Save our school

Last October, Steve West, principal at Reno’s Rainshadow Community Charter High School, made a quiet announcement to faculty that the school would be closing due to lack of funding. The young drama teacher, Pan Pantoja, raised his hand and asked, “Well, did we ever ask for some?”

The truth was, they hadn’t.

“So let’s do what most other nonprofits do,” Pantoja pressed. “Let’s do a fundraiser.”

And, as a drama teacher, his first idea was an original play, Charter School—The Play, which runs through March 31 at the Circle of Life Hospice Foundation Theater, 900 W. Fifth St.

Fundraising seems obvious, but West says he and the board of directors had naïvely believed solutions were in place. But state money, their primary source of funding, was no longer guaranteed, and their savings had been exhausted.

When Rainshadow moved into its current location on Vesta Street five years ago, they opened two student-run businesses, a coffee shop and a pizzeria, intended to help fund the school. Additionally, the Rainshadow Foundation was installed to solicit funds from the community. Neither worked.

“Unfortunately, that Foundation didn’t do much of anything for four years,” West says. “Over time, we sat in denial, and we got to the point where we were running out of money.”

“I’m an insane optimist,” says Pantoja. “I didn’t consider giving up when the closure was announced. We’re artists, so we’re already used to the bottom.”

Pantoja, who is also the curator and co-founder of Reno Art Works, talked to his co-founder, fellow artist Aric Shapiro, about ways to raise money for the school, and together they conceived of making the school’s spring play a fundraiser (independently run, and not hosted by Rainshadow itself). By the time of the formal announcement of closure at the end of January, the two began soliciting monologues from faculty and staff, and had a huge response.

The three full-time staffers (two English teachers and a counselor) and three students performing original monologues in Charter School—The Play

collectively share the experience of attending the school, whose interdisciplinary approach provides an alternative educational path to at-risk students, and what that has meant to them.

“I’m so proud of these guys, that they have the guts to get up and speak in such an honest, hopeful manner,” says Pantoja, the director, who says he did little more than tighten the script. “None of them are actors; they’re just speaking from the heart.”

Pantoja says the students are using their own stories to represent the feelings of the population about how charter schools like theirs help students change their lives for the better.

At each performance, the audience will also have the opportunity to bid on a wide array of silent auction items, which include massages, haircuts, hand-knitted apparel and much more. All proceeds from show tickets, auction items, and sale of refreshments go directly to Rainshadow.

Though donations from the Redfield Foundation and an anonymous donor came through this month, granting Rainshadow a reprieve for another year, West says they’ll spend the next year seeking donations to sustain the school. And Shapiro says that he, Pantoja and students and faculty are already thinking about other potential fundraising events, including, perhaps, a formal dinner this summer.

“Everyone can do a little bit,” says Shapiro. “We need to make a decision as a community: Are we comfortable being 49th in the nation, or do we want to do something about that?”