Idea behind charter is already in action

Steve Marcus

Crystal Rodriguez, a third grade teacher at Cozine Elementary, is a graduate of the School District’s STEP UP program, which offers high schools juniors and seniors a head start on teacher training. A proposed charter school would build on that program.

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009 | 2 a.m.

John Jasonek, executive director of the Clark County Education Association, has asked the State Board of Education to sponsor his proposed charter school, where high school students could simultaneously earn high school and college credit for classes toward teaching degrees.

Mary Abbott, department chairwoman of the teacher education and early childhood program at Northwest Career and Technical Academy, the district’s magnet high school, wants interested students to know a similar program for students interested in teaching is up and running there.

Jasonek’s proposal is an outgrowth of a successful initiative started by the School District and the teachers union’s Community Foundation in 2004. STEP UP (Student to Teacher Enlistment Project Undergraduate Program) covers the cost of the dual-credit classes and offers students scholarships to local colleges in exchange for agreeing to work in district schools for four years.

Now in its third year, the Northwest Career and Technical Academy offers students a chance to prepare for a variety of careers, including in medical fields and engineering. The academy’s teacher education and early childhood program has room for 120 students — 30 at each grade level. Students at all of the district’s career and technical academies are required to take rigorous academic schedules in addition to classes in their specific fields of interest.

The biggest difference between what Jasonek is proposing and the career and technical academy program would be the chance for the charter school’s students to earn college credit while in high school.

Abbot said she considered signing on with STEP UP, but the planning committee decided it would run counter to the school’s overall philosophy and would mean the students would be taught by outside instructors. She is looking for alternative ways to gain college credit for the advanced education classes at Northwest Career and Technical Academy.

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The Clark County School District’s Hispanic student population is up by nearly 1,000 to 126,731, which is 41 percent of the total enrollment, compared with 40.5 percent the previous academic year.

The district’s population of white students declined by almost 2,500 — to 107,232 students or to 34.6 percent of the total enrollment, compared with 35.3 percent in the prior academic year.

The statistics are based on student enrollment as of Sept. 18, the official “count day” used by the state to determine per-pupil funding.

Since 2002, Clark County has been what’s known as a “minority majority” district.

Some district officials were expecting to see a decline in Hispanic enrollment, in part because of the loss of so many construction jobs in the Las Vegas Valley.

But Jeremy Aguero, principal analyst at the Applied Analysis research firm, said that kind of thinking is shortsighted.

Although “layoffs have certainly affected Hispanics disproportionately,” Aguero said, “that doesn’t necessarily play out with school enrollment” because, for instance, there may be an increase in the number of Hispanic youngsters reaching school age among families that still live here.

The district’s populations of black and Asian students held steady at about 14 percent and just under 10 percent, respectively. As expected given the Las Vegas Valley’s economic climate, the percentage of students qualifying for free and reduced-price meals was up to 44.3 percent, from 42.6 percent last year.

As for where the more than 2,500 white students have gone, the answer will be tough to pinpoint, Aguero said. Some might be in local private schools that have seen increases in enrollment, while others might have chosen charter schools or home schooling, or left town altogether — the same choices being made by families of all students, Aguero said.