Red carpet treatment: First-day tradition at Historic Westside school celebrates students

With the pop of a confetti cannon and music bumping from a DJ station, Matt Kelly Elementary School joyfully launched another school year today.

The school in Las Vegas’ Historic Westside continued its tradition of greeting families with a red carpet parade through the lunchroom, with teachers, school board members and other dignitaries, and friends of the community all eager to slap high-fives and bump knuckles with children in their first-day best.

“It’s the first day of school!” Principal Jerrell Hall called out in between dance moves.

At Kelly and beyond, the Clark County School District welcomed back roughly 300,000 students. The start of a new school year comes with familiar challenges for CCSD.

Staffing remains an issue, with about 1,100 teacher openings posted to the district’s jobs site as of today. That’s about as many as it had to start the last school year, but about 300 fewer than the year prior.

Only about 41% of elementary school children were proficient readers as of 2023, the most recent state data available — but about 5 percentage points better than 2021, the first year back after the pandemic closure and the unprecedented blow it dealt to student achievement.

According to district data, kids still struggle to consistently show up to school, as shown by last year’s 30.9% districtwide chronic absenteeism rate – but that too is improving, down from 36% in 2022-23 and the dubious post-pandemic closure peak of nearly 40% in 2021-22.

Interim Superintendent Brenda Larsen-Mitchell said she was grateful to district staff for their work educating children and to the community for its support. She called for continued support for the sake of students.

“To our parents, I’m very excited and proud to welcome our students back to the school year. I’m confident that if we all work together, we will demonstrate amazing results for our students and the community,” she said at Thursday evening’s school board meeting, which was the last of the summer. “We need to work together as one community for all of our children.”

Community is the cornerstone at Matt Kelly Elementary.

It’s a relatively small school, with fewer than 400 children, located in a low-slung mid-century building off J Street. But the cafeteria was packed Monday morning, with free backpacks, books, and other swag awaiting those who wanted them, and community leaders — including U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., — cheering on the children.

One mom ushering in her son greeted one of the police officers that was part of the welcoming team.

“You look after my boy,” she said.

And into the happy crowd they went.