FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK: A solution in search of a problem

By VERNON ROBISON

Setting aside age-old rivalries for a moment, the high schools in Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley are both crown jewels in the Clark County School District (CCSD). Both schools have top-rate educators and administrators. Both schools are laser-focused on what is best for the kids. Both are backed by strong, family-oriented communities: parents, grandparents and a host community leaders who model and uphold a strong value for education.

This community strength shows in school performance. Our schools regularly rank as 4 and 5 star schools – among the top in the district. The local high schools regularly graduate seniors in the 90th percentile.

It is true: our local administrators and School Organizational Teams (SOTs) sometimes have to be creative in stretching the rural resources allocated to them to address the various needs of their kids.

But where there is a will, there is a way. And there is always a will in our valleys.That kind of outside-the-box thinking is what has set our schools apart from the miserable academic state of the rest of CCSD.

Despite all of this, CCSD central administration has made life difficult for our local school administrators. The district brass always has an itch to grind away brilliant facets that make a community-guided school unique, in favor of more institutionally mediocre uniformity. Any exceptionalism galls at the CCSD bureaucracy. It is always something! And lately, they have been hounding our principals about issues surrounding the long-standing block schedules at the schools.

The block schedule is one of the secrets of success to our high schools. At Moapa Valley High School this system of scheduling the school day has been in practice since 1991. Every MVHS principal since Dr. Larry Moses has embraced it and passed it down; always at the blessing of CCSD central. The innovative approach has brought more educational opportunities to both high achieving and struggling students alike.

Virgin Valley High School added the block about five years ago. Since then the synchronicity of scheduling between the two schools has opened all kinds of opportunity-sharing. It has created a synergy that, if built upon, could provide tremendous benefits to both Bulldog and Pirate student bodies.

In short, the block schedule has provided educational opportunities and resources that would simply not be available to rural kids if they were bound to the more standard six-period-per-day schedule.

There is time for dual-credit college courses for high-achievers. There is time for College and Technical Education (CTE) programs like Agriculture, Ag Mechanics, Construction Tech, Auto Shop and more. And there is time for remedial work to help students who are struggling just to make the grade.

But the block schedule has one weakness – that is, if you insist upon nit-picking for weaknesses. It does allow students to earn an over-abundance of credits: eight per year instead of six. Freshman students are already two full credits ahead by the end of their first year; and it progresses from there.

That opens the door for kids to take open periods during sophomore, junior and senior years. The horror! Kids actually have the flexibility, during those open periods to take an early lunch, get career/work experience, seek religious instruction of their choice, take private music lessons, do community service, or just go outside and smell the dandelions. They can do all of this, even while graduating with more course credit than most students in the urban CCSD.

But CCSD central has decided that this is a bad thing. Local policies around open periods have actually caused the district to mark our high schools as “substandard.” That is rich! Our exemplary high schools have been declared out of compliance with state regulation. CCSD has even threatened our principals with discipline on this issue.

What is all of this based on? A nit-picky interpretation of a hazy clause tucked away deep in the fine print of the Nevada Administrative Code. The CCSD interpretation of this line makes the block schedule impossible.

Ironically, that impossibility is actually a problem of the CCSD’s own making. Over the past decade, the faculty at our rural schools has been decimated by funding cuts handed down by the district. Rather than complying with state law to hold rural schools harmless in their budgets, CCSD has forced local schools into a death of a thousands cuts. Shave off a teacher here. absorb a loss to retirement there. It has happened again and again. The loss of a teacher, in a small school, becomes the loss of a whole academic program. The result is always fewer offerings for kids.

That brings us to the dilemma that CCSD has teed up for us. If all local sophomores and juniors were forced back into the classroom during their open periods, as CCSD demands, there wouldn’t be enough teachers and class sections left at the school to accommodate them all. Our administrators are stuck in a catch-22 of the district’s own making. The only fix left for them is to dismantle the block once and for all. Conform to the urban status quo.

Of course, the cost of dropping the block is to shave away many of the opportunities that make our schools exceptional. There is little flexibility for dual credit college courses; little flexibility for Career and Technical Education; little flexibility for credit retrieval; little flexibility for the two schools to work together on expanded course offerings.

In forcing this dramatic change, our square-pegged rural schools will indeed be stuffed into the round hole of an urban-centric view of the state regulation. But it will likely hurt our high graduation rates in the process. It could soften the foundation beneath our schools’ exemplary star rankings. It will reduce our ability to prepare kids for college. And it will certainly leave behind those who struggle to make the grade.

Yes, our kids will be forced into compliance with this new-found iota from the code. But it will be more about the iota than it is about the kids. The students will be hurt and education in our communities will suffer – all in the name of dotting i’s and crossing t’s. Talk about missing the forest for the trees!

This whole pathetic episode is a prime example of a solution in search of a problem. It is yet another case of the CCSD forcing unique rural communities into an urban mould. It is not at all in the best interest of our kids. And sadly, it is the kind of treatment we have all come to expect from CCSD central.