By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Local schools will continue to have an strong and understanding advocate in the central administration halls of the Clark County School District (CCSD). Logandale resident Grant Hanevold, who served as principal at Moapa Valley High School from 2006-2013, was selected last week to fill one of three newly created region superintendent positions in CCSD. The announcement was made on Wednesday, Jan. 16 by CCSD Superintendent Dr. Jesus Jara.
Hanevold has served the last two years as one of 16 Associate Superintendents. During that time, he supervised school administrators of about 30 schools including the eight schools in Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley.
But in a reorganization which was announced in November, Jara opted to pare down the number of CCSD executives. It went from 16 Associate Superintendents to only 3 Area Superintendents.
“The region superintendent positions are critical to accelerate the student achievement goals in our draft strategic plan,” Jara said in the announcement last week.
In his new position, Hanevold will continue to supervise rural schools in Moapa and Virgin Valleys. He will also continue to work with the schools in North Las Vegas which he had supervised before. But eighty more schools will be added to his oversight including schools in west Las Vegas, northwest Las Vegas and parts of Summerlin.
“I am excited to be able to keep serving the communities that I know well and have worked with,”
Hanevold said in an interview last week with the Progress. “But I am also looking forward to getting to know some of the other school communities that I haven’t worked directly with before. I’m just humbled and honored to be selected as Region 1 area superintendent.”
Hanevold said that Jara’s consolidation of executive positions at CCSD makes good sense.
“In his tour of talking to people throughout the district, he heard that there was a lot of inconsistency throughout the district,” Hanevold said of Jara. “With 16 Associate Superintendents they were not always doing the same things in the same way and a unified message wasn’t coming across. He wants to have one message and that is harder to do across 16 different people vs. only 3.”
Hanevold acknowledges that the workload will be much greater. But he also believes that it will, by necessity, further the goal of greater autonomy at the school level.
“There simply won’t be free time for micro-managing,” Hanevold said. “The schools that are doing well and getting results will be left to do what they have been doing. So we can just get out of those administrators’ way and let them do their jobs.”
Hanevold said that he will continue his long-time push for fairer funding mechanisms for the rural schools in Clark County. He believes that the 17 rural Clark County schools should be comparable in their state funding to the way that other rural schools across the state are funded.
“Our rural schools are similar in demographic and in the needs of students to the other rural schools in Nevada,” he said. “So we need to look at our rural schools through that same lens and seek for the same kind of additional funding as other rural schools get, to expand and maintain the programs that have been cut over the past decade.”
Hanevold said that Jara is the first CCSD superintendent he has seen who has actually taken a hard look at the district’s rural schools and how they are funded.
“This Superintendent really believes that he is the Superintendent for all students in Clark County,” Hanevold said. “He is firm that rurals can’t be forgotten any more than the unique needs of urban Las Vegas schools can. So our voices in the rurals are being heard and respected. That makes it exciting for me to go to work. I am eternally optimistic that good things are coming.”
The other new region superintendent that was announced last week was Debbie Brocket, the current franchise principal of Las Vegas High School and Duane D. Keller Middle School.
The third region superintendent position is yet unfilled.
“The final region superintendent position will be filled once we identify the candidate who will be able to lead our schools to meet the goals of the strategic plan,” Jara said last week.
