Neighbors want to rein in school

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 | 7:13 a.m.

Residents of a rural Henderson neighborhood say their pastoral views - and way of life - are threatened by the Clark County School District's version of progress.

The neighborhood opposes a new elementary school the district says is necessary because of soaring enrollment. It's a fight expected to play out many times in the years ahead as new housing developments are built on once-rural land.

Located off U.S. 95 in the foothills of southeast Henderson, Paradise Hills boasts large custom homes. Equestrian paths and trailheads are plentiful. Streetlights and sidewalks are not.

Homeowners say they chose Paradise Hills because of its bucolic charm and distance from the bright lights of nearby cities. Some residents say those benefits are diminished already by the addition of Mannion Middle School on Paradise Hills Drive in 2004 and nearby J. Marlan Walker Elementary School on Scholar Street in 2002.

"I used to have mountains, now I have Mannion," Sherry Graham said of the view from her home near the intersection of Greenway Road and Patti Ann Woods Drive. "I hear the announcements on the loudspeakers, I hear the buses. And the traffic is absolutely horrible."

School District officials say some of those traffic problems will be abated by the construction of an elementary school, proposed for a site at the northeast corner of Paradise Hills Drive and Greenway Road.

The new campus would relieve Walker Elementary, where enrollment has more than doubled to 1,250 students since the campus opened in 2002. The campus uses 19 portable classrooms.

Graham said the district has another option. It could rearrange existing attendance zone boundaries, she said.

"There are kids zoned for Walker who are passing two or three other schools on their way every morning," said Graham, whose two children attend Ulis Newton Elementary School on Greenway Road. "How does that make any sense?"

Theresa Renner, a Paradise Hills resident and member of the alliance, said she understands how it may not be possible to suppress the district's needs.

"I'm for the rural way of life. We live it, we love it," said Renner, who has four young children. "But I don't want my kids to suffer at an overcrowded school either."

The School District originally intended to open the elementary school for the 2006-07 academic year. Because of delays in approval of the site, the opening date was pushed to 2007. But even that is looking less likely, said Fred Smith, construction manager for the district.

"We need approval in the next couple of weeks to open on time," Smith said.

Paradise Hills is covered by a rural preservation ordinance, adopted by Henderson in 2001. The designation exempts the community from certain requirements that are typically required, such as sidewalks, curbs and streetlights.

It also sets a higher bar for future development, including stricter limits on density and a requirement that developers outline plans at a community meeting before the city grants approval.

Paradise Hills residents told members of the Henderson Planning Commission two weeks ago that they feared the new school would decrease property values, increase traffic and raise the possibility of "children petting their horses."

Other residents have argued that approving the new school would amount to a betrayal.

"The stated purpose of declaring our neighborhood 'rural residential' was to prevent just such projects as this school and major roadways," Joseph Donnelly wrote in a January e-mail to city officials.

Peter Kingman, president of the Mission-Paradise Rural Alliance, which represents the neighborhood, said he believed alternate school sites are available elsewhere.

"I know the city of Henderson has offered them sites that have been rejected," Kingman said. "The city is quite interested in seeing a possible alternative outcome. There is enough opposition, not to the school, but to de-ruralizing areas that were hard to create and fought to preserve."

Several alternate sites proposed by the city were turned down because of the time or expense involved.

But Dan Shaw, chairman of the Henderson Planning Commission, said the rural preservation designation is a blueprint - not a guarantee.

The School District has met its requirements and has gone back to the drawing board several times to accommodate the city and residents for design changes, Shaw said.

"One of the challenges, whether you're an elected official or an appointed official, is how do you best serve the total needs of the community," he said.

The Henderson City Council is expected to vote on the proposed zoning change April 18.

The larger and recurring issue for the future is the planning - or lack of planning - for school sites on the ever expanding fringe of suburbia.

Donnelly, who moved to Paradise Hills in 1993, said Tuesday his neighborhood faces a "constant barrage of attempts to destroy what they (the city) acknowledged should be a nice, quiet residential area."

If a new elementary school is needed, it's because of poor planning, Donnelly said.

"When they don't require developers to put in the infrastructure, they take a fresh bite out of Paradise Hills and Mission Hills," Donnelly said. "We already have tremendous traffic around schools that are not for the people who live here."

In letters to the City Council, other residents shared Donnelly's complaint that the homebuilders in Paradise Hills should have anticipated the need for schools and set aside land for additional campuses.

While that type of long-range foresight has become commonplace in master-planned communities such as Summerlin or Aliante, municipal and School District officials say it's unrealistic to expect it from smaller subdivisions with multiple builders.

Instead, School District staff stays in close contact with planning departments at the city and county level, reviewing tentative maps for upcoming residential changes and searching for potential future school sites.

The inventory of potential Clark County school sites includes 34 purchased by the district and 42 leased from the Bureau of Land Management, said Matt LaCroix, director of real property management for the district.

The School District has opened at least 10 new schools in each of the last five years and has up to 40 projects in various stages of development.

Until two decades ago, residential development meant "you got a piece of land, you built homes and it was called a subdivision," said Monica Caruso, spokeswoman for the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association.

"Where the school was located wasn't a factor, neither was the grocery store, for that matter," Caruso said. "Now that we've converted to the master-planning model, a very important element of the conversation is schools."

The district has done a good job of predicting the need for future school sites given that "whole communities seem to spring up in a couple of months," Caruso said. "For a long time this wasn't a place with lots and lots of kids, and we became a very family-oriented community real fast. "