Five-star school ratings are team effort for southwest, Spring Valley schools

“I don’t think you can just put a school in a nice neighborhood and assume that everything is going to be good. I don’t think it’s that easy,” he said. “Or if you look at a school in a neighborhood that has some challenges and assume that it’s going to be bad. There are great teachers and great schools all over the place. It’s just building — a solid school, that’s the trick.”

Carolyn Edwards, trustee for District F, the area that includes much of the southwest and Spring Valley area, said school success is a team effort with teachers, administrators, students and parents working towards a common goal.

“And, for some, it’s hard, with parents working two and three jobs just to make ends meet,” she said.

Dr. Joe Morgan, assistant professor of special education and coordinator of special education programs in the UNLV Department of Educational and Clinical Studies, said schools in the valley’s urban core face challenges that may not be as common in the suburbs.

“There are a lot of maps created to show that, overwhelmingly, the one- and two-star schools are in the core of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas,” he said. “As you go out further into the valley, like in Summerlin or Centennial Hills, the star level increases. We know that in areas where there are one- or two-star schools, there is also a higher concentration of students living in poverty, students who are English learners, or students with special needs.”

Add to that a difference in teacher experience level.

“State data shows that the highest percentage of newly licensed and alternative licensed teachers are in urban schools because they have the highest need due to their long-term vacancies,” Morgan said.

But Edwards said even in challenging circumstances, good leaders can make a difference.

“Your leadership in school is key to the kind of climate there,” she said. “When your leadership and your teachers are pulling in the same direction, you’re more likely to be successful than if there’s controversy.”

Creating a positive learning climate is Rekrut’s top advice for other principals seeking five stars.

“School should be fun,” he said. “My style has always been, the more open and approachable and fun the place is, the more the parents and the students become engaged in the building.”

Part of that engagement is Rekrut’s insistence on accessibility.

“You don’t need an appointment to see the principal,” he said. “If any parent wants to see the principal, they come in the front office and say, ‘Hey, is Joe around?’, and the office staff finds me, and I come help them. It’s that sort of relationship that I want to build.”

And parent participation is always welcome.

“This is your school,” he said. “If you want to come in and have lunch with your kid, have lunch with your kid. If you want to peek into his classroom and see how he’s doing, great. If you want to help the teacher put up bulletin boards, that’s fantastic. You don’t need an appointment. You don’t need to notify the teacher a week in advance that you’re coming. Your kid is here. If you have the time, we want to have you.”

In addition to taking care of students and parents, Rekrut insists on respecting his teachers. They have a say in the way the school is run from sitting in on new hire interviews to feeling free to test out new teaching strategies without fear of failure. He said he still adheres to the advice of his administrative mentor, former Jydstrup Elementary principal Nadine Nielsen, who said. “Hire great people, and then get the heck out of their way.”

“I trust them as professionals, and they know it,” Rekrut said. “I think if you have a bunch of teachers who know that you trust them and you rely on them, and you’re counting on them to get the job done, they work their tails off. They do. They won’t fail. They refuse to let the kids fail.”

He added that teachers at his school are happy because they know no one is out to get them.

“It’s not a game of ‘gotcha,’ ” he said. “It’s a game of ‘how can I help you.’ How are your kids doing? What can I do to help you get these kids to do better?”

Teachers and kids don’t freak out when Rekrut enters a classroom because it’s an everyday occurrence.

“I try to hit every classroom every day,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just walking through giving a high five. Sometimes it’s taking a dry erase marker and putting a big happy face on a kid’s desk just to mess with them. They call it the daily disruption.”

Stuckey is expecting more than 900 students to enroll this year. Rekrut said the building has the capacity to house at least 800. The addition of seven portable classrooms provides space for the rest.

Crowds of kids are not uncommon in the district, especially in the southwest. Edwards said the biggest challenge the district faces is growth.

“We have a lot of growth in the district and a lot of permits being pulled for new homes, especially in the southwest area,” she said.

Meeting that growth has pushed many elementary schools in the area to consider year-round schedules. Stuckey is still on the traditional calendar, but the school is one of 61 districtwide on a watch list to see if year-round school should be considered.

Edwards said new elementary schools are on the way to alleviate overcrowding with two to be built in the southwest for the 2017-18 school year and two more the following year.

In addition to meeting the needs of growing neighborhoods, Edwards said enrollment numbers could be impacted by Nevada Senate Bill 302, a bill passed during the 2015 legislative session that permits the establishment of education savings accounts that can be used to redistribute public funds to offset the cost of private school or home schooling. To access the funds, a child must first be enrolled in public school for 100 consecutive days. The funding option will not be available until January. The question is, will longtime private school families put kids in public schools for 100 days to access the funds, and will previously public-schooled families leave the system in favor of private or home education?

Rekrut said he hasn’t seen any impact in his enrollment numbers … yet.

“We don’t know what the impact is,” Edwards said. “We could see an influx of students coming into public school for that 100 days and then going back to private. We don’t know how many parents will do that. Maybe none, maybe hundreds.”

Edwards said it’s also possible some who have never been to public school will try it, find out they love it and decide to stay.

Edwards said she is proud of the progress of schools in District F, and she has seen success in the Clark County School District firsthand. In her previous home in Fairfax, Va., she struggled to get even a few hours a week of special education services for her son. When they moved to Las Vegas, his new school gave the second-grader who couldn’t read four hours of specialized instruction a day. Edwards said the extra attention worked, and now her son has a bachelor’s degree and is successful.

“It was just an incredible difference in the approach from one to another,” she said.

Despite the fact that his kids come out on top, Rekrut said leading a school is about more than statistics.

“I don’t know if it’s anything magical that we do,” he said. “We just operate with a fundamental belief that, at its core, education is a people business. The data is important. You can learn a lot from charts and graphs. It’s important to track student achievement. All of that is crucial because you need to know what you’re doing well and what you’re not doing well. But in the end, at the end of the day, schools are about people and kids and parents and teachers. And those relationships here are every bit as important as the charts and graphs. I’m never going to lose sight of the fact that education is a people business. As soon as you start treating parents like stats and kids like stats, you lose something. There has to be that personal connection. You have to be personally invested in it.”

— To reach View contributing reporter Ginger Meurer, email gmeurer@viewnews.com or follow her on Twitter: @gingermmm.