Leading Social Indicators:
Quality of Life in the Silver State

Justice & Democracy Forum Series
UNLV Center for Democratic Culture
William S. Boyd School of Law
Friday, November 5, 2004*

Children and Youth in Nevada
Session 1. 9:00 - 12:00 a.m.

Introduction

PROFESSOR SHALIN: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the forum. I'm Dmitri Shalin, Director of UNLV Center for Democratic Culture, and this is the third gathering in the Justice and Democracy Forum series that is sponsored by the UNLV Center for Democratic Culture and William S. Boyd School of Law.

About once a year, we bring together politicians, scholars, and community members to reflect on the problems confronting our community. Our first forum was on how we select, elect, or appoint our judges. The second one was a debate about tort reform. And this forum is on quality of life in the state of Nevada.

This forum is tied to the National Survey of Social Health – the survey conducted by Fordham University that rates all 50 states on several parameters. Here are some of the leading indicators that are part of that national survey -- infant mortality, child abuse, child poverty, youth suicide, teenage drug use, high school dropouts, teenage birth, unemployment, wages, health care coverage, age 65-plus poverty, life expectancy, violent crime, alcohol-related traffic fatalities, affordable housing, and inequality in family income. To the 16 indicators, we have added two more, somewhat peculiar to our state, although not all other states. One has to do with gaming, gamblers and problem gambling, and the other one covers sex industry issues.

We have two sessions. The morning one is on children, youth and schooling in Nevada. The afternoon session will be on health care, housing, gaming issues and so on. Governor Guinn's office indicated an interest in this project and will be working with us to produce the first social health report for our state. Several states in the nation now have made such a report mandatory. I hope someday we'll produce it on a regular occasion as well.

Before I turn the floor over to our first moderator, Professor Mary Berkheiser, I would like to recognize Andrew Bell, Associate Dean of College of Liberal Arts, who wants to say a few words of welcome to the forum panelists.

DEAN BELL: Thank you, Dmitri. I'd just like to extend an official welcome on behalf of the University of Nevada Las Vegas and the William S. Boyd School of Law and the College of Liberal Arts to all of you this morning, and extend my hopes for a good, successful day of doing what the university, the school, the college is devoted to -- asking good questions, doing the hard work, thinking things through, and with a spirit of moral earnestness. That's quite a disquieting list of indicators that Dmitri just cited. I suppose the real cause for optimism is that there are people that are asking the right questions, and are doing the right business, and all common betterment of independent-minded citizens in this community, this state, and in this republic. So all my best wishes for a successful day. Thank you.

PROFESSOR BERKHEISER: Good morning. It's my pleasure to be here. My name's Mary Berkheiser. I'm a professor here at this fine Boyd School of Law with our Wiener Rogers library, and our Thomas and Mack Legal Clinic. One of the hats, among the many that I find myself wearing at this law school, is the hat of co-director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic, which was one of the original clinics that we founded at this law school, so the issues on this morning's panel are near and dear to my heart and to those of some of my colleagues who are here today.

I don't want to take a lot of time introducing our panelists. You will learn how qualified they are to speak on the issues they speak of when you hear them speak. Let me just say this: Each panelist will speak for 15 to 20 minutes. If you have questions to clarify something a panelist has said, please feel free to raise your hand and be recognized. However, if there are longer questions, we'd like to really save those for the end in this, the wrap-up sort of period after all of our panelists have spoken. And we will try to stay somewhat on schedule. I know it can be difficult when there're so many interesting issues to discuss. But I'd like to get us going here this morning with our first panel of speakers on child abuse, teen pregnancies, and unwed mothers. By the way, we will take about a 10-minute break after our second panel to allow people to mill about and our Court Reporter to replenish his supply of paper.

So first off, speaking to issues of child abuse, teen pregnancies, and unwed mothers, we have with us two very knowledgeable and experienced women who have worked in these areas for many years, Susan Klein Rothschild, the Director of the Clark County Department of Family Services, and my colleague, Professor and Associate Dean of Clinical Studies, Annette Appell, who is also the co-director of the Child Welfare Clinic here at the law school. We'll start off with Susan, and then go to Annette. I'm going to be using first name, I guess, for the people that I know. I hope that's okay. It's a friendly gathering. And welcome. Thank you for being here.

MS. KLEIN: Thank you for having me. Just by way of introduction, let me tell you that I've worked in the area of child abuse/neglect for over 25 years. It's a passion for me. I worked here in Nevada for the last three years. I worked in Colorado before that. And for eight years, I was consultant and worked in about 20 different states, all in the area of child abuse/neglect.

When we talk about child abuse and neglect, what do we mean? Well, the statute defines child abuse and neglect as physical or mental injury of nonaccidental nature, sexual abuse or sexual exploitation, negligent treatment or maltreatment caused by or allowed by the person responsible for his welfare under circumstances which indicate that the child's death or welfare's harmed or threatened with harm. What that means is you're talking about harm of children by people who are parents or in care-giving roles who are responsible for protecting the children. We have different types of child abuse and neglect, including physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse. All of them can result in significant harm to children.

I say to you that my experience before I worked in the field was that I made an assumption like many people do that physical abuse is the worst kind of abuse. Certainly, physical abuse is terrible. But approximately half of the deaths of children in this country due to abuse/neglect are the result of neglect. Neglect can be as dangerous to children as physical abuse is. We're talking about direct harm, particularly young children who are at most risk of harm. In our country, I think there's a history that parents have the right to raise their children the way they choose to raise their children. Families have that ability. But there's a belief that the government intervenes when the family's not reaching a minimum level and that there are safety concerns for the children. In abuse or neglect, that means when a parent is maltreating the child or allowing maltreatment of that child. Some people in our society must report suspected abuse or neglect. If they think a child may be abused or neglected, they must report it. Those are individuals who may be involved in the medical profession, school professionals, others such as that. But many calls related to child abuse and neglect may come from people in the community, neighbors, friends, people who choose to remain anonymous, people who care about kids and want to make sure children are protected.

All of us have seen children in families, in grocery stores, anywhere in the community, and you see a situation that may leave you feeling uncomfortable. Is that child safe with the person who’s responsible for caring for that child? Our responsibility in the public agency is to receive reports of abuse/neglect, determine if they, in fact, may be legitimate, and meet their legal criteria for us to investigate. We do investigate. We pursue to learn what's happened on behalf of the child. It involves interviewing and seeing the child and any of his or her own siblings, the parents, any others, to determine if this child is safe. Bottom line for us first and foremost is safety of the child. If the child is safe, we conclude the investigation. If the child is safe now, an immediate factor, but may be at future risk of harm, we may make a referral of the family to a community service, a community agency. We may offer services ourselves. If we feel like there's an imminent, right-now risk to the child, if the worker leaves and the child may be injured, then we have a responsibility to remove that child from the parent or to bring services into that home so the child does not have to be removed to assure the child's safety.

Whenever a child is removed from their parents and caregivers, it's our responsibility to make reasonable efforts to return them and reunite them. And how you define "reasonable efforts" is just a very tricky thing, obviously. But in our community, we do what we can to provide services to families. We do what we can to identify relatives. If a child cannot be with his or her parents, is there a relative who can provide safe care? Many times relatives are alternatives. Most children who are involved in our system are not removed from their homes. Most children remain with their parents, obtain the services. But there are a number of children who are removed. I want to give you some high-level statistics to get a sense of what we're talking about.

In 2000, there were an estimated 879,000 victims of child maltreatment in the United States. In 2000, an estimated 1200 children died because of child abuse or neglect in this country. The number of children born each year exposed to drugs or alcohol is estimated between a half a million and three quarters of a million annually.

The number of children in foster care in the country is a little more than half a million children. In Nevada in 2003, there were somewhere between 12,000 and 13,000 reports of suspected child abuse or neglect that were received in our state statewide. About 22 percent, a little less than a quarter of those reports, were substantiated. "Substantiated" means after the investigation, they were found to be accurate and true.

Neglect is the most frequent type of maltreatment in Nevada. Physical abuse follows as the second most frequent type of maltreatment. I suggest to you that many out of home cases are about the youngest children, because children who are younger are more vulnerable. They do not have the ability to protect themselves or meet their basic needs.

Between 1993 and 2003, we've had a number of children who have died because of abuse or neglect in our state. The low was three a year. The high was 18 in a year. That's a lot of children.

Let me share information about Clark County. It's the county I'm most familiar with. In 2000, we received 6,359 reports of abuse and neglect in which we did a Child Protective Services investigation. That averaged 530 per month. Between January and September of this year, we've already, in the first nine months of the year, received 6,757 reports of abuse and neglect that were investigated. That's an average of 751 a month, or about a 29 percent increase between 2000 and 2003 in our county.

We've seen a dramatic increase in the number of children who need to be removed from their parents' care for their own safety. I'm very, very concerned about this trend. In 2000 to 2003, somewhere between 3,300 kids and 3,600 kids were removed from their parents' care and placed in shelter care for some period of time. Emergency shelter is used when the child is not safe at home. This year, between January and September alone, we've already had over 3,400 children removed that remain in shelter care. That's up from an average of about 280 per month to 380 per month. The increase has been absolutely substantial and I am struggling with trying to figure out why. It doesn't match the population growth. It doesn't match the poverty levels. Certainly, many people in Nevada, many people in our Child Welfare system are from poor families. Many people in our Child Welfare system are also families where substance abuse or alcohol abuse are a huge factor. It's estimated in different research across the country that as many as 80 percent of our families may have substance abuse and alcohol abuse problems. A number of our families have domestic violence issues or mental health issues by the parents. So we're trying to look at what some of the factors are. I am concerned. I am very concerned by what's happening in our community

And I would like to enter a dialogue with you after our presentation about what you see as what may be changing and might be contributing to the increase. I share with you that in Nevada, we have changed. The legislature, I think, made an excellent decision and helped change the organization of how Child Welfare services are provided. It used to be that Clark County, at the county level, would receive reports of a child abuse/neglect, would investigate them, would provide emergency shelter for children, and provide in-home services for families. But if a child could not return home, where services and ongoing foster care was needed, that was provided by the State through the Division of Child and Family Services, and adoption was provided by the State. Therefore, every child that needed an ongoing care needed to switch from the County to State. Every child needed to get a new worker. Every child needed a new placement. And that has added delays to the process. I'm happy to share with you that as of October 1st of this year, we no longer switch across from County to State, that all the foster care and adoption services are now being provided by the County. And part of our primary responsibility is not only to meet the emergency needs of children and families and the long-term needs, but look at how we serve families. I share with you, as a consultant working in 20 different states, one of the things I found is that California had many more children than Rhode Island did. They had almost a hundred thousand children in foster care at the time. But if you look at the individual families, the dynamics were very similar. These were families that had substance abuse, that had domestic violence, had similar criminal histories. But the way the agencies and organizations and the states responded resulted in different outcomes. I believe the way we provide services and intervene with families really does make a difference. So it's our responsibility to look at how we do that and how we can do that better.

I share with you a couple of things we've started since we've begun this integration process. One thing we started is an after-hours investigation unit. We recognized families don't just have crisis Monday through Friday 8:00 to 5:00. We have a unit of staff now whose job is to intervene at the time of crisis, up to 10:30 at night, every night of the week, as well as all day on weekends. If there's a domestic violence situation, if somebody' taken to jail, those are the situations which historically children were just placed in Child Haven and shelter and we were saying to the families, we'll help you come Monday morning or the next morning. We don't do that any more. We have a whole group of staff whose job is to intervene at the time of crisis, to say, is there an answer? Is there someone we can bring in to support alternative others, [we] can bring in to assist you? The after-hours investigation unit, which began as a unit of six people, has now grown to a unit of 10 investigators and is working more diligently.

We've added new staff to the agency over the last year or two. Beginning in July alone, the County government has added 22 positions to our department, which is incredible in this fiscal environment. We were not able to answer all the calls of people who felt like there was abuse of a child and investigate. So we are working intensively in adding positions. We've initiated a safety assessment tool. When a worker goes out to see a family, what is it they're assessing? How do we know we're looking at the same factors and making the same judgment? It's a huge decision to remove the child from the home, and that decision is traumatic for every child. We should not do it lightly. So we instituted a safety assessment tool for every worker across the state.

Clark County’s received a federal grant, I'm pleased to say, a five-year grant that will give us up to $500,000 a year up to five years to look how we can strengthen our system with particular emphasis on relatives and kin. If we have a child who cannot remain home, how can we better support those relatives who are often hanging out with very difficult children? The research also shows us that children who are different or perceived as different by parents are more difficult for us to parent. As a parent of two children, I will tell you, I have one child that fits the book, much easier to parent than the other one. So we are excited about using that federal grant to help wiht difficult children.

We've developed a universal process and tool. Anyone who wanted to be a foster parent or an adoptive parent, we used to assess them as a foster parent. They might care for a child for a couple of years, and then the child becomes legally free for adoption through the court process. We would go back and do an adoptive home assessment. We're not doing that again. We're doing a single assessment of every family. If the family is safe enough and good enough and appropriate enough to care for a child for two or three or four or whatever years, they're good enough for the rest of their lives. Let's look at assessing the right things up front. We're doing that with every family. We're doing that universally now in Clark County.

We're also looking at increasing the number of people who make the decisions about kids. When do you remove a child from their home? Where do you place a child? When do you consider termination of parental rights? These decisions should not be made by one person. We need a brain trust of people who have different perspectives and viewpoints. We're looking at team decision making about these key areas, like about case planning, what services are needed, and where we place the child. We are looking to use that intensively because too many children in foster care move too many times. And every time you move a foster care, you're adding to the damage and trauma of that child.

There's some very good research out of Illinois right now. They have some excellent access to data which we hope to get in the near future. We're working on that, aren't we? They can now tell us that for boys who were in foster care in Illinois, if they have more moves in foster care, there's greater likelihood of them being involved in the delinquency system. You’ll hear more about delinquency, and they made a direct correlation, very important. So the things we do every day in our work in child abuse/neglect have lifelong impacts that we need to consider for each child and what that means and how that means.

We're also doing a couple of other things I want to point out to you. When children are in crisis and they need emergency assistance, we've been traditionally using Child Haven as a shelter facility, which is a wonderful place. For anyone who's not been to Child Haven, I encourage you to visit any time. It's a wonderful, nurturing, caring environment with staff who work there who make it their life's work. We don't have a turnover of staff like most facilities do. But we're still a residential facility. And for some children, we know it's best to have children in a family home. And if at all possible, their own family. But if that's not possible, it should be another family home where there's a single caretaker, where there's a person, one person who's there 24 hours a day, because that's so important for bonding and attachment. We don't want to disturb kids as they grow up. So we have expanded the use of shelter foster homes for children who come into shelter. I tell you today we have approximately 130 children in Child Haven. We have approximately 100 more children who are in shelter foster homes. It's incredible. And that hundred children in shelter homes, almost every single one of them is under the age of 4. We have lots and lots of kids who need safe care.

So those are some of the things we're working on. I do want to come back and share with you -- I am concerned. I'm concerned about the growth in our community. I'm concerned about the capacity of the agencies in our community to serve families, because child abuse/neglect is so clearly associated with so many other things. Do families have their basic needs met for shelter and housing and utilities? Do families have alternatives for counseling and mental health services when and how they need them? Do families have substance abuse treatment when and how they need it? Because if that doesn't happen, those things contribute and that's what we're seeing in our [community].

I think there are three areas I would focus on in terms of stating priority needs in the areas of child abuse and neglect. First is to expand availability of community services and community providers. We need people in this community to serve families in need. What concerns me -- and I'll be right up front about this -- is an agency that deals in child abuse and neglect, we cannot say no at the door. We accept every call, every kid, every time. We cannot say no. But a lot of the factors that contribute to child abuse/neglect could be addressed be agencies if we had enough resources and those agencies have waiting lists. And those agencies have limits and numbers. So the same families and the same individuals who have mental health crisis who are backing up the emergency rooms are also parents. Where are their kids? And who's caring for those kids? We get calls of infants and toddlers being left alone. Infants and toddlers. So the better we do in our community of meeting peoples' basic needs when and how they need them, the better we will be, because you need to know when we see kids come to us, they don't just come to us as a result of child abuse/neglect. They come to us showing signs of not getting their basic needs met over a long period of time. We see toddlers with rotted teeth because they've been having bottle, just holding bottles, that's all they've had. We see kids who have never been to the doctor, not getting immunizations. Kids come to us with lice. We no longer have any furniture that's not made of plastic. Too many lice, too many insects. We have kids who have not had the basic holding and care and nurturing that an infant needs. What happens if an infant cries and the mom or dad or adult does not respond to their need? That cycle of attachment. Kids have a need. They get tense. They cry. They need someone who comes and meets that need and they go, "Ah." It's the repetition of that cycle of getting that need met in which an infant learns to attach and bond and trust. If an infant has trust, they can transfer it to other people. We have infants and toddlers and older kids who never develop trust because no one was there when they cried. They stopped crying. We have kids who run up to strangers to give them a hug because they don't know them any more than they know anyone else. They don't know who to trust. They don't know how to have relationships. You know and I know what happens to kids who don't have relationships as they grow up. They become a challenge in every other system in our society. We want to see the expansion of community services.

We clearly need more staff to address the needs of families and kids. As our numbers go up, how can we begin to keep on top of meeting these needs effectively? These are not families who need one or two things over a little bit of time. This is very intense. These court cases -- just so you know in Clark County, we almost don't have any cases that don't go to court and don't have civil action going on. We are all involved in court in all these cases. But a key factor in whether we are successful in finding a timely permanent home for a child, which is our goal -- a safe, permanent home for every child in a timely way, bottom line, safe, permanent home -- is the amount of time they have with the worker to do the job. Our work is about relationship, just like human beings are about relationship. If I have a good relationship with my worker or my parents, I learn to build on that. And if workers don't have that, we know that doesn't work. We have national information from the Child and Family Service reviews that talk to us about the frequency of visits between workers and parents, the frequency of visit between workers and kids. Those factors make a difference getting that positive outcome.

And I guess the last thing I say to you as a priority need -- we need more foster and adoptive families, because we have too many children who would do well and need an individual family who are now in group care. I'm concerned about that, because I'm concerned they're not developing those individual relationships and getting those needs met and we'll see them down the road. This is a high-level view of child abuse/neglect.

PROFESSOR BERKHEISER: Professor Annette Appell.

PROFESSOR APPELL: Good morning. How's the volume? I have a visual aid, so I'm going to stand near my visual aids.

I want to thank Professors Shalin and Berkheiser for bringing this diverse group of experts together and for looking at these important issues, and I'm very, very pleased and honored to be here.

I am law trained, not trained in the social sciences. There will be a little bit of numbers and I'm sure they'll be a little confusing. I don't do numbers. And I'm going to talk, I think, pick up on some of the things that, or echo some of the things that Susan said, but perhaps frame them a little bit differently.

I've been asked today, as Susan was, to speak about child abuse, teenage pregnancies and unwed mothers. So I want to do three things this morning, briefly. I want, first, to address an overarching point about how we frame and identify these topics. I then want to address the way our State treats abused children who are in or at risk of being removed, in State care, basically, who have been removed from their homes. And Susan's remarks today have given me a great deal of hope about the things that the County is doing regarding assessments and placements for children. And I'm going to end with a brief call to address the large immigrant population, the growing immigrant population that we have in this community, because I'm not sure that's being addressed today during the course of the panel presentations. But it's very important that we examine the special needs that immigrant families face as we look at the quality of life in the Silver State.

First, my overarching point is how we identify and examine social issues. And with full respect for the aims of this symposium and the wisdom of its organizers and participants, including myself, we customarily frame the issues of the particular topics of this portion of the panel as child abuse, teen pregnancies-and unwed mothers. My issue is that this framing narrows the gauge to individualized assessment and solutions. In other words, this framing seems to place the problem on the individuals who are abused or who abuse, on the teenagers who become pregnant, and on the mothers who are not wed. Instead, it seems it would be more fruitful and, I would argue, more just to look at these problems as issues of community support for families and children.

Regarding child abuse -- and I think that Susan made this point and, in effect, talked about child abuse and neglect and not child abuse -- the phrase "child abuse" is shorthand generally for child abuse/neglect that requires some form of governmental intervention. And I think it's the wrong shorthand, since the vast majority of child protective issues are related to neglect -- here and nationally.

Keeping in mind, first, the vagaries of categorizing and counting findings of incidents of abuse and neglect -- and our state is notorious, we all laughed at data problems regarding Child Welfare -- it seems that in 2002 of the 6,428 substantiated instances of child abuse/neglect, 1124 involved incidences of physical or sexual abuse. The remainder, 5,464, appear to be incidents of neglect. 2,442 of this 5,464 are in the other category, a category apparently encompassing domestic violence and substance abuse, which I can take to mean -- and I may be wrong -- children who are exposed to parental substance abuse, of spousal or intimate domestic violence, and intimate partner domestic violence. So I think of that in the neglect category, but it's not clear. It is that type of conduct, it’s more akin to neglect, because it is adult conduct directed elsewhere, not at the child, although the child feels very, very serious effects.

So anyway, if we look at these numbers, just in a very broad way, we see that most substantiated incidents of child maltreatment, 60 to 80 percent are for neglect. Nationally the numbers are similar. Generally about under a third of the substantiated cases had incidents of physical or sexual abuse. Yet, we continue to characterize the problem, particularly in the popular media, as one of child abuse with all of its connotations.

Let's look briefly at the neglect categories in Nevada. I think Susan mentioned them. Physical neglect -- and those are up here, I don't know if they're -- I don't know if you can see them well enough. Basically, and this data's taken from the Kids Count, Nevada's stats that they give to the feds and also federal data. Basically, physical neglect refers to things like lack of basic care, clothing, housing, et cetera, lack of supervision, another neglect round, inattentive parents or failures in child care arrangements, leaving children too young without adequate supervision while a parent shops, works, sleeps, does drugs, gambles. Unfortunately, we see that here in this particular community. Educational neglect -- not insuring that the child is in school. This could be related to lack of supervision, transportation, or being unable or unwilling to monitor or control the child. Abandonment -- leaving a child without a care plan or support or being unavailable when the caregiver can no longer care for the child. Emotional abuse or neglect -- this category includes having intellectually or emotionally-impaired child and being emotionally unavailable, having unreasonable expectations of the child or dissocializing the child, whatever that means. Medical neglect -- being unable to afford health care, having differences of opinion regarding the appropriate medical treatment, failing to appreciate and meet the child's medical needs. And then there's the other category which I discussed earlier.

Now I don't want to minimize child abuse. But the problems of neglect are more pervasive and tractable and, as Susan pointed out, deadly, unfortunately. Moreover, there are close and complex connections between neglect and poverty in that poverty is often confused with neglect and impoverished families do not have the resources to mediate the underlying causes of neglect and abuse relating to substance abuse, mental illness, and violence in a general, a dearth of supports basically for families. Thus, presenting child protection issues as abuse obscures the financial and social isolation families and children most at risk face.

And visual aid No. 2 -- this is a chart from DCFS, indicating the -- Nevada's DCFS, indicating the family stressors basically that they've identified that have led to protective services involvement in 2002. And we see on this list things like alcohol and drug dependency affecting over 2,000 families. Health problems of caretakers -- 660 incidents. Health problem [involving] children -- 760 instances. Insufficient income -- 1584 families. Inadequate housing -- 760 families. The list goes on. Domestic violence, which has been mentioned -- nearly 1,000 families. Parents who are unable to cope -- 2,042 families. And another section, which includes stress factors that the Child Welfare system hasn't been able to identify or may be too diverse to categorize -- over 5,000. But these stress factors I've listed, that are listed in the longer list on this visual aid, are largely social and community issues around housing, income, health care, and mental health care. So we can characterize child protection more accurately, instead of as abuse, but as a welfare or protection issue and think about them that way.

First and foremost, as we know, and as Susan mentioned, the privilege and obligation to protect and provide for children's welfare rests with the parents. But also, it's a community responsibility to provide the supports necessary for families to function and children to be well. And that means -- I like the way Susan put it -- having the services needed when and how they need them, basically, having things for people in the community when and how they need them.

I'm sorry if I misquoted you too, Susan. But that's the idea.

And a number of these things Susan mentioned, but let me [mention] perhaps some other. We need safe and engaged schools. We need after-school programs, parks where children can play and where parents can go and meet other parents and provide support and community networks that way. We need affordable and safe child care, affordable medical care, affordable and available drug treatment, affordable housing, agencies that provide material supports to families at risk, adequate and available community-based mental health services for children and adults, and families together, and redouble efforts to diminish the unexpectedly high levels of domestic violence in our community.

Characterizing the problem as child abuse does not evoke these community norms and does not invite community solutions. Instead, it invites a form of child saving we know does not work well, does not serve children, and does a disservice to the pluralistic principles on which this democratic public was founded. Moreover, characterizing the issue as abuse obscures the known risk children face as a result of being removed from their families, from their neighborhoods, their homes, their schools. And that's a risk that I want to come back to a little bit later, but something we have to really think about when we're talking about Child Welfare.

Teenage pregnancy, the second category for this panel. Again, this phrase directs our gaze to the pregnant girl, rather than at the larger systemic issues that face or fail girls and contribute to their inability to control or postpone their reproductive lives. These include lack of information, lack of options, inability to perceive options. Those of us who have dealt with youth understand the limitations of forward thinking and understanding the implications of their actions. Coercion, and lack of access to or control over birth control. Focusing on pregnancy also foreshadows what we can do for pregnant and parenting teenage girls. First, give them opportunities regarding whether to birth or to keep the child once born, including both the controversial [options] of adoption and abortion. If they keep the baby, make sure they have child care. Make sure they can stay in school so that they will be able to improve their outlook beyond having children, will minimize having more children in their teen years. Provide other supports if those teenage parents, own parents, are unwilling to provide, such as a place to live, parenting assistance, the kind of wrapping one's arms around the new unit, the teenage mother and her child.

The third topic of the panel is unwed mothers. This phrase, too, focuses our gaze on the person and it is especially loaded in an often moralistic way. Identifying unwed mothers as the problem masks so many deep and complex issues around gender, class, and race that we could be here all day talking about it. I promise we won't do that, and I won't do that. But problematizing unwed mothers targets individualized, stereotyped women while admitting the fact that our political and financial economies privatize dependency. What we do is we leave the rearing of children in private hands, which is a good thing under the principles of liberal democracy, but we do not provide the public supports on many levels, including health care, child care, and income support for families to rear their children. Because even in two-parent families, increasingly both parents must work to support the family. While we force single poor mothers to enter the work force rather than remain at home and care for their children. And then we don't even necessarily provide the means for them to obtain an education and job training, but instead force them, in many communities, to take low-wage jobs which really mean they can't support their family and certainly can't do much to improve the lives of their children.

There's no question that single parents are between a rock and a hard place in having to provide both the financial and child care role functions in the family. Nor is it a controversial assertion that a parent cannot raise a family on minimum wage. Two incomes, a stay-at-home mom or dad, grandmother or grandfather sure helps the family's economic and perhaps emotional health. But the truth is that poor families, working families, even middle-class families with one or two parents are struggling to provide for their children. And this is a community problem.

My main point here is to encourage us today in this process of assessing the quality of life in the Silver State to look more broadly at what all parents and all children have in common and what we, as a community, can do to meet their needs with special attention to those most vulnerable among us who cannon do it on their own.

Now, my second issue is our care and treatment of children in substitute care, children who have been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect and are placed in State, and now County, primary care, generally foster care, but also higher levels of care like group homes, other institutions, and unfortunately psychiatric hospitals. And we've just undergone a federal review of our foster care system. It's kind of a silly and superficial process that requires an extraordinary amount of effort and resources on the part of the State agencies to find out what they, and we all, pretty much know, the strengths and weaknesses of the agencies. But it's a good thing in some ways in that these reviews at least shine a light on the Child Welfare agencies and threaten to administer sanctions if the State’s not improved or overcome the deficiencies that were found.

Nevada, like most states, though perhaps a little bit more, was found to be failing its children in many ways during this review process, ways that mattered to families and in ways that anyone who had even a remote, you know, relationship to the Child Welfare system was not surprised about. Nevada is now then engaged in developing a program improvement plan to meet the federal guidelines in the areas that Nevada was deficient. Unfortunately, so far it's not terribly encouraging. The plan is formalistic and it makes promises that have been made for years but have still not been realized. And it seems to be terribly inorganic in that it speaks the language of Child Welfare professionals and bureaucracies and not really of the community. I understand it is a bureaucratic document, but it seems quite cold.

In particular, I want to focus on the children who are in State care or relying on the Child Welfare system to protect them when their parents are unable to do so. These are our most vulnerable children and we are in this state failing them miserably. Of course, it's difficult to know how miserably because, again, we come back to the lack of reliable data, and Susan's not responsible for most of this. I don't see any faces from DCFS. But for some reason, over the years the State has not been able to marshal data.

So what I'm reduced to are anecdotes based on my experiences and experience of my colleagues here and at the Clark County Legal Services, Children's Attorneys Project and at the Special Public Defender, which has a couple of attorneys who represent parents. Children in foster care are moving around way too much. They have an extraordinarily high number of placements that are not simply related to the old bifurcated system. We used to blame it on that -- the County places them first, then they go to the State. It's way worse than that. I sit in court and routinely hear children who have been in five, 10, 15, 20, even more than 20 placements in their time in State care. And it's not -- you know, it's not occasional. I hear that a lot. I don't think we have a child in our small case load across the hall in the clinic that has been in less than five placements, and some in many, many more. And Susan alluded to this. Moving a child -- I mean, think about when you move. Think about, you know, when you have a relationship that breaks up or a divorce, same difference. You move homes, how stressful and difficult that is. Now you take a child and you do that one time is bad, two times is bad, [what about] 20 times? It's unspeakable.

Then, our foster children, and especially a lot of these kids, but who have been mistreated the most by their families and by the system are really heavily drugged. Shockingly so. They can't function in school sometimes, they're so highly drugged. They can't stay awake. Our foster children are also placed for long periods in very restrictive psychiatric settings. It's no wonder if you move around 20 times, it's hard for them to adjust to their various places. But we shouldn't be placing them for long periods in psychiatric hospitals. And this is due very much because of our lack of qualified and equipped foster and group homes and foster parents to care for our lack of supports for these children in the community and their foster homes and in the group homes.

Now also, our foster children who cannot return to their families are staying in care for long periods because we do not have the expertise, resources, or apparently the will in our state to get our kids adopted. These are the kids who can't go home, for whatever reason. And some of these kids require a lot of care. Most of the kids who are adopted from -- who have been in foster care adopted by their foster parents, that's true nationally, and I think probably here, but I'm not sure if we have data about that, but there are a lot of kids who don't get adopted by their foster homes, by their foster parents. Judge Hardcastle who's our Juvenile Judge here in Clark County -- and will continue to be, it looks like, after the election -- has made countless findings against DCFS, and now DFS as of October 1st, for failing to make reasonable efforts to get children adopted. These findings deprive this state of federal monies for these children. Yet, in the year or two or three that Judge Hardcastle has been doing this with regard to the State, the State hasn't responded as far as I can tell. The judges keep making these findings on new cases, on the same old cases, and I've seen no improvement in this very important area of -- and very specialized area of finding adoptive homes for hard-to-place children. And it is doable, and people are doing it around the country. We have apparently no plans to do that here, although I don't know what the County's up to. I look forward to . . . it, because I'm sure I will see a plan for that to happen.

So in my experience and research, which is pretty extensive here and in other states, the State is a poor parent, and I mean that, the government, not just the County, is as bad or worse as a poor parent, but different than many of the parents from whom the children are removed. So you know, you've got bad parents on both sides, arguably, and I use "bad" with parenthesis. But even the best state cannot provide the kind of flesh and blood, individualized and relatively conflict- and interest-free care the children need. So we need to do better to move our kids out of institutional care as efficiently and safely as possible. I fear that in our system there is very little accountability and support for the state and county, because we have little community organization here. The agencies are not terribly transparent and there's very little legal representation for children and even less for parents, and it's particularly true in Clark County. I think in the rural counties and in Washoe, [things are done] better than we do in this area. We have very smart, very good-willed, and very, very highly competent people in our Child Welfare leadership. But the community still must support and push them. That means being at the table. That means being vocal with the legislature to provide the means necessary to protect our most vulnerable children and families. That means holding our Child Welfare agencies accountable and expecting more transparency. That means demanding data. And that means -- that means coming down to the Juvenile Court sometimes and sitting in there and seeing what's going on.

Finally, let me conclude, at least by mentioning immigrant families. It's an area that I don't have much expertise in, but I feel should be -- should be at least mentioned. The immigrant families are very -- are generally very, very strong and healthy. But they're also on average challenged by things like parents with less education, low wage work with no benefits, language barriers, discrimination and racism, poverty and related risk factors, and lack of supports such as TANF, food stamps and Medicaid. I urge us to consider the special needs of our strong and growing immigrant population while we assess and improve the quality of life in the Silver State.

PROFESSOR BERKHEISER: Thank you very much to our first panelists. I think that you would agree, that you would agree with me that we don't need TV at this time.

We have much that's live and happening here at the Boyd School of Law. Susan Klein Rothschild and Annette Appell have gotten us off to the kind of start that I knew they would, by framing the issues, by setting the stage, helping us understand the importance of public -- and not just the public -- but community support of all kinds, and of challenging, as I know my colleague Annette Appell always does, assumptions that we make and characterizations of issues. I think we're going to see very interesting -- I look forward to seeing how the information we've gotten from these two speakers plays out, as I suspect it will, when we move to some of the other issues of children and youth in Nevada, particularly when we think, if we do, as the real problem being neglect of children, not abuse of children, that more intractable problem of neglect.

So we now will excuse these panelists from their chairs, and invite our second round of panelists to come on down.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Like a TV show.

PROFESSOR BERKHEISER: My mother was living with me for over a year, and she just loves that show, that "Come on down" show.

Today we are really fortunate to have with us two distinguished and knowledgeable speakers, presenters, workers in the fields of juvenile justice.

Senator Valerie Wiener has long been a tremendous advocate for juvenile justice and for juvenile justice reforms in the state of Nevada. She just shared with me that probably over half of her legislative agenda has been either directly on indirectly related to issues of juvenile justice. As a result of a bill that she sponsored back -- how many years ago was that, Senator, that we had our first study committee on juvenile justice issues -- 1997, so seven years ago. We had our first study committee on juvenile justice. And those committees continue. And the reforms in juvenile justice that I myself have seen in the past six years have been remarkable. We are making some strides, and as you know, we still have a long way to go.

And Fritz Reese is here today. He stepped ably into the shoes of Kirby Burgess when Kirby, who is the Director of Juvenile Justice Administration for Clark County, was suddenly called out of town. Fritz is the Assistant Department Head of Juvenile Justice Services, and he will start off this panel, and there may be some sort of back and forth between them, between our two panelists. Fritz, of course, will be able to talk about services that are being provided and sort of new wave of activity in our juvenile justice administration.

MR. REESE: Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here.

I don't usually get that kind of response when we're talking about juvenile justice because it's a complicated thing and it actually pairs and goes hand-in-hand with what Susan Klein Rothschild was talking about in terms of child abuse/neglect. Senator Valerie Wiener has been a long-term supporter of juvenile justice reform in the state of Nevada, and particularly in the community of Las Vegas. So what I would like to do is turn it over to her and we're going to more or less tag team and she's going to talk about statistics around suicide, nationally and here in the state of Nevada, as well as substance abuse. And then I'll provide some information about my department.

One thing real briefly I want to say is that Juvenile Justice Services here in Las Vegas is the fifth nationally largest Juvenile Justice Services agency in America. Some of you might say, how do we do that? Well, our agency's unique in the sense that most agencies don't have a detention as part of the department. It's actually somewhat separate and more or less is either administered by just probation or by a judge. So we have probation services, whether that it be intake and field services, and we have a booking and receiving area. We have a 235-bed detention facility, as well as our Spring Mountain facility which is up in Spring Mountain, that houses a hundred youth, young men. And so our agency's somewhat complicated in terms of juvenile justice. It was actually more complicated when we had Child Protective Services. And so right now I'm going to turn it over to Senator Wiener.

SENATOR WIENER: They always tell me to stand, but I'm about the same height standing or sitting, so I think I'll sit. Is that okay, Chris?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: That's perfect.

SENATOR WIENER: When I was first asked to do this -- and thank you for being the pit bull to get me here -- I graciously tried to decline, not because I don't want to do it, but I knew it would be a rigorous campaign season and I didn't know if I'd have the opportunity, after Tuesday, to recover, but I did. And I'll share some statistics and again maybe how I got involved in both the substance abuse arena and also the suicide one. I've served on the Drug Commission for Nevada as the Senate representative since I first went to legislature in 1997. It has not been active because of funding, but we did an extraordinary amount of work and, of course, we never do enough work when it comes to juveniles. As one of the members of the Judiciary Committee, this is something that always concerns me because substance abuse is an extraordinarily difficult issue to confront when you're dealing with young people, because that's where you need to do the job, and in the state of Nevada, over and over again, in the limited funding that we have in BADA, Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, we don't seem to front end the services the way we need to. We are extraordinarily underrepresented in that funding arena, where it needs to be done, the most it's done the least. Of course, if we don't grab those young people early with those substance abuse issues, they certainly don't change on their own.

Also, when I first went into legislature in 1997, introduced a bill on treatment communities in prison, therapeutic communities in prison. It was a novel idea for Nevada. No one knew what I was talking about, including the Director of Prisons at the time. And initially, he refused to accept that program, and I didn't learn that until I went to the Finance Committee and said he couldn't deliver what the bill had asked for. And so I had to track him down and say, yes, you can, I'll reduce the number of people we'd address, but you can't say no to therapeutic community bill, it's the right thing to do. We're going to send probably 95 percent of our adult inmates into the community at some point. And a vast, vast majority of the numbers vary, depending upon which study, up to maybe 85 percent of those inmates are going to be substance abusers. If we can correct their issues while in the facility, then we have a chance to send them out clean. It won't happen without that assistance. And they might become taxpayers and certainly many of them will not return to that facility. So that was a big bill for me in substance abuse in 1997. 1999, 2001, and 2003, I addressed fetal alcohol syndrome, and I got wrapped up in this issue, not primarily because of the health care concerns -- though that is primary -- but because Mr. Burgess -- Fritz, you were there too at the conference, was it Orlando?

MR. REESE: Yes.

SENATOR WIENER: A Juvenile Justice Conference, where I, one of our speakers was national expert on FAS, and, at a Juvenile Justice Conference and the thrust of her presentation lingered in my mind. And I came right back and started working on this issue. And this was startling. 50 to 60 percent -- I think that's probably a low estimate -- of our juveniles in the system are FAS babies. It's a hundred percent preventable if mom just wouldn't drink during pregnancy. At the time I introduced that bill the social and additional costs, however those are measured, for an FAS baby were about a million and a half extra dollars to taxpayers and to families in the lifetime of that child. When I brought the bill back a second time to require signs, warning signs where alcohol is sold by the drink that drinking during pregnancy can cause birth defects in the unborn child – [the bill] didn't pass, but it passed last session -- that cost had risen to $4 million. We did a snapshot, one-week snapshot of the special clinic for children here in Las Vegas, just picked a week, and there was one mother who had seven FAS babies. So a primary concern in the original bill and FAS dealt with the education, getting the health care providers in determining which ones were most important, educated about drinking during pregnancy.

When I first got involved with the issue, doctors, OB-GYNs were still telling mothers-to-be, it's okay to have a drink once in a while, it will calm you down. That evolved, I guess, with a more positive, more assertive message that you probably shouldn't drink during pregnancy. Now the message from most doctors is, if you're thinking about getting pregnant or think you might be pregnant, no alcohol. Because once FAS sets in -- and we don't know which drink does it, there's no science to know that -- there are those doctors who said it's only heavy drinkers, that lets everybody else off the hook because most people don't think they're heavy drinkers, no one knows which one sets it off. So why risk it? So anyway, I had a colleague in the Senate, though, when the sign bill coming through the second time who said, well, my wife had a drink once in a while and our kids are okay. So I guess there's still work to be done. So FAS, we finally got that sign requirement through.

The next session, I'm going to be doing a bill based -- and I don't know the language, I haven't been asked yet -- the language, I've been meeting with the juvenile justice people on this. I had a resolution last time and I didn't know what I was going to do with it in the bill draft request for, and I kind of had to figure it out -- about inappropriate illegal behavior while operating or driving a motor vehicle, but it ended up being about those use, up to 25 years old, so we can capture some of the young adults who would have alcohol in the car, maybe primarily the mobile parties.

Nevada ranks fourth in the social and public costs for those who participate in mobile parties. So the bill I'm probably looking at -- and I'm really in the vague thought stages here, we're bouncing some ideas around -- would be something to deal with the social hosting and that would be bringing the parents back in. We've done a lot of targeting of the juveniles. We haven't done enough targeting of those adults who allow the drinking in the home and allowing children to leave those homes where alcohol has been used. Sometimes we don't even learn when children die. Those behaviors often continue, and we need to maybe look at parents more carefully, that's where they're falling through the cracks. So I'm looking at something in that arena.

Nationally, just under 5,000 kids under the age of 18 will try marijuana for the first time every day. That's about 4,700 to 5,000 kids every day [who] will try marijuana for the first time. About a hundred thousand young people enter treatment every year. Almost 7 percent of our population 12 and older uses illicit drugs other than marijuana. In Nevada, we are the number one state in the nation for illicit drug use, other than marijuana. That's a stunning, difficult challenge for us to deal with. We have about -- just under half of our high schoolers will try marijuana by their senior year. Two-thirds of Clark County kids will try marijuana by their senior year. About 60 to 70 percent -- I think this might even be a low estimate -- of our crime in the Clark County involves drug use at some level that prompts the crime.

So we have some issues with drug use leading to other behaviors that are illegal and we don't budget for it enough. We tackle it every year, trying to get enough funding for the front and often I think the Legislators, except for people like Chris Giunchigliani, who is a forward-looking thinker, many of us get caught up in the now of it, and we can't. We can't -- I know we have limited resources, but doing even now stuff just keeps us in the emergency mode way too much.

And as we think ahead to the preventative side, which has been a primary focus of my work, let's front end it rather than back end it. And all that we'll do at the back end is attaching larger band-aids to a problem that doesn't go away until we front end it with preventative work. Takes more money to do it, people think, but by front ending, we did save the multiple dollars on each dollar expended at the front end, and all we get is repair work instead of turning behaviors around.

Let me talk a little bit about the suicide component. We have an interim study between 2000 and 2001 on suicide. And as they were assigning interim committees, this was the one I specifically said I do not want to serve on. I couldn't think of anything that would be more distressing than to go to many meetings, knowing who was going to be chair, and I knew it would be many, and talk about suicide. It was probably one of the most profound experiences I ever had -- yes, I was put on the committee -- one of the most profound experiences I had . . . because it was such an eye-opener to many other social problems in our state.

We have, interestingly, our highest rate, at least at that time -- I might be old on my numbers -- the highest rate of suicide was among men over the age of 60 or 65. And if you think about what might be happening in the life of that person -- many people, we are the fastest growing senior population in -- not just the country, but . . . unless it's changed, it's the fastest rate of growth for senior population in the world. So there are many countries that look to Nevada and look to Clark County to determine how we handle this social phenomenon.

And the snapshot of the senior population would be people coming here to retire, and they're probably healthy, maybe coming from a colder climate or where it's too expensive to live, and they probably have 10 healthy years, if they're the walkers, bikers, swimmers, golfers. And at that point, maybe one of the spouses has a health issue, mental health, physical health, and passes away, or becomes an extraordinarily dependent person on the other spouse. At some point, it's probably going to be the man who's left behind, in case that happens. The man left behind often is the one who is least able to take care of himself when left alone. And so that, at least two years ago, that was the highest rate of growth for suicide. But not to underestimate the teen suicide issue, nationally suicide is the third leading cause of death among 10 to 24-year-olds. It surpasses AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, chronic lung disease, heart disease combined. And 60 percent of the people who kill themselves use a firearm.

Young men in the teen years are more likely to succeed in their efforts to commit suicide. But young ladies are more likely to attempt, and they report depression at higher rates. In Nevada, 15 percent of our high school students by 2003's numbers had a specific plan for suicide. And we in Clark County have seen a decrease in the attempts, but we see an extraordinary rise in those who feel depressed, which is the step toward the attempt. We don't have the facilities to address this. Many of these are substance abuse-related. Many of these are mental health issues.

And I know, Kathryn, it's probably difficult to separate the two. Kathryn Landreth works extraordinarily well and with exceptional commitment in mental health. It's tough to separate out mental health and substance abuse. And one of the challenges we have -- because I work in both arenas pretty heavily -- when you have co-occurring issues of mental health and substance abuse as to which one came first, who cares? They're there. Whether it was substance abuse -- I don't mean to be flip -- but if it's substance abuse that led to the mental health issue, we have to deal with both. If it's a mental health issue that require a dependency on a drug, that leads to a dependency on something else, it's still both. What we found when we started working in both these areas -- because I've done a lot of coordinated work on both -- we had some issues between the professionals in both areas where -- let me get this right -- the substance abuse community has at least historically been reluctant to deal with people who are taking medication to get them stabilized because of their mental health problems. So until they are clean of drugs, the substance abuse community was not willing to receive them. But the people, many people who are on mental health meds need that medication to be stable enough to get help. I mean, it's just a difficult place to be. But they're now talking. At least, they're talking. And we're having to get past some long history of attitudinal differences. It's a challenge. Again, funding is a challenge. But if we don't address sometimes both of these combined -- again the suicide is one byproduct, crime is a major byproduct -- we have additional social ills if we don't get to that front-end issue of being honest enough about how to handle social issues by going at the front end rather than the back end. It takes a lot to change peoples' attitudes towards funding front end versus back end because back end is on the emergency end. We've got to stop it. And the way to stop it is to go to the front, not the back.

MR. REESE: Let me talk now how, in conjunction with juvenile services, your community responds to suicide and drug abuse and then I will provide some national statistics and local statistics on juvenile crime and where juvenile crime's going really in this country and where it is going here locally.

In terms of suicide prevention and intervention, it's important to understand that we get involved with clients and families when they're referred to us for delinquent offenses. So we're not really in the market, our job is not out seeking to assist youth that are having mental health issues. This past year, out of the youth that are referred to us -- and we have 25,000 referrals a year, and that results in 16,000 youth, so there's youth being referred to us, either multiple times or with multiple charges, that's so you can get an understanding of the depth of that population. Out of those that are referred to us, our staff are then referring 1,200 to our psychology department, which we have, to [determine] whether or not they should be assessed, whether they should have community placement, and so forth. And so what we've been able to do when we have found youth with mental health issues, we've had immediate intervention and we actually have contracts in the community. We have in-patient facilities that we refer those youth to. Now, the important thing to understand is there's a great, huge amount of youth out there in our community that aren't being referred to us, obviously, that are experiencing mental health issues, particularly [involving] suicide. And the statistics, though, are looking upward, I believe, and I think Senator Wiener kind of mentioned that this is changing, but it's certainly alarming because people don't think [this to be] one of our major juvenile issues. Most think of it as serious crime, and that it's really mental health and substance abuse [issue].

Let me talk briefly about our response to substance abuse. We get a tremendous amount of referrals for first-time alcohol and drug abuse. I'll be honest with you, 10 years ago we had a graduated response. First time, okay, don't do it. Second time, what did I tell you the first time? The third time, we might be thinking about, okay, now what if we have some type of intervention? So what we have started for the past couple of years is that every youth referred to us for drugs and alcohol gets an immediate assessment. For example, from August 19th of '02 to June 30th of this year, a total of 2196 out of roughly 2200 youth [referred to us] were assessed. That's how many youth were referred to us for first time. Out of that, 98 percent completed the assessment, and probably the 2 percent -- you're wondering what happened to those 2 percent -- they probably got referred to us for other charges and we're having some different type of responses to them, not that we're overlooking their substance abuse issues. What we've found then going back and looking at the outcomes is that 84 percent that were assessed -- and we have three levels at which we look at them -- whether or not they need just mild intervention, do they need drug education, is this a first time experimentation? Were they at a party where drugs were [used], and they got arrested? The second is, Do they need some type of educational intervention? The third is, Do they need to be involved immediately in a counseling program, whether that be outpatient or in-patient? So those are the three levels of responses. Out of the outcomes that we've had over the past two years of this program, 84 percent that went through our assessment process have not returned for drugs or alcohol offenses. That's powerful. We also established a program called SOAR, which [operates] in conjunction with the National Guard. Most people wouldn't link juvenile justice and the National Guard, other than boot camps – but we started a program called Seeking Opportunities and Accepting Responsibility for youth that are referred to us more or less for minor infractions but are experiencing problems at school, substance abuse, and we're doing some intervention regarding mental health.

What I'm gratified with is that it is just not geared towards boys, and I'm going to talk briefly about how I think girls are underrepresented in terms of community programming here locally, and what we've done about that, as well as nationally. Just in the year '04, we've put 114 youth through [this program], and out of that -- 58 were males and 56 were females. It wasn't a disproportionate level of females, even though we have a higher national rate in terms of female referrals to us for delinquency, which is 33 percent. The national average is roughly around 28. So, we're trying to do some immediate interventions regarding mental health. We're trying to do some immediate interventions regarding substance abuse.

I just want to briefly say, too, that I'm on the statewide committee on underage drinking. Most people laugh about that. One of the things I'll reveal is that I've taught wine classes at UNLV, and continue to do so at community colleges, for the last 10 years. But people don't really understand how serious underage drinking is in this country. One of the things I'm supporting, and I am going to work with Senator Wiener on that, is keg registration. And most people -- how many people in this room know what keg registration is? All right, now you'll know. If someone goes in -- if I go in to a liquor store and I purchase a keg, i.e., if you rent it, you put up a deposit. Once you do that, they've established a number, I sign my name and they look at my driver's license as the person who bought that keg. If that keg shows up at a party where there's underage drinking, not only are the youth responsible for being under the influence and possession of alcohol -- I'm in serious trouble for providing that keg and alcohol to them. So it's a national initiative around the country, particularly gaining a lot of support and momentum around the East Coast and I'd encourage you to look into that further.

The other thing I want to mention concerns mental health. And then I'm going to talk about some national and local statistics for juvenile justice. It is the misrepresentation of detention in this country for youth that are experiencing mental health issues. And really, youth that are experiencing mental health issues come to us fairly quickly, because if they're having mental health issues, they're depressed, they may be involved in drug abuse, they may be involved in acting out, inappropriate behavior, stealing, all of those types of things that a lot of them are drawing attention to. I think that Senator Wiener mentioned that boys are much more successful in committing suicide than girls. But with girls, it's more of an attention-getting mechanism, [sort of ] saying, “Help me, I need help.” So we're concerned that a great deal of youth that have mental health issues are being incarcerated in our detention center because they don't fit at home, they're out of control, they're having trouble, even in specialized schools in the School District -- so, gee, they're assaulting other kids in the class, so we get them arrested through the School District police and they're referred to us for assault because they assaulted the kid sitting in the chair next to them, and then what do we do with them?

So it's a real challenge in terms of finding appropriate mental health services for kids that now are being locked up in a detention facility who really aren't delinquent. It's a national reform process -- the one thing I want to say, is that crime is down in this country. Most people wouldn't say that. They would think we need more police and we need more prisons and we need more jails. Every year, crime goes down in this country. Juvenile crime is down in this country this year 8 percent. It's down in this community 10 percent. We've had 10 percent less referrals in the fastest-growing county in America for the last 10 years. I'm optimistic about the programs and the partnerships that we've established in the community -- Boys and Girls Clubs, Clark County Parks and Recreation, all the community centers. Providing for after-school programs or for kids that are at risk, to gang members -- it used to be thought, we don't want to have any gang members in our community centers -- we want the police to find them and lock them up.

When I go around -- I have many speaking engagements -- I challenge my audience, and I am going to challenge you to do the same thing and say, all right, what do you think the average age of someone, a male, who commits a serious aggravated assault and [causes] serious bodily harm? Anybody want to take a guess? Some people say 12. That's good. Some people say 15. I've had 19, up to 19. The other day I had 20. It's 33. The attitude of this past 10 years has been to quickly move juveniles through the process and to the adult system. People don't realize that they get out. Youth involved in gang activities like drive-by shootings, whether they're a principal in that shooting or whether they're part of the group that was involved in that -- and I'm certainly not diminishing drive-by shootings or serious crimes that result in either death or serious bodily harm, but they're going to do 7 or 8 years and they're going to get out.

One of the things I want to think about, one of the challenges facing this nation and the state is that as we move youth into prisons as juveniles -- we currently have 500 under 21-year-olds incarcerated in Nevada state prisons. 85 of them are under 18. Now, it would be a good guess that those 800 started out as juveniles. And the issue is, they're going to get out. And so what do we do in terms of prevention and intervention, and that's been our challenge particularly for our agency and my director for the past 10 years, as opposed to being an agency that's just been responsive. The police show up, we take them, and we do something with them. Our staff has been very excited because we're actually doing prevention. We're actually trying to [form] partnership with community agencies in terms of working with at-youth risk and try to make a difference.

So, on one hand, we're cautiously optimistic in the reduction of juvenile referrals in this community by 10 percent. But we're also concerned that nationally juvenile crime is down, as I mentioned, 8 percent. We have a 40 percent higher rate of incarcerated youth in detentions and correctional facilities than we did 14 years ago. So what we're doing is we're escalating youth faster into detention facilities and into incarceration juvenile facilities than we ever had in the history of juvenile justice.

So one of the things here locally -- we just recently opened here the past couple of years a detention center that has now 235 beds. Now one would think, okay, we have the fastest-growing community in America, we have a need for that. Our previous detention center, which is almost inside the new one, had 112 beds and we were running up to about 240 youth in that facility, which is outrageous, 2 or 3, maybe sometimes 4 youths sleeping on mattresses in one room. This is -- this is what's happened to detention centers across the country. So we opened a beautiful facility. So, guess what? Approximately 13 or 14 months ago we were sitting at 290.

So we decided we needed to do something. We engaged the help, because they're a very active proponent, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, to work on detention reform -- one of our major issues. And we were approved as a pilot site and we really want to become a model site in the country, in terms of changing the attitude of even our staff and our community of locking kids up. There's a very safe way to maintain kids in the community and also keep the public safe. The statute says detention is to be used for protection of the youth, protection of the community, and to ensure that they'll return to court. So through home management programs, through electronic monitoring, through community programs, we have through the Boys and Girls Club, we have afternoon reporting where they'll come in after school and do their homework, just to keep youth out of detention. We've also changed the configuration of our detention, and you'll probably say that seems pretty basic, in that we had kids coming into our old facility, where, too, we were keeping the most serious, sophisticated juvenile offenders. Now we've established an intake unit and we've freed up an extra five beds, an extra four staff to deal with other issues we have in our facility.

Let me talk about national [figures]. Nationally, we have about 2.3 million arrests per year for juveniles, and although juvenile arrest rates for violent crimes such as murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assaults grew substantially during the '80s, through the mid-'90s they decreased for eight consecutive years by 8 percent. Over the last eight years, there's no longer the statistical proof that there's juvenile predators out on the street. The [number of] juveniles arrested for violence in '02 was the lowest since 1987 nationally. Nationally 29 percent of juvenile arrests involve females. That's roughly about 654,000 arrests of females under the age of 18. Currently here locally, we run at 33 percent.

I was at a national forum on juvenile statistics, and I find this really fascinating, in that one of the major reasons that we had an increase of assault-like charges on females is because of the domestic violence issues. Moms and dads call the police, the police come and arrest them, and charge them with domestic violence, battery. . . . This is the single most [important cause] of the rise in batteries and aggravated assaults for females nationally. Now that's certainly not to diminish the issues of how this ties in with substance abuse and mental health for our female population, which is so important, which is not actually being served like it should. So we're not really seeing girls until they come in for domestic violence, aggravated assault. Now the schools act very quickly -- and I understand that -- if a girl hits another girl, they used to pull them apart and call their parents and say, “They can't do that at school.” Well, [now] the school police brings them in and charges them with battery or aggravated assault. So that's one of the major reasons why there's been an increase in the female population [when it comes to] physical types of gross misdemeanors and felonies for females.

Let me just briefly talk about Nevada's population. About 2.3 million in '03, and that was the estimate, in June. Between 2000 in '03, juvenile arrests for violence crimes declined overall by 16 percent. That's a good thing. However, violent crime arrests for juvenile females increased by 23 percent. Really what that does, it represents what's happening nationally in those types of offenses for females.

Here in Clark County -- the entire state, the entire state of Nevada had a population, as I mentioned, of roughly about 2.3. Clark County was the most populous county in the state, which we know. The population's about 1.6, and in '03 there was an estimated 295,000 juveniles between the ages of 6 and 18 living in Clark County. That's roughly about 19 percent of the population in Clark County.

In '03, there were, as I mentioned, about 16,000 juvenile referrals to us, I mean youth, and that resulted in about 25,000 referrals. 60 to 70 percent of the crimes committed in Clark County emanates from drug abuse. Let me state that again. 60 to 70 percent of the crimes committed in Clark County is a result of drug abuse. We did a snapshot a few years ago, because I mentioned we were, I thought, inappropriately handling first time offenders for drug and alcohol, in that we have -- we got a consultant -- we did a study for over a period of two weeks, and found that 80 percent of the youth that came in with a net two-week period were under the influence of some type of drug or alcohol. So kids are committing crimes under the influence. That's pretty easy to see. In terms of our substance abuse intervention, I mentioned that we're very proud of the fact that we've had an 80 percent reduction, and those kids referred to us have gone through our assessment process.

So what I'd like to do is leave this open for any questions. The one thing to say is that on the back table back there, just in front of the pastries, are the national juvenile websites that you can go to and get this information. And as I get up, I'll also put my personal e-mail address at work. And if you e-mail me, I'll send you in Word format the approximately 7 or 8 pages I have of bullet points information on juvenile justice and crime.

In leaving you, the one thing I want to say, that I'm very encouraged. Sometimes this paints a terrible picture, but I'm very encouraged that over the last eight years juvenile crime has subsided, particularly serious crime. And it seems clear that the challenge for us to deal with mental health and substance abuse with our youth. And so as long as we have that type of response, to females as well as males, and that we continue to establish the type of community program and partnerships, because to all of us, it's clear that it's a community solution. It's not an agency solution.

PROFESSOR BERKHEISER: Certainly, issues are inexplicably intertwined with the other issues we've been hearing about this morning. I want you to welcome -- we have three panelists. We have an addition to our panel. First to my left is Dr. Rebecca Nathanson, Professor of Special Education and Law. She has a joint appointment at the School of Education here at UNLV and with the Boyd School of Law, and is someone I have the great pleasure to work with in our clinical work. Then we have, seated next to Dr. Nathanson, Dr. Ina Dorman. She is a social worker, professional social worker, and is the social worker in our Thomas and Mack Legal Clinic here at the law school and in that capacity does a lot of work with the children and teens that we represent and supervises graduate students in their Masters and social work programs in their placement in the clinic. And then to the far left, we have Dr. Sandra D. Owens-Kane, who also is with the School of Social Work here at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and I believe we'll be starting at the far left. Is that correct?

PROFESSOR OWENS-KANE: Good morning. I'm Dr. Sandra Owens-Kane. I'm Assistant Professor in the UNLV School of Social Work. I've worked as a social work practitioner and researcher for the last 20 years here in Nevada and California. I have been a licensed clinical social worker since 1993 here in Nevada. Most of the research that I do and the training that I've done has been related to the bio-psycho-social aspects of problems experienced by at-risk groups, groups involved in the Child Welfare systems, children and families living in poverty, and groups experiencing negative health disparities because of their race or ethnicity.

I'm very pleased today to discuss the subject of high school dropouts and graduation rates in Nevada. I will try my best to outline some of the most important factors that must be considered when we're evaluating high school dropout rates in Nevada. It's a crucial social indicator for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that high school graduation is directly and positively correlated to income and improved economic success over life span.

I will share with you some of the statistics that I found, and I have shared with you in a handout setting forth the references I have used for this presentation, as well as a few tables and charts that illustrate my findings. And I want to thank my research assistant, Jessica Reyes, who assisted me with finding some of these statistics and we'll make sure each of you have the handout.

First and foremost, I'd like to share some of the specific national, state and county statistics on high school dropout and completion rates and some of the related socio-economic indicators contributing to these rates. I will then provide you a summary of suggestions and recommendations for how we can continue to positively impact these dropout rates.

So, if you look at Table 1, these are key indicators of child well-being nationally and in Nevada. High school dropout rates will vary, depending on the criteria used to measure them. The Annie E. Casey Foundation defines high school dropouts as a percent of 16 to 19 year-olds who are not enrolled in school and who are not high school graduates. Students who earn the GED are considered graduates. Based on these criteria, the Annie Casey Foundation estimates Nevada high school dropout rate for 2001 as 14 percent. This ranks Nevada as the second worst in the nation. And Arizona has the worst ranking with a 16 percent high school dropout rate. The national average dropout rate was 9 percent.

It is significant to note, and encouraging to note, that between the years of 1996 and 2001, Nevada's dropout rate decreased from 17 percent to the14 percent. This represents a negative 18 percent change score for these years. You can see that in Table 2. In other words, in the past five years, we have experienced an 18 percent decrease in the percentage of high school dropouts. Nationally, there's only a 10 percent decrease from 10 percent in 1996 to 9 percent in 2001. And so that was just a 10 percent decrease. Nevada's dropout improvement was twice that. We want to continue this trend.

If you take a look at Table 3, you'll see the national dropout rate by ethnicity. As I mentioned previously, 9 percent of teens nationally age 16 to 19 are high school dropouts. What is alarming is that 18 percent of Latino teens nationwide are high school dropouts. 10 percent of both African-American and American Indian teens are dropouts. And about 6 percent of white and Asian and Pacific Islander teens drop out of high school. In Nevada, as you can see from the single-page insert from Nevada's Kids Count, 14 percent of teens age 16 through 19 have dropped out of high school. Of these teens, 9 percent are Latino. Nine percent of black teens dropped out of high school, compared to almost half as many -- only 5 percent -- of whites, Asians and Pacific Islanders and Native Americans. Thus, when compared to national dropout rates by race, Nevada has similar statistics. Latino and black teens are facing the most challenges. However, the state indicator that is most different from the national indicator is the fact that the 9 percent Nevada Latino dropout rate is almost half of the 17 percent Latino dropout rate nationally.

As you can see in Table 4, of the young adults in Nevada, ages 18 to 24, 55 percent were white and 29 percent were Latino. This 29 percent Latino population represents a significant proportion of the youth in our state. Table 5 provides an analysis of the Clark County School District high school dropout rates for 9th through 12th graders in the 2002-2003 academic school year, the most recent date for which we have statistics. Clark County has a total school enrollment that year of 267,858 students and this represents 70 percent of the state of Nevada's student enrollment. The total student enrollment is 383,230 students.

As you can see in the table of the Clark County School District, the dropout rate overall is 9.5 percent. The only ethnic group with a higher than average dropout rate is the Latino students, with a 9.8 percent dropout rate. This represents an actual total of 1,787 Latino student dropouts in one year. That number is extremely high by any standard, regardless of the fact that many are joining the workplace, are in the work force. It seems that these children are being left behind by our educational system.

In Table 6, you'll see that Nevada has a slightly higher percentage, 10 percent, of high school dropouts not working and not attending school, as compared to the national average of 8 percent of teens ages 16 through 19 who are not attending school and not working. There's some relatively good news when we look at the employment rates of teens 16 to 19 that are not attending school and that are not working. The good news is that of the Latino high school dropouts nationally, only 13 percent are not working. Thus, we can infer that the vast majority, mainly 87 percent of Latino high school dropouts, are joining the work force. Conversely, only 83 percent of American Indians and 86 percent of black high school dropouts are working. Although it is good news that high numbers of Latino dropouts are working, their earning capacity and representative health and well-being may be negatively impacted. The initial and long-term earning capacity of those working high school dropouts is much compromised, and thus it will contribute to low-paying, low-skilled jobs that place them at the lower than average socio-economic status throughout life.

I didn't include this table, but the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002 estimated that high school graduates earn on average approximately $7,000 more per year and 20 percent more over lifetime than high school dropouts. Specifically, for full-time, year-around workers for 40 years synthetic earning estimates are about $1 million in '99 dollars, in year 1999 dollars, for high school dropouts. While completing high school would increase earnings to almost a quarter have a million dollars, to $1.2 million, if you have a high school diploma. Additionally, individuals with a Bachelor's degree would earn an average of $2.1 million over a 40-year work history. An individual with a Master's degree will earn $2.5 million over 40 years. A doctoral degree earner will earn $3.4 million over a 40-year work life. Lastly, an individual with a professional degree will earn a whopping $4.4 million over a lifetime. This is 4 1/2 times what a high school graduate would earn over lifetime. These figures are not so startling if one believes in the adage that money does not buy happiness. However, these figures are very alarming if one believes in the fact that money does buy good food, good housing, good clothing, good education, and 76 savings even. I think these aforementioned earning disparities between high school dropouts and various degree earners will serve as an impetus for motivating community constituents such as yourselves to work even harder to reduce the high school dropouts.

I will now transition to talking about graduation rates in the nation and in Nevada.

The term "high school completer" as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics includes both diploma recipients and other high school completers, such as those receiving a certificate of attendance or a GED. In the 2000 and 2001 school year, the four-year completion rate ranged from a high of 90.1 percent in North Dakota to a low of 65 percent in

Louisiana. You can see that from Table 8, the three-page table that I've distributed. Seven states had a four-year completion rate above 85 percent. Those were Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Dakota, Wisconsin. Five states had a four-year completion rate below 75 percent -- Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, and New Mexico.

National Center for Education Statistics reports that between the 1996-97 school year and the 2000-2001 school year the changes in completion rates were relatively small, 77 [percent] -- less than 2 percentage points in 18 states. Two states, however, Idaho and Nevada, increased their four-year completion rates by over 9 percentage points between 1996-97 school year and the 2000-2001. Again, good news for Nevada. In 2000-2001, Nevada had a 73.5 percent four-year high school completion rate. Rural areas, small and large towns under 25,000 people in population had completion rates of 58 to 87 percent. Midsize cities had 77 percent completion rates. And urban fringes of large cities have the lowest completion rate of only 70 percent.

[Total school enrollment] in Nevada is currently 51 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic, 11 percent black, 7 percent Asian and Pacific Islanders, and a 2 percent American Indian/Alaskan Native students, as you can see in Table 9. Hispanics represent 30 percent of the enrollment statewide and blacks represent 11 percent of the student enrollment. These are significant numbers and they have implications for this discussion and for future action. In the 2002-2003 academic school year, the Nevada graduation rate was 75 percent, as you can see in Table 10. White and Asian and Pacific Islander students had a graduation rate of 81 percent. American 78 Indian/Alaskan Native students had a graduation rate of 69 percent. Hispanic students had a graduation rate of 63 percent. And black students had the lowest graduation rate of only 60 percent. These low rates of graduation in the two largest ethnic minority groups in Nevada correspond, as expected, to the relatively high dropout rate as compared to the other ethnic groups. So while we must address the dismal dropout and graduation indicators in general, we must also target these ethnic minority students who are at highest risk for dropout and least likely to graduate. These youth will make up a large portion of the unemployed and disenfranchised youth in Nevada and those who will work with decreased earning capacity as they begin their 40-year work life trajectory in Nevada and coming years. The resultant problems caused by low skilled, low-paying jobs are obvious and too numerous to discuss here. Suffice it to say that in Nevada, the high school dropout and graduation rates should be a top priority in our collective efforts for promoting social justice, economic and equal successful educational student opportunity and advanced earning potential for our youth, particularly these ethnic minority youth who are at risk.

In conclusion, I'd like to just say that the National, State, and county statistics discussed during this presentation illustrate the most important information related to high school dropout and graduation. I want to emphasize the fact that there are many complex, inextricable factors that contribute to these statistics. Some general factors include, but are not limited to, poor school readiness, poor educational environments, family poverty, and lower neighborhood socio-economic status, which, in turn, contributes to lower educational aspirations by the students who live in those low income neighborhoods. Some factors specific to Nevada include the ready access and acceptability of youth working in the gaming industry, and the sex industry, and in other low skilled, yet potentially lucrative service industry jobs. These factors are the subject of other forum presentations today and will be addressed in more detail during those panel presentations and discussion.

However, if we are to positively impact a dropout and graduation rates, we will have to take into consideration the aforementioned general and specific factors. We will have to devise and consistently implement a wide array of interventions. These interventions will have to fully identify and, to the extent possible, ameliorate the underlying causes of dropping out. We'll need to target our efforts towards the needs of the groups at highest risk of dropping out. And the resolution of these causes of dropout will require the combined efforts of students, parents, school administrators, teachers, community organizers, as well as federal, state and local governments. In short, there must be a careful and thorough study of all of these factors as they pertain to Nevada, and systemic improvement of the conditions that make for educational success. And we can discuss some of those statistics after my next two co-presenters. Thank you. (Applause)

PROFESSOR DORMAN: Good morning.

I'm the addition to the group, because I was the school social worker for 27 years with the Clark County School District, and the main population of students I worked with was homeless. The information that we thought might be of interest to you [concerns] the students who are dropping out and the reasons this happens. Nevada is the fifth largest School District in the nation with a population currently of over 280,000 students. Our district is also located in a setting where cultural factors associated with academic failure often lead to student dropout. Millions of students drop out each year. And of those students, one-third are entering the society without high school diploma nationally.

In Nevada, according to the most recent data for the Nevada Kids Count, you can see from the year 2000-2001, there was a drop from -- or a decrease in the high school dropout grades 9 through 12. Just a second. Okay, thank you. The high school graduation rates from 2000 to 2003 had dropped, and continued to drop from 77 percent in 2000 to 2001 school year, to the 2002-2003. These numbers aren't the most recent, but that's what we have for up to the last school year. So hopefully, [the numbers] will improve.

There are a myriad of social reasons why students are dropping out. As a school social worker, I have been directly involved with assessing and monitoring many of those reasons. Poverty, homelessness, pregnancy, parenting, mental health, domestic violence, gender issues, bullying, supervision, 24-hour economic cultural environment, and lack of school intervention and prevention programs are the ones want that stood out the most for me. So far as poverty, we've already talked a little about that. We know that Nevada has a large working population [living] at poverty level, and that can't be dismissed. We just passed, hopefully, an increase for the minimum wage. We really do have a lot of poor working families in our School District. This is probably the most invisible group of children that the School District has because they're not identified in any special way. This poverty has increased the number of people unable to attend school, [whose] basic needs are not being met. You live in a house with no heat and water and you don't -- can't -- go to school. You can't take a shower -- you don't attend. These are just really basic kinds of things that are impacting the students as they try to attend school, and reasons why they are not going to school. And when you get to high school -- and I don't know how many of you are familiar with the attendance policies -- but if you miss more than so many days in a year, you are referred to an alternative program. Once you're in that alternative program, the risks are increased even more that you won't finish the year and be able to graduate or maintain your credits to the degree that you should.

Homelessness. We've a large homeless population. . . . Last year, the number of homeless children documented in the School District was over 2,000. That's significant. As already indicated, when you make numerous moves, it's hard to stay on top of things. And so homeless children move frequently. When you get to high school again, it's difficult to stay in school. And transportation becomes an issue. You can't stay in your home school. You lose credits. You end up needing to drop out.

Pregnancy. That's another factor. It's already been stated, nationally we have a high pregnancy rate. Those teens have to drop out. We don't have schools that have facilities for pregnant teens to attend. We do have some alternative programs, but it's not nearly the number that we need to support the number of pregnant teens that we have.

Parenting. [Teenagers with kids] drop out. You have to, if you can't comfort your child or if you're not in a setting where you can parent in school, you can't attend.

Mental health issues. That's been touched upon by many of the presenters this morning already. For many years, the recognition that children are affected my mental health issues in school was missing. Depression is significant. And oftentimes, behaviors that are going on in school are related to mental health issues. Acting out behaviors are not being diagnosed for the right reasons. The children aren't getting the right services. They end up dropping out or ending up in our juvenile justice system. Even though there are schools in those systems, again, you're missing your regular courses and you're not in a regular setting, so your chances of success are again being minimized.

Domestic violence. The speaker just spoke about the significance of how students are being impacted by that and the acting out behaviors that result from it. And it's not necessary that they go to school and act out because of these behaviors, but they do impact their ability to succeed, their ability to learn, their ability to respond. If you're concerned about the things that are going on at home, [if you are] witnessing those things -- and I'm not talking just high school, I'm talking about all school age children – you will know this is a factor.

Gender and life issues. I don't think there are enough services in school to address the issues that children are coming to school with related to their gender. There are not enough support services. Again, if you're not comfortable, if you don't feel like you fit in, or you're being discriminated against, you're not going to stay in school. You're not going to -- you're just not going to go.

Bullying. Nationally, bullying is a factor and a safety issue. Kids are going to school all the time and being taunted and bullied. You can only take so much of that, again, before you don't go to school.

Substance abuse. We live in a culture where substances are easily accessible, and I think more and more of our young people are being involved in activities where they are exposed to substance abuse a lot earlier and it's a contributing factor.

Supervision. A lot of our students aren't being supervised. And, again, I'm talking of the younger students. A 24/7 town, it's hard when you're a single parent, working graveyard shifts, to be home. So the lack of supervision allows children to become involved in some activities that could be detrimental, and again, make them accustomed to not being in school during the times they need to be. One of the biggest factors, in addition to Las Vegas being a 24-hour town that never shuts down, there's constant activity, constantly something going on, [tempting] students to get involved. I'm not saying it's all negative, but it provides an opportunity that other places may not have, that make our students to be involved in things. But the thing that stands out most to me in terms of a risk factor is lack of school intervention and prevention programs. We just don't have enough things in place within the school system to facilitate the need to allow a student to come to you, talk to you about something, or programs that would provide some services that would be very beneficial to them.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Were those in order?

PROFESSOR DORMAN: No. No, they're not ranked. Those are just issues.

The good news is -- all is not lost and there's a lot of hope. The School District has developed several alternative programs to accommodate the students who are at risk of failure. And even with the good news, there are still challenges that need to be met. But according to the School District currently, several of the programs we have are beneficial. We have the Academy for Individualized Study, which is a program designed to assist seniors in graduating on time by offering them the opportunity to take an independent study course concurrent with their home school. So if a student is credit deficient, this is an opportunity to be able to make sure that they're on time for graduation. Adult education is designed to serve adults out of school, [as well as] youth aged 16 or older who desire to earn a high school diploma. The program also serves students enrolled in regular day schools who need to make up a number of deficient credits in order to graduate on time.

We have Horizon and Sunset programs, and these are alternative settings for high school students who are considered at risk of dropping out or for those who have already dropped out and are under age of 18 and are scheduled to graduate within that current year.

We have the GED program. And in the absence of a high school diploma, the General Education Development test, otherwise known as the GED, is used as a measure of an individual's basic competencies in the area of English, social studies and mathematics and it serves as the Nevada State Certificate of High School Equivalency. There's an option there for students who need something, if they want to go on to work or even go on to school.

Home schooling -- a student may be excused from compulsory attendance at a public school when written evidence is provided to the School District that a student will be receiving equivalent instructions in a full-time program. An exemption will be provided by the School District prior to the student's withdrawal from school.

The last program the district has in place is called Virtual High School, and this is probably the most innovative program I'm aware of right now. And it's a full-time for concurrent program for students through interactive online services and courses. Students can take courses from any location, as long as they have access to a computer. All classes are based on the Nevada State standards, and students can enroll full-time at no cost and may take all the necessary coursework to earn a high school diploma from home. Concurrent students may enroll in two courses per semester at a fee of $95. So for students doing it full-time, through the technology piece, it's free. If they're going to a regular school and they want to take additional classes, then they can pay for those additional classes to get ahead or to get caught up.

That's pretty much what I wanted to share in terms of what the problems are. I always get asked, why are students dropping out of school? There are a lot of reasons why and it's not the same for any one family. You might have students in the same family, one is very successful, one is not. But you have to look at each individual student. I am a firm believer that every student should have an individual education plan. They have them for Special Ed students, but I believe it would be beneficial [for everyone], because we miss too many of the factors that impact the outcome. We miss the mental health issue. We miss the domestic violence issues that are going on. We miss the poverty issues. And students, especially when they get in high school, are very good at masking things that are going on. But if we had knowledge of what was going on with those students at the time things are happening to them and we had an ability to provide some intervention early, we would have a lot more students who could be successful and not have to drop out. Some things are within our control and some things aren't. Same things depend on the students. Some things happen to them that are way outside their control. Being homeless is out of their control. Yes, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I want to ask a question. I get the impression that the curricula in the high schools are primarily focused on quantitative and verbal aptitudes. And if a person doesn't have high quantitative or verbal aptitudes, then they're necessarily going to do poorly, no matter how frequently they come. What is the extent of programming for people with other aptitudes, aptitudes for mechanical and vocational and technical and craft capabilities, engines, electronics, plumbing, heavy equipment and so on? I mean, there's so many ways you could have an aptitude.

PROFESSOR DORMAN: Right. We do have some alternative programs with a vocational focus and Professor Nathanson here will talk to you about some of the Special Education programs. But in terms of those that are nonacademic or those you want to see as a vocational program, we do have a couple of schools that do address that. But they still have to be able to meet the basic academic standards set by the state.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: In other words, I'm wondering about the proportionality here. Is it true that, for example, if we have two vocationally strong places and 30 -- I don't know -- some number like 30, that are primarily quantitative and verbal, is that the same breakdown genetically that we get in the human race where about 30 out of 32 are strong quantitatively or verbally and 2 out of 32 are not strong [in this way]? I don't see it, no?

PROFESSOR DORMAN: We have our Superintendent here who can answer you.

SUPERINTENDENT GARCIA: First of all, our goal right now -- we're building another Vo-Tech on the northwest side. Our goal is to have a Vo-Tech in every single area in our district. And in the next three, four years we will have three new Vo-Techs added on. I mean I personally found it rather absurd that we only had one vocational technical high school in a district our size. So we're trying to catch up because we do see an absolute -- in fact . . . -- Vo-Tech has the highest attendance rate of any school in our entire district. So we know that what you're saying is absolutely true. So that's why we're going to build these schools, because they have to be out, you know. Not all kids are going to travel that far to go to Vo-Tech. So if we can bring it to their neighborhood and set up some hubs like that, then I think more kids will be successful, and that's what we're doing right now.

PROFESSOR DORMAN: Thank you for that question, and thank you for that answer. And at this point, I think I'll turn it over to my colleague, Dr. Nathanson. (Applause).

PROFESSOR NATHANSON: As Professor Berkheiser said in her introductions, I'm Rebecca Nathanson. I'm a Professor of Special Education here in the College of Education, also Professor of Law here at the Boyd School of Law. And as a Professor of Special Education, I have the privilege on an almost daily basis of preparing future teachers for children with special needs and disabilities. And that's really an exciting opportunity for me. It's great to be able to see students who are so excited and have such positive attitudes about kind of changing the educational system and really teaching children with disabilities. The other part of my job, as I said here, as a Professor of Law, is primarily focused in the Thomas and Mack Legal Clinic, where my primary responsibilities focus on supervising education students who work as part of the legal teams addressing the educational needs of our clients in clinics such as Juvenile Justice, Child Welfare, Immigration, Capital Defense Clinics. In that capacity, I have the opportunity to really observe what happens when educational needs of student are not met. And unfortunately, those aren't always real positive outcomes. So I get kind of both ends of the spectrum in my job, going from positive, enthusiastic, new teachers, to what happens when these needs aren't met. So what I'd like to do today is just spend a few minutes kind of talking about special education in general, and particularly in here in the state of Nevada.

Many of you are probably familiar with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997, which was originated in 1975, as Public Law 94-142. And basically, this is a federal law that mandates that we provide a free and appropriate public education to all children, regardless of the nature and severity of their disability. In other words, prior to 1975, there were over a million children who were not even attending school because of disability. There was one case cited that a child with cerebral palsy, for example, was denied access to school. Why was that? Because he was deemed to, quote, have a nauseating effect on the teacher and other students. Fortunately, things, I think, have come a long way since that time.

However, and I was always talking about this in my class, it was as recent as 1975 that this happened. I won't tell you what grade I was in at the time, but me being in school now, most of my students weren't even born at that time. To me, it's still fairly recent. Since 1975, we have had changes that require states to provide this education to students with disabilities. Unfortunately, even though that was almost 30 years ago, we still, I think, have a long way to go.

According to the Kids Count book in 2002, there were 42,532 children in the state of Nevada that were receiving services under eligibility for special education. Of those, the two counties that had the highest population of these students were, as you can see, Clark County and Washoe County, with Clark County serving 27,713 students. Just as important to note is that the majority of these students -- and this is consistent with national statistics, of course -- are actually what we consider mildly disabled. Most of them had learning disabilities, almost 24,000 of these students, so again, more than half of these students were classified under learning disability.

So how are we doing meeting the needs of our students with special education needs and what are the challenges that we face? I could probably sit here and talk to you all day about that, but I won't, so don't worry. But just kind of a couple of top things that come to my mind that we face here in the state of Nevada and in particular, of course, in Clark County, the first one being a shortage of teachers. And we're going to talk about again why that happens. The difficulty in identifying students with disabilities. And also the challenges in providing appropriate education for students with disabilities.

Teacher shortage. As we know we hear it almost on a daily basis, because of our growth rate here, almost 6,000 people moving in every month to Clark County, we have a shortage of teachers. And that's the bad news. The good news is that we have, and I'll speak for our programs here at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, we have tried to develop innovative programs and have worked collaboratively with CCSD. And I thank you, Mr. Garcia, for support at all levels of our efforts to provide opportunities for people to obtain teacher licensure. We have a number of programs for a cohort program, alternative licensure program, a step program. These are all programs that enable current people in the School District to obtain licensures and specialty licensures. So, for example, one of the programs focuses on student teaching assistants. And many of those folks have great experience working with students, but haven't had the opportunity because of money, family obligations, work, et cetera, to go through a degree program and obtain licensure. So with the cooperation and the major support of the Clark County School District, we're able to offer these alternative programs where Clark County School District can help financially support these students to enable them to obtain licensure. We at the University have been innovative in our delivery of these services so that teachers can sign up for programs where they're basically complete courses in a shorter amount of time by going full-time while they're being excused by the School District from work temporarily or going on weekend programs. So again, there are these programs that have been developed and are continuing to be developed, and that are producing some very high-qualified teachers to address this need.

There're also some issues with that. Critics of such programs often wonder, Do you get the same quality of education if you go to a standardized program, as you would in a standardized program, for example? So the initial data that's out, at least, supports the notion that these programs are just as effective, that the teachers are just as qualified and capable as people who go through traditional training programs. But again, I think we need further evaluation over a long period of time to assess the efficacy of those programs.

Another issue related to teacher shortage is this notion of categorical licensure that we have here in the state of Nevada. Many states across the country have a generic licensure, meaning the teachers are prepared to teach children with disabilities. And they could teach a child with a learning disability, a child with mental retardation, with autism, with emotional disturbance, with basically any type of disability. Many states also have a dual categorical system of licensure in which teachers are prepared to train either children with mild to moderate disabilities, again, folks with learning disabilities, behavior disorders, or severe profound disabilities, children that have mental retardation, for example, multiple impairments or serious emotional disturbance.

Here in Clark County, as I said, we have categorical licensure. What does that mean? Well, according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, there are 12 different categories of disability. So here in Clark County, we have endorsement programs to teach in the different areas of disability. For example, if you get an endorsement in the area of learning disabilities, you are only permitted to teach children with learning disabilities. If you get an endorsement in the area of emotional disturbance, you're only permitted to teach children with emotional disturbance. The positive of that, many people argue, is that, well, you have more specialized instruction, therefore, more specialized expertise and, therefore, a better teacher for those children. The problem with that is then we run into shortages in the various areas. And as the coordinator of the program in emotional disturbance here at University of Nevada Las Vegas in Special Ed, I know, for example, that there's a great shortage of teachers for children with emotional challenges in the School District. And oftentimes, many of my students who have not completed the endorsement in that area are put into those classes because there's a lack of teachers for those students.

We also have to remember that the recent modifications of IDEA in 1997 stated that we should focus more on the child, the individual child, as opposed to the disability. So if we're focused so much on a particular category of disability, are we really looking at the individual needs of that child? Many of you may know people with learning disability, for example. And we all know if we lined up five different people with learning disabilities, they would probably have five very different sets of characteristics associated with that disability. Again, I kind of question, Is it best to educate kids and license kids according to their disability, or according to their individuals needs?

Another challenge in serving kids with special education needs is identification of these students. And I'm not going to give you a Special Ed class here, so I won't go into the inherent issues in assessment in trying to identify some of these children, especially when we have disabilities such as autism with a whole spectrum of disorders that many people are still learning about. So there's those issues. But some issues that are unique to Nevada, the transience issues we have with so many people moving in and out of the state, I find that oftentimes parents are very frustrated. They were receiving special education services in California, then they come to Nevada and either they don't bring their educational records with them or they have to be reassessed and sometimes they're told that the procedures are different here in Las Vegas or Nevada, versus California. And oftentimes, or sometimes, there are months and sometimes unfortunately even years where their child is kind of lost in the educational system without having the appropriate assessment and because of the frequency of moves and whatnot.

Again, from my experience here working at Thomas and Mack Clinic, and we're witnessing many children in -- a number of our presenters today, Susan, Annette, and others, have talked about the numbers of children, the vast numbers of children in the Child Welfare system. And unfortunately, I found, again, those children are at risk for being identified for Special Ed, or not being identified. Why? Because once again they fall through the crack. Or as Professor Appell noted, kids are oftentimes in five to 10 different foster homes. And without having that consistent advocacy, it's very difficult to track kids and make sure that they're identif