A U.S. Department of Education grant, announced this week, will enable CCSD to convert Lyal Burkholder Middle School and Carroll M. Johnston Middle School into magnet schools.
Why it matters: The grant will enable these schools to offer a rigorous, interdisciplinary, STEM-infused curriculum while also bringing together students from different social, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds.
- The addition of Burkholder and Johnston means CCSD will have 44 magnet schools in its national award-winning magnet program.
“Every year we have our families asking us for more and more of these options, so this is our way of being responsive to that and adding more opportunities for our students to engage in magnet learning,” says Gia Moore, director of CCSD Career and Technical Education.
What they’re saying: Melanie Poster, principal of Johnston Middle School, is excited that this will be the first magnet middle school in North Las Vegas.
“It is going to build opportunities for our students – for their future – so that we can get more students into college, more students into the science field, more students into those career and technical education fields,” Poster says.
The big picture: Students in middle school are at an age when they “start to dream about what they want to be when they grow up,” says Christopher Hermes, principal of Burkholder Middle School.
“The knowledge we instill in middle school is that steppingstone to that career path,” Hermes says. “We’re going to provide those access points for that.”
