Tears filled Maria Castaneda’s eyes as she recalled moving her son from a Las Vegas charter school to a microschool in 2020. She explained that in the charter school, her 7th grader was excelling academically but was growing increasingly withdrawn and angry. “I pulled him out because in that situation it brought out the worst of him, not the best of him,” she told me when I visited her son’s microschool, TCMI Academy.

Now in the microschool, her son has completely changed. He is happy and engaged, involved in many extracurricular activities and clubs, and has a much more open, respectful relationship with his mother. In fact, the turnaround in her son, along with his younger brother who she also enrolled in the microschool, led Castaneda to leave her job in the construction field, and take a pay cut, so that she could help with administrative tasks for the microschool. “When I saw the change in my kids I said I want to be a part of that,” she said.

I’ve spent this week visiting some of the approximately 25 microschools within a 10-mile radius of the Las Vegas Strip, serving roughly 300 students.