Nye School District program receives extra funding

To those who are not aware, the Nye County School District Homeless Activity/Scholarship Fund ensures the right of students to go to school even when they are homeless or don’t have a permanent address.

It also provides students the opportunity to achieve the same high quality academic standards by eliminating barriers to their education.

As such, on Monday, April 13, officials from Golden Gaming presented a check totaling $4,050.17 to support the program.

On hand to receive the funds were school district Assistant Superintendent Kyle Lindberg and the program’s coordinator, Linda Fitzgibbons.

“This is absolutely a godsend because we rely upon our community donations to help our families and this is a huge shot in the arm for us,” Fitzgibbons said. “A little bit of the money will go into the scholarship fund and a little bit into the activity fund. Whenever we have donations, we try to split it up a little bit.”

Fitzgibbons also said each year, the school district offers the scholarship to a high school student in Nye County that has been identified as a student in transition in the homeless student program.

“We are actually collecting applications as we speak, and we’ve had really good success with our students who have gone off to college,” she said. “I had one particular young lady who won a scholarship four years ago and she is getting her third bachelor’s degree. I also heard of another young lady who earned a scholarship three years ago and she’s graduating from Great Basin College with her degree in nursing this year, so this is a real step up and a great thing for our kids.”

Pahrump Nugget Assistant General Manager Darin Yunek spoke about how the donations are generated to provide much-needed money to area charities and organizations.

“Every three months, we do this, and this is our second one that we have provided a donation to a charity organization, so it’s fairly recent,” he said. “After our guests cash out when they do their gaming, if there’s a little change left over they have an opportunity to put it in the donation box. We have an in-house committee that we vote and select the organization. It’s really the community giving back to itself.”

Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes