Teaching Black Kids to Advocate for Themselves

John Vellardita is being generous. Magnanimous even. The new tax proposals he and his organization - the Clark County Education Association (CCEA) - are touting is for all issues in the state. Not just education.

“We have a contraction of dollars from the feds on Medicaid money, we have issues around mental health. I mean there’s other needs the states has… so raising additional revenue that’s outside of education… relieves an effort to try to draw from education.”

Vellardita and CCEA are collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would force the legislature to consider new revenue streams in 2021, or leave it to voters in 2022.

The first ballot measure is the Local School Support Tax, which is currently the largest tax going to education. It’s a statewide sales tax, currently at 2.6 percent. CCEA wants it to go to 4.1 percent.

Check out the graphs at the Guinn Center. The Local School Support Tax funds almost 29 percent of the state budget.

Along with the support tax, Vellardita is also collecting signatures so voters can weigh in on raising teh gaming tax, from 6.75% to 9.75%. That initiative is the source of his magnanimity. Gaming doesn’t go to schools. It goes to the General Fund. But Vellardita is calculating that if more money goes to other importing issues, then there will be more left over for schools.

Both taxes will, Vellardita says, raise $1.4 billion annually. That kind of money would transform school funding in Nevada.

CCEA has until November 18 to collect enough signatures to send a bill to the legislature. They have to collect nearly 98,000 signatures - at least 24,000 in each Congressional district in the state. After that, the legislature can vote up or down. If they vote up, then those taxes go into effect. If they vote down, then the initiative goes on the ballot in 2022. Just to make things more interesting, there’s another race in 2022. For Governor. Steve Sisolak will be trying to keep his job just when voters might be coming to the ballot to vote for two new taxes.

Oh, also, Vellardita hinted there may be a third ballot initiative directed at another state industry. We’ll keep you posted.

As Amelia Pak-Harvey was on the road to Indianapolis, to start work covering City Hall for the Star-Tribune, we caught up by phone and had a wide ranging conversation about her view of education in Southern Nevada. Pak-Harvey has some really great memories of her three years here. But she also left Vegas struck by how many people here just don't care. That includes parents, non-parent citizens and government officials - especially in the legislature.

Imagine, as a teacher, finding one of your students has died. Imagine it happens often. In a single year. Imagine knowing that a student of yours is being trafficked. By her family? Imagine teaching English to kids who don't feel safe, who don't have food, who don't see a future for themselves. Who could care less about a southern lawyer fighting for justice in the 1950s segregated south.

Teachers in America deal with this reality every day. They are burnt out. They bounce between caring so much it hurts, to numbness. They are experiencing secondary trauma. Many leave. But many stay. For their students.

Carrie Kaufman has a riveting discussion with two veteran teachers - Tonya Scroggin and Alexis Salt - about what they've seen, what they do for their students, and why they stay.

These teachers want to change America's view of what students need to succeed. "It's not just about test scores," said Salt, adding that before she can focus on Bloom's Taxonomy, she has to deal with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Many of the students Salt deals with are still on steps one or two of Maslow's.

"You're teaching kids who have been raised by kids," said Salt. "I  know very few children whose parents don't have any substance abuse issues."

Salt and Scroggin see a marked change in students since the recession in 2008. There's as whole generation that is growing up without hope.

"There's just a nihilism in kids, Salt said. The things they joke about, the things they kid about... You have this horrible mix of hedonism and nihilism and they had a baby.

"No Child Left Behind told us we were accountable for students, but we've been way more than that. In fact, just saying we're accountable reduces what we do," said Scroggin, who noted that she sees the same issues at Coronado - where a few kids have committed suicide in the last few years.

"They're sad, and they don't know why they're sad. They're lonely. They're reaching out, and no one is there," said Salt.

This is a must-listen for any teacher, any education leader, or any parent

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Nevada Voice is doing is holding regular, off the record, group meetings around topics of social issues in schools. That includes teacher issues and burnout. The rules are that you walk into the room and put your cell phone in a box. And just talk. The number of participants will be limited each time, but we’re trying to get a sense of what people are dealing with, and how it can be solved. If you are interested, connect with me through the Nevada Voice Facebook page, or stories@nevadavoice.org or join in the conversation at Nevada Voice's Facebook page.

Michelle Gillie Amor is a screenwriter in Los Angeles. Her son earned an A in his AP World History class, but the teacher gave him a B. Michelle told her son to challenge the grade. When that got nowhere, she and her husband stepped in - exposing a teacher who changed her mind because, as she told Michelle, "he was having too much fun."

Akiko Cooks and Carrie Kaufman talk with Michelle about "black boy joy" and how they are teaching their sons and daughters to advocate against systems.

SB543. Nevada's new funding formula. It is supposed to solve the issue of money being supplanted from the state education budget. (See the video explaining supplanting here.)

But not everybody is happy with the new law, and they're putting a lot of pressure on a funding commission that is tasked with working out the law's details.

Chief among the concerns is that the new funding formula doesn't provide any funding. It's a hangar waiting for clothes.

But groups such as the Nevada State Education Association are also concerned about the idea that funding must follow the student. That means that students who need extra help - as ELL students, as underprivileged students, as GATE students, as disabled students - would get funding for that extra help no matter what school they went to. Even if they were the only ones who needed that extra help in those schools. That is not what we do now. What we do now is to give extra funding to schools that have large populations of students who fall into those categories. This is called "weighted funding."

Carrie Kaufman sat down with two critics of the bill who are hoping the funding commission will fix the issues they say might be harmful.

Communities in Schools is a non-profit that partners with schools to increase graduation rates. But that's not a simple fix. They deal with absenteeism. They are often the front line for kids with suicidal thoughts. They deal with bullying and other social issues. Their goal is to intervene before a kid veers onto a track that will end in dropping out.

As part of our ongoing look at social issues in schools, Carrie Kaufman sat down with CIS Nevada executive director Tami Hance-Lehr to talk about the challenges K-12 students face in Nevada.

In 2018, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Janus vs AFSCME, effectively creating "right to work" rules for every public sector union in the country. Pundits called this the death knell of government unions. Workers now are not compelled to pay dues to the union that represents them in bargaining with states and municipalities. If you don't HAVE to pay, the thought was, why would you?

Brad Mariano thought otherwise. The UNLV assistant professor in education policy and leadership, thought this was an opportunity for unions to grow stronger and attract more members. He and his colleague, Katherine Strunk from Michigan State, co-authored a piece that appeared in The Conversation arguing that the current Chicago teachers' strike represents the new union bargaining power.

Teachers in Chicago were offered an 16% raise. For someone making $50,000, that's a $8,000 more per year. But teachers rejected it, choosing to walk the picket line for smaller class sizes and hiring more school counselors and nurses and social workers. This was the same strategy that was employed last year in Oakland and Los Angeles. Mariano says it makes perfect sense: all of the CTU demands will result in more jobs, and more jobs means more potential union members.

Carrie Kaufman talks to Mariano about the Chicago strike, the future of unions, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the teachers unions in Nevada.

Every month, Carrie Kaufman sits down with Akiko Cooks, the proprietor of the Facebook group No Racism in Schools 1865, to talk about social issues within education - including implicit bias and racism.

In March 2019, Cooks was alerted by a relative to a social media account that targeted nine black boys at Arbor View High School, threatening a "Columbine 2" the next day. One of the boys was Cooks' son. She now speaks regularly on racism and white supremacy in schools, and how we can educate each other.

Pete Simi embedded himself into white supremacist groups in order to study and write about them. Carrie and Akiko talk to him about the continuum between white nationalism and everyday implicit bias.

And we launch a new segment today: Hidden History of the United States, in which we highlight African-American inventors and change makers.

Nevada Succeeds' Brent Husson says schools with lower income kids are paying more for their teachers than schools in wealthier areas. It's called Average Teacher Salary, and the new Nevada education funding formula may tie teacher pay to "actual" salary. That, says Husson, means a possible reshuffling of teachers.

He also says it's the way schools should be - with a mixture of experienced teachers mentoring newer teachers in a collaborative atmosphere.

Currently, Husson explains in the first half of this Nevada Voice podcast, when schools pay teachers based on an "average," the schools with higher paid teachers aren't charged what their staff actually costs. But schools with lower paid teachers - who tend to be less experienced - are charged more in their budgets than what their teachers make.

Husson says that's plainly unfair.

Former CCSD asst. superintendent and interim CFO, Eva White (who was a finalist for the superintendent's job last year) says that there have been schools in Vegas where experienced teachers mentored brand new teachers. And it can work, if schools are willing to do it. But she tempers Husson's vision of utopian, collaborative school cultures by point out the hurdles the district will need to jump in order to get there.

Kids miss school for different reasons, but economics - especially poverty - is a major contributor. Once again, this isn't just a school issue. It's a community issue, say our guests. But Nevada is just starting to talk about solving the problem.

We talked to two principals - Jim Kuzma of Ranch High School and Kim Basham from Robert Taylor Elementary School - who have worked to lower their absenteeism rates. We also talked to Western High School Nurse Tina Miller about the reasons kids don't come to school, and Nevada Board of Education board member Felicia Ortiz.