By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
The administration at Moapa Valley High School is resorting to some unorthodoxed measures to preserve the school’s more advanced college preparatory programs in the face of looming budget cuts. MVHS Principal Hal Mortensen is now actively recruiting instructors for the College of Southern Nevada Moapa Valley center in order to create more options for his college-bound students.
“We just really need instructors with masters degrees to teach college courses at the high school,”
Mortensen said in an interview last week. “There is a strong demand with our students to be able to take more college classes. But we don’t have instructors for the classes. The efforts that the CSN staff have previously made in recruiting instructors here haven’t yielded much. But we know that they are out there. So I am really trying to beat the bushes for our students.”
Budget cuts have caused the local high school to tighten its belt once more. Next year the school is cutting its Advanced Placement (AP) class offerings from five classes down to only two. Currently, MVHS students can take college level AP classes in Statistics, Calculus, English, Biology and Government. For the 2018-19 school year, students will only have Statistics and English to choose from if they want an AP class with a live teacher.
“The good news is that students will still be able to choose from 15 different online AP courses,” Mortensen said.
But Mortensen recognizes that the online classes are a harder sell to students than live teacher classes, especially at the more rigorous Advanced Placement level.
In a School Organizational Team (SOT) meeting held on February 7, a group of parents and students in attendance drove that point home.
“Those online classes are a tough format to take an AP class,” said local parent Erika Whitmore in the meeting. “Without that teacher support it is just a lot harder and I’m afraid that you will have kids that just won’t take those classes.”
With that in mind, Mortensen has turned again to the CSN Dual Credit program to shore up the college prep options for his students. This program allows students to enroll in college classes during their school day schedule.
“It is really a great way for students to get a taste of what college is about while they are still in the more forgiving realm of high school,” Mortensen said. “And from the parents’ perspective, it will never be cheaper for kids to earn college credits than right there.”
Tuition for a typical three-credit course at CSN comes in at around $300, which as a college class goes is fairly minimal. But online classes are offered for only $100. And classes that are in the CCSD/CSN partnership “Jump Start” program only cost $75 in tuition.
“You are never going to beat that in a university,” Mortensen said. “It is a great way for students to get some of their basic general education requirements out of the way if they can.”
Mortensen’s goal is to have the local CSN offer one or two classes per academic discipline. Those include math, science, english, humanities, communications and more.
His only barrier, though, has been to find qualified college level instructors willing to teach those disciplines. He knows he could fill classes in subjects like Biology, Forensic Science, Communications/Speech, Political Science, Psychology, Environmental Science, Nutrition, Physics, Mathematics and more; if he only had a few instructors with masters degrees in those disciplines to teach the courses.
“There has got to be people out there in the community that are qualified to teach some of these subjects,” Mortensen said. “I just have to find them and get them to come out of the woodwork to help out our kids.”
Qualified candidates who would be interested in teaching these courses can contact Mortensen at 702-397-2611 extension 4100 for more information.
