New elementary school to be built in NLV

Diana Sahagun

Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2000 | 9:52 a.m.

To keep pace with the growth in the northwest part of North Las Vegas, the Clark County School District is planning an $8 million to $9 million elementary school to house at least 920 students year-round.

School district representatives will appear before the Planning Commission tonight to ask for a special use permit to construct an elementary school on 33.8 acres zoned residential at the corner of Commerce Street and Tropical Parkway.

The parcel is big enough to house the elementary school and a proposed middle school.

The elementary school is slated to open by the 2001-2002 school year. The middle school could come by 2004.

The new school will take up some slack at the nearby heavily populated Raul P. Elizondo and Lee Antonello elementary schools, Kim Vesely, a school district spokeswoman, said.

Starting this fall, the two schools will hold 961 and 973 students, respectively. Vesely said even though both schools are on a year-round schedule they are over capacity.

The new school in North Las Vegas would have a capacity of 725 students on the nine-month schedule, or 920 students year-round.

"We continue to grow by leaps and bounds every year, and it has been this way for quite a while," school district spokeswoman Mary Stanley-Larsen said.

At least 217,000 students attended school in the Las Vegas Valley last year, and the number is expected to jump to 231,000 students this year. Because of the rapid growth, schools can't be built fast enough, Stanley-Larsen said.

One of the ways the district is keeping up with the rapid pace is converting more schools to a year-round schedule. Last year more than half of the district's elementary schools were on that schedule.

The North Las Vegas school will be part of the second group of schools to be built under the Capital Improvement Program passed by the voters in 1998. The program is a 10-year plan intended to construct 88 schools with money from a real estate transfer tax, a 1 5/8 percent tax on hotel rooms and bonds.

The first two middle schools under the program are set to be open by August, and another four schools will open in 2001.

"We are keeping pace with the growth, but that's the best you can really do with it," Stanley-Larsen said. "It's like a wave that keeps coming at you, keeps pounding the shore. If you don't keep up with it, it's going to pull you under."