First day of school exciting for some

Monday, Aug. 26, 2002 | 11:03 a.m.

Trenton Brewer was up at 5:30 this morning, double-checking the contents of his backpack and asking his mother when it would be time to walk to his first day of fourth grade at Wendell Williams Elementary School in Las Vegas.

"I like learning, I miss school in the summer," said Trenton, who was one of the first students to arrive at the new school for the start of the 2002-03 academic year.

Located on J Street near Washington Avenue, Williams is the first two-story elementary school in the state and one of nine new campuses opening today in the Clark County School District. More than 258,000 students are expected to attend its 277 schools this year.

"It's a beautiful place," Trenton's mother, Dinah Hunter, said. "I'm proud to have my son go here."

Teachers and staff at Williams spent the weekend putting the finishing touches on classrooms, while maintenance workers hustled in furniture piled in the front courtyard. Books piled in the library waited to be shelved, and a chain-link fence blocked off an unfinished brick planter in the back. The school's playgrounds are expected to be completed within a few weeks, Williams Principal Carol Foster said.

"It's incredible how much we got done in three days," Foster said. "When I think where we were on Friday, I wasn't sure we were going to make it. But we did."

Built with funds from a 1998 capital-improvement bond, the new school -- named in honor of Assemblyman Wendell P. Williams, D-Las Vegas -- boasts such energy-saving measures as motion-activated lights and solar panels.

"All our new schools are a credit to the community, the voters who put their faith in our children," said Clark County School Superintendent Carlos Garcia,who stopped by the new school to join the students for cereal and milk in the cafeteria.

Kimberly Brown and Alexandrya Zaragoza, both in fourth grade, said they were looking forward to meeting their new teachers and making friends.

"We're the first kids in this school and that's exciting," Kimberly said.

"We get to explore the school we saw them build," Alexandrya said.