Highlights from 2023 RISE Award Honoree Carlene Pacheco's work include:

• Ms. Carlene Pacheco, a Paraprofessional, Title VI Liaison, and Family Service Specialist in Churchill County School District, Nevada, who serves all six of the district's schools.
• Ms. Pacheco serves on the Nevada Indian Education Advisory Committee. Its mission is to support, promote, and assure optimum educational opportunity that is based on tribal cultures and maximize participation in the education of American Indians and Alaskan Natives in Nevada. 
• She makes a positive impact on Native American student learning and graduation rates through offering one-on-one tutoring, classroom support, and after-school tutoring.  
• Pacheco exemplifies growing up in a community and being part of a program that reaches the most students.
• She has built bridges among the community, Native American Reservation, and schools. The community views Pacheco as someone to rely on and come to for assistance. 

Highlights from 2022 RISE Awardee Keeley Anderson’s work include:

• Ms. Anderson, a paraprofessional, serves in a role that prioritizes students who need additional support to be successful.
• She is in charge of Newcastle Middle School’s in-school-suspension programs.
• Ms. Anderson serves in a leadership role for the school’s late academic start Wednesday programming.
• In addition, she pitches in as part of the district’s summer maintenance department.
• She was the head varsity volleyball coach for Newcastle High School until recently.
• During the pandemic, she became the key communicator and liaison for students who were placed in quarantine by public health orders. Ms. Anderson organized a plan to keep students on track and assisted them in the transition back to classes.

Highlights from 2021 RISE Awardee Melito Ramirez' work include:

• Over his 40-year career, Ramirez has worked for multiple school districts in over a dozen different roles such as migrant home visitor, summer school coordinator, special education secretary, and bus driver.
• Ramirez conducts home visits, bridges the gap between home and school for Spanish speaking families, and works to secure the mental health and technological resources students need.
• Ramirez helped to organize a night school in English and Spanish for adults.
• Ramirez has supported students as they apply for and participate in youth leadership programs, as both a mentor and driver.
• Ramirez is credited with diminishing tensions among rival gang members in the 1990s when gang conflict was high in the Walla Walla area by coordinating supervised evening and weekend activities.