Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Transiency keeps some from moving forward

Lucy, a quiet fourth grader, blew in and out of Helen Jydstrup Elementary School this year like an autumn leaf.

The 9-year-old started the school year at Nate Mack Elementary in Henderson. After a move, she attended Jydstrup for several months, then moved again, landing at Harvey Dondero Elementary.

Lucy came to Jydstrup looking "scared to death," Pendry said. She left calling Pendry her favorite teacher ever.

"I've been in three schools in one year," Lucy says, with a laugh. "I don't know the kids when I come and then I make friends. And then I move to another one."

The mussy-haired 10-year-old with a quick-draw grin is one face of transiency in the Clark County School District.

"I call her my little snowflake," the girl's mother said. "She just sort of floats through life. She always has a smile."

School officials define transiency as a rate of turnover. Statewide, it's 39 percent, meaning about four in 10 children in a classroom will move by the end of the year. Clark County's rate is higher -- about 44 percent.

In a class of 25, that's 11 kids who disappear. In many cases, 11 more come along to take their place.

Those statistics deeply trouble education officials.

"We have a horrendous transiency rate," State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mary Peterson said. "Think about how long it takes for a child to make new friends, find an academic routine, settle into a school. How can a child possibly focus on academics when she is making these moves?"

Adds Clark County Schools Superintendent Brian Cram, "There are real problems that come with growth and a high rate of transiency is clearly one of them. Children learn best in a stable environment."

At Jydstrup Elementary, where nearly every child lives in an apartment, the transiency rate is even higher than district and state averages: 55 percent last year, among the highest rates in the district.

Since this school year began in August, Jydstrup's harried office manager Marsha Overholt has enrolled about 530 new students and said goodbye to 336, according to a recent count.

"We're a swinging door," Jydstrup principal Nadine Nielsen said.

Among the real-life children who drive transiency statistics in Clark County are nine who have left Pendry's class this school year, including Lucy.

* Michelle, the daughter of a teacher, was the tallest pupil in Pendry's class. She had moved to six different Clark County schools during her kindergarten year alone before moving out of the district. Last fall, she resurfaced in Pendry's class. On Nov. 9 she left Jydstrup for Texas.

* Elizabeth, a wide-eyed child with glasses who plodded around the classroom in platform tennis shoes, came to Pendry's room a few weeks after school started. Her family moved to Las Vegas last year, and she has been in five schools since then, except from October 1997 to January 1998. "We don't know what happened to her then," Overholt said.

* LeAnthony, the son of a cocktail waitress and a handsome boy with a knack for landing in trouble, had been in six schools since kindergarten. One day in October a relative called the school to say they had moved the boy to Atlanta.

* Shannon T., a bright child and sometimes show-off, knew the answer to virtually every question Pendry posed to the class. She's one of three from Pendry's class who was in the gifted and talented program. Her parents moved into a house from an apartment. She now attends nearby Frank Kim Elementary.

* Henry was another handsome, quiet boy who was in special education classes at Jydstrup, which regularly pulled him out of Pendry's classroom and away from his classmates. In the room he never raised his hand. He went to kindergarten at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary, then transferred to Jydstrup. Now he's back at King.

* Ana and Gwen were the exceptions: both had attended just two schools since kindergarten. Ana had several close friends in Pendry's class. At lunch, she often would offer them her apple. She left Jydstrup for Roger Bryan Elementary on Nov. 2. Gwen, the shyest girl in class, moved to Patricia Bendorf Elementary one month later.

* Armand came to Jydstrup in October and Pendry quickly realized the student was well behind his peers in math and reading. In March, Pendry gave the boy study materials to use during spring break. But Armand's family moved to Green Valley and the boy never returned.

Parents who frequently move often are following jobs, school officials say. In a survey of parents taken three years ago at Jydstrup, nearly one-third of respondents worked in a hotel-casino.

Parents who are constantly looking for a better job and a nicer place to live often drop their children in a new school, education officials say.

Often, their learning suffers.

One comprehensive study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in September 1993 concluded that: "Frequent family relocation was associated with an increased risk of children failing a grade in school and ... frequently occurring behavioral problems."

"They never get a chance to have that feeling of stability," Jydstrup principal Nielsen explained. "How they react depends a lot on the children and the family. Some can do it a lot better than others. Becoming accustomed to different teaching styles and social structures is hard."

Students who transfer from school to school can suffer in a number of ways, officials say.

They often have a hard time making friends. Students may have trouble trusting adults, including teachers. Or they may not feel comfortable enough to take chances, or to fail.

"You cannot get them engaged in school," said Kay Carl, the assistant superintendent who oversees elementary schools in Clark County. "The kids recognize that they may not be at that school for very long."

School officials feel powerless to change the mobile lifestyles of parents.

"Jobs are so fluid in the Valley," Carl said. "The parents who move are trying to find something better for their families."

But school officials could do a better job of helping teachers with transient children.

Carl said student records, mostly grade reports and some demographic information, follow students from school to school. But it can take weeks for student information to land in the hands of teachers at the new school.

The teachers of an incoming student may not immediately know if the student should be in special education or language programs, for instance.

Carl said she is considering an initiative that would stuff student files with the latest examples of their work, including recent tests and assignments.

"We would like the teacher at the student's new school to be able to see that this is what the kid was doing at his other school yesterday," Carl said.

In addition, education officials are lobbying the Legislature for $14 million in state money to finish installing a computer system in Clark County that would help schools better track transient students. The SMART system would instantly provide schools countywide with 130 pieces of information about every student.

Several School Board members said the new state curriculum standards also may help transient students. The new standards are supposed to make learning more uniform throughout the state. If a student moves from one school to another within Nevada, that student should find roughly the same material being taught -- at about the same time -- at her new school.

Clark County School Board member Lois Tarkanian said it's difficult for teachers to learn as much as they can about each child.

"How do you key into a child's learning unless you have enough time?" Tarkanian asked.

Lucy attended Jydstrup long enough for Pendry to recognize that she had made several friends, but she was generally not outgoing. She loved to read to the point of distraction from class activities, Pendry said.

"She didn't really come out of her shell a lot," Pendry said.

Lucy left Jydstrup for Dondero Elementary when she and her mother moved into a comfortable mobile home and out of an apartment they hated.

"The bugs were so big you needed a pet deposit," Lucy's mom said.

Lucy already seems happy at her new school. On a sunny afternoon recently, she played and laughed with a new friend. The two romped around the school grounds during an after-school program called Safe Key, talking about a detective agency they planned to organize.

"She's amazingly well-adjusted," her mom said. "I'm amazed it hasn't affected her more."

Lucy said she missed Mr. Pendry and hopes to contact him by e-mail soon. She would like to visit the class again, if possible.

"He's really funny," Lucy says of her former teacher. "He's always doing things that make us want to be like him."

No simple answers to the transiency problem have surfaced.

School officials say a steady stream of students will continue to wander in and out of classrooms as long as low-paying, entry-level jobs continue to fuel a service-based economy and the growth explosion in Las Vegas.

"What can we do? Hold up our hands at the door and say, 'You can't come in -- we're full?' " Jydstrup assistant principal Charles Anderson asked. "Every child is welcome here."

archive