School Board trustee overcame childhood poverty

By her own account, Clark County School Board trustee Lola Brooks shouldn’t have graduated from high school.

A troubled teen raised by an impoverished single mother in Florida, she remembers frequently getting into trouble.

“I missed a lot of school,” said Brooks, 41, who represents the Summerlin area of District E. “The time that I was on campus my senior year was spent mostly in (in-school suspension).”

Her behavioral problems, she said, stemmed from the unstable environment in which she grew up — one that had her mother and two sisters hopping around from house to house, taking advantage of the movein specials that housing complexes offered new renters.

The typically quiet trustee’s unusual path from at-risk student to School Board member could serve as both a source of inspiration and a cautionary note for equally troubled kids in Clark County.

“Largely, you are going to be the person who predicts your success,” she told Burk High School students who urged the board to save the day When people overcome adversity, sometimes they ascribe that to some kind of greatness within themselves, and sometimes it’s really just a series of lucky breaks. program for at-risk students in October. “Whether you go to this school or you go to one of the other alternative schools, your success is going to be determined by your work and your perseverance.”

Barely graduated

Brooks, who’s just completing her first year in public office, grew up with two sisters, mostly in Lakeland, Florida, as her mother scrambled to keep the family afloat on annual earnings of about $20,000.

She remembers falling and cutting her hand on glass when she was 7. She needed stitches, she said, but her mother didn’t have enough money to take her to the hospital.

“’I only have three dollars,’” she

BROOKS

reversal, which set guidelines for future divorce cases to include “the wishes of the child,” “the child’s educational needs” and “the child’s ability to adapt to an unfamiliar environment,” among others.

“Determining which school placement is in the best interest of a child is a broad-ranging and highly fact-specific inquiry,” the decision stated, “so a court should consider any other factors presented by the particular dispute, and it should use its discretion to decide how much weight to afford each factor.”

Las Vegas attorney F. Peter James,

representing Melissa Arcella, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. In September, James said the lower court ruling could have been more complete in its findings.

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @ randompoker on Twitter.