Laurel Crossman
As a parent and new trustee in 2012, Laurel Crossman took notice of the Carson City School District’s Gifted and Talented Education structure.
Her then third-grade son received extra homework instead of assignments that challenged his potential. There were fewer teachers then who had a GATE certification and fewer students CCSD identified as eligible for the program. Crossman was motivated to help improve academic programs and re-engage students.
“Our program is identifying more students as GATE, including more Hispanic and English learners, which is actually more consistent with the demographics of our district,” Crossman said.
This month, she finishes her third and final term having navigated tough but rewarding experiences that often required compromise. She influenced the board’s longterm vision with its strategic plan.
“One of the things I really wanted to see when I first started was that we didn't just have a strategic plan that was a piece of paper, and then things didn't happen with it,” Crossman said. “I think that during my time on the board, the board has been successful with the superintendent in not only implementing the strategic plan but continuing it through two more drafts.”
Crossman graduated from Carson High School in 1991, earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah and her juris doctorate from BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. She practiced law in Utah for two years. She raised five sons in CCSD and participated in various parent teacher associations at Fritsch Elementary and Carson Middle schools.
On the school board, Crossman worried about school safety, especially after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 students and six teachers were killed in 2012 just before she took office.
“I was brand new, and (the district) had a whole capital improvement plan that they had worked on, and it was like my second board meeting,” she recalled. “And they talked about that we didn’t have secure points of entry at all the schools. So I just remember still feeling that sickness, that, ‘How do we keep all the kids safe?’ ”
In recent years, Crossman has been glad to see partnerships form with the Carson City Sheriff’s Office’s school resource officers and the increase in safety training through active shooter drills. The board’s most recent training in June at Carson High School stands out, she said.
“It was so sobering to be in the school,” she said. “I went to that high school, and to think that this is happening, even though you knew it was all a drill, it's one of those things where every person that works in the schools, I think, keeps that in their mind and is ready for it and they really worry about all the kids.”
Crossman also saw the overhaul from the Nevada Plan to the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan after Senate Bill 543 during the 2019 Nevada legislative session. The change was meant to create more transparency by redirecting more than 80 funding streams into a single source. Subsequently, in 2023, Gov. Joe Lombardo’s Acing Accountability initiative resulting from his $2.6 billion allocated to K-12 education was to implement a boost in student performance.
“When I started in 2012, we were still on the heels of the Great Recession, and it just seemed like every year we were, ‘What can we cut in the budget that won't impact kids as much? Because everything will eventually,” she said.
Lombardo’s investment significantly assisted with Carson City’s staff salaries. The school district long has encouraged the next generation to apply for teaching or support professional jobs. Crossman said the teachers’ unions voluntarily agreed to a salary freeze early in her service to keep staff employed, which encouraged her, she said.
“No investment in children is ever wasted, even if we don’t see results in a year or two,” Crossman said.
She also recalls experiencing difficult moments in all three of her terms, which have included student fatalities or accidents and significant decisions in policies, capital projects and academic needs that have shaped CCSD’s outcomes.
But she also is proud of what the district can provide students with its pathways, including its Career and Technical Education, Advanced Placement and JumpStart courses. She thinks about her own sons and those who have graduated from the district who come back to thank former teachers.
“I like the opportunities that we give our children,” Crossman said. “I think that's going to continue to be something the board's going to have to look at is how do we continue to give our students the options that they want and what will most benefit them. … We just want them all to be good people.”