Teachers, parents and other concerned community members gather in front of the Clark County School District administrative offices to protest against campus violence and advocate for school safety, Wed. April 13, 2022.
Thursday, April 14, 2022 | 2 a.m.
As a longtime Clark County School District teacher who works with autistic children, Dolly Rowan thought the year-long, pandemic-induced school closure was the hardest thing she’d ever have to work through.
“Until I came back,” she said.
Rowan was one of about 150 people gathered Wednesday morning on the sidewalk outside CCSD headquarters on West Sahara Avenue to demand change as violence in schools goes from bad to worse.
The triggering incident for the teacher-organized protest was the April 7 after-school attack of an Eldorado High School teacher in her classroom. Jonathan Eluterio Martinez Garcia, 16-year-old Eldorado student, is being charged as an adult with attempted murder, sexual assault and other felonies.
Adriana Martinez is a bilingual, long-term substitute who teaches science, English and government at Eldorado. Her current classroom is across the hall from the badly hurt teacher’s. Martinez said she asked to be assigned to the east valley school because that’s where she graduated from in 1982.
“It’s come into your house and violated your home,” she said. Her eyes were wet with tears.
CCSD Police took 6,827 calls for violent incidents this school year just through February. In all of 2018-2019, the last complete school year without pandemic interruptions to in-person learning, there were 7,001 calls.
Alexis Salt, who teaches English at Indian Springs Middle and High schools, said speaking out by exhausted and angry teachers would grow because the violence can’t continue.
After the Eldorado attack, Salt said she thought of her petite, 15-year-old daughter and what could happen to her.
“If teachers are not safe at school, I need every parent in Clark County School District to understand that neither are your children,” she said.
Vicki Kriedel, one of the protest organizers and president of the National Education Association of Southern Nevada, one of two teacher unions in CCSD, said the district had “conveniently compartmentalized” the violence.
She alleged that CCSD officials hadn’t taken responsibility and instead blamed students and parents, and relied on the criminal justice system for recourse.
She doesn’t want town halls or discussions to talk about how bad the situation is.
“We’ve sat through board meeting after board meeting, hearing the pleas of frustrated and desperate teachers, support staff, parents, students, as well as concerned community members. Our pleas have gone unanswered and unheard,” said Kriedel, a second-grade teacher at Heard Elementary School. “This recent heart-wrenching event at Eldorado is just one of many as we watch our district remain in crisis.”
Rancho High School government teacher Sarah Comroe read a list of demands on behalf of school staff: In the short term, they want all classroom alert systems and phones to be working and have responders on the other ends. Surveillance cameras need to be working and running. Teachers want a districtwide policy on how to react to fights in their rooms, and all schools should have a school safety plan published on their website.
In the long term, educators want the district to overhaul the grading policy, to
institute a “true” restorative justice plan and social and emotional learning programs with less emphasis on standardized testing, and to retain staff by giving raises and examining health benefits and workplace culture, Comroe said.
District officials pledged this week to promptly issue to teachers new panic buttons or upgrade existing panic buttons and eventually, the cameras.
School Board member Danielle Ford, speaking as the mother of two CCSD students, said anyone who ignored the demands and protest “will be committing an operational failure.”
Brian Rippert, president of the Las Vegas-based Nevada State Education Association, said everyone in schools was in “survival mode,” and when they’re in that mindset, they “can’t do much else.” Children who feel unsafe can’t learn, he said.
The schools need more adults, including mental health professionals, he said.
Rowan, who has worked in CCSD since 1995 and is currently at an elementary school in the Historic Westside, asked for the same.
Class sizes are too big — rooms can have 30 to 40 children in them at all grade levels, she said.
Her sign read, “The kids deserve better.”
“We gotta do better,” she said. “We have to do better.”
