This program brought to you in part by the Erika Lewis Endowment Fund.

♪♪♪ CCSD is the fifth largest school district in the nation, with student success as its number one goal.

Join us as we meet student go-getters and goal setters and discover their skills, talents, and drive.

Plus meet the incredible staff who are helping students shine.

It's all here in Student Spotlight.

(Mauricio Marin) Hello, and welcome to a new season of Student Spotlight .

I'm Mauricio Marin.

(Melinda Malone) And I'm Melinda Malone.

The new school year is officially underway, which means we've got a lot to share with you during the next half hour.

Go inside a kindergarten classroom where kids are learning in both English and Spanish, how this new pilot program will help students graduate biliterate.

-Plus, District staff get surprised with some big awards.

Meet this year's CCSD Employees of the Year.

-Then a look inside the District's new Central Technical Training Academy, how this new high school is helping students become career ready.

-And we'll talk with members of the Hope Squad from Clark High School.

-But first we head to Bonanza High School to meet a teacher who has impacted generations of kids and has served in the classroom for more than 50 years.

(Pennie Edmond) There are three full sheets of paper.

-Seventy-four year old Pennie Edmond has been a teacher in the Clark County School District for more than 50 years.

-Well, I started in '70.

That was the end of my first year.

So it's almost-- I don't know if it's 53 or 54.

They said 54.

Okay, I'll agree.

I'm not gonna argue with you.

-And most of those years have been right here at Bonanza High School.

She was one of the original staff members when Bonanza first opened in 1976.

(Keyaira Washington) She said she was here when the school opened, so I feel like she's seen a lot.

-While Ms. Edmond has spent most of her life in the classroom, it wasn't originally where she thought she'd end up.

-Yeah, I was training in college to be in science, chemistry.

And I thought that I was going to be working with nuclear things.

The guess turns out my husband is the one that worked at the test site and drilled holes for nuclear bombs.

But I never got-- I never really officially finished off.

I just said okay.

And the School District says, Well, we have a job.

And so I went there.

-But it is here, teaching students, that she's made her mark.

(Laron Evans) Everybody knows who Ms. Edmond is.

If you're like a freshman and you're like, Oh, I have Ms. Edmond's class, we'll be like, Oh, you have Ms. Edmond's class?

Okay.

We'll show you exactly where her room is because she's been here for, like, so long.

Everybody knows her.

-Retirement did cross her mind once, but then her husband passed away.

-And when he died, I didn't have any real reason to retire now, because everything we'd planned was for both of us.

And they said, Okay, well you-- Well, Bonanza, we'll take you right away.

I said, Okay.

Thank you.

-And so back to the classroom she came.

-For her to go, like-- be here for so many years and see how kids grow up, I feel like that's a really strong and great quality.

-While a lot has changed in the past 50-plus years, Ms. Edmond says maybe not as much as you think.

-Kids are still kids.

They still have the same problems.

-So this year, once again, she has a new class full of fresh faces.

-I like this class a lot because she's able to show me the things that I'm not used to or anything that I need help with.

-As another school year begins.

-Yeah, I guess I'm infamous.

I wouldn't necessarily say famous, but infamous.

-Among Ms. Edmond's former students: Imagine Dragons' lead singer, Dan Reynolds; pro baseball player, Kris Bryant; and her very own granddaughter who graduated last May.

-And starting this school year, a cohort of students on the valley's east side will be learning academic subjects in both English and Spanish.

The District's new Dual Language program is rolling out at Desert Pines High School, Monocle Middle School, and Ronnow Elementary School.

(Jennifer Lopez) My name is Jennifer Lopez.

I am a kindergarten teacher in C.C.

Ronnow, and I teach the Spanish component for the Biliteracy Bilingual program.

(Melina Arriaza) My name is Melina Arriaza and I teach kindergarten, the English component of our Dual Language program.

-So we teach two languages at the same time; we teach in Spanish and English.

We teach them how to speak, how to write, how to read both languages.

-It's a lot of partnership, a lot of collaboration.

The running joke is we're married to each other.

We plan together, we make sure that our lessons are flowing, and we teach.

-We teach them how to speak, how to write, how to read both languages.

So our kiddos comes.

If they come in the morning to the Spanish, they go in the afternoon to the English.

(Ignacio Ruiz) So this year, this is our first year for dual language immersion.

We are starting with kinder-- kinder classes, sixth grade as well as ninth grade.

It's important for our English learners.

The research shows that as our English learners are able to build proficiency and master their first language, then they're able to then gain and be able to build proficiency in that second language.

And our native English speakers also leverage our English learners with the Spanish as their Spanish model.

So kids are learning from each other, that interaction, and they're building bilingualism and biliteracy.

-With our students, just our students in particular, most only speak Spanish at home or only speak English at home.

We do have a few that do speak both languages at home, but usually there's a primary language.

-My first language is Spanish.

When I-- I came to this country when I was 13, almost 14 years old, with no English.

And it was pretty hard for me just to go to school where it was monolingual, only English, and I couldn't understand anything.

So by the end of my high school, I learned a language, but I missed the whole academic.

-My hope, and I believe that they will be fluent in two languages.

-If all of them had more opportunities, not only in their careers, but also in life.

I like going to school.

-Dual Language is an opt-in pilot program.

The hope is to expand the initiative to other schools in coming years.

-Now it's time to head to Rancho High School for our first Student Spotlight NewsBreak .

(Dianne) Hi, I'm Dianne.

I'm a junior at Rancho High School.

(Six) And I'm Six, and we're in the Ram's broadcasting room here for our first NewsBreak .

-Welcome back to the new school year!

The Clark County School District has about 300,000 students, as big as some cities.

We are the fifth largest school district in the nation.

-Did you know school lunch and breakfast is free all year for CCSD students?

The meals are funded by federal nutrition programs.

When students are fed, they do better in the classroom.

And this year for the first time since the pandemic, the salad bar is back.

-A teacher at West Tech was awarded a grant.

She said the grant will help her give the students an opportunity to participate in independent research projects.

Congrats!

-We've got a lot more here to offer at the Ranch, but for now let's take it back to the PBS studios.

-Thanks, Dianne and Six.

As they mentioned, the Clark County School District is one of the largest school districts in the country.

Would you believe CCSD covers nearly 8,000 square miles?

That's why the District has its own police department.

As you'll see, officers work every day to provide a safe, secure, and nurturing learning environment for students to succeed.

He's a familiar face for students at Centennial High School.

(Steven Patty) I know I'm here to protect them.

I know I'm here to help them out in any way, shape, or form.

-Clark County School District Police Officer Steven Patty makes it his mission to keep students and staff safe.

(Student) When I'm going from class to class, lunch break, all that stuff, I always see them, so I always feel safe at school.

-Keeping the campus safe begins with building rapport.

-We have an open door policy.

We have kids that come in all the time and just talk to us about things in their life and everything else that's going on.

-The CCSD Police Department has about 175 officers districtwide.

For Centennial High School Principal Keith Wipperman, the officers patrolling his school make a world of difference.

(Keith Wipperman) Our officers really do focus on prevention; they're not trying to arrest people.

They really want kids to-- to try to help kids make choices before they get to a point of no return.

-For Officer Patty, his mission is truly rewarding.

-I've had numerous kids, even the kids that I've arrested, give me hugs and tell me thank you for helping them out and straightening them out.

-Along with safety, CCSD helps provide resources to students for mental wellness.

Hope Squad at Clark High School has students reaching out to their peers to check on them, and we're joined here by three students from Clark High School.

We have Izzy, Belle, and Claudio.

First of all, thank you so much for being here.

Now, the first question I have for you, Izzy, what is Hope Squad?

(Izabella Harju) So Hope Squad is a school club, organization that actually originated out of Utah, and the goal is to bring suicide prevention into schools by allowing students to have a more hands-on role and a bigger connection to their peers so that we can have a much larger system of being able to help and offer resources to students for all types of mental health assistance.

-Now, this was really exciting.

Clark High School isn't the only CCSD school that has this.

There's many other schools around the District.

Belle, tell me a little bit, when you talk to your peers, to students, what are they saying?

What are you hearing?

What feedback are you providing them with?

(Belle Pobsuk) So obviously, alongside adults, students have many problems in their lives that they may need assistance with or comfort or security or just someone that they can talk to.

For example, some of the things that we may deal with could be family issues, school issues, just personal problems that people may have that they choose to discuss with us.

-We know that some students are dealing with adult issues.

Claudio, when you-- When you talk with them, your work is just truly so important.

What are some of the things that you're hearing from them, and why did you decide to get involved?

(Claudio Villalobos) Well, when I get into Clark High School, I used to have, like, a lot of issues, like making friends, because I didn't have the opportunity to speak very well the languages.

So then I saw my friends helping me off.

And then I was interested in help other people with their social skills.

So then I hear about this program called the Hope Squad, Clark High School.

So I tried to join into it.

So right now, I've been having a lot of friends around the school making sure, like, all my friends have opportunity to have good health and social skills for-- -That's terrific.

And there must be so much training that goes beyond this.

You have support from Hope Squad, from staff members and administrators.

Izzy, tell me a little bit about that training that you go through in order to be able to help fellow students.

-Right.

So obviously as students ourselves, being pretty young you know, we have hands-on or first-hand experience with understanding what our peers are going through.

So we did go through a pretty long training process that began last year.

This is our second year in the club.

A lot of it was starting with how to recognize that somebody needs help and how to reach out to students who we thought could benefit from some sort of assistance with the counselor.

It went a lot-- A lot of the stuff that we did was a lot of just the ways to approach somebody and then talking to them and understanding their issues, getting them to trust you and feel safe so that we could then further those conversations and relationships, to talk to other people too.

-Yeah.

That is super crucial.

Belle, I'm sure you've had many conversations with folks your age.

Of course, this program is in middle schools and high schools.

What advice would you give to students who maybe are a little bit nervous about approaching you?

What advice would you give them?

-Advice that I would give my fellow students is that I'm a student as well.

And as a student, I understand the struggles that they've gone through.

I, myself, have problems at home, problems with school.

Everyone deals with all these problems.

And I want my fellow students to know that we can have a conversation, not only student to student, but person to person; and that, truly, any of the Hope Squad members, any of the Hope Squad advisors, anyone who is Hope Squad recognized understands and understands that everyone's mental health is important and that these are conversations that we all need to have.

And I think it's really important for them to know that we're here for them.

-Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you again for the work you do.

And, Claudio, when you're talking to a student, that reaction you get from them, is it a-- Is it a sense of relief?

Is it someone that they're just glad to talk with?

-Well, sometimes I feel, personally, very happy because sometimes I found people that actually doesn't speak English.

So when I come to them and I speak in Spanish with them, they sometimes, seeing their face, like, they know that it is someone trying to understand them.

It's like-- It's a very happy feeling thinking about that, you know?

-Izzy, Belle, Claudio, thank you so much for joining me.

The important work that you do every single day on top of everything you do to stay in class and stay busy, thank you so much.

And, folks, there's always resources.

There's always someone to talk to at home.

We have more information on ccsd.net.

Melinda, back to you.

-Thanks, Mauricio.

Now we'll head back to Rancho High School for our second NewsBreak .

(Benjamin) Hi.

I'm Benjamin, and welcome back to Rancho High School.

-(Julissa) And I'm Julissa, and we're here with your second NewsBreak .

-We have a long tradition here at Rancho High School, as we are the second oldest high school in Las Vegas, founded in 1954.

-A lot has changed since then.

We also have a new building.

And we also now have Academy programs, basically schools within the school.

Students can study pre-med here at Rancho and even get their pilot's license.

-Last year we won the championship in women's volleyball, our HOSA team finished top 10 at the international competition, and the Video Production class won a competition and had a film shown on the NASA website.

There's so much we can say about what's going on here at Rancho.

-Thanks for visiting Rancho High School.

Now we'll send it back to the Vegas PBS studios.

-Thank you, Benjamin and Julissa.

It's so important to recognize a job well done.

Melinda, you do a great job.

-Thank you.

-That's why District leaders and the Public Education Foundation recently announced the 2022 CCSD Employees of the Year.

-In fact, the winners were surprised with the honors, then celebrated at the Public Education Foundation's Annual Golden Apple Gala.

Mario Galvez, a site-based computer technician, is the Support Professional Employee of the Year.

Mr. Galvez was at Brinley Middle School and now works at Palo Verde High School.

-Ryan Cordia is the Principal of the Year.

He was the principal at SECTA last year and will be principal at the new Career and Technical Academy located in the northeast part of the valley next school year.

-The Central Administrator of the Year is Sheri McPartlin, the Chief Nurse for the Clark County School District.

-And the Teacher of the Year is Jeremy Lawson, a Geoscience teacher at Desert Pines High School.

(Jeremy Lawson) I want to make a difference in this world, you know?

I want to be able to look back and, like, I did this.

I did this; I impacted these lives.

I'm Jeremy Lawson, and I teach Geoscience and Principles of Geological Studies at Desert Pines High School.

I've always loved science.

And my mom, she became a teacher and, you know, I kind of followed in her footsteps a little bit.

But I wanted to be a geologist, so I went UNLV to become a geologist.

But it seemed like as I was getting towards the end, a lot of the jobs were contract at six months, one year.

And I didn't like that, that being not steady.

So my mother, the genius mother she is, said, Why don't you try teaching geology?

You want to make a difference in this world, you can go teach and make a difference.

(Brenda Oceguera-Soria) He's impacted so many lives.

He-- He takes in kids and, like, people who don't have parents to support.

Like at sports games, he's there.

Like, he will adopt you.

And he will make sure you have your Gatorade, your lunch for your sports games.

He's a very important teacher here.

-I get here at 5:15.

But really, the real reason is because there's kids here, you know?

This school has a large homeless population.

And even the ones that aren't homeless, still some of them come to school because they don't really have anywhere else to go in the morning.

So, you know, there is a couple that depended on me to be here.

They didn't want to be out in the cold in the wintertime.

And so I made sure that I was here, and I just kind of stuck to it.

And it's been that way ever since.

(Melany Leon) He has been very inclusive with his students.

He has always made sure to include the students.

Every time a student is in need of help, he'll always go around and make sure-- He makes sure to ask them if they need any help.

(Isaac Stein) Mr. Lawson was just nominated as the CCSD High School Teacher of the Year.

(applause) -The students are what has made me successful here.

Yes, the admins are great.

Yes, the coworkers are great.

They all help me, and they all do their thing.

But if it wasn't the students, I don't know if I'd be here.

I don't know if I'd be at this school.

But it's-- I've just fallen in love with these students and this demographic so much that I just want to say thank you to my students.

I love them very much, and they're the reason I'm still here.

-Congratulations to all of the honorees, and a big thank you to every CCSD staff member.

We know how hard you work to make the District number one for kids.

-The 2022-23 School Year brings a new shared campus for CCSD.

The corner of Maryland Parkway and Oakey is the new home of Global Community High School as well as the Central Technical Training Academy.

Central Technical Training Academy is a nontraditional high school offering students career and technical education courses, industry certifications, and work-based learning opportunities.

In its inaugural year, it is focusing on two industries: Advanced Manufacturing and Construction Technology.

With the increased focus on the CTE coursework, the English, math, and science teachers are able to incorporate the Nevada Academic Content Standards into lessons that correlate directly with students' chosen fields.

(Jose Hudec) It's pretty nice, pretty cool.

And construction, it just seemed fun to do, like, get to-- You finally get to use a protractor and stuff like that for a real purpose.

(Lilianna Bonderov) Our partners have been phenomenal working there, wanting to provide--not just provide opportunities for our students to talk to them, but also to provide some guidance to our instructors on what they are looking for so that our instructors are ensuring that they're meeting the needs of the industry professionals that we're sending our students out to.

-For the 2022-23 school year, Central Tech is open to high school juniors.

Students interested in attending the school can find more information at centraltechccsd.org.

-Meanwhile, Global Community High School's new home will benefit students who are often learning a new language along with their normal coursework of reading, writing, and math.

-If you struggle to understand that, you have an idea of what most Global Community High School students would experience inside a regular classroom.

Here's a quick translation: Coming to a new country and learning a new language is difficult no matter your age.

Global Community High School is working to help students conquer that challenge.

(Elena Fabunan) So I'm also not born here.

I was born in Mexico.

So I understand the struggles to learn a new language, come to a new country.

What's gonna be amazing is our students come from the four corners of Las Vegas, from the city, right?

-The mission of Global Community High School is to provide academic and social education to emergent multilingual high school students so they are able to pursue lifelong learning in their future paths.

(Loreta Nadal) -In addition to the academics, students also look forward to bonding with their classmates over shared interests.

(Paula Rodriguez) -While everyone expected the students to embrace the new campus, Principal Fabunan says she's encouraged by how quickly neighbors have stepped up to be part of the school community.

-So having them come on campus, providing tutoring for our students, giving them access to learn English would be-- is just going to be phenomenal.

-We know it's going to be a great school year.

Starting school can be a big change for some kids.

But as Bryan Callahan found out at Matt Kelly Elementary School, community leaders made going back to school a lot more fun.

(Bryan Callahan) Matt Kelly Elementary School students got a big welcome back for the 2022-23 school year with a lot of support from the community.

(Jerrell Hall) Our school motto is Dream it, Believe it, Achieve it.

So when we have this community support, as I was kind of mentioning, it really starts planting seeds in minds.

-Principal Jerrell Hall looks forward to the school's red carpet welcome event all summer long.

She says this moment is vital to help set up students for success.

-And it's a great opportunity for students to see them, you know, dressed in their suits, dressed in their uniforms, and really start thinking about career and college and the path that they'd like to take their lives as they leave elementary school.

-Elected representatives, business leaders, police, and firefighters came together to root on students for their first day of school, including Clark County Commissioner William McCurdy, who has an extra personal connection to Matt Kelly Elementary School.

(William McCurdy) It is particularly impactful for the students who are oftentimes coming into the first day of school with a lot of anxiety because they haven't been in the classrooms.

You know, a lot of uncertainty.

But for me, it's awesome that we were able to come together, you know, with so much love and so much excitement and welcome our kids back to school.

-The event is in its sixth year, and McCurdy makes a point to keep coming back year after year.

It's a walk down the red carpet students won't soon forget.

-That was Bryan Callahan reporting.

Matt Kelly Elementary School was also a pilot school for a new online tutoring program, known as Paper.

This year CCSD is offering Paper online tutoring to all CCSD students for free.

Students can access the tutoring service when not in the classroom by using their online Clever account.

-That does it for this edition of Student Spotlight .

Can you believe another school year has already begun?

-It is moving quickly.

Absolutely, time moves quickly.

But it's great to be back.

A reminder that you can watch this episode and past episodes of Student Spotlight on the Vegas PBS website.

-We'll leave you now with a special student-produced segment by the Vegas PBS media crew called In Our Opinion .

See you next month.

♪♪♪ (Lahana) Hi.

I'm Lahana.

(Adam) And I'm Adam.

-And this is our opinion.

-Today we're here at Arbor View High School to talk to two students, Soraya Horsford and Elija Pearce, to get their opinions on trends, social media, and the effects that can have on students.

(Soraya) A trend to me is, most of the time, it's something that's very popular that gains attention either really quickly or over time.

And it tends to just pick up with different age groups.

(Elija) A wave of something that's fun, something that's new, something that people can do.

-On average, students spend five to seven hours a day on social media.

But does this constant exposure have an effect on these students?

-I believe that it can have a positive and negative, actually.

-It would have to depend.

Most of the time they tend to be positive, like little prank things.

But then you get certain ones, and they get more destructive or harmful.

-Some people don't know how to use a trend.

I think some people overpower it or they're just not being themselves and doing something else that they shouldn't be doing.

-I like to think that there are a lot more pros, because there's, like, connectiveness with it.

Like people get to, like, I guess vibe a little more with each other.

You know, something that everybody has in common.

-Are you a cloud chaser?

-God no.

I haven't got the time for that one.

If you got the time for it, go ahead.

I can't hate, but it seems pointless to me.

-I think that's like a bad thing to do if you cloud chase, you know?

-So you're not a cloud chaser?

-No.

Be yourself.

-Within the past year, the Clark County School District along with districts all around the world have had a sharp increase in violence within schools.

But does social media have an impact on this?

-Most definitely.

That's what these kids are, like, influenced from.

They don't just grab that out of nowhere.

They're trying to be funny and follow the trend.

I don't think that's right, but that's just what's happening.

-Stop.

It's not worth it.

Just stop while you're ahead.

Trust me, it's not going to be worth the suspension or getting expelled for just doing a little stupid trend.

-So how do those students that wish to use social media in a positive manner accomplish that?

-Just be yourself.

You don't have to follow the negative trends.

-There's no telling, individually, how you can do it.

It's all based on yourself, because being on social media and being on it as frequently as some people are, it's an addiction at that point.

-Thank you so much, Soraya and Elija, for sharing your opinions.

-And remember to always try to avoid negativity online, and try your best to utilize social media and trends for good causes.

-I'm Adam.

-I'm Lahana.

-And this has been In Our Opinion .

♪♪♪