Moapa Valley Progress
Grant Bowler Elementary School has lost one of its key administrators due to falling student enrollment at the school over the past year, said school officials For the upcoming academic year, the school will not have a full time assistant principal. Pledger Solomon, who has been serving as the assistant principal at the school, has been re-assigned to other schools in Las Vegas.
According to Principal Shauna Jessen, Bowler Elementary fell below a key enrollment indicator in a count done late last spring. At that time, the school had only 639 students enrolled. This was below a 650 student threshold set by the district that qualifies the school to retain a full time assistant principal.
At the time of last week’s interview with Jessen, Bowler had enrolled 653 students for the upcoming year, though Jessen stated that these early numbers are still subject to change in the days leading up to the beginning of school.
The staff at the school are preparing for the year without a full-time assistant principal. Given the unique situation, the district has allowed Bowler to share an assistant principal with Virgin Valley Elementary School in Mesquite, which is likewise on the borderline in its enrollment numbers, Jessen said. Virgin Valley’s assistant principal, Matthew Bennett, a resident of St. George, Utah, will spend two days a week working at Bowler.
Jessen said that she was saddened at losing Solomon in the position. “Pledger did so much at the school,” she said. “He had taken on such a key leadership role and was involved in so many things. We were able to accomplish so much with him here it feels like we’ve taken a huge step backwards to lose him.”
Jessen listed out some of Solomon’s responsibilities which included overseeing the student council activities, managing lunchtime periods, supervising half of the teaching staff, coordinating student programs, and running the school’s program for English as a second language (ELL).
Solomon also founded the Bowler Boys Book Club which was a program designed to engage boys who were struggling with reading and other academics at the school.
“That program was his baby,” Jessen said. “He was able to grab a couple of struggling kids and bring them up. We’re not sure what is going to happen to (the program) without him.”
Jessen said that it will be tough for the remaining staff to fill Solomon’s duties. “I don’t know how we will do all of what he did,” she said. “Matt (Bennett) is very good and he will help with a lot of it. But it just isn’t the same with only two days a week between two schools.”
Jessen is working on plans to spread Solomon’s workload among the remaining staff at the school. “I think that we can cover most of it,” she said. “But the hard thing is that some of the very valuable things, the things that might be considered as extra, might just end up going away.”
“The hardest thing will be that the community and parents might feel the loss the most,” Jessen concluded. “It will be more difficult for us to get to them and do everything that we did before. But we’ll work hard to provide the same service.”
