Activists want high school built in West Las Vegas

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2003 | 11:07 a.m.

Marzette Lewis doesn't want to hear about lack of available land, enrollment predictions or other explanations about why the Clark County School District has yet to build a high school in her West Las Vegas neighborhood.

"The only thing I want to hear anybody say is 'We're building your kids a high school,' " said Lewis, a vocal critic of the school district and leader of the community group WAAK-UP. "Elementary school, middle school and high school. We want our kids to leave together and come back together. We've waited long enough, paid taxes long enough. It's our turn."

Each morning, district buses make dozens of stops in West Las Vegas, collecting students for the trip to Cheyenne, Mojave, Western, Cimarron-Memorial, Rancho and Palo Verde high schools. The commute times range from 15 minutes to over an hour, Lewis said.

The long commutes aren't just a hassle for the students. They also make it difficult for parents to get involved in the school community, said longtime West Las Vegas activist Helen Toland.

"Teachers think parents just don't care when they don't show up for conferences or special activities," Toland told the Clark County School Board at its Oct. 29 meeting. "Some (of the parents) don't even know how to get to the school or have to use public transportation to go that far. It's exceedingly difficult for them."

But school district officials say the logic behind planning a high school goes beyond which community complains the loudest.

"We have to look for affordable vacant land to site a school, and we have to make sure the location makes sense given the enrollment boundaries that already exist," said Dusty Dickens, director of zoning and demographics for the district. "We have to consider diversity, class sizes and make sure no campus is being over-utilized while others in adjacent areas are being under-utilized."

The district has looked for land in West Las Vegas, but has yet to find a reasonably priced tract that is big enough to support a high school, Dickens said.

Lewis's solution? Build a six-story high school.

But Fred Smith, construction manager for the district, said the $3.5 billion capital improvement plan approved by voters in 1998 requires the district to use prototype designs as a way of saving money.

The district has used a prototype two-story elementary school to accommodate smaller sites -- first for Wendell P. Williams Elementary and again for Hollingsworth, which opened in August.

But elementary schools do not require the amount of square footage, playing fields or parking facilities as high schools, Smith said.

In the 1970s, the school district was under federal order to desegregate its schools through busing. While that order has long since expired, maintaining diversity is still one of the district's requirements in determining attendance boundaries, Dickens said.

"Essentially we're not facing a federal order because we're doing it voluntarily," Dickens said. "The goal is to have as many campuses as possible be an accurate reflection of the ethnic balance in the district as a whole."

With minorities accounting for 54 percent of the student enrollment, Clark County is a "minority majority" district.

Debra Jackson, also a member of WAAK-UP, said West Las Vegas should be treated as its own community, and not a supply source for balancing out diversity in other neighborhoods.

"It's disgraceful how our children are being checker-boarded all over this valley," Jackson said.

District officials hope much of the "checker-boarding" will be solved with the opening of Canyon Spring High School on Alexander Avenue in North Las Vegas. The new campus should open up seats for West Las Vegas students at existing high schools closer to home, said Buffy Kilarski, chairwoman of the Attendance Zone Advisory Commission.

While the commission plans to discuss West Las Vegas attendance boundaries at its meeting Thursday it's premature to say whether the area needs a high school, Kilarski said.

"We need to wait and see if we get the domino effect we're hoping for from Canyon Springs," Kilarski said Monday.

WAAK-UP members will also be discussing their demand for a high school at a special meeting with the Clark County School Board at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 18 at Kit Carson Elementary School, 1735 D St., Las Vegas.