Carson Montessori faces issues in finding — and funding — new location

Carson City’s Montessori has been educating a portion of the capitol city’s children for over a decade. They quickly outgrew their space, and have been looking to relocate for about 13 years.

Now, an end may be in sight. According to Carson Montessori Executive Director Jessica Daniels, the school has been looking at the vacant Silver State Charter School complex on Fairview since Silver State shut its doors. After funding fell out more than once, they’re at it again, and a tentative offer of over one million dollars has been offered for the space.

“We are the only school in the district to have a balanced budget and funds in reserve,” said Daniels. “Everyone else is in the red. However, finding a lender with reasonable interest prices is still difficult.”

In 2018, Nevada voters agreed that marijuana taxes should go towards the schools after Nevada has repeatedly been in the bottom of the barrel of American education. However, Nevada lawmakers instead decided to divert the tax money into the state’s rainy day fund. At the end of this recent session, Gov. Sisolak announced Assembly Bill 309 which would return those funds into education, and Senate Bill 543 would have the “Nevada State Education Fund” replace the original “Distribute School Account” as a way to keep all funding in a single pot, as opposed to the 80 plus revenue sources it currently has.

However, Northern schools will most likely not see much of that money, as an overwhelming amount of funding goes to the south and its much denser population; especially, says Daniels, when it comes to Charter schools.

“There are many, many charter schools in Clark County,” said Daniels. “So while there are grants and funding, we don’t meet the standards needed, such as percent of children in poverty.”

Carson Montessori is a public school, not a private school. Their funding comes from the same charter-school-pot as the rest of the district and state, but, because they are separate from the district, that means they aren’t lent money in the same way. Charter schools, it would seem, are a “riskier” choice for banks, no matter how long they’ve been established.

At any given time, Carson Montessori houses around 250 children from Kindergarten to Eighth grade. The curriculum is “student led” and focused on real-life and hands-on education. The school has an in-school culinary program, a hydroponic garden in which all of the produce they grow is then donated to FISH to feed Carson’s homeless and hungry population, 3D printers and STEM courses, and during the last session they partnered with law makers to pass a unanimous bill written by the students to make neon the state’s official element.

“Our students are incredibly involved in every aspect of the school,” said Daniels. “They write proposals on projects they want to explore and present them to me. We’re all a family here; if tragedy strikes any family, within a day all of the students have banded together to figure out what they can do to help.”

The industrial area Carson Montessori has been located in for over a decade is not technically zoned for a school, but they were grandfathered in during zoning changes. But it makes it incredibly difficult to expand. Last year, while updates were being made to the building, some of the children had to be bussed to the Children’s Museum for their studies, which had a negative affect on their education.

Originally, Daniels said, they had a partnership worked out with Western Nevada College where the school could be held there, sharing space with the college. They had plans to create a Fine Arts program in the current Early Childhood Development building, and build a new building to hold that program, the Montessori school, and an events and banquet room accessible to the college, Montessori, and the community.

However, plans fell through for the expansion along with WNC’s idea to build dormitories when funding was cut short.

“It would have been perfect,” said Daniels. “It’s still on the back burner, but for the time being, we have to look at other options.”

The old Silver State Charter School complex on Fairview has stood vacant since the 2017-2018 school year after the Nevada State Public School Authority voted unanimously to shut the charter’s doors. In that iteration, it was renamed Argent Preparatory Academy and had been struggling for years with low graduation rates.

This will not be the first time Montessori has set out to relocate to the complex, which, under NRS codes has to be first offered to another educational facility.

While the intent to purchase the property has been accepted, Montessori is waiting to find proper funding for the property, and until then, are stuck in their current location.