High school boundaries discussed

Jace Radke

Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2001 | 11:40 a.m.

Meetings

A second public comment meeting on the proposed zones will be held tonight at 6 at the Durango High School theater, 7100 W. Dewey Drive.

A meeting to discuss zoning for four new elementary schools will be held 6 p.m. Thursday at Cheyenne High School, 3200 W. Alexander Road.

Two new high schools will open in the fall, bringing much-needed relief to the packed hallways of Durango and Silverado high schools in the southern part of the Las Vegas Valley.

But before students can pack their backpacks and move their school spirit, the Clark County School District has to redraw the school zones.

Tuesday night the district's attendance zone advisory committee held a public meeting to gather comments from parents about two proposals for those boundaries -- meetings that in the past have been heated as parents fought and pled to keep their children in schools close to their homes.

Sierra Vista, 7610 S. Cimarron Road, near Windmill Lane and Buffalo Drive, and Coronado, at 1001 Coronado Center Drive, near St. Rose Parkway and Eastern Avenue in Henderson, are among 15 new schools scheduled to open for the school year 2001-2002.

They will draw students from four existing high schools: Durango, Silverado, Green Valley and Foothill.

The advisory committee has come up with two zoning proposals for the public to comment on, with the main differences in the zoning of Silverado.

Proposal 1 sets the boundaries for Silverado at Interstate 15 on the west, Sunset Road on the north, Pecos Road on the east and St. Rose Parkway to the south. The second proposal sets Silverado's boundaries at I-15 to the west, Tropicana Avenue to the north, Silverado Ranch to the south and a combination of Eastern and Pecos to the east.

The first option drew a familiar complaint from the audience of about 100 parents and students -- that children will commute too far to school.

"Proposal 1 will force a group of kids to have to go all the way across town to school at Sierra Vista," parent Danny Hastings said. "It's like sending Rancho kids to Western or Valley kids to Clark."

Hastings was referring particularly to an area bordered by Tropicana, Eastern, Sunset and I-15. Under the first option, students in that neighborhood would attend Sierra Vista. They now go to Silverado.

"I drove it, and it was about 13.2 miles from my house to Sierra Vista," said Hastings, who lives near Tropicana and Eastern. "It took me 30 minutes to get there at 1 p.m. on a Saturday, so you can imagine what it will take on a weekday afternoon."

One of the two proposals is expected to be decided on by the school board March 6.