By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
Frustrations ran high among Virgin Valley parents and education advocates during a special meeting of the Virgin Valley Community Education Advisory Board (VVCEAB) held on Wednesday afternoon Aug. 26 at Mesquite City Hall.
In attendance at the meeting to answer questions were Clark County School District (CCSD) Superintendent Jesus Jara and School Board Trustee Danielle Ford.
VVCEAB members grilled Jara for nearly an hour with questions and comments. Most of the question sought for the reason why plans to bring students back to local schools, made last month by principals and their School Organizational Teams (SOTs), had been swept aside and denied by CCSD central administration.
Students of all four Virgin Valley schools were required to return to school last week on an all online distance learning model.
Rural schools unique
VVCEAB chairman Jodi Thornley summed up the grievances by stating that rural schools could not be treated like those in the city. Rather rural school administrators require more flexibility to enact plans that are best suited for unique rural needs, she said.
“Things are very different here than in urban areas,” said Thornley. “Our parents and communities are very involved in education. We know our needs and we know where we are lacking. You and the other central administrators are operating far away from here. You can’t possibly keep track of all our unique needs. We want to help you with that. But you have to give us flexibility to do that.”
Thornley said that the principals had developed plans that would have met all health guidelines and still brought local kids back into the schools.
“They worked hard and long on those plans in good faith, believing that they would be approved,” Thornley said. “Then at the last minute their plans were flat-out denied.”
Jara agreed that rural schools need to be treated differently. But he insisted in this case that he was limited by what the Board of Trustees had approved.
Interpreting the Trustees
He claimed the Board had given only three options: the first being face to face instruction as usual, if it was possible given social distancing requirements; the second, the district’s narrow hybrid model; and third, all distance online learning.
“I can’t allow any schools to do differently than what the board has approved, ” Jara said.
Jara also claimed that he was limited to these three options because that was all that had been submitted to the Nevada State Board of Education for approval.
VVCEAB member Steven Lisk contested Jara in this.
“If it was always known that the answer would be ‘no’, why were the principals told that it was okay to go forward with creating their plans?” Lisk said. “Based on what they were told by CCSD officials, they worked tirelessly to contact parents and do a poll of the interest in coming back. They created their plans and then everything changed the next day and the plans were shut down.”
Trustee Ford said that she had a different interpretation of the intent of the CCSD board’s action in providing flexibility to rural areas.
“My understanding was that it was all just for setting the calendar days and setting forth the three plans,” Ford said. “But when we added the clause that rural axhoola could submit their unique plans I thought it gave much more flexibility as long as the schools stayed under CDC and state guidelines.”
Ford suggested that clarification of this should be an important topic of discussion for the September CCSD board meeting.
“I feel that we should allow the leeway to the rural SOTs for these plans,” she said. “They could actually act as a prototype for opening the other schools in the district more broadly later on.”
Interpreting health data
Jara assured that he and other CCSD administrators truly want kids back in schools. But the health data is not allowing for that at this time, he said.
“We are looking at the numbers for Clark County, because we are all part of Clark County,” Jara said. “That is the data that we are looking at. And the safety of students is our top priority.”
But Lisk reiterated that not all of Clark County is the same. He cited that the CCSD territory is roughly the size of the state of New Jersey with 330,000 students.
“One size doesn’t fit all,” Lisk said. “There is a need to adjust to different areas because there is a lot of difference. Our rate of positivity (in COVID testing) is low in this community. The risks we face are very low compared to what is going on in urban schools. There should be some different treatment here. Our plans met the state and CDC guidelines and should have been considered.”
Lisk asked Jara for some assurance that the local plans might be considered once again.
Jara responded that he didn’t have the ability to approve the plans if the Trustees had not approved them and they had not been submitted to the State Department of Education.
“But I am willing to have a conversation with the State to ask if we could submit a separate plan for Mesquite,” Jara said.
If the response is positive, then it could be brought back to the Trustees in their upcoming Sept. 10 meeting, he said.
Special needs students
Another concern brought by board members was the treatment of Special Education students. Thornley stated that the district is obligated by federal law to fulfill needs of special education students. She said that those needs were not being filled in the distance education plan provided by the district.
“I would just remind you that federal laws are not on quarantine here,” Thornley said. “They are still fully in effect. You knew ahead of time that we were going to go online. But you made no efforts for these special needs students. These kids have just been dropped and are being treated as an after-thought. I’ll tell you, we don’t want to lose millions of public funds in lawsuits. We just want these kids to be educated.”
Jara responded that he had visited special education units in urban schools and had seen the online education that was being done there. He said that it was effective.
“Our teachers are doing a great job,” Jara said. “The online distance education is meeting the kids’ goals. If that isn’t getting out to you from local schools we will have to work on that.”
VVCEAB member Jaime Wakefield emphasized that the online instruction was far from ideal for special needs students, and far short of what the local schools had been prepared to provide.
“We had one principal here who had a plan to bring these students back to school,” Wakefield said. “The plan met all of the requirements but it is just not being allowed.”
Internet connectivity
Another subject of discussion which arose was providing connectivity to Virgin Valley children who didn’t already have internet access at their homes. Thornley said that the VVCEAB had worked much of the summer trying to set up a solution to this issue. Local service providers Reliance and TDS had been contacted to discuss options. They had offered a discounted rate of $30 per month for basic internet service to these students, Thornley said.
Then the CCSD announced a program which would provide service through Cox Cable only, which is not available in Virgin Valley.
“What would it take to get that $30 per student re-routed to our local providers,” Thornley asked Jara.
Jara said that the district had already sent wireless hotspot devices to local schools to fill that need.
“That decision was made as a whole district, through the procurement process,” Jara said.
Virgin Valley Elementary School principal Matt Bennett said that his school had receiving T-Mobile hotspots but they had provided very spotty connectivity in the community. He said that he had been told that Kajeet hotspots were being sent next week. These could connect to the Verizon wireless network which was expected to have better coverage, he said.
But Ford pointed out again that the community had already identified a best option that would have provided the best connection for Mesquite students. “What would stop us from contracting with local providers?” she asked.
Jara said that this might be possible.
“We would have just liked to have been a part of the conversation,” Wakefield said. “We worked very hard with our local providers to set up a discount that would have worked.”
VVCEAB member Nick Montoya, who had done a lot of the legwork with the local companies this summer, was even more frustrated.
“The hardwire connection was talked about with the district, we presented the idea,” Montoya said. “The idea was just swept under the carpet and ignored. We worked pretty hard on it and I was pretty disgusted that it wasn’t even listened to.”
VVCEAB action
In the days after the meeting, a letter was drafted on behalf of the VVCEAB addressed to Nevada Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert. The letter chronicled the struggles with local plans being rejected and it appealed to Ebert to allow a unique plan to be enacted in the Virgin Valley schools.
“Our principals are outstanding, creative professionals who know the needs of our students and are capable of finding solutions to meet state health requirements,” the letter stated. “Our community parents have assessed the risk and predominantly concluded that the wide array of other consequences from remote learning outweigh the potential risk of COVID exposure. Our students are actively expressing their desire to return to school and are willing to take the proper safety measures to do so. We look forward to hearing your response and working with you and CCSD to serve our community to the best of our ability.”
