Expectations, payoff high at new charter school

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, May 24, 2015 | 2 a.m.

I much prefer SWOT to SWAT.

We all know SWAT is the highly trained, highly capable and successful police unit that enters the fray when practically every other option for peaceful resolution has been exhausted. It looks great and exciting on television, but in real life no one really celebrates the fact that it is needed, especially the men and women of SWAT.

Enter SWOT. That stands for Scholars Working OverTime. It has been around for five years, and I would bet that, outside of the families in the community of East Las Vegas, few Southern Nevadans have ever heard of it or know what it is.

I sure didn’t until last week when my dear wife, Myra, took me to a meeting full of her favorite people in town. The group was composed of present and former Teach For America teachers, the young women of her philanthropy group and the next generation of community-minded education activists who are constantly looking to support what could be an answer to a community-wide failure to adequately educate our students.

Lackluster educational achievement in public schools is not a Las Vegas problem alone, but Las Vegas can be a city that finds the answer that has eluded most large cities in their effort to prepare the next generation for the competitive world.

SWOT is the product of a team of students, teachers, families and community partners in East Las Vegas who have built the first college preparatory school in that part of our city. Frankly, East Las Vegas would not be on anyone’s radar as a place from where the next generation of college graduates would come. And, yet, there they were in the guise of ninth-graders who couldn’t contain their excitement as they spoke to us about their aspirations and their goals of becoming successful college graduates.

Of course, to do so they first had to attend and graduate from high school. That is what the meeting was really about.

This summer, SWOT will morph into Equipo Academy. It will move into its own facilities, instead of sharing classrooms in whatever Clark County School District school could manage to house it for the past five years, and set off onto an education trajectory that could only be imagined just a few years ago.

Thanks to the leadership of Principal Ben Salkowe and his team of education superstars including Emily Bassier, Raymond Gonzales and Amanda Keller, Equipo will open its doors to the next generation of Las Vegans who, instead of a life headed for anonymity or worse, will learn from some of the country’s best and most passionate teachers and administrators.

One of the main reasons these young people will succeed is that their school day will not be constrained to what CCSD schedules allow. A typical school day for SWOT eighth-graders starts at 6:30 a.m. and doesn’t end until after 4 p.m. when arts and athletics are available to those who want more. In all, the kids at Equipo will gain 80 additional days of educational experience compared with their public school counterparts.

As a charter school, Equipo will get a per-pupil payment from the Clark County School District but, beyond that, it is all bare bones. That is why so many of us were invited the other night to meet the students and teachers. Money for what many of us take for granted in our schools — simple and obvious things like computers, field trips, music, arts and athletics — will have to be raised.

There are already some generous commitments from some community funders, people who see a new reality of young people going to college rather than prison, or worse, but there is always a need for a little bit more.

What is most encouraging to me is that for every fund drive the kids have conducted to date, there has been 100 percent parental participation.

Even with parents who couldn’t afford $5, the money came in. Where else in the entire school district are you going to find teachers, students and parents all contributing at 100 percent or more?

But that is what it will take to educate these children — almost every one of whom will not only be the first to graduate in their families from college but probably the first to graduate from high school!

What will set this school apart from many others is the winning combination of high expectations for everyone involved, more time on task than any other school, the achievable and demanding goal of college access for every student and the belief that literacy is power. Of course, the location will be the most exciting part of Equipo.

As this school is proved a success — the first graduating class will be in three years — it will create a template for other schools across the valley to show young people and their families there is a better way through education.

Scholars working overtime, parents working overtime and teachers working overtime. What a concept!

If you want to help, with dollars or hundreds of dollars, you can reach the school at [email protected]. I am told whatever you give will be matched by some enthusiastic and committed donors.

Brian Greenspun is owner, publisher and editor of the Sun.