Editorial: Shedding light on lack of shade

Monday, Nov. 7, 2005 | 8:36 a.m.

Imagine one of Las Vegas' sunny, sweltering September afternoons, when temperatures are creeping past 100, and the air is dry and dusty.

You're standing in the middle of a treeless yard. You're hot because there is no shade. But you can't go inside because recess doesn't end for another 10 minutes.

Welcome to the playgrounds of more than 200 valley schools that were built before shade canopies over play equipment were standard parts of the picture.

The Clark County School Board is to approve today a plan that calls for building shade structures at the district's schools. Board members also will have to prioritize 270 requests for such canopies, the Las Vegas Sun reported Friday. It will take several years to fulfill all the requests and cost $6 million to $8 million.

It is surprising that any modern school situated in the Southwest desert would be built without a portion of its playground shaded. But the only schools automatically built with such structures are those funded by a $3.5 billion bond issue that voters approved in 1998.

That bond issue included about $850 million for renovations at existing schools. But there were $1.5 billion in renovation projects waiting when voters approved the measure. The money, a district official said, is already earmarked for projects to be completed through 2013.

As a result, district officials must find money from other sources within the overall facilities budget to pay for canopies. Then the plan is to start with the older inner-city schools and move outward.

With more than 200 schools on the waiting list, that could take a while. Parents at one school considered trying to raise money for a playground canopy, but found the $15,000 price tag daunting. And an elementary school in Green Valley waited nine years for the canopy that was built there last spring.

It is a long, frustrating ordeal for principals of such schools as Quannah McCall Elementary in North Las Vegas. McCall's 3- and 4-year-old Head Start pupils routinely return from the playground on warm days with flushed faces and sunburned arms.

It's a small portion of an unattractive portrait. Whether we're looking at inadequate shade outside or a lack of classroom supplies and textbooks inside, clearly all of our children are being burned by a poorly funded public school system.