Carson City School District Associate Superintendent of Educational Services Tasha Fuson, honored with a scholarship in her name during Carson High School’s Salute to Scholars on May 22, is retiring at the end of the school year.
Photo by Jessica Garcia.
Raising the level of rigor in the classroom starts with coaching and mentoring the staff members most closely working with students, Carson City School District’s retiring Associate Superintendent of Educational Services Tasha Fuson says.
That’s where she’s felt she’s done some of her best work in her current role for CCSD.
“For me, the major priority for the past six years … includes textbook adoptions and bringing in high-quality materials, making sure … I was building around common assessments and having strong-aligned curriculum,” Fuson said.
Fuson retires at the end of June after a career as a special education teacher in Clark County, assistant principal and principal in Washoe and then assuming Carson High School’s top role after Principal Ron Beck retired. She has been Carson City’s associate superintendent since 2019.
For advocating for students and staff, she was named the Nevada Association of School Boards’ District-Level Administrator Making a Difference in 2023 and a Woman of Distinction by the Carson City Chamber of Commerce in 2024.
But her work at Carson High, she feels, is her best accomplishment. The district’s Jump Start program dual enrollment launched under her oversight through which 24 students graduated with their associate’s degree before they crossed Carson High’s stage. The campus became a five-star school per the Nevada School Performance Framework’s accountability system.
“While I was principal there, we were able to literally almost double the number of students taking the Advanced Placement tests,” she said. “My staff worked really, really hard there. We had raised graduation rates substantially. I think we had a 94% graduation rate my last year at the high school.”
Fuson said she loves Carson City as a supportive community that encourages its educational offerings. Schools continue to refine their infrastructure in their career and technical program, its Multi-Tiered System of Support framing academic interventions toward students’ needs and mental health supports, she said. Even the district’s ability to help students navigate the role of artificial intelligence and its use in their education or in the workforce has become a burden of responsibility to teachers to evaluate and align with curriculum.
“I think the role of K-12 education has really expanded, so it is beyond academics now,” Fuson said. “I mean, we feed our students, we clothe our students, we provide them access to medical care, and now we're providing them access to mental health supports if needed.
“I'm hoping that we continue to receive the funding as a district to continue those efforts because it's needed now more than ever, and I just don't see it changing.”
Fuson said she’s confident in Carson High Principal Dan Carstens, her successor Brandon Bringhurst and other staff to carry on the work to boost students’ achievement.
She reflected on her love of her journey as a teacher and administrator.
“I'll tell you as a veteran, everyone thinks they know how to do school because all of us went to school for at least 12 or 13 years,” she said. “And people do not realize what hard work our teachers do.
“People don’t see what happens behind the scenes for teachers and how much work they put into their craft. … Teachers have to be the best of learners, and they’re always on every second of the day. I’ve said teachers work really hard, but people don’t see it.”