Carson City School District welcomes new teachers

First-year kindergarten teacher Shea DeJoseph starting at Carson City’s Bordewich Bray Elementary School this year initially was reluctant about entering the profession.

“Both of my parents are teachers, and that was kind of the reason I didn’t want to teach at first and I didn’t want to get into that,” she said. “Then I thought, I think I like the sound of everything that teaching has to offer. I started taking classes for it and I really enjoyed it so I ran with it.”

Thirty-seven new hires in the Carson City School District gathered for breakfast Tuesday in the Governor’s Mansion Larry Ruvo Stateroom during a week of training before school starts Monday. Teachers and professionals have received program supports and instruction to be ready in the classroom before students arrive for the 2024-25 school year. For CCSD’s professional learning and family engagement coordinator Merri Pray, who leads the training for new hires, it’s her favorite time of the year.

“I’m a passionate educator, I’m passionate about kids and education but I’m also passionate about support for our teachers,” Pray said. “How do we unfold our teachers into a program to learn this job, which is a difficult job in the best of times?”

The district works to prepare teachers, instructional coaches, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, aides and other roles to work with students at all levels coming through the doors with mental health needs or other situations at home. Pray said the district is in an excellent position currently with staffing. Approximately 80% of its new staff are first-year teachers, and CCSD will begin this year with no open positions except for Carson High School’s two vacant Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps instructors that have been difficult to fill.

Hiring numbers are decreasing, which positively points toward the district’s ability to attract, retain and train employees in the long term.

“My first year, we had 58 new hires, then we had 60, last year we had 71 with 63 new teachers and about 10 or so licensed educational professionals, and this year, we had 37 teachers with about 10 other educational professionals, school mental health professionals, but 37 new teachers,” Pray said. “That is totally a group effort. Retention is huge.”

Superintendent Andrew Feuling welcomed new staff members with pride and humor to Carson. He described the advantage of being one of a few districts to offer such an event and to host it at the Governor’s Mansion.

For the “new, new, new” teachers entering classrooms for the first time this year, Feuling said their choices will be real and seen by students when they come in the doors Monday.

“You’re going to walk in and that first day, the best laid plans — and (former professional boxer) Mike Tyson said it — ‘Your plans only last until you get hit in the face,’ and all of a sudden and kids are coming in and (more) kids are coming in,” Feuling said. “It is so important to remember the impact you are having on our kids and what you model for them. … Everything you do, everything you say, every interaction matters.”

Carson City Mayor Lori Bagwell called the energy the new educators are bringing with them “electric” and announced her plans to hold her Mayor’s Attendance Hall of Fame again after an inaugural campaign in 2023-24 to help turn around the district’s chronic absenteeism figures and offered bike giveaways for improved or perfect attendance. She said encouraging students like Charlee Dobson of Seeliger Elementary School, who was sworn in as junior mayor in April after Bagwell visited and read to her class, matters to the community.

“Just touch a child’s life, it doesn’t matter how,” Bagwell said. “It will be forever a junior mayor, a child that won a bike, a child that’s going to school now — it just doesn’t matter. You can do it, right, although you have to do ribbon-cuttings with me because I don’t let the crowd get away without being a part of it.”

Bordewich Principal Cheryl Richetta said her school will focus on building relationships this year. The school held its parent night Monday and teachers have been working on preparing their classrooms. Richetta is welcoming seven new teachers and a few new paraprofessionals to her staff and said they will continue to focus on reading and math.

“We’re here to meet the needs of every single student,” she said. “We know kids all come in at different levels. … We’re going all in at the proficiency scales. It’s going to be a good year.”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert was invited to speak as well, and shared when she began as a first-year math teacher, her goal of inspiring and receiving total engagement from all students was a challenge to overcome. An encounter with a young boy who felt ashamed to share his mother spent the previous night in jail taught her a valuable lesson she’s carried with her during her academic career.

“I don’t know what else was going on, but I knew there was love needed in that space,” Ebert told the educators. “All of us come to work to do the best job we can, and our parents are sending us the best children that they have in their family situation. That’s not all children, but there are those times when you’re just like, ‘We’re doing learning today!’ — when you ask children what’s going on, we learn a lot from that.”

In a separate interview with the Appeal, she said her goal was to remind them of the importance of enjoying themselves in their chosen profession.

“Being an educator is a very hard job and there are some days you come in and say, ‘OK, I know for some of my students, there are things that happen at home and they may not feel like they’re ready to learn,’ but once you capture their heart, everything comes and moves forward, and yeah, it is a hard profession,” Ebert said.

She said it can be that the gratitude from students often takes years, but what happens in classrooms now helps to build on other professions, so she encouraged everyone to bring the excitement and passion about their work.

“To have a great school year is really the message,” Ebert said.