Joe Cacioppo
Carson City School Trustee Joe Cacioppo says he often applied his engineer’s mind with data. It often helped to sort the district’s standing with school rankings, for example.
When he began serving on the school board in 2012, Carson High School nationally was ranked 4,162 out of about 18,000 schools, according to the U.S. News and World Report. This year, Carson High is ranked 5,236 on the Best U.S. High Schools report among approximately the same amount.
“Prior to COVID, we were on a very good track,” he said. “We were starting to see improvements and then, of course, with COVID we took a dip. I think there's still work to do there, but I would say that test scores don't singlehandedly paint the picture. But I also don't want to try to skirt away from the issue that test scores could improve.”
In 12 years, graduation rates have fluctuated and the data has changed, but success shouldn’t hang on the numbers, Cacioppo says. He finishes his third and final term this month grateful to have served students and staff, the most central players in the classroom.
His firm Resources Concepts, Inc., originally was hired as a civil engineering consultant to assist with the district’s capital improvement projects. The work was backed by voter-approved bonds in planning, permitting and construction management. The introduction to the district’s facilities opened opportunities to meet CCSD’s faces and understand school needs, and he dove into the academic issues at hand.
Yet, improving scores, rankings or graduation rates weren’t the challenges Cacioppo signed up to solve. His priorities were boosting student advocacy, diversifying job pathways and promoting physical or mental health.
“I learned over the years being on the school board that … test scores also are generally the same as improving Nevada’s test ranking,” he said. “One complements the other. That's been the biggest challenge, but advocating for students is something I've continued to be very passionate about, and I feel like I've done that.”
The work required building partnerships.
“You know, you work with a number of stakeholders all the time, legislators, associations, the educators, the parents, the students, of course,” he said. “It can be a full-time commitment. You’re in board meetings, you’re reading materials and probably late into the night.”
Cacioppo said he’ll look back on the board’s navigation through the COVID-19 pandemic when it presented families and district staff with challenges. The following months meant making tough choices in finances and policies in the classroom, he said. The trustees, in cooperation with administrators, closed school operations and moved staff and students from in-class instruction to remote learning, transitioned to a hybrid model at the start of 2020-21 and returned students to campuses full-time in 2022-23.
“The room was flooded with people that had concerns, not all of them directly associated with what we were doing,” he reflected on community reaction in 2020-21. “Some of them were political concerns, some of them were educational concerns, but I would always try to listen to what they were saying, not how they were saying it, and remembering that I'm sitting up there and for the same purpose that I originally campaigned for to serve the students.”
He’s also served as board president several times, a role in which he not only has presided over meetings but represented the board’s mission and programs. He has been president this past year.
Cacioppo said he supports term limits for officeholders but said he would gladly sign on for four more years with the board. He’s enjoyed backing the experts working in the classrooms and with families every day.
“We the trustees are the support staff of the district, and I kind of lightheartedly have said it hasn't always resonated well with some, but I mean it in a positive manner. We get back to, ‘What do you need for a school? You need an educator and you need a student.’ The rest of us are support staff.”
Carson City’s educators are successful in fostering and helping students, Cacioppo said.
“The kind of work I do, we do a lot of work with developers and that's important for the community, and I still enjoy that, but getting to work with the schools in the school district for the purpose of making the district and its facilities better for the students, was where that started resonating with me,” he said. “It was, why are we doing this?”