Over the past two years, upwards of 18,000 young children in the Las Vegas metro area have received free monthly books in the mail as part of an early literacy program started by country icon Dolly Parton. But that ends this month.

Storied Inc., the Clark County-based nonprofit partner for Parton’s Imagination Library, last week announced to parents and guardians that its October books would be the last until additional funding for the program is secured. The program, when funded, provides a free, age-appropriate monthly book to children 0 to 5 years old.

According to Meredith Helmick, executive director of Storied, the nonprofit sought funding from the Nevada State Legislature earlier this year to keep the program going after an initial two-years of state grant funding ended, but they came up empty handed.

Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager sponsored a bill to appropriate to the United Way of Northern Nevada and the Sierra, which currently runs the Imagination Library for Washoe County residents, to expand the program statewide. The bill was referred to the Assembly Committee on Ways & Means, where it languished until the end of the regular session without a hearing or even a mention, according to the legislature’s website.

Helmick also hoped the nonprofit program might be able to secure funding through , Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro’s omnibus education legislation.

An early version of that bill appropriated $50 million for early childhood literacy readiness programs, but an amendment reduced that to $0 for the fiscal year beginning July 2025 and $12 million for the fiscal year beginning July 2026. Helmick says lawmakers chose to prioritize expansion of preschool seats, a Cannizzaro priority.

SB460 was heavily negotiated and amended to include many of Gov. Joe Lombardo’s education priorities. Those priorities included setting aside $7 million in grant funding for charter school transportation.

It appears those other priorities came at the expense of existing innovative programs that were working.

Helmick says a survey of her families last year found 62% of them had fewer than 20 children’s books in their homes before enrolling their children in the program.

“This program is such a low cost, high reward program,” she added.

Helmick is hopeful the program can return to the Las Vegas area. She says Storied is having conversations with large companies and other nonprofits, reaching out to elected officials at all levels of government, and urging their supporters to do the same.

“We’ve heard rumors of a special session,” she adds. “Can we rewrite SB460 to include the language that it took out? Are there other funds that we could add or tap into that we could fit under? Maybe that’s an avenue.”

‘It isn’t just about the books’

Meredith Helmick and her husband, Kyle, were inspired to start Storied Inc. after attempting to sign up their daughter for Imagination Library only to learn the nationwide program didn’t serve their area.

Dolly Parton launched Imagination Library in 1995 and the program has since given out more than 250 million free books to children in the United States and four other countries.

Storied Inc. is one of several partners running the program in Nevada. According to Helmick, the other partners have managed to continue their programs, either in whole or by scaling down the number of kids served.

The sheer size of Clark County’s population makes that a tougher task for Storied. According to the Imagination Library’s website, nearly 29,000 Nevada children are enrolled, the vast majority through Storied.

Helmick says that before they even had a chance to market the program or figure out stable funding, an intrepid stranger found the sign up form and shared it on a social media group for parents in Las Vegas.

“In 48 hours, we had 3,500 kids registered,” she recalls. “It was, like, ‘I guess we’re doing it now.’ But it all worked out beautifully.”

From there, the program quickly grew just by word of mouth. It was funded from June 2023 to July 2025 by a grant from the state’s Early Childhood Innovative Literacy Program. Participation fluctuates each month as kids are signed up or age out at 5 years old, but Helmick says it stays in the range of 18,000 or 19,000 thousand children spanning most of Clark County.

(Boulder City residents have a dedicated partner, Reading to Z, which currently serves fewer than 200 kids. Rural Clark County residents who live in Valley Electric Association’s service area can sign up for a program run by the energy cooperative’s charitable foundation.)

Over the summer, with the funding drying up, Storied stopped accepting new kids into the program.

“We didn’t want to disappoint families” by starting to send them books only to stop sending them a few months later, said Helmick. “One thing that sets (Imagination Library) apart is these books are sent directly to their home. I am a huge proponent of libraries. I’m there practically every week. But not everybody is able to do that. That is a barrier.”

Additionally, the books arrive addressed to the child.

“Getting it in the mail, the label with their name, it gives them ownership of the book,” says Helmick. “It makes a huge difference. I didn’t realize it until I heard it from families.”

On the inside of each book cover is a note from Imagination Library with tips for parents on conversations they can have with their child about the book, or questions they can ask to boost critical thinking and early reading skills.

“It isn’t just about the books and the words and the stories you’re reading with your kids,” said Helmick. “It’s sitting together side by side. It’s having conversations with them.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com.

“I’m so sorry to tell you this but unfortunately your private information has been leaked,” read the email, sent to Hecht in the middle of the night Oct. 25 from an account tied to a school district in California. Attached were PDFs with personal information about her daughters including their names, photographs and the home address where they’d just spent the night asleep. 

“Be careful out there,” the cryptic message warned. “Don’t shoot the messenger!”

Some 200,000 similar student profiles had been leaked, the email claimed, following a recent cyberattack on Clark County School District, the nation’s fifth-largest district and where Hecht’s three daughters are enrolled. But the message, she’d soon learn, was not from a California student but from the student’s email account, which had also been compromised. An unidentified, publicity-hungry hacker was using it as a “burner” account to brazenly extort Clark County schools by frightening district parents directly.

“I put my child on the bus and then immediately called the district,” Hecht told The 74. “I called the school, they transferred me to the district, the district transferred me to their IT department, who then transferred me to the help desk. I have yet to hear anything back.”

The Clark County threat actors claim their in-your-face tactics, which apparently involve not just direct outreach to parents, but also to media outlets, is already being used against at least one other district. Also distinct from other recent K-12 ransomware attacks, including high-profile incidents in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, the Vegas school district hackers claimed to use weak passwords — in this case students’ dates of birth — and flimsy Google Workspace file-sharing practices. Deploying those relatively low-tech incursions allowed them to gain access to reams of sensitive files, including students’ special education records. 

Schools nationwide rely heavily on Google Workspace to create, and share records and the methods the hacker used to exploit district systems, a cybersecurity expert said, offer valuable lessons for all of them. 

“This is not going to qualify as sophisticated hacking,” said Doug Levin, the national director of the K12 Cybersecurity Information eXchange, and is perhaps a sort of brand-building exercise. “Given that they reached out to the media” and have demanded payments smaller than those typically leveraged by ransomware gangs, “it seems they may be more interested in publicity and reputation than they are money.”

For Las Vegas educators, the hack has already brought significant consequences, including a class-action lawsuit and to resign. 

Clark County school leaders on Oct. 16 that they became aware of a “cybersecurity incident” on Oct. 5, noting in that it was “cooperating with the FBI as they investigate the incident” and that such attacks against schools have become routine. “Rest assured that we will share information as it becomes available so everyone is informed and can respond to protect personal information.”

When contacted by The 74, a Clark County spokesperson declined to comment further and shared a copy of the district’s previous statement. 

Yet as Hecht and others accuse the district of failing to inform parents about the extent of records stolen, much of the information being revealed about the data breach has come from the threat actor themselves, including taunts that they were still in Clark County’s computer systems. In two follow-up emails shared with The 74, Hecht was sent web links that purportedly included troves of sensitive information about students including disciplinary records and test scores. 

In an Oct. 26 message to Hecht, threat actors this time used a Clark County student’s email address “to show how much of a joke their IT security is and to show how seriously they are taking this.” 

Beyond outreach to parents, the hacker — which could be one or multiple people — on Oct. 25 without solicitation, first communicating with a reporter via Facebook. Identifying themselves as “SingularityMD (the hacker team),” the threat actor disputed Clark County’s statement that it had detected “a security issue” on its own and that district leaders had only become aware after the hackers sent an email “to tell them we had been in their network for a few months.” 

A hack with TikTok origins

Perhaps between the hacker and a cybersecurity researcher at the blog DataBreaches.net, where the threat actor divulged their techniques and offered advice on how other districts can protect themselves. 

In recent years, cybercriminals have gravitated toward “double-extortion ransomware” schemes, where they gain access to a victim’s computer network, often through a download compromising records and lock the files with an encryption key. Criminals then demand the victim pay a ransom to unlock the files and stop them from being posted online. Yet in this case, the threat actors appear to have skipped past the first part and are employing an extortion strategy that centers exclusively on holding students’ sensitive information hostage. 

For years, the 325,000-student Clark County district, whose systems were also breached in 2020, has reportedly reset all students’ passwords to their birth date at the beginning of each academic year. Using a student’s date of birth as a password has . In the case of Las Vegas schools, hackers claim the breach began on TikTok, where a student shared their birth date. The student used their district email address to create a TikTok account and their student ID became their username on the social media platform. 

Once the hacker used that information to compromise the student’s account, they claim to have exploited poor data-sharing practices in the district’s Google Workspace to access the sensitive files. The compromised account was used to access information available to any student, which in turn offered records that allowed the hacker to escalate the breach until they were able to access administrative files. 

“Google groups and google drives, if not configured correctly will expose teachers and staff files and conversations,” the hacker told DataBreaches.net. “In rare instances teachers have created shared drives and given the google group access to this drive. So if one was to add themselves to the group, they can then also access the drive contents. Nothing fancy at all.”

Schools are particularly easy targets because so many students have access to a district’s computer network, the hacker noted, with a word of advice: “I would recommend school districts separate the student network from the teacher network to make this process harder for teams like us.” 

The same technique, , was used recently to compromise records maintained by Jeffco Public Schools in suburban Denver. In Nevada, SingularityMD says it demanded a ransom of roughly $100,000 versus just $15,000 from the 77,000-student Colorado district.

Federal law enforcement officials generally advise cybersecurity victims against paying ransoms, which can embolden hackers and spur future attacks. In the last year, ransomware attacks against the , according to a recent report by the nonprofit Institute for Security and Technology, which observed an uptick in incidents immediately after hackers succeeded in securing payments. 

Levin said the hacker’s breach methods should set off alarm bells for educators nationwide, with “virtually every school in the U.S.” relying on cloud-based suites, like Google Workspace, to create and share content internally, with parents and with the public. 

“It’s very easy to overshare information and grant rights for people who shouldn’t be able to see this information,” Levin said. “That’s what it looks like happened in Clark County is they got access to some student accounts, found some shared folders and in the shared folders was more sensitive information that allowed them to escalate privileges and get to even more sensitive information.” 

Google spokesperson Ross Richendrfer said in an email that as districts become “a top target” for cybercriminals, “there’s not just one way that attackers attempt to infiltrate schools.” This particular incident, he said, was “the result of compromised passwords and configuration issues at the user/admin level.” 

He pointed to the company’s , which notes that while Google products “are built secure by default, it is critical that admins also properly use and configure networks and systems to ensure security.” The guidance also recommends that districts train teachers and staff on best practices around file sharing. 

In response to an email request, a Jeffco Public Schools spokesperson shared acknowledging the breach, which noted that staff members had received “alarming email messages from an external cybersecurity threat actor.” The district is working with outside cybersecurity experts and the police to determine the scope and credibility of the attack. 

With respect to the emails from the California student, it appears the hacker used a compromised account associated with the roughly 4,440-student Coalinga-Huron Unified School District in Fresno County merely to communicate with other victims. The threat actor said that compromised student email addresses are used as “burner accounts” when they are not useful in escalating permissions beyond the student level. 

Still, the district has conducted an assessment of its systems to ensure that it also hasn’t become the victim of a data breach, Superintendent Lori Villanueva told The 74. She said the student’s email address was used to send four emails, which were then deleted. 

“We canceled that email account, we set up a new one for the student, and we’re just running our own diagnostics to make sure there was no other unusual activity,” Villanueva said. Allowing students to choose their own passwords can have drawbacks, she said, if they settle on weak credentials. “My people have been in contact with the Clark County school district and are trying to cooperate with them as much as we can but we’re really limited to that one tiny piece of information.” 

Never before had she experienced an incident where a student’s email address was compromised and exploited in such a major way, she said. 

“Nothing this widespread, nothing in another state, nothing this big,” she said. “For our little neck of the woods here, this was a little crazy.” 

Reputational damage

For Hecht, the Las Vegas mom, the cyberattack in Clark County is deeply personal. In fact, she has a hypothesis about why she, in particular, received direct communication from the hackers. 

In 2021, of numerous news reports when she contracted COVID and never recovered. 

“The only thing I can think of is somebody knows that I’m not quiet, that I will talk,” she said. If the hacker’s goal was to get Hecht fired up, it worked. The district, she said, needs to be held accountable for a failure to protect her children. Still, she said she hasn’t been able to get any answers from school administrators. 

“I’ve emailed the superintendent and I just continue to call that helpline,” she said “Nothing. Nobody has responded. I can’t even get through, it just rings and rings and rings. To me, that tells me there are so many parents calling.”

Hecht said she has since retained a lawyer, and a pair of other parents have already filed a class-action lawsuit against the district. The Oct. 31 complaint accuses Clark County schools of negligence, particularly in the wake of the 2020 ransomware attack. The lawsuit alleges the district has refused “to fully disclose any details of the attack and what data were accessed and were available for third parties to exploit.” 

“We think the district should be held accountable for their failures and ideally they will be able to make a more secure network in the future and anyone who has been subject to these data breaches will get the proper identity protection provided by the district at a minimum,” attorney Steve Hackett, who represents the families, told The 74.

Among those calling for Superintendent Yara to resign is Nevada Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, who with nontransparency.

In an email, a district spokesperson said that individuals found to be affected by the breach will receive data breach notifications in the mail and declined to comment on whether it had, or planned to, pay the ransom. The after the 2020 breach led hackers to release Social Security numbers, student grades and other private information. 

“As the investigation continues, we are committed to cooperating with agencies responsible for finding the responsible party and holding them accountable,” the statement said. 

The district also offered a sharp rebuttal to calls for Jara’s resignation, specifically referring to with the local teachers union: “Superintendent Jara will remain superintendent as long as the Board of Trustees desires him to do so,” the statement continued “No bullying pressure, harassment or coordination with the leadership of the Clark County Education Association will deter him from his job to educate over 300,000 students and protect taxpayer resources from those who wish to harm the district or its finances.” 

Hecht said the release of sensitive files, like medical records and special education reports, is particularly concerning, with implications extending far beyond those of Social Security numbers and financial records. She offered a message of her own directly to the hackers. 

“It worries me because this stuff is going to follow them for life,” she said. “Look, I know that our district is not great, but if you’re going to go against the district, don’t take our kids down with you. They did nothing wrong.”

The Clark County School District hired a pest control company last month to trap and remove close to two dozen cats from a Las Vegas high school, but officials refuse to say what was to become of the creatures.

“Desert Squad Pest and Wildlife will do 1 month of trapping for feral cats underneath the portable buildings that are at the School,” says the company’s for $6,000 to trap cats at Desert Pines High School. “The traps will be checked daily and re baited. … Desert Squad Pest and Wildlife can’t guarantee that all cats will be removed because in this process more cats could come.”

Tabitha Linton, owner of Desert Squad Pest and Wildlife, says her company has a permit from the state to trap and euthanize pests, including cats. She says cat trapping is not a routine request, but one the company has performed.

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“With that, if the pest control falls within this criteria, (the law) does not restrict trapping and euthanasia,” says Ciara Ressel, spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture.

The company declined to disclose how it kills cats.

“Is it a pest animal or is it a lost pet? I have no idea how these pest control companies can possibly tell the difference,” says Keith Williams, founder of Community Cat Coalition Clark County. “If it’s a pest animal, they can take it out and shoot it. If it’s a pet, they’ve stolen someone’s animal and euthanized it illegally.”

Linton declined to say what was to become of the cats at Desert Pines HS, adding the school’s principal, Isaac Stein, instructed her not to divulge their fate to the media. “I’ve been instructed by Principal Stein that any inquiries have to be redirected back to him.”

Stein and CCSD also refused to say what was to become of the cats.

“The school explored options for cleaning sites contaminated by felines with outside entities specializing in complying with local regulations and the humane capture and care of animals,” a statement from CCSD said.

But cat lovers know there’s nothing humane about removing a colony of cats.

“You can’t relocate feral cats. They’ll kill themselves trying to get back where they were.” says Nancie Anastopolous of Community Cat Angels, a nonprofit that treats sick and injured felines, and finds homes for those suitable for adoption.

In October, Gina Greisen of Nevada Voters for Animals, got wind of the plan to trap and remove the cats and persuaded Stein to allow rescue organizations to intervene. The pest control company retreated, and volunteers from Community Cat Angels (CCA) trapped some two dozen cats, who were neutered, sterilized, and returned to the campus at no cost to CCSD. Medical care for two cats cost CCA more than $1,500. At least two of the cats were socialized and ultimately adopted.

“If you have nothing to hide, and you’re just doing TNR (trap, neuter, release) which is totally legal, why did everyone clam up?” asks Greisen, who worries that owned cats in the neighborhood adjacent to the school could have been lured by the bait, trapped, and removed by the pest control company.

That’s what happened to a Florida woman whose outdoor cat was trapped and legally killed. The has since been changed.

“I’d like to know how they are euthanizing these animals and if they are looking for an owner or checking for microchips,” says Williams. “When people call the pest control company and get inquisitive, they get hung up on. The company refuses to answer any of those questions.”

School board trustee Linda Cavazos says the cat trapping contract was included in the board’s consent agenda, in which smaller items are approved in one motion.

“We’re only briefed on the big ticket items,” she says, adding she “was not aware of any contract like this at all.” Cavazos says she inquired about the contract and was told Superintendent Jesus Jara would review it. She says she has not heard back. Jara did not return calls.

Revolving door

Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Clark County fund the Animal Foundation (TAF) and support its community cat program, where found cats – socialized as well as unsocialized – are vaccinated, sterilized, and released where they came from in order to keep the shelter population from exploding and to avoid a higher rate of euthanasia.

The program is not without its , who have grown more vociferous since learning of  CCSD’s foiled effort to remove a colony, and complain cats are caught in a revolving door.

“It sickens me that we have a taxpayer-funded community cat program, which releases every cat found on the street where they can then just be picked up by another taxpayer-funded effort, and ultimately euthanized,” says Anastopolous.

TAF’s CEO Hilarie Grey did not respond to requests for comment.

An unsterilized cat averages three litters of four kittens a year, according to experts, a rate that can’t be absorbed by shelters and rescues via adoption, giving rise to a debate over the most humane means of controlling overpopulation – TNR or catch and kill.

Is catch and kill, which is widely in Australia, an effective means of population control?

“It can be, if they rounded up and killed about 10,000 cats a year,” says Williams, who estimates the valley’s feral cat population at more than 200,000. “That’s why we try to TNR 10,000 cats a year. That’s what it takes to actually affect the population.”

Some local governments, such as Henderson, require trapped animals to be turned over to be evaluated for adoption or euthanized. But in most of Southern Nevada, so-called community cats – which run the gamut from socialized and abandoned domestic cats to unsocialized ferals, are protected by law and allowed to run free.

“You can trap feral cats for the purpose of having them spayed or neutered and returned to the same area,” says Clark County spokesman Erik Pappa, adding that county code and state law “prohibit the unjustifiable killing of animals.”

The City of Las Vegas, home to Desert Pines HS, gives animal control officials, not exterminators, the authority to declare a cat or a colony a public nuisance.

“The city’s preference would be that pest control companies take captured feral cats to an appropriate rescue or shelter,” says City of Las Vegas spokesman Jace Radke.

While animal control officers have the right to trap a community cat that is deemed a threat to public health or safety, a licensed veterinarian must decide if the cat poses an imminent danger or has bitten a person, in which cases it may be euthanized, the says.

Animal control officials who investigated the CCSD trapping contract say the pest control company has agreed to abide by TNR procedures should it resume trapping at the school.

Greisen wants the Department of Agriculture, which regulates exterminators, to investigate whether pest control companies are illegally disposing of community cats.  She’s also hoping a legislator will ask for an opinion on whether cats, under state law, are a pest.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on and .

Quality of schools in the region, which encompasses Boise, could be a factor, according to a from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation that identifies the nation’s best and worst metro areas for educational effectiveness. 

“Literally, you see the houses springing up like mushrooms,” said Terry Ryan, CEO of Bluum, a nonprofit supporting charter and district schools in the area. 

The region is among those where schools made above-average academic progress prior to COVID-19, the report shows. With the pandemic now accelerating toward suburbs and smaller metro areas — and often away from high-priced coastal cities — the authors say families and business leaders looking to relocate should factor in school quality when deciding where to settle down.

Michael Petrilli, president of the Institute, cautioned that there’s no guarantee the pandemic hasn’t stalled progress in areas where student performance once trended upward. Some experts, for example, have called recent “staggering.” But he said the message to districts and charter schools that were effective before the pandemic is to stay the course, and those that are ineffective “cannot just go back to normal.”

“I would assume that school districts and charter schools that were doing well by kids before the pandemic are probably largely the same ones doing well by them during the pandemic,” he said.

Using the — a national database of student performance — and graduation data from the U.S. Department of Education, the Fordham-Chamber project focuses on 100 large and mid-sized metro areas. The top locales include Miami, which recently received back-to-back from the state; Memphis, where Black, Hispanic and low-income students have shown above-average academic growth; and the Atlanta region, which ranks fourth in the study.

Atlanta has been ranked among the best places to start a new business, attracting tech leaders like . Collaboration among districts across the metro area is one reason why students were making progress before the pandemic and are “well-positioned to return to growth,” said Kenneth Zeff, executive director of Learn4Life, a nonprofit working to improve education outcomes across the metro Atlanta area. “Substantial inequities still exist, but the gap in several key indicators has been slowly eroding.”

Smaller metro areas, such as Jackson, Mississippi, and Brownsville, Texas, also emerged as places where schools performed better than expected based on demographics.

Those on the lower end of the spectrum include the Salt Lake City area, Las Vegas and Tulsa. Average achievement in math and English language arts has improved over the past six to 10 years in the Las Vegas metro area — essentially the Clark County School District — but schools still perform below average nationally, according to the report. 

Eighty percent of the population

The researchers focused on the nation’s metro areas because that’s where 80 percent of the U.S. population lives and where economic activity and labor market trends tend to have the most impact. Issues such as school choice and racial segregation also affect multiple districts. 

In addition to identifying areas with above- and below-average academic growth, the researchers factored in progress among Black, Hispanic and disadvantaged students, a region’s improvement over the past six to 10 years, and high school graduation rates. They combined these indicators into a measure they call “student learning accelerating metros” — or SLAM. The report includes interactive features so users can isolate results for specific indicators, subject areas or demographic groups.

The authors stressed that while achievement scores might seem to be an obvious indicator of high-quality schools, achievement alone often reflects students’ family backgrounds instead of a school’s effectiveness.

That’s why “Best Places to Live” lists should provide families a more comprehensive view of school quality instead of relying on standardized test scores, the authors wrote.

The SLAM rankings show that a metro area in which students have high achievement scores overall might not perform as well on the other measures. 

In North Carolina, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools, in the state’s Research Triangle region, has among the highest ACT scores in the state, but also large in achievement between Black and white students. 

That hasn’t stopped the region from attracting Google, Apple and Nike, which are in the area.

And the Raleigh area ranks fourth in raw achievement scores, but falls to 48th in the report when the other indicators are considered. On the other hand, the McAllen, Texas, area — which includes the Sharyland, Edinburg and Hidalgo school districts — ranks 41st in raw achievement, but third based on the report’s SLAM measure.

Brenda Berg, president and CEO of BEST NC, a nonprofit organization of business leaders in North Carolina, praised the report for providing relevant data for her state, where countywide districts include both urban centers and higher-performing suburbs. 

She said in an email that she’s “most concerned” about Wake County, which includes Raleigh, and is “most eager” to see where the Guilford and Charlotte-Mecklenburg districts go in the years to come.Those two districts, she said “have some really interesting promising practices emerging” around literacy and teacher recruitment in high-needs schools.

The authors note that while charter growth and district reform efforts have often focused on the cities at the heart of a metro area, the “suburbs are where many of the kids — and much of the action — are at, and they often explain a metro’s grade.”

Looking at broad trends across metro areas, however, can hide “meaningful variation” from one district to the next, said Alex Spurrier, associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners. In October, the think tank released a report showing how a lack of affordable housing in some of the nation’s most sought-after districts limits educational opportunity. 

“Even if families decide to move to a metro area with higher-performing public schools,” Spurrier said, “their access to specific public school systems may be limited based on where they can afford housing,” Spurrier said.

When Michelle Mihalik was hit by a car on March 8, 2018, she didn’t see it coming.

After a night with friends at a Las Vegas casino, she was dropped off at a nearby Walmart and planned to walk home. But Mihalik, 54, didn’t realize the area had no public transportation available. As a legally blind person, this presented a major issue, but she decided to get home by walking along the side of the road, which didn’t have a sidewalk.

Next thing she knew, she was in the hospital with six pelvic fractures. A vehicle had struck her from behind, and she didn’t wake up until the following morning. “I was happy to be alive,” Mihalik said.

Walking can be dangerous, depending where you live. In Mihalik’s case, Nevada is ranked eleventh in pedestrian fatalities, according to a report by . And Clark County, which includes the Las Vegas metro area, 78 pedestrian deaths in 2017— the highest in county history.

Erin Breen, traffic safety coalition coordinator at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the built environment was constructed for vehicles, not people.

A typical Las Vegas intersection is nine lanes long, and a standard street is 120 feet at minimum. Wide lanes make drivers more comfortable speeding, Breen explained. Even with recent infrastructure improvements in Clark County, “we still kill a stupid amount of pedestrians,” she said.

This pedestrian-unfriendly environment also exacerbates inequality. In the Las Vegas metro, the people most likely to walk as a primary mode of transportation tend to be low-income. And in a state where traffic infractions are considered misdemeanors, a jaywalking violation can cost nearly $250 in fines and could even land you in jail.

“A lot of times when you hand them a ticket, you are handing them a warrant for their arrest,” Breen said.

That’s why Breen and Laura Gryder, project director at the UNLV School of Medicine, teamed up in 2017 to create , an organization that teaches pedestrian safety classes. It operates autonomously under the Vulnerable Road Users Project in the Transportation Research Center at UNLV and works with local courts and law enforcement.

The program, previously held in person and now online because of the pandemic, allows people to dismiss pedestrian-related citations and fines — as a walker or driver — by sitting in a three-hour educational course. Taught three times a month by Breen herself (and once a month in Spanish), the free course addresses case studies and historical data on pedestrian crashes, provides an overview of local laws, and offers do’s and don’ts for walkers, bikers, and drivers. At the end, in addition to having their pedestrian tickets dismissed, participants receive reflective vests and slap bands. More than 2,800 people have graduated from the course since 2017. According to data provided by PedSAFE, most people who leave the course have a better understanding of pedestrian safety and pedestrian rights.

PedSAFE typically serves 100 to 200 people per month, but with traffic court closed due to the pandemic (felony charges are still being seen), fewer violations are being enforced and attendance is down to 25 people per month.

After Mihalik’s accident, her attorney and the driver ended up settling the case. As part of the settlement, Mihalik was required to attend the PedSAFE pedestrian safety course. “I think all people should be required to take this course to get a driver’s license,” she said, citing “wear bright-colored clothes” as a safety tip she had never thought about. She’s unsure if the driver who hit her was ordered to take the course too. She places part of the blame on herself for having worn all black at the time of her accident.

But advocates warn that the cause — and not just the symptoms — must be treated.

Angie Schmitt, former national editor at Streetsblog and author of Right of Way: Race, Class and the Silent Crisis of Pedestrian Deaths in America, says programs like PedSAFE are useful for reducing fines, but in general, she doesn’t see the value in enforcing jaywalking laws.

“[Local governments] are punishing the individual for a systemic problem,” Schmitt says. Enforcement is often , and many people jaywalk because streets don’t have accessible crosswalks in the first place.

On March 1, the state of Virginia jaywalking and reclassified it as a secondary offense — meaning people won’t be ticketed unless they’re violating another law. The change also reduces unnecessary interaction with the police. “As long as jaywalking was a primary offense, it was going to be a big source of harassment,” Peter Norton, associate professor of history in the University of Virginia’s Department of Engineering and Society, NBC 12.

Decriminalization is also being considered in California. In March, California State Assemblymember Phil Ting, who represents part of San Francisco, the Freedom to Walk Act (AB1238), which would legalize safe crossings against the traffic light or outside the crosswalk, and eliminate jaywalking fines. Ting cited the 2018 killing of , a Black pedestrian Tased and beaten by police officers during a jaywalking stop, and heavy fines as evidence of the bill’s urgency.

“It’s easy to send police out and feel like you’re solving a problem,” Schmitt says. “It’s harder to think about how streets are laid out and what problems are inherent to the environment.”

Even as the city of Las Vegas has lowered speed limits and added buses in some areas, it still has a long way to go until it’s safe.

“Until we give pedestrians reasonable places to cross the street and we lower the speed limit to something survivable,” Breen says, “humans will be human.”

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“Las Vegas believes in the power and impact of high-quality early education,” says Dr. Tammy Malich, director of youth development and social innovation for the city of Las Vegas.  In 2017, the city launched the Strong Start Las Vegas campaign to build awareness of the importance of early childhood education and to drive home the reality of how vital the first five years of life are to a child’s future success. Out of that grew the in partnership with Acelero Learning, an established, well-respected Head Start program. Strong Start now comprises three brick and mortar facilities with a fourth coming online in August 2021 that focus on kindergarten readiness for children ages 3 and 4.

Despite that investment, gaps remain. In the city of Las Vegas, 17.7% of children ages 0 to 5 live in poverty, with a large proportion located in the urban core where many families face daunting challenges to giving their children that crucial good beginning. The city has committed to helping these families overcome those roadblocks, Malich says.

“At the unveiling of the first mobile academy, Mayor Carolyn Goodman was so pleased, she said she wanted a fleet. So far, it’s a fleet of two,” Malich says. “The Mayor’s Fund for Las Vegas LIFE — the city of Las Vegas’ vehicle for corporate and philanthropic partnership — is seeking donors for the third bus now.”

The city’s early learning programs represent a significant change in the view of care for 3- and 4-year-old children, Malich says. Until recently, child care centers for this age group were thought to be doing their job if they were safe, caring and gave the little ones a snack and a nice place to play. But as researchers’ understanding of brain development in young children has grown, educators have increasingly come to terms with the readiness gap that means low-income children are starting school already far behind. The pre-kindergarten years have taken on a much greater significance in preparing children for a successful life.

“We saw the gaps in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms between the children who had more advantages and the 5-year-old who walked in without ever having been out of their home in any kind of a formal setting,” Malich says. “Suddenly they had to follow rules, share and deal with an unfamiliar social and emotional environment in addition to having no academic experience. We saw the negative impact and what a great disservice it is to our kids who grow up with so many obstacles and barriers.

“We still feel strongly about providing that safe, loving space, but we also want to make sure we tap into their minds when they are so ‘spongey’ and most eager to learn,” Malich says. “They are so bright, and they retain everything.” If they can’t come to a learning center during this crucial time, Strong Starts wants to take the learning center to them, she says.

The Mobile Pre-K program allows the city to be flexible and responsive to neighborhoods’ changing needs, Malich says. As the neighborhood’s demographics change, being mobile enables Strong Start to go into other high-need areas, bypassing families’ transportation problems to deliver pre-K right down the street.

Each of the buses has a licensed teacher and a teacher’s aide, plus trained substitutes who can step in as needed. Though the teachers have at least 10 years of teaching experience, none of that background prepared them to wrangle pop-out extensions on an RV or back a big vehicle out of a tight spot. For these skills, all the staff attended driving school to be trained and certified with RV level driver training.

“At first, they were definitely nervous,” Malich says. “But once they learn and then do it every day, they get very comfortable. Plus, it may make them an asset during family vacation time.”

Funding for the Strong Start Academies Pre-K program is a community affair, Malich says. It is also a prime example of the results that can be produced when leadership and a community come together on an issue of importance.

The Strong Start staff and program funds are financed through the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) Education Set Aside funding pursuant to AB 70. Funds to purchase and rehab the buses came primarily from RDA Education Set Aside funds, however, the second bus was partially funded through the Mayor’s Fund for Las Vegas LIFE, which provides a way for corporate and philanthropic partners to support initiatives that improve Las Vegas residents’ quality of life. The Nevada Taxpayers Association, which advocates for “responsible government at a reasonable price” awarded Strong Start Mobile GO its Taxpayers Award for efficient programs last year.

For both mobile and bricks-and-mortar Strong Start Academies, the free pre-K programs are only one component of the offerings for low-income, working families. The children’s programs take place four days a week and on the fifth, the Academies offer engagement sessions that coach and support parents in skills and activities to participate in their child’s learning. In addition, the program gives each of the parents a Chromebook and provides training on how to engage with distance learning and how to interact with the digital landscape they’re about to enter when their child starts school. The computers are preloaded with educational apps that the families have access to whenever they wish, which enables the caregivers to share academic-oriented programming with the children instead of playing video games or watching TV. Having the computers and being able to participate virtually has dramatically increased participation in the parent-engagement sessions, Malich says.

“Once we get the parents navigating the Chromebooks, it affords us an opportunity to push out messaging about workforce and training opportunities as well,” says Malich. “Beyond just helping the kids, it can become a multi-faceted tool many of the families haven’t had. We can help parents navigate how to fill out online applications, find virtual jobs and other important information they need to be able to engage in the electronic world we now live in.

“The focus remains on the children, but helping the parents create better situations for themselves improves things for the entire family.”

Most of the education support employees working for the Clark County School District in Las Vegas may soon find themselves switching state and national unions. A loss for the National Education Association will turn into a gain for the Teamsters.

The Education Support Employees Association is affiliated with the Nevada State Education Association and NEA. It is the exclusive bargaining agent for some 11,000 school district support personnel in Las Vegas. Historically, about half of those employees have been union members. ESEA calls itself the .

For almost 20 years, ESEA has been locked in an organizing and legal battle with Teamsters Local 14 for members and exclusive representative status. In 2006 and 2015, the , but Nevada law requires a challenger to receive a majority of the entire bargaining unit, not just of votes cast. That law was ultimately upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court after years of litigation.

While ESEA held on to its negotiating status, it continued to hemorrhage members to the Teamsters. Reliable numbers are rare, but an examination of ESEA’s dues income indicates a range of somewhere between 2,500 and 4,500 active members remaining. Teamsters Local 14 had 2,487 active members as of December 2018, according to its to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Though the law makes it highly unlikely for ESEA to be unseated in a representation election, it was becoming more and more possible that the union could no longer demonstrate that its members constituted a majority of the bargaining unit. The Clark County School District could then withdraw recognition and no union would have exclusive bargaining rights.

To avoid this possible outcome, ESEA and Teamsters Local 14 laid down their swords and entered into negotiations to split the bargaining unit.

Teamsters 14 confirmed to Union Report that talks were taking place. ESEA did not respond to that request, but two days after it was made, the union :

“Representatives of ESEA have been meeting with representatives of Teamsters Local 14 in order to determine the possibility of resolving the issue of representation of [education support professionals] in the Clark County School District. For the past two decades, ESEA and its members have been locked in a series of disputes with Teamsters Local 14 regarding who is the exclusive bargaining agent for the ESPs in Clark County. While ESEA has been victorious in all proceedings regarding these representational disputes, including the recent Nevada Supreme Court and [Employee-Management Relations Board] rulings in our favor, the leadership of ESEA feels that it is important to explore all options in order to ensure unity among the ESPs in the Clark County School District during difficult times in our district. We will keep our members updated as additional information comes available.”

A source with knowledge of the negotiations told Union Report that talks center on ESEA retaining the members and exclusive bargaining rights for teacher aides, administrative support staffers and others near the classroom, while the Teamsters would get blue-collar workers such as bus drivers, custodians and food service personnel.

This would not be a done deal even if the unions reached a settlement, because any alteration of the bargaining unit would require school district approval. However, should the district refuse, the unions would be able to appeal to the state Employee-Management Relations Board. The board might welcome a congenial solution to a decades-long dispute.

This would be a clear win for the Teamsters, which despite its support among district employees was unable to achieve exclusive representative status for any of them. ESEA also would benefit from an end to the war. The union has seen its finances suffer and survived only by .

The picture is far less bright for the Nevada State Education Association. It is already reeling from the loss of the Clark County Education Association, the exclusive representative of Las Vegas’s 18,000 public school teachers, which left the state union and NEA last year and became independent.

Losing its grip on most of Las Vegas public school employees would leave the state union with less than half of its former statewide membership. It received additional bad news last week, whens a district court ruled it had no further claim on dues collected by the county unit during the dispute between the two unions. The county unit is now free to return those dues to its members.

This is doubly painful because that money was used as collateral for a $1.2 million loan from NEA last year. The loan has an interest rate of 3.5 percent, but I suspect NEA will forgive it and write it off.

In an effort to raise more revenue, the state union put its Las Vegas offices up for sale. The 9,000-square-foot building is the headquarters for both ESEA and NEA Southern Nevada, the affiliate the state union created in the aftermath of the county unit’s secession.

Originally offered for , the property, about 4.5 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, is now on the market for .

These incidents have no great effect on Nevada as a pro-union state. All these employees will still be represented by a union. But as an NEA affiliate, Nevada will be added to the national union’s life support list.