Editorial: Learning to get along

Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007 | 6:59 a.m.

T he Clark County School District's newest magnet school is to be a North Las Vegas technical academy where students will study such subjects as environmental science, technology and the hospitality industry.

Great idea, neighbors say - as long as district officials build it somewhere else. A story by the Las Vegas Sun on Tuesday says people who live near the proposed site of the Northeast Career and Technical Academy, at Commerce Street and Dorrell Lane, are concerned that the 1,300-student facility will create traffic, noise and litter as teens travel to and from school.

The proposed location for Northeast Academy is only half a mile from Legacy High School, which opened last year. But district officials say the site is the one most suitable for the school, which is to open in 2009.

After land is acquired, the facility is designed and a builder is found, it would seem that the hard work of building a school is finished. But as Sun reporter Emily Richmond points out, the hardest part of the process is, in many cases, just beginning. Residents often don't want a middle or high school built in their neighborhoods because they assume children of those ages bring trouble - even if they are good students.

It is unfair to assume that schools and their students automatically make bad neighbors. And it is unrealistic for people who live in one of the fastest-growing communities in the country to assume that schools will not be built near their homes.

Hopefully, the School District's public information meeting about Northeast Academy on Tuesday helped to ease residents' fears. The principal and student council members of the new school might also consider inviting neighbors to the academy for an open house to showcase what students are learning.

Getting to know one another and learning to work together as members of the community is far better than making assumptions and grumbling from opposite sides of a schoolyard fence. Clark County will continue to need new schools, and people are going to have to learn to live with them.