High schools to face pressure from student explosion

Simon Gajer

Tuesday, March 24, 1998 | 10:05 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The number students graduating from Nevada high schools is expected to skyrocket over the next 15 years, according to a study released Monday.

The number of Nevada high school graduates will jump to nearly 25,000 in 2012, the study says.

In the 1995-1996 school year, the last year the study recorded, 10,771 students graduated from Nevada high schools.

"This increase in graduates by around 134 percent puts a lot of pressure ... on Nevada," said Robin Zuniga, researcher of the bipartisan study of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and the College Board, which conducted the study.

Nevada's increase in teenagers going to high school is the fastest of all 50 states, and Washington, D.C., according to the study. Nationwide, the number of high school graduates will increase by 20 percent by 2012.

"(The states) have to face the challenge of need for more rooms ... and the challenge to find the dollars," said Richard Jonsen, WICHE's executive director.

At the beginning of the 1997-1998 school year, the Clark County School District had 9,814 12th-graders enrolled in its 28 high schools and programs providing high school education, said Terry Hicks, the school district's demographer. Clark County was listed as one of the fastest growing counties in the country, according to figures released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In 1996, the Clark County School District had 6,681 students in its graduating class. By 1997, that number had jumped to 7,157 graduates, said Jane Kadoich, assistant director of the district's guidance program.

By the year 2000, the county will build three high schools, which together will hold 2,700 students, Hicks said. The additional schools, however, "are definitely not enough," he said.

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said the study's projected increase was not a surprise. Nevada has long been among the fastest growing states, he said. And now, the major concern was "how to finance the growth," Bryan said.

Traditionally, the money for new schools came from bonds, he said. With the extraordinary growth, "the state has to find new methods of financing," Bryan said.