FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK: The fight to return kids to school is paying off

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

Life and learning is finally returning to area schools again. The kids are waking up after a dreary, year-long, at-home hybernation. And they are returning back to class.

Of course, Moapa Valley schools have been employing the district’s hybrid model of in-class mixed with online learning since the beginning of the school year. But last week, the K-2 grade levels in Mesquite and Bunkerville got to dip their toes into the hybrid model too. And this week, students at Virgin Valley High School have also jumped into the hybrid pool as well. Finally, beginning next week, on March 15, all four schools in Moapa Valley will be advancing from the hybrid model to a full, five-day school schedule. Thank heavens! It has been a long time coming!

Of course, there have been many actors in our communities who have played crucial roles in expediting this return to school. Those include members of parent advocacy groups, School Organizational Teams (SOTs), community education advisory boards (CEABs) and many political leaders throughout the district, county and state. And surely we can’t forget the mammoth work of advocacy done by our school principals and other administrators who have arduously drawn up plan A’s, and plan B’s, and plan C’s and on and on; in hopes of somehow returning the kids back to the halls of their schools. All of these efforts are finally paying off.

But let’s face it: the true, quiet heroes through it all have been the teachers of northeast Clark County schools. In other areas of the district, teachers have stubbornly declined coming back to their jobs in the classroom. But in our communities, nearly all of the teachers have courageously stepped forward and bravely returned to school for the sake of the kids. A few have agreed to remain home to focus on the online cohorts, which was also a necessity.

All of these teachers have taken on an added workload this year. No doubt, quite an adjustment was required when our educators had to retool their lesson plans for an all-virtual classroom. Then as hybrid learning has taken effect, teachers have had to transition into managing both live, in-person classes, all while keeping close track of an all-online cohort of students. Now as Moapa Valley teachers are preparing to transition again from hybrid to a five-day school week, these wonderful teachers are retooling everything again in midstream.

These folks have truly been the unsung, in-the-trenches heroes that have kept it all together for our kids’ education. They have been willing to tune out all of the distractions, the hysteria, the shaming and the politics; and finally move forward in doing what is best for the students. Local teachers have remained the ‘grown-ups’ in a public education system that has gradually digressed into utter infantilism.

So my hats off to all of you brave teachers in the schools of northeastern Clark County! Each of you truly deserve the gratitude of students, parents and communities! If I could, I would give each of you one of Doc Moses’ famous Gold Stars for your honorable service (that’s a bit of an inside joke for Moapa Valley old-timers; but rest assured it is a high honor, indeed!)

Finally, I would just address one more issue that has arisen in the past couple of weeks. Some folks in our communities have expressed frustration about the plans to change the school schedules again now, with only a little over two months of school left on the academic calendar. “What is the point?” some of these people have said. “The school year is nearly over. Why throw everything up in the air again now? Haven’t we had enough chaos?”

These are important questions and they deserve answers.

First off, I would respond with a reminder that the school year is still far from over. Take a quick look at the calendar and you’ll find that there is still nearly a quarter of the school year left. That is not a throw-away. A lot of quality instruction can take place in that time. And no doubt, there is a lot of catching up to do now in this year of the COVID.

But pressing forward into live school schedules has even more importance when you look at the long game. In struggling with the CCSD to get kids back in school over the past year, our communities have been beating their heads against a huge bureaucracy. The CCSD central administration moves at a glacial pace in good times. And these have not been good times for education.

What’s more, the CCSD bureaucracy has no motivation to move past the safety and comfort of the status quo. So it is important for our schools to push through that comfort zone for as much as we can get. The folks in our communities have been doing that all year long.

But now, if we sit and wait for the end of the school year, or the middle of summer, or the beginning of next school year – or whatever we decide to wait for – we will only end up that much further behind in the process of returning our kids to “normal” in the fall.

Now is not the time to sit back and coast into the summer break. There is work to be done, lost ground to be regained and education to be accomplished for our kids.

Gaining ground in the fight to get kids back into a full school schedule will never be easier than right now. Despite the end of the school year approaching, our voices are actually being heard right now by CCSD central. The bureaucracy is actually working with us to move forward. That doesn’t happen very often!

If we wait for summertime, the chaos and political upheaval of getting all the urban schools back on track at once will, by then, have captured the complete attention of the CCSD bureaucracy. At that point our rural voices will be rendered almost imperceptible amid all that urban noise.

So the time is now for our communities to press this cause forward while we can. We must continue to advocate for opening our schools now to the furthest extent possible. That way, we can be that much further ahead in the fall.