Foundation To Mobilize Community For Local Education Needs

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

A group of Moapa Valley residents with a passion for education have formed a new organization in an effort to bridge what they see as significant funding gaps in local schools. The Moapa Valley Education Foundation (MVEF) recently secured its 501c3 non-profit status and is now ready for business. And the local team is already off and running!

That team includes founding board members: Lindsey Dalley, President; Lance Robertson, Vice President; Robin Ozaki, Treasurer; Geniel Ozaki, Secretary; Directors Connie Robertson and Dr. Larry Moses; and local attorney Evan Jones as legal adviser for the board. The group gathered for a meeting on Tuesday, April 24 at Sugar’s Restaurant in Overton to discuss future plans and goals for the Foundation.

Keeping scholarships local
The MVEF had its beginnings last year when the Clark County School District announced that changes were needed in the way community-generated scholarships are distributed to local graduates. Until then, scholarships had always been administered by the Moapa Valley High School staff. The funds would be paid by donors directly to the school which would then hold them in trust and eventually distribute them to the recipients.

This could be a complex operation, though. There is regularly between $60,000-70,000 in locally funded scholarships awarded to MVHS graduates each year. Careful monitoring is required to ensure that the many recipients are actually seeking higher education and that the funds are truly being used for the approved educational expenses. Furthermore, many local students delay use of their awarded funds while serving church missions or joining the military, with plans of returning later and applying the funds for school. Thus, the funds have to be accounted and held during that time. Each recipient’s plans and activities must then be tracked before the final disbursement is made. All of that has required a a good deal of careful management by school staff over the years..

Last year, CCSD officials proclaimed that the school banker was not the appropriate position to administer these complex operations. “The word from the CCSD was that we were not to handle the scholarship money any more,” said MVHS principal Hal Mortensen. “And to some extent that really does make sense.”

The more common mechanism for administering scholarship donations is through the CCSD Public Education Foundation (PEF), Mortensen said. This district-wide entity, administered from Las Vegas, is commonly used by CCSD schools as the pass through mechanism for private scholarships. In the absence of any other organization, this would have become the only option for local donors once the school staff had been pulled out of the equation.

“The Public Education Foundation does good work,” said MVEF Board member Connie Robertson who also works as a college/career prep specialist at MVHS. “We have had a few students each year that have benefitted from that organization. And it is still an option for our local donors to use. But a lot of the local people fell like we are a small rural community and they’d like to keep things closer to home. The MVEF will provide that local option.”

When the change was announced, MVEF board member Larry Moses said that he was concerned that the amount of locally-generated scholarships would take a hit and that the college-bound kids would suffer.

“A lot of the local donors just don’t feel comfortable turning their money over to a large, urban organization,” Moses said. “They worried about losing control of the process and about money getting through all of that to the right people here locally. I think that this organization, at the very least, can provide that service to local people who feel that way.”

The MVEF has already begun to provide that local service. All of this year’s donors are being directed to work with the Foundation rather than going to the school administrators. The process is similar in almost every detail except that the funds are passed through the MVEF rather than the high school.

With the change, local scholarship donations are still going strong as ever. “People are going along with it and we haven’t seen any downsides at this point,” she said. “And there is even potential for growth. We have seen three new scholarships established just this year.”

Even Bigger Plans
But all of that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the overall vision of the MVEF. The board members also see it as a way to raise local funding for other educational needs specific to the four local schools.

Moses pointed out that, over the past couple of decades, educational opportunities available in the local schools have slowly been eroding away. He cited relentless cuts each year to school funding which have resulted in gradual cuts to school staff. And with a reduced staff has come fewer local programs for kids, he said. He pointed to the loss of beloved MVHS programs of the past like Auto Shop and Choir to name a few.

“We feel strongly that kids need Fine Arts in school and they need vocational training; they really do,” Moses said. “And if the district won’t or can’t do these things for us, then maybe we need to do something to preserve these things locally.”

Meeting Unique Local Needs
Moses said that he had recently contacted most of the local principals. He asked them if the community was able to raise, say, $100,000 what kind use could be made of that funding in their schools. The principals responded with lists of possible needs that could be met by such a local fund, Moses said.
The local school administrators all expressed enthusiasm about the plan.

Mack Lyon Middle School principal Ken Paul saw a huge benefit in having a local funding mechanism to meet focused local needs. “So much of the grant funding that we go after out there has strings attached,” Paul said. “By the time you have sorted through all of that, a lot of the requirements make it less relevant for our unique local need. This would be just for needs that we could identify as a school and as a staff, and they could be funded where there is no funding available through other means. I see it as giving us much more autonomy.”

“I love it!” said Ute Perkins Elementary Assistant Principal Kelby Robison. “It is people in the community stepping up and doing the hard work to support our kids. It is really the essence of bringing education to a local level. So I just really appreciate what they are doing.”

Moses made the point that the local focus was a vital reason for forming the foundation.
“Look, we can argue all day about all of the things that the district will not do; and how there is so much inequity for our rural kids,” Moses said. “We can spend our time doing that, or we can get together as a community and find a way to provide some of those things that our kids are missing.”

MVEF legal adviser Evan James said that he had been impressed by the ability of the community to pull together to get things done for the kids. “One of the neat things about this community is that when folks see a need they address it,” James said. “They dont wait for other people to come in and solve it. That kind of spark could bring a lot of good to the local schools, I think.”

Moses said that the MVEF planned to engage alumni, businesses and community partners, as well as seek educational grants to bring resources and opportunities to the local schools. He is confident that the pride and support of people for the local schools would come through in the efforts.

“I’ve been here for a long time and seen the pride that people have for our schools,” said Moses who served for many years as the MVHS principal before his retirement. “I’ve gone to people when I had a project that was needed and they have opened up their pocketbooks and helped to get it done. I’ve never had trouble raising funds for the schools in this community. So I don’t think that we will have any trouble in raising $100,000 a year or more to help bring education equity to our local schools. And that is what we are trying to get to.”