Superintendent Pam Teel has much to be proud of as she wraps up the final days of her 29 years spent as an educator at the Lincoln County School District. 

Teel has watched her district — located about two hours northeast of Las Vegas — help students who weren’t expected to graduate high school beat the odds and walk across the stage and receive their diplomas. She’s helped grow a pipeline of licensed educators from within the district’s support staff. Most recently, Teel was able to add art and music classes to her elementary schools thanks to the 2023 increase in K-12 education funding from the state Legislature, an investment Teel said needs to keep growing and which she plans to advocate for during next year’s legislative session. 

A Roswell, New Mexico, native, Teel moved to Caliente, 36 years ago with her husband, who worked for the Bureau of Land Management. 

Teel started her career at the district teaching pre-K at Caliente Elementary School. While she enjoyed the classroom, Teel said she felt she couldn’t help but to voice her opinion whenever she felt there was a better way to do something.

“Leadership, I think, just oozed out of me,” she said. 

Teel slowly moved up the ranks until she became superintendent nine years ago. She oversees nine schools — four elementary schools, two middle schools, three high schools — that serve about 900 students. 

In June, Teel was named Nevada’s superintendent of the year for the 2024-25 school year. 

Teel said her dedication to making sure all students receive the education they deserve and the support they need to bring out their potential has helped keep her in the district for almost three decades. 

“Every kid deserves a diploma, a graduation that means something, that they're then capable of going out and then bettering the world,” Teel said.  

In August, the Lincoln County School Board approved Teel’s retirement at the end of the school year. The 55-year-old said she came to that decision after a fight with colon cancer forced her to ask herself how she wanted to spend the rest of her life. 

“I have done my due diligence,” said Teel, who is now cancer free, in a December phone interview. “It's going to be hard to leave. This is my world. I have such a passion for education in Nevada.”

Funding increases

Teel plans to spend part of her remaining time with the school district to lobby for more funding for K-12 education in Carson City. 

The Lincoln County School District greatly benefited from the historic increase in K-12 education funding passed during the 2023 legislative session, which Teel compared to filling a pothole left after years of chronic underfunding. 

Teel said her district’s budget increased by more $2 million, from $15.4 million to about $18 million during the last two fiscal years. In addition, lawmakers approved a $250 million matching fund, SB231, to incentivize school districts to raise educator pay, from which Lincoln County received almost $900,000. 

The funding increase allowed for raises of 15 percent during the past two years to all school employees. This brought the district's teacher starting salary from about $38,000 to almost $44,000. It’s still less than the starting salary at its neighboring school districts, about $45,000 at White Pine County, $51,000 at Nye County and $58,000 at Clark County. 

The district also used the SB231 funds to give teachers and support staff an additional 9 percent increase over the past two years. 

This year, the Lincoln County School Board also approved raises proposed by Teel for administrators and district leadership, including Teel, out of the general fund that were in line with the increases given in the SB231.

Lincoln County Education Association President Sherry Spencer said in a March letter those raises turned the thank you that teachers statewide received from the Legislature as part of SB231 into a participation trophy for all. 

Like other rural Nevada school districts, recruiting teachers can be a heavy lift for the district, Teel said, though Lincoln County’s proximity to Las Vegas and the Utah border gives it an edge compared to other districts in more remote areas of the state. 

After these raises, the district only has four teacher vacancies. 

In addition to the staff raises, Teel said the district added an elementary art and music teacher to the northern elementary schools, and a music teacher to the Pahranagat Valley schools, which serve students in  kindergarten through 12th grade. 

Teel also hired four elementary reading strategists, who work with students to improve their reading skills. Teel said the district was able to fill these positions by tapping into a grow your own talent pool of paraprofessionals as well as teachers from an Alternative Route to Licensure program that provides a fast track into teaching for individuals who hold a bachelor's degree outside of education. 

“I never thought I could say, ‘Hey, I'm gonna hire people and then find them,’” Teel said.  

Despite the 2023 funding increase, Nevada’s per pupil funding projected for fiscal year 2025, about $13,000, remains behind the national average by about $4,000 and what optimal K-12 education funding as recommended by experts, according to estimates from the state’s Commission on School Funding. 

To reach optimal funding, Chair Guy Hobbs told lawmakers during a Dec. 16 meeting, the commission recommends expanding the state’s sales tax base and phasing out, capping or eliminating property tax abatements. 

Teel said she’s in support of the commission’s recommendations to generate more funding for Nevada’s K-12 education system. 

“There needs to be a mechanism that guarantees that education is funded and not just on a whim of every other year that we luck out and get money, because that's not going to sustain salaries,” Teel said. “We can’t lose momentum.”

After she retires at the end of the school, Teel said it’s likely she’ll find a way to stay involved in education. 

“I have ADHD, and I probably can't stay home and do nothing,” Teel said. “It's just a piece of me.”