Enrollment keeps passing projections

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

Sierra Vista High School shifted 400 of its overflowing students to Durango High School last year to relieve crowded classrooms.

And still, Sierra Vista has lost ground. It has grown by more than 600 new students since the attempted downsizing.

"We have core subject classes with 40 students to a room; our gym classes are huge," Sierra Vista High School Principal Emil Wozniak said. "At some point, we just can't absorb anymore."

This is the reality of the nation's fifth-largest and fastest-growing school district, where enrollment projections are routinely shattered and brand-new campuses need portable classrooms on opening day.

Sierra Vista, located on West Robindale Road off Buffalo Drive, opened in 2001 with a target enrollment of 2,600. Last fall, 2,886 students were expected to show up. Instead, 3,271 came knocking.

The additional students at Sierra Vista come from new housing developments in Mountain's Edge, Nevada Trails, Rhodes Ranch and Southern Highlands, which have been filling more quickly than the Clark County School District's demographics office anticipated.

Paul Gerner, associate superintendent of facilities, says the situation at Sierra Vista illustrates the need for a seamless transition into the next generation of school construction. The district, which is finishing a 10-year campaign to build nearly 100 schools, will ask voters in 2008 to support another 10-year bond measure to generate more than $10 billion for additional school construction.

"No one sees any letup in the growth patterns," Gerner said. "In other words, if we don't keep our delivery of new schools on schedule, we're going to find ourselves behind and in some trouble."

To compensate for the unexpected surge of new students at Sierra Vista, Wozniak said, he had to quickly hire 13 teachers in October. It wasn't easy. The school also added 20 portable classrooms, schedules were rearranged for 1,200 students to bring down class sizes, and a seventh guidance counselor was added. Even so, there still aren't enough lockers, and a third lunch period had to be added to accommodate the burgeoning student body.

The place is so jammed, Wozniak installed center railings in the main staircases last month to help the flow of the bustling throngs of students.

"The kids do a good job staying calm, but I worry when the big crowds are rushing up and down," Wozniak said.

School District planners knew the region around Sierra Vista was growing fast, and planned to build a high school nearby, near West Torrey Pines Drive and South Levi Avenue. But plans by the Bureau of Land Management to lease land for a new campus were delayed because of stiff opposition from nearby residents. The design issues have since been resolved, and the school is now expected to open in August 2008 - a year behind schedule.

The delay will not only exacerbate the crowding at Sierra Vista but will cost the district more money to build the delayed school because of escalating labor and construction material costs.

The district can trip up on individual school projections because of bursts of growth in new neighborhoods.

Such issues have forced officials to constantly adjust attendance boundaries, often to the consternation of parents and children who won't be attending the schools older siblings did.

To address crowding for the 2007-08 academic year, for instance, the School District is proposing that about 300 eighth graders from Tarkanian Middle School attend Liberty High School - rather than Sierra Vista. Current Sierra Vista students would have the option of uprooting themselves and joining younger siblings at Liberty High School. When the new high school opens at Levi and Torrey Pines, the Tarkanian students would have the option of moving to the new campus, or staying at Liberty without district transportation.

Liberty is currently under capacity with about 1,800 students. With the influx from Tarkanian, the school could be eligible for more elective classes and special programs.

Sierra Vista is far from the area's most crowded high school, and the School District's machinations over how to accommodate such growth are hardly limited to that campus.

The new Rancho campus, which opened in August, already is nearly 900 students over its design capacity, and Eldorado has 700 more students than it was built to hold.

School District officials say they want public input in deciding how to relieve campus crowding. To that end, meetings to discuss the proposed Sierra Vista relief plan will be at 6:30 p.m. Thursday and at 9:30 a.m. Friday at Tarkanian Middle School, 5800 W. Pyle Ave.

It's one time when district officials hope for a crowd.