Contentious boundary change for school delayed

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2003 | 9:31 a.m.

Parents and educators who opposed plans to redraw Paradise Elementary School's attendance zones for next fall won a partial victory Tuesday as the Clark County School Board voted unanimously to delay the change until the 2004-05 academic year.

In an effort to have more children enrolled at campuses closer to home and improve alignment with surrounding middle schools, the proposal would have moved 500 Paradise students to Jack Dailey and Gene Ward elementary schools. The same number of students would also have been moved from Daily and Ward to Paradise.

After quickly dispatching boundary changes for six new elementary schools, the board spent two hours debating the plans affecting Paradise, which is located on the campus of the the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and serves as a teacher training and research site for the School of Education.

Citing the lower student-to-teacher ratio, along with the strong sense of community that exists at the school, about 20 parents braved a chilly downpour to ask the board that their children not be moved from Paradise.

Moving the students would disrupt ongoing projects that follow individual students, said Professor Maria Myerson, who serves as the College of Education's liaison to Paradise. The research is already hampered by the school's 50 percent-plus transiency rate, Myerson said.

Additionally, the Paradise campus isn't set up to handle the influx of students from the Dailey and Ward campuses who would need bilingual programs, Agustin Orci, deputy superintendent of instruction, said.

While the "programs follow the students," it would take time to establish the necessary faculty at Paradise to duplicate the comprehensive bilingual program at Ward, Orci said. Contracts with the teachers union would prohibit the district from simply re-assigning the Ward staff to Paradise, Orci said.

But members of the board's Attendance Zone Advisory Commission, which drafted the recommendation for the change, said the revised boundary lines would in the long run serve the most students district-wide.

"We're reducing the need for busing and increasing the opportunity for children to attend the same school for a longer period of time," Vivian Kilarski, president of AZAC, said. "We're also improving feeder school alignment, which means we're meeting the requirements (the board) set down for us to follow when we make our decisions."

Neil Roth, also a member of AZAC, suggested delaying the zoning change would be putting the needs of UNLV's program ahead of those of the district's students.

By delaying the switch until 2004 the district will have time to make the necessary program changes at the various campuses, school board member Larry Mason said.