence, Calhoun, an Army veteran, said he would like the district to partner with Nellis Air Force Base to create an alternative military school for repeat offenders to get the structure, discipline and accountability that they need.
David Coram
David Coram owns a video production company and taught video production and journalism at Western High School. Before that, he was an educator for 12 years in California, where he also served as a public/ traffic safety commissioner in Temecula.
“There’s been something cooking inside me for the last 10 years to give back to the kids in the community,” Coram said. “I’ve always had a heart for kids.”
Coram said he was inspired to run after noticing dysfunction on the current board, saying there was a disconnect between board members and the community. “I don’t think any of them really visit their schools, talk to their students, talk to their parents,” he said.
When it comes to school safety, he said there needs to be a re-evaluation of the policies and procedures currently in place and an effort to involve parents more in their children’s education.
Coram, who worked in law enforcement for 17 years, said he believes disciplinary measures should be adjusted accordingly depending on the age of the student and the severity of the offense.
“When I think of restorative justice in the elementary schools, to some extent we’ve always done that as a culture,” he said. “But if you get into high school … you can’t use restorative justice on a victim that just got beat up by somebody else.”
Liam MacCaul
Liam MacCaul is an operations manager for a local medical group who has lived in Las Vegas for 20 years. MacCaul, a district parent, decided to run for school board after an outbreak of violence at his oldest daughter’s high school, Desert Oasis.
“Our kids shouldn’t have to live with that fear,” MacCaul said. “Their job right now is to go to school and learn and become the best person they can be. We need to be able to give them the best educational experience possible.”
MacCaul also wants to prioritize improving the district’s literacy rate and increasing pay for “severely underpaid” teachers in order to stop the exodus of classified staff.
When it comes to the superintendent’s performance, MacCaul said principals are given five years to turn around a school and Jara should be given the same amount of time to complete his performance in the district before he is evaluated by trustees.
“I can’t say he’s doing anything wrong, but I can’t say he’s doing much right,” MacCaul said. “I would have to support him now until I saw more of the facts, because I always have to put my trust in the person that he’s doing it for the right reasons until I don’t know any better.”
Ultimately, the district father says the one thing he hopes to bring is a more open and collaborative environment between parents, teachers and students to be able to create a better district.
Kali Fox Miller
Kali Fox Miller is making her second bid for school board after losing to Ford in the 2018 general election. She says morale in the district has tanked and the current school board is “at each other’s throats.”
“We are in a position where certain members of the board treat being on the school board as a joke or a game,” she said. “I think that when you have 300,000 children to account to and 40,000 employees to account to, you should go out of your way to set an example.
“I chose to run because I once again feel that, in a very convoluted pool, I’m the best candidate for the job,” she said.
Miller is the director of Regulatory Legal, a financial technology company, and president-elect of the Nevada Parent Teacher Association.
Miller’s campaign priorities include prioritizing school safety and retaining teachers. She called the recent outbreak of school violence a “ticking time bomb” following a rapid return to school following the pandemic and the district’s lack of social workers and psychologists.
“Children without adequate support are going to act out,” she said.
Tim Vicario
Tim Vicario is a social studies teacher at Innovations International Charter School whose daughters attend school in the district, the same school where his wife is a teacher.
He hopes to bring the voice of an educator who has firsthand experience inside Las Vegas classrooms to the school board.
“I want to join and I want to run because I want to try and work with the other board members and give them a point of view of what it’s like to be in that classroom,” he said.
His campaign priorities include school safety, retaining teachers, lowering classroom sizes and increasing parent engagement. “We have to have buy-in from the families,” he said. “It’s really a team effort.”
Vicario said he disagrees with the way the board ousted and rehired Jara. “He’s our leader, and you have to give him a chance to lead,” he said.
Jamil Bey, who worked as a school bus driver in the district until 2019, did not return calls for comment and does not currently have a campaign website. Tammi Musemici, a real estate agent, also has no website and didn’t return calls.
Erica “Mama Neely” Neely, who also didn’t return calls, is running on a platform of school choice, reducing school overcrowding and reversing “damaging” policies such as critical race theory and restorative discipline, according to her website.