School board holds meeting

At the Lincoln County School District board meeting Nov. 12, approval was given for Superintendent Steve Hansen?s resignation, but with heavy hearts.

Hansen put in his letter of resignation due to personal health problems and said he feels this is the best thing for he and his family. Hansen said education has been his life for more than twenty years and although he enjoyed and loved working for LCSD, it?s time for him to move on.

Board members Wade Poulsen and Patrick Kelley both joked that they would like to protest. Poulsen said the schools where losing a wonderful superintendent and that Hansen had done a great job. Kelley seconded the motion to approve the resignation and said that he understood but this was not easy for the board.

Hansen said that being in the position had taught him a lot and that he has learned much from the schools and students, and he hopes they?ve learned just as much from him.

The board also approved advertisement for filling the superintendent position. This began on Nov. 16. In December they will introduce the three most qualified applicants to the board and set interviews for January.

In other business, a letter was written by Hansen to express concern about wild horses as a hazard to school bus drivers and kids. The route times and school bus times have been rescheduled due to the increasing number of wild horses the drivers have seen during the morning bus runs. The drivers and school have asked that the Bureau of Land Management help find a solution to reduce the numbers of the wild horses for the safety of the drivers and children. A solution may be some sort of control offered and approved by the BLM and state such as fencing or other ways to block them from the highway.

Resignation of Jeanna Canfield as LCSD?s paraprofessional under C.O. Bastian High School was approved. This position is part of an alternative school program created last year and run by Mike Burcham that continues the education of students who previously attended C.O. Bastian. The board wants to relocate the parapro position from Lincoln to Clark County and needs to waive the residency qualification that is typically part of new hires within the district.

The board did a similar action last month and at this meeting approved the hiring of Neosha Smith for a second paraprofessional alternative high school position. Smith ran track at Southern Utah University. She was in Southern Utah for two years, then returned to Las Vegas. She holds dual degrees in sociology and criminal justice from UNLV.

Plans are also in place for a third parapro position for the alternative school program.

The board also approved updates to the district?s discipline plan. The updates would personalize the plan for each school.

Finally, Poulsen, who is part of the Nevada Association of School Boards, reported on the group being against Nevada?s recently passed school voucher law (SB 25), where families can receive voucher money from the state to move their child from a public school and put them in a private school. The NASB?s concern comes from the liability factor that a public school must keep record of all monies spent and what it is spent on, but a private school does not have these guidelines. The association thinks that a private school should have to have the same standards as all public schools.