Parents fail to alter course for their elementary school

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, Feb. 15, 2002 | 9:41 a.m.

More than 100 Hispanic parents and their children left a School Board meeting Thursday confused and disappointed after the board voted to proceed with plans to convert Bracken Elementary School into a magnet school specializing in math and science.

The parents have expressed their opposition to the plan on repeated occasions since learning of the move Nov. 21, but Thursday's meeting marked the first time their concerns were placed on the board's formal agenda.

The parents said they were not consulted during the two-year process of considering transforming Bracken -- near Eastern and Washington avenues in eastern Las Vegas -- into a magnet school. The decision will result in 40 to 60 percent of Bracken's students being sent to one of two nearby schools -- Cambeiro and Lunt.

Parents said they opposed the plan because it will divide some families by putting children in different schools, cutting out a pre-kindergarten program, reducing the time children spend in kindergarten and requiring parents and children to pass through areas and enroll their children in schools they consider unsafe.

"It's an injustice, never having taken our views into account," Rosalinda Gonzalez, mother of a 4-year-old enrolled in pre-kindergarten at Bracken, said.

The board voted 5-2 against a motion by Larry Mason to table the plan, even while CCSD Superintendent Carlos Garcia acknowledged on repeated occasions that several of the parents' objections were reasonable.

"I do believe the process should be changed, and future decisions involving magnet schools should involve the whole community," Garcia said during the meeting.

"But by the time we got accepted to participate in the program, it was too late to make these changes," he said.

Bracken is one of six schools in the district approved for a total of $7.5 million in federal funds for magnet schools.

Members of the board, including President Sheila Moulton, said it would be difficult to halt the process because some of the money allocated to the plan had already been spent, and 670 students had registered to participate in a March 13 lottery that determines who will attend the new magnet schools.

Moulton and Garcia also said that stopping Bracken from becoming a magnet school could jeopardize future efforts at obtaining funds for the program.

"There are so few funds available for these types of schools, if we don't use this money it will not be seen by the federal government favorably," Garcia said.

"What they're telling us is that our children are negotiable for a large sum of money," Liberato Puga, father of three students at Bracken, said.

The parents are looking into legal options. Allen Lichtenstein, attorney for the ACLU, attended the meeting.

"What you've got here is the School Board acknowledging that they've screwed up by not involving their parents, but then not addressing any of their concerns because they're too late in coming to their attention," Lichtenstein said.