Shanda Crosby is changing roles with CCPS, but leaves a lasting legacy at GRC

With the 2025–2026 school year under­way as of today, the dis­trict has been prepar­ing for a fun and pro­duc­tive school year. Running a school dis­trict takes a lot of hard work and many ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple who are will­ing to help out. Former Smoke Signals teacher Shanda Crosby is a shin­ing exam­ple of how hard work and ded­i­ca­tion can for­ev­er impact stu­dents and fac­ul­ty, leav­ing a last­ing mark on our schools and the community.

This year, Crosby made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to move on from her long-time teach­ing posi­tion at Smoke Signals to become CCPS’s full-time District and Community Relations Coördinator after tak­ing up the posi­tion part-time for a few years. Crosby plans to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing the stu­dent media pro­gram by guid­ing the new teacher, Mr. Hagan Wells.

“Hagan was the obvi­ous choice to take over Smoke Signals,” Crosby said. “I’ve known him since he was young, and his fam­i­ly is spe­cial to me. Hagan cares for the program’s lega­cy and tra­di­tion. I’ll be there for what­ev­er he needs.”

Crosby said leav­ing her 20-year teach­ing posi­tion is very hard, but she knows it’s what is best for her fam­i­ly and the program.

“We accom­plished awe­some things,” she said. “I think that helps to think about leav­ing the lega­cy strong and also leav­ing it in good hands.”

Crosby’s love for telling sto­ries is deeply root­ed in Clark County. Starting out work­ing for The Winchester Sun as a reporter for four years, Crosby said she gained a lot from that experience.

“It was a dai­ly paper so I learned a lot. It was before the days of instant news at our fin­ger­tips, so peo­ple looked for­ward to the dai­ly paper to find out what was going on. I actu­al­ly cov­ered the Board of Education and school board meet­ings dur­ing some of that time.”

After hav­ing her third child, she went on to do free­lance work so she could stay home with her kids. While she was doing this, she received a call from John Atkins, a for­mer GRC prin­ci­pal, ask­ing her to help get Smoke Signals up and run­ning once again.

“The teacher had left and they didn’t have any­body to get it going. It was impor­tant to the school. So I came in for a cou­ple class­es a week, met the kids. I’m still in touch with some of them.”

Reviving the school news­pa­per wasn’t an easy task, but Crosby was deter­mined to make it work.

“They had no com­put­ers, so I used my own, and we some­how got some papers out. Mr. Atkins retired, and Gordon Parido became the prin­ci­pal and hired me as a teacher. I nev­er thought I want­ed to be a teacher, but then when I got in there, I fell in love with the kids. I had always worked with the kids at church, so it was already a love of mine. I could use what I had been doing as a pro­fes­sion­al career to help the stu­dents build something.”

Crosby said the hard­est part of leav­ing her 20-year posi­tion this sum­mer was walk­ing away from the rela­tion­ships and bonds she cre­at­ed dur­ing her time lead­ing Smoke Signals.

“It’s just crazy, the bless­ings of the whole thing. The rela­tion­ships, the fam­i­lies I have got­ten to know, and the lega­cy we have been able to estab­lish with it are real­ly over­whelm­ing and hum­bling,” she said. “It was fun to build it into some­thing dif­fer­ent and new. Twenty years lat­er, I could not be more proud of what the stu­dents have accom­plished. Every sin­gle group I had was special.”

Crosby says she is going to miss her stu­dents the most.

“The best part about teach­ing is help­ing stu­dents find gifts, tal­ents, and inter­ests with­in them­selves they didn’t know were there. I loved giv­ing them a blank can­vas to cre­ate and dig deep within.”

Crosby’s posi­tion at the Board of Education will allow her to con­tin­ue her pas­sion for telling stu­dents’ stories.

“I am look­ing for­ward to telling the sto­ries about the great­ness that goes on in Clark County Schools. I could work until I’m 200 years old and still not tell all of the sto­ries of all the great peo­ple and great things that are going on con­stant­ly in our schools,” she said. “I’m hon­ored to be a part.”

Crosby has been a ded­i­cat­ed mem­ber of our school sys­tem, putting all of her effort into guid­ing our stu­dents to find­ing their true selves and pas­sions. Her work will con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit our entire com­mu­ni­ty through the sto­ries she will con­tin­ue to tell.