NO VACANCY

Backstory

On March 13, 2025, Jhone Ebert was approved by board vote to become CCSD’s Superintendent. Her contract was submitted and approved in a meeting of the Trustees on April 10, and her first day in the position was April 14. The public was hopeful the new superintendent could bring much needed improvement to a struggling district. 

Before becoming CCSD’s superintendent, she was state superintendent. There were a lot of reminders of her holding this important position, and how she was retained by Republican Governor Joe Lombardo, even though she was first appointed by his opponent Governor Steve Sisolak.

Why would a Republican governor keep a democratic appointment? What does the state superintendent do, actually? Much of the state superintendent’s role is unclear. Managing the state’s department of education includes issuing educator licenses, and ensuring teachers are qualified; but, are state superintendents driving student achievement? What could Sisolak, and Lombardo have in common with this superintendent?

First, let’s be clear that the state superintendent does not have a strong supervisory role over district superintendents. District superintendents are evaluated and supervised by the board of Trustees in each county. So, state superintendents aren’t really in the student achievement business, and they don’t influence district superintendents. They’re generally apolitical as well. 

The wait for Ebert to make the first move was long. There were a lot of photos, and a few interesting hires, but it wasn’t until July when things started to come into better focus. 

Let’s get into it!

Binders full of Teachers!

Mitt Romney during the Presidential Debate in 2012 used the phrase “Binders filled with women” to explain away equity issues in his campaign and career. The internet laughed its head off, and a small issue got worse because of the gaffe. “Binders of Teachers” comes to mind for the following reasons. 

You must’ve noticed a lot of messaging coming from the superintendent on how they solved staffing problems. There was quite a campaign to convince everyone that Ebert’s administration was effectively hiring teachers on a large scale, and “lowering the vacancy rate”, in preparation for her first full year as superintendent. 

Have you ever heard a claim one time too many and decided, “someone is trying entirely too hard to convince me of something”? That’s what this was. It annoyed me. Particularly the choice of words. Wouldn’t it be easier to say our Human Resources Division, through great retention and terrific recruiting have filled almost all the positions? The messaging they were using seemed to be stepping around something. 

Rates are ratios, they’re fractions. One thing compared to another. Changing the “vacancy rate”, is accomplished by changing one number or the other. If, in fact, it was the number of teachers that was increased, this is just about clunky word choice, but another way to “lower the vacancy rate” is to lower the number of available positions. No one gets to take a curtain call for lowering the number of teaching positions. 

Take a look at this annotated screenshot from an article written by Rocio Hernandez in the Nevada Independent on August 31, 2025. The full article can be seen here, and is referred to again, later in my piece. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/nevada-raised-teacher-pay-in-2023-two-years-later-vacancies-have-dropped 

Before I show which of the two ways to “lower the vacancy rate” Ebert did, I’d like to point out the following images from October 2023.

The full image, and X post are available at https://x.com/DataInsightPart/status/1714284785282265367/, here I have trimmed unnecessary portions to accommodate this document. 

In this image, Data Insight Partners is debunking Superintendent Jara’s claim that he and his staff have hired 20% more teachers than the prior year. The point they are presenting is that while Jara, may have hired in greater numbers, the number of licensed personnel went down. 

Hiring in greater numbers is a mirage if the number of employees is reduced. That’s exactly why they included the hashtag #RetentionMatters. I found a lot of respect for Data Insight Partners when I saw this post. Nothing like using someone’s own information to show them they are spreading misinformation, and a false narrative

So, back to “Summer of Ebert”, where there’s a steady diet of “all these teachers” being put out on social and broadcast media. 

Here’s Will Farrell celebrating in the cereal aisle over the vacancy rate. These are not serious people. “Low vacancy rate” does not, in fact, educate kids.

There was a bunch of fan-girl stuff from assorted members of the community, but notice how "Data Insight Partners" is excited? Whoever they are, I remember they didn’t like Jara, and they had an intelligent reason for pointing out Jara’s gaffe. I wondered what the current staffing numbers will look like when I go to the same source which Data Insight Partners used in 2023.

Remember that Data Insight Partners aptly used the “#RetentionMatters” hashtag? Well, now, they’re content to point out all the hiring Superintendent Ebert has done, but NOT the fact that more licensed personnel left, than were hired. They have now fully embraced the narrative they debunked less than 2 years ago. 

Superintendent Ebert said in a clip the district has more teachers than it ever had. That quickly proved false, as, when she said it, we actually had fewer licensed personnel than we had when she was hired. It was probably a gaffe, an honest mistake, and she meant to say “starting a year with more than we’ve ever started with in previous years”, but if you’re going to live in that narrative, she should get the phrasing right. 

Now is as good a time as any to point out that when school district administrators say things like “licensed teachers in classrooms” the image is professional educators; howeever, substitutes also have licenses. A sub license is considerably easier to get than a full teacher’s license. The above image uses separate categories, but when you’re getting a sound bite on the news, “licensed teacher” is NOT the same as a “licensed contracted teacher”. 

Last observation on the above image- “Other temporary/Substitute employees”. There are substitutes which are not “classroom teacher” substitutes. Most people don’t know there are substitute administrators too. An AP takes time off to have a baby, a sub administrator comes on. Many times, this is a former retired administrator who comes in and pitches a few innings for a little extra cash while still retired. The rest of this 3000+ category, and quite a lot of it, is something else entirely. 

Back to this odd propaganda-like stream of enthusiasm from Data Insight Partners. Another screenshot from Ms. Hernandez’s article in the Indy: 

The "widespread skepticism" Data Insight Partners is trying to rebut is coming not entirely from me, but from teachers, and yes, the occasional principal. People who work everyday in school buildings and classrooms. I think they know what the heck they’re talking about.

Data people, like myself, are usually pretty straight-forward, and facts oriented. So, it strikes me odd that left-brained facts-and-figures folks would take to such enthusiastic, strange, obsequious cheering. Then, when challenged, use a narrative they helped debunk only 2 years prior. 

There was a thread on CCSD staffing triumphs in the “CCSD Parents” group on FB. Here we go again. Remember I said sometimes you can hear a song one too many times, and it becomes a thing? This is what did it, this was the exact moment it became clear we were being programmed. 

“In case you missed it”? How could anyone? And who the hell is Nathan Trenholm anyway? I don’t remember seeing his name around, or hearing him speak during public comment, or take a position during the superintendent search, or on Jara issues, or… Well, it turns out, we have!

Nathan Trenholm is one of two co-founders of Data Insight Partners. Shocker. The next discovery is what really did it; but first, who is doing all this hiring at CCSD anyway? Well, that’s going to be the HR Division. Let’s put Nathan and the Data "Narrative" Partners on the backburner and look at CCSD HR, hmm?

HR

Pretty quick after Dr. Jesus Jara turned in his resignation letter, and Brenda Larsen-Mitchell became interim superintendent; she had to find someone to run the HR Division. It’s a large district, and given the challenges of HR, the ability to pay a good salary, and having no shortage of important companies around town, we should be able to find major talent to do the important work of managing our HR situation. 

Brenda Larsen-Mitchell chose an internal candidate. She not only chose an internal candidate, she picked her friend, Roann D. Triana. Mrs. Triana has stepped up a number of times in the past decade. When a high school principal in 2019 was assigned to home after he called out Jesus Jara for a terrible decision, Triana was ready to step in and run the high school. This was early in the school year interrupted by COVID.

Next thing you know, Triana is a school associate superintendent, then a regional superintendent, and now an Chief HR Officer, all in under 5 years. Her husband is also in education. Daniel is vicechair at Mater Academy, where CCSD Trustee Satory is the chair. Daniel is also Principal at “SLAM”, Sports Leadership and Management, a charter school chain that was founded by a Florida rapper. 

I think an outside HR professional would have been better than a fast-track CCSD administrator. It’s not like we’re in the news every few weeks with another inappropriate conduct story or anything. Triana was ready to get into the thick of it and fill positions, right?

Soon after getting the promotion to HR director, Triana, interim superintendent Larsen-Mitchell, and Trustees Bustamante Adams, and Cavazos had a press conference.

They invited students... to their teacher recruitment campaign... for an hour. The kids were left speechless. Local media was there too, but there was little time for questions because the kids had to get back to their classrooms. 

Triana, like many in CCSD, have strong feelings about a national program called Teach For America. After the student press conference, Triana had some ideas about how to increase Teach for America in the Clark County School District. More on that, later.

Teach For America

Teach For America is a union busting operation. I can’t say it more plainly than that. Organized labor in and out of education have been saying it for quite a while. Sources from the left say that Teach For America is a far-right organization, but they say that about everything they don’t like. The AP says: “The program has been credited with alleviating teacher shortages in difficult-to-hire schools and building a dedicated force of education policy and school leaders.” https://apnews.com/general-news-49bcb4d2574e40abb3f6a04dfa6e42fe 

Salon, in 2014, discusses the union-busting agenda of TFA, while listing some very concerning sources of funding. https://www.salon.com/2014/01/13/teach_for_americas_pro_corporate_union_busting_agenda_partner/ The Gates Foundation (Great City Schools), The Eli Broad Foundation (Chiefs for Change, from where we found Jara) and more. In Salon, it is pointed out that TFA worked behind the scenes with a number of privately-managed, charter school operators to close 49 public schools in Chicago to open fifty-two new charter schools over the next five years. Essentially, TFA is an invasive species.

Google “Teach For America Union Busters”. It’s an open secret they are replacement workers. My favorite example of it is “Scab or Starve”, a choice offered to Oakland members during an educator labor dispute in 2019. https://eastbaymajority.com/scab-or-starve/ Stand alongside your colleagues and you will experience immediate financial hardship. 

I’m not here to defend unions. Most certainly not local teachers unions. In fact, if the TFA is here to bust up CCEA, it would be their most redeeming quality. CCEA should be among the top TFA opponents. Where is executive Director of CCEA on TFA?

Found him! He’s out giving TFA talks! Wait, the leader of organized labor for educators in Clark County is promoting what labor everywhere regards as a union busting organization? Yes, that is exactly what is happening. Vellardita, 3 years after “Scab or starve” is in their roadshow. It wasn’t a one-off thing. Here he is again, this time reading to kids at Pittman ES at their request in 2020.

Teach for America has the following requirements of their candidates. 

• Bachelor’s Degree

• 2.5 GPA

• Legal work authorization in the US

• Criminal background check

• No educational background required.

Candidates accepted by TFA are trained for 5 weeks. They are sent to cities with TFA programs, and pair up with others to share housing, and living costs. They make a two year commitment, leave the program debt-free, and have a number of excellent opportunities waiting at the end of their classroom commitments. 

Many TFA members use their commitment time to complete state requirements to earn a license and teach after their commitment is finished, but that is not what most do. Some use the opportunity to make community in-roads or become administrators. Not all TFA people are bad people. Some go on to be amazing educators. I know some of them, and yes, the best of them raise the bar in many ways. 

The majority of them are unqualified, and wildly under-trained for what they should know in the classrooms they are assigned to lead. Good intentions are not a substitute for a strong educational background. Traditionally trained teachers complete a 4 year program. Sure, there’s some fluff in the 4 year program, but by no means, can those experiences be compacted to a 5 week training. 

TFA candidates, as a whole, compared to university trained, licensed teachers, are deeply substandard. Why go to a certified mechanic when some fella has a YouTube video? That’s fine for fixing a garbage disposal, but educating children shouldn’t have shortcuts. I don’t think, and neither do you, that a teacher’s educational background should come from a pamphlet they read while changing planes in Atlanta. 

Nevada Governor Lombardo has recently appointed a new State Superintendent. His name is Dr. Victor Wakefield. Wakefield is the Vice President of Teach For America.  Something to think about when CCSD posts, yet again, how they want input on when schools should start. The Governor, has made the VP of (Under-trained Educators Inc.) our state's top educator. At the top, when I talked about Ebert being state Superintendent, and how the job was poorly defined, Lombardo took care of that last session. The new State Supt has plenty of authority now. Interesting, hmm?

Loose Ends?

CCEA is 100% on-board with the Rent-a-teacher, Teach For America agenda. The Clark County Educators Association has created pay tables, and more importantly, placement on those pay tables that intentionally reduce the salaries of higher seniority teachers. What kind of bargaining unit trades away seniority? It's the most basic tenet of organized labor, yet, they're intentionally torching their most senior members.

They’re not a union, they themselves are union-busters. When confronted with rectifying the pay discrepancy in later bargaining sessions, they punted on the issue. Eventually the Executive Director, Mr. Vellardita was recorded saying "a 'lookback' would only benefit white suburban teachers.” https://www.ktnv.com/13-investigates/racially-charged-comment-by-teachers-union-leader-fans-flames-of-teacher-pay-controversy

Look closely at the photo taken at the most recent contract ratification vote.

"A Teacher in Every Classroom" is the name of one of their PACs by the way

https://x.com/cceanv/status/1954260811364610066/ 

Now look at the breakdown of staff by demographics. 

CCEA members, your “union” has forsaken you. If your director won’t bargain for you because of the color of your skin, that’s a serious problem. The Central Labor Council and the National Labor Relations Board should review Vellardita and his gang, and remove them from having any influence in negotiations immediately.

Racism of any kind should be rejected. Here, it is practiced against the majority of its membership. How does a group such as this continue to function while undercutting its members? It’s simple, really. Teachers are kept too busy to fight. That’s the shameful and ridiculous truth. The days are long, the extra work piles up, and there’s no time to notice that no one is in your corner. 

CCEA likes rank and file members that don’t know enough or are too busy to complain. Their indifference to talent, experience and credentials makes them natural fans of Teach For America bobble-heads. TFA employees aren’t going to stick up for themselves. They won’t file grievances, demand better contracts, insist on retirement, or longevity benefits, they’re temps!

Let’s circle back to the Human Resources Division, and Director RoAnn Triana’s “discovery” of Teach For America. It happens to be a public record, and, it so happens, I found it. Let’s look at it together. 

That was Triana in May 2013, writing to the Senate Committee on Finance in support of SB517, which later died. More recently, when Mrs. Triana, the new HR Director, gave a press conference to a room full of Elementary school children, she was thinking about how simple TFA was going to make her job. From a sheer numbers perspective, it makes sense. Bodies in front of the whiteboard. 

What HR Director Triana has forgotten was that when a 20 year teacher leaves, a fresh face with no experience is not the same. Had there been a legitimate union around to remind her, that knowledge would have come more easily. Too bad advanced skills aren’t valued in the Child Care School District to which we all pay taxes. Following the “Children’s Press Conference”, Triana presented a memorandum of agreement to the Board of Trustees. 

In its 19 pages, we should use Summer School as an opportunity to let our new TFA teachers get their feet wet in CCSD. This again is short-sighted. Students who attend summer school need the professional assistance of a strong teacher. Some of them are there because of inability to keep behavior in check, or have learning challenges, or apathy, or they need a new approach from a practiced educator. Triana has piñatas and sack races in mind, I guess. The board unanimously approved Triana’s TFA assisted summer school, but not before Trustee Cavazos had an opportunity to tell us she once had reservations about TFA, but someone got her on-board. It’s easy to convince Cavazos of certain things. 

The union likes TFA, HR likes TFA. What of the superintendent?  https://www.facebook.com/ClarkCountySchoolDistrict/posts/pfbid0Dpia8dekpYpqHzEABaQaLXHwcogTR2AvShA3qLgEgu8Tp7ihgwQYUaHNzCuHgtbml

All set!! She doesn’t care. She’s excited about practically any damn thing. She’s a collapse of professional standards in every single measurable way. She sees an opportunity to boast about big staffing numbers down the road. The above picture is a TFA cohort welcome event from June 10, 2025. If you know someone who has been surplused out of a job, show them this picture of temps the superintendent waved in the backdoor over the summer. 

It is WRONG, that Superintendent Ebert has done these things to our established educators. I’ve demonstrated that she has cut positions to lower the vacancy rate. I’ve established that licensed personnel have stayed basically the same, and I’ve now shown a picture of temp employees at a welcome party. Superintendent Ebert is erasing seniority, just as Vellardita is doing, and neither of them is suggesting this is a bad idea.

Now you know what column 7 is. Temporary employees. Teach for America goons. They don’t have a license, or they would be in column one. They’re not subs in column 6 either. They’re your new, temp, non-educator, educators. Enjoy! With 3,695 of them, you might know one, or 10. 

Again, I’d like to emphasize that I know some TFAs who are amazing. A friend of mine works for one TFA who has become a principal and he does a remarkable job. But we can’t keep booking flights on Value Jet just because they didn’t lose our luggage. “Scab or starve” somewhere else.

There’s one more pretty important point to make. This absurd business with Data Insight Partners. It’s so terrible when Jara says he’s hired people, but the numbers are the same. When Jhone hires people and the numbers stay the same, these boneheads throw a party over vacancy rate. 

I did a very quick search on Data Insight Partners.

Data Insight Partners wants to mine your kid’s data. Cute! Look at their faces, they’re doing it right now. At least he’s taking a break from posting about how fabulously Ebert has filled lowered the vacancy rate. Data miners! Seriously. GTFOH.

One more just to cover the point spread?

Yeah, they’re TFA! The data miners, who think teachers are crazy for saying their class sizes are larger than usual, the guy who argues a “lower vacancy rate” is great for kids in the district, the guy who is an unabashed Ebert fanatic, wants to mine data from kids and turn classrooms into testing center hell-holes ran by untrained educators. Put out your cigarettes, your bus is here. 

I’ll leave you to the research on data mining, but it’s ugly. Think two-way mirrors, bare lightbulbs swinging from the ceiling, and lots of data collection. You don’t take the test, the test takes you, comrade. I analyze the NFL. I do pretty good at it too, but the more data I collect, the more I realize, I need to collect more. There’s an endless quest to eliminate the X-factor, but you know what? Sometimes it rains. Sometimes the player had an argument with his girlfriend. 

Guys like these? They don’t like variables, they don’t like art. Band programs are a wasted opportunity to structure trick questions with disguised incorrect responses. They need to do those things to sell results to curriculum development companies. They make money helping Bill Gates make more money. It’s disgusting. 

How come there are think-tanks in Las Vegas, who are in the education business, but no one is telling you how absolutely absurd minimum F grading policies are? Tell us why minimum F means one thing when it’s applied at the end of an odd quarter, but it does something else when it’s applied to every individual assignment? Why aren’t these two helping parents, teachers, and administrators, understand that unlimited retakes has little value in skills mastery or the demonstration of it?

Why are data farms like these guys running always so obsessed with graduation rates? Grad rates are the laziest of all education statistics, but there they are, every time. Grad rates go up when Ebert calls Principal Skippy and says your numbers stink. We all know it. But, Nathan is going to open Excel and show us that grad rates in schools with TFA involvement smell like Lavender oil and hot towels?

Data mining is anti-classical education. It’s Common Core on steroids. Special needs kids are especially marginalized even more than they already are when they become data terminals for sociopathic education IRS agents. I couldn’t be happier to see that two obsequious superintendent fanatics are TFA data servers. 

Extra Credit

The Superintendent is stepping up TFA involvement. She’s responsible for the HR Director, who is waving these under-trained individuals into our classrooms. Let's be clear, Teach for America isn’t an education organization, it’s a leadership patronage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lcOeLpSvPE 

A great example of TFA trained leaders is Selena Torres-Fossett. 

Selena Torres was a Teach For America Teacher. During her 2 year commitment at Eldorado High School, she ran for State Assembly in District 3, a democratic stronghold. She won, and has since won 3 re-elects. In 2026, she will seek a 5th term. 

After her 2 year commitment at Eldorado was finished, she was off to charter schools. Now, she is the Director of Young Woman’s Leadership Academy. 

You may remember that in late-September 2025, YWLA was caught in a child-sex scandal https://www.ktnv.com/news/las-vegas-middle-school-teacher-accused-of-attempted-production-of-child-sexual-abuse-material

The first official act Torres completed after becoming the director of YWLA was to hire Darlin Delgado as a consultant. https://www.ywlalv.org/ourpages/auto/2024/7/2/50656950/YWLA_Approved%20Minutes_7-8-24.pdf?rnd=1725041979927 Delgado had recently and suddenly retired from her job as Principal of Rancho HS following the murder of Jonathan Lewis. https://www.ktnv.com/13-investigates/questions-linger-after-former-rancho-high-principal-rehired-in-new-ccsd-role 

Five and a half months after that, she married a member of the faculty at Young Women’s Leadership Academy. Is it modeling good leadership to young women to marry your subordinate? You decide. 

Selena Torres-Fossett proudly displays her CCEA endorsements, and her TFA history. She is also now the chair of NV Assembly’s Education Committee. It’s no longer necessary to have a principal of a middle school write a leader to the Finance Committee, as Triana did. TFA is now a political heavyweight in Nevada with frequently successful CCEA backing. 

Conclusion

Bill Gates Foundation TFA cronies are here to stay. They’re in thousands of classrooms, they’re in cahoots with the union that isn’t a union. They’re in the Superintendent’s office, and they’re well installed in the state’s legislature. They come in talking about diversity and inclusion only to leave, and take important roles that keep the treadmill going. They advance themselves under hero-fueled, savior-complex narrative, while walking over the truly marginalized. Just while writing this conclusion, Superintendent Ebert has posted the following photo to the CCSD FB Page. 

When management, combines with organized labor leaders, and external corporate interests, like assessment companies and curriculum developers, and the legislative and executive branches of state government join in, there's not room for rank and file teachers, parents, and certainly not, students.

This is a pork-barrel buffet that will NEVER successfully move the needle of student achievement and mastery. Things will continue to stay the same, at best. At worst, charter schools will pop up left and right, the size of government in education will explode resulting in more regulation, more taxes, and complete government dominance of learning. Nowhere, including homeschool, will be safe.

Good teachers, who do good work, have no one in their corner as their union and their superintendent are waving replacement workers in through the back door. Many educators don't know this is happening, as they've grown accustomed to long days and an endless list of mandatory busywork tasks. The remaining advocacy has to be self-advocacy as supports are gone.

It is already evident that some licensed teachers can't find work, and more are being pushed out through the surplus process, only to find that they aren't even being accepted as substitute teachers by the district. The union should be over-flowing with grievances as licensed personnel, in good standing, are being shown the door, and jobs are being soaked up by temps, but where is CCEA? They're not fighting the disposable teacher agenda, they're behind it. A new, untrained, unproven, educator will never be the same as one who has run the course.