(Marc M. Friedland, District G Constituent) – As extensively documented in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Clark County School District has long grappled with a sobering paradox: graduation rates climbing while basic academic proficiency lags.
Behind this statistical illusion lies a long-term pattern of progressive policymaking and administrative dysfunction. As Trustee Linda Cavazos seeks re-election to represent District G, her tenure since 2017 demands a rigorous public accounting.
The most glaring indictment of the board's stewardship under Cavazos is the persistent gap between highlighted performance and actual learning.
According to Nevada Department of Education accountability data, CCSD high school math proficiency has declined from 24.4% in the 2017-18 school year, when Cavazos took her seat, to just 21% today—even as reading proficiency has barely moved, edging from 44.5% to 46% over the same span.
Yet despite this stagnation in actual learning, the Board has overseen a graduation rate that climbed from 83% in 2017-18 to roughly 87% by 2023.
Rather than closing that gap, the board leaned into progressive “equitable grading” reforms—minimum grading floors, relaxed late-work penalties, grades that no longer reliably reflect mastery—effectively masking systemic failure with inflated pass rates and leaving students profoundly unprepared for higher education or the workforce.
A diploma under this board's watch increasingly certifies attendance, not achievement.
Nowhere has this ideological alignment been more detrimental than in student discipline. As a vocal proponent of restorative justice frameworks mandated by state law (AB 168), Cavazos strongly supported policies that restricted out-of-school suspensions and tied the hands of campus administrators.
While framed as a compassionate alternative, the real-world impact on the nation's fifth-largest school district was severe.
As detailed in reporting from the Las Vegas Sun, schools experienced an escalation of campus violence, culminating in serious assaults on educators—such as the harrowing 2022 classroom attack at Eldorado High School—and prompting a wave of teachers voicing alarm over hostile working conditions.
The crisis became so acute that the Nevada Legislature was forced to intervene in 2023, passing bipartisan legislation (AB 285 and AB 330) to roll back those very mandates.
Yet Cavazos' current 2026 campaign platform still pledges to invest in “restorative practices”—the same restorative-justice approach state lawmakers were forced to roll back in 2023—illustrating a stubborn adherence to progressive theory over student and teacher safety, and a refusal to learn from a failure that carries her own fingerprints.
Cavazos' combative style extends beyond the boardroom and into her public rhetoric.
In September 2023, she took to social media to call the parental-rights group Moms for Liberty “a cancer,” citing the Southern Poverty Law Center to bolster the claim—language the local chapter's leader called “unprofessional” and said “calls into question the impartiality” of a sitting trustee.
That posture has not endeared her to the growing bloc of parent advocates now on the board. When trustees elected board leadership in January 2025, Cavazos lost her bid for the presidency to a colleague, a sign that her influence within CCSD's own boardroom is waning even as she seeks another four years representing District G.
Beyond policy and rhetoric, Cavazos' tenure as board president was defined by internal instability that paralyzed district administration.
As documented by The Nevada Independent under the headline “In split vote, Clark County School Board terminates Jara's employment contract,” Cavazos was among the board president-led 4–3 majority that voted on October 28, 2021, to terminate Superintendent Jesus Jara “for convenience”—a move that threw the district into a chaotic leadership vacuum in the middle of a pandemic.
The impulsive firing was reversed weeks later amid threats of costly litigation, but not before exposing deep governance fractures.
During that same meeting, fellow trustees attempted to strip Cavazos of her own presidency, publicly rebuking her leadership style—a preview of the erosion of support she would face again in 2025.
Cavazos' campaign finance disclosures underscore where her support truly lies.
According to her Contributions and Expenses Report filed with the Nevada Secretary of State on July 15, 2026, covering April 1 through June 30, 2026, three of the four largest contributions to her 2026 re-election bid come directly from CCSD's own labor apparatus: $10,000 from the Education Support Employees Association, $4,500 from NSEA Together in Politics, and $1,500 from the Nevada Association of School Administrators—the very unions and associations representing the support staff, teachers, and administrators she oversees as a trustee.
Challenger Paul Casey, by contrast, has reported no contributions to date, entering the race unbeholden to the institutional interests that have long shaped Cavazos' tenure.
That contrast extends to organizational support as well. Casey has been endorsed by Veterans in Politics International and the Nevada Veterans Association, the Nevada Young Republicans, and Moms for Liberty Clark County—volunteer-driven, grassroots organizations rather than dues-funded political operations.
The Moms for Liberty endorsement carries a particular irony: it comes from the same organization Cavazos publicly branded “a cancer” in 2023. In contrast, the group has thrown its weight behind the man trying to replace her.
Casey's résumé stands in sharp contrast to nine years of institutional entrenchment.
A licensed CCSD teacher specializing in autism support, he also holds a Juris Doctor degree—pairing direct classroom experience with a working knowledge of governance and policy oversight. Beyond the classroom, Casey has spent decades as a Las Vegas entrepreneur and event producer, work that has helped generate charitable contributions for organizations including the Children's Miracle Network, the Nevada Blind Children's Foundation, and the Epilepsy Foundation—efforts that earned him the President's Lifetime Volunteer Service Award for lifetime volunteerism.
Just weeks before this election, Casey published “Standing Tall Against Bullying: A Kids' Guide to Self-Protection,” a 209-page workbook co-authored with Allen Woodman and available on Amazon, giving children ages 8 to 17 practical tools to recognize unsafe situations, address cyberbullying, and speak up with confidence. It's the kind of hands-on, student-facing work on bullying and safety that a trustee who has spent nine years theorizing about restorative discipline might benefit from reading herself.
Where Cavazos has spent nearly a decade managing decline from the dais, Casey brings a record of building things—in the classroom, in the courtroom, and in the community.
Elections are ultimately a referendum on results. After nine years of stagnant academic proficiency, compromised classroom safety, and manufactured political instability, voters in District G face a stark choice.
Recent elections have already begun reshaping the board, with a new wave of parent-focused trustees pushing back against the entrenched status quo Cavazos represents.
Replacing her with a challenger unbeholden to the interests that have long shaped her tenure would not be a radical break but a natural continuation of that shift: a welcome addition to a Board finally being pushed toward practical accountability, safety, and academic excellence.
Cavazos built her tenure by wielding political power and ideological conviction against anyone who stood in her way—administrators, dissenting trustees, parent advocates.
This November, District G voters have the chance to close that chapter.
As the saying goes: live by the sword, die by the sword.
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