Faculty members at Mt. Charleston Pre-K Elementary School are cheering members of the Pahrump Rotary Club for a recent donation of educational materials.
Joe Gent, director of Alternative, Distance, Adult and Pre-K Education, said he, staff members and especially the students, were very appreciative of the generous gesture.
He noted the donation nearly doubled the amount of reading materials the school received last year from the local Rotarians.
“The Pahrump Valley Rotary Club recognizes the importance of teaching the children the desire to love books at a young age,” Gent said. “Because they recognize that, it is their intent to do whatever they can to help us promote reading with a love of literature and books, and that’s why they work with their resources who put together the book bags that were sent home with all of our students. The amount of books they gave us was really a surprise. They have had some generous donations to their program and they were able to pass it along to us. It was pretty awesome.”
As a result of the donation, Gent said he plans to meet with Rotary Club members later this month to discuss the educational activities at the campus.
“I’m going to visit with them and tell them what we do down here and try to help the kids get ready, and get a jump start as they enter kindergarten,” he said. “Mt. Charleston School reopened last year. Years ago, it was a full K-through 5 elementary school. Now it’s a Pre-K elementary, and we service both students who qualify for the Nevada Ready Pre-K Grant, for the four-year-olds, and we also service the Pahrump area Special Education and Early Childhood students, who are the three-and four-year-olds. The kids are really enjoying their materials, and they are a wonderful age to work with.”
Additionally, Gent spoke about how the COVID-19 outbreak has affected operations at the school.
He noted that at present, student enrollment has experienced a slight decline.
“Last year we topped out at about 209 students, so it has dropped slightly this year,” he said. “We think it’s because of the pandemic, so a lot of parents are kind of holding onto their kids, and keeping them at home. Right now, we are over 130 students. As far as operations are concerned here, it’s weird having to wear a mask all day, and unfortunately, we can’t use our big playground yet. We do a lot of movement on the inner-circle pavement, which is what we call ‘gross motor time’.”
Social distancing and additional safety procedures were other topics of discussion Gent touched on.
“Along with that, no volunteers are allowed on our campus this year, and no parents are allowed to come and volunteer because of the pandemic, so that’s kind of different and it can be quite a challenge at times, but we are making it work out.”
Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes