SPARKS — Walking the halls at Reed High School made Dean Whellams reflect on his own school days in the mid-1980s at Sparks High School and on his current experience as a basketball coach at Wooster High School.

"All the options kids have in terms of curriculum," said Whellams, who works in business and employee development at Q&D Construction, about what impressed him at Reed. "It's very cool that this school has continued to have vocational classes from sewing to metals to wood shop to auto."

Touring the campus with principal Mary Vesco as part of the Principal for a Day program on Thursday, Whellams and Vesco talked about how vocational classes and athletics are often the first to be cut when the budget is tight, as it is now for the Washoe County School District. Whellams said he knows that not all high school graduates will go on to college, so it is important for them to have some aspect of their education to tap into and hold their attention — whether it be a trade or a sport — and give them an answer to the question, "Why go to school?"

"He needs a 'why,' " Whellams said of a player he coached in this, his first year at Wooster. "If his why is basketball and it gets his butt in the seat, let it be basketball."

A few halls later, Vesco and Whellams listened to the Reed choir gleefully perform three songs while practicing for an upcoming concert.

"Sports keeps kids in school just like music keeps kids in school," Vesco said.

The Education Alliance of Washoe County instigated the Principal for a Day event, placing 15 local business leaders in schools all around the district. Modeled after a concept started in San Francisco schools, this is the second year of the event in Washoe County, growing from three guest principals to 15. Business leaders shadowed the principals in all their duties all day, including staff meetings, administrative tasks, classroom observation and evaluation, bus and lunch duty and interactions with students, teachers and parents. After school, all of the business leaders and principals met at the Microsoft Licensing offices in south Reno to talk about their experiences.

"It seemed so much smaller," Silver Legacy CFO Stephanie Lepori said with a laugh about her visit to Agnes Risley Elementary School in Sparks. "When you're little everything seems so big."

Lepori, a product of Greenbrae Elementary, Dilworth Middle and Reed High schools, partnered with Risley principal Muriel Dickey on Thursday. They talked about the business of running a school and how it bears many similarities to running a private business.

"She really is the CEO of a little business," Lepori said. "I never had that perspective before."

"I think Stephanie in her job does many of the same things, just in a different avenue," Dickey said. "It's nice to have people in the community understand the complexities of managing a whole school."

"I was always told when I was a principal you have to run your school more like a business," school superintendent Heath Morrison said during the after-school gathering at Microsoft.

Paula Lee Hobson, executive director at Truckee Meadows Community College, said she was impressed with the writing practice in a sixth grade class at Van Gorder Elementary, which she visited with principal Troy Parks. The students were working on an essay assignment in which they were being challenged to write 264 words on the easiest thing they had ever done, which proved not to be such an easy task.

"Two students I talked to said it was hard to come up with the easiest thing they had ever done," Hobson said.

Despite the difficulty, the students were coming up with some good pieces of writing, Hobson said. Being that 90 percent of her college freshmen come in with remedial writing, English and math skills, Hobson said public schools need to be expect more from students at younger ages.

"We have to help them be more successful or we fail them as students," Hobson said. "I was excited to see more rigor in the elementary school, pushing them and keeping them excited and engaged."

For more information about the Education Alliance, visit www.ed-alliance.org.