School growth still surging

Tuesday, May 7, 2002 | 11:12 a.m.

The Clark County School District could see enrollment balloon by two-thirds over the next 10 years to more than 400,000, school demographers say.

The district's enrollment, now just shy of 250,000 students, has soared 36 percent since 1998, said Dusty Dickens, director of the district's demographics and zoning division. Despite an economic downturn following Sept. 11, there have been no indications that the expansion in Southern Nevada will taper off, school officials said.

"When you think of our enrollment almost doubling in a decade, it really is staggering," said Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of the district's operations division. "Especially when you consider the difficulties we're already experiencing meeting the demands placed on our infrastructure."

Since 1998 the school district's demographers have been nearly spot-on with their enrollment predictions, falling short of the mark by as little as a few thousand students. School officials say they have no reason to doubt the current predictions will be just as accurate.

The growth is expected to put further pressure on the nation's sixth-largest school district, which this year is in a financial crunch to serve the students it already has, to keep up.

More students may not necessarily mean more money. The school district will get the same per-pupil funding from the state whether there are 200,000 or 400,000 students, said Allin Chandler, executive director of the Clark County Association of School Administrators.

As the district gets bigger there could be some savings along the way thanks to the "economy of scale," Chandler said.

"It's cheaper to buy textbooks and chairs for 100 students than 50 students," Chandler said.

A greater concern than the district's finances is the organizational structure of the district's administration, Chandler said. Superintendent Carlos Garcia divided the district last year into five regions, each with its own administrative team, in the hopes of improving accessibility and efficiency. But in a survey last month by Chandler's organization, in which a third of the school district's administrators participated, the majority said accessibility had not improved.

Chandler said while he has always been against the idea of dividing Clark County into separate school districts, he might reconsider such a proposal if responsiveness by the administration to staff and families doesn't improve.

The district is already stretched to keep pace with growth in a county that saw an 85 percent increase in population between 1990 and 2000, according to the census.

When the Clark County School District's payroll office cuts the twice-monthly checks for 27,000 employees, Rulffes said he crosses his fingers and hopes the outdated, overburdened software used to manage the district's finances won't crash and burn.

The district is using the same payroll program designed in the early 1990s when there were half as many employees, Rulffes said. The business office asked the school board for $2 million for an infrastructure study -- the complete overhaul could cost between $15 and $20 million, Rulffes said. Replacing the infrastructure would be a three-year project, Rulffes said.

"We really have no choice, we're at the breaking point," Rulffes said. "We need to lay the groundwork now so that we're not caught off-guard later on."

Dale Scheideman, director of the district's planning and engineering division, is also looking ahead. He wants the district to build a new curriculum and professional development center on Pecos Road north of Flamingo Road, at a cost of $9.7 million. The new center would consolidate about 150 staff members and save the district from spending money to rent office space at sites scattered throughout the district. The school board will consider the purchase when it meets Thursday.

John Jasonek, executive director of the Clark County Education Association, said while he welcomed discussion on how to improve the district's infrastructure and facilities division, neither will matter if there aren't enough teachers to staff the schools.

A nationwide shortage of credentialed teachers is looming, and Clark County will have to compete with other regions for qualified professionals, Jasonek said.

"If the district is going to have a master plan, that plan certainly better include how they're going to take care of their teachers," Jasonek said. "Otherwise, not only the school district but the whole community will suffer."