CROWDED HOUSE

Venus Ausan is on time for school, which is a bad thing. Being on time means she will have to compete for her parking spot and fight her way through the hallways to get to class.

Ausan is a senior at Eldorado High School, and having gone there for four years has noticed many changes. "My freshman class was roughly 1,200 students, and I hated it. It made the school way too crowded."

"I love how the school district put in these amazing computer labs," says Terry Conder, a teacher at Eldorado High School. "But they only put in 30, and I have classes that have up to 45 students."

For the past four years, Eldorado has been implementing policies to help compensate for overcrowding. Before making the changes, Eldorado was at more than twice the maximum capacity for students the school was designed to accommodate.

"Freshmen and sophomores seem to be the reason for the school being so overcrowded," Ausan says. "At least the seniors drop out."

There are currently 44 high schools in the greater Las Vegas area, with 12 more to be completed within the next four years. Many are overcrowded.

"Other school districts have been calling us up and asking for help," says Rick Baldwin, coordinator of demographics for the Clark County School District. "I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing though."

Teachers also are affected by overcrowding.

"With this many kids, my classes are more like crowd control than educating," says Michael Pape, a teacher at Eldorado.

As the bell rings, 3,000 students stampede out of their classrooms and head to their next class, plodding through the maze of hallways or attempting to outsmart the crowd by walking around the perimeter of the school.

"It's a hassle to get to class," says Javier Rivera, a senior at Eldorado. "You either go through the hallways because you know that you will see someone you know, or you walk around the school in an effort to get to school on time."

The school district has started work on its plans to improve the situation.

"We've implemented the new Eldorado freshman academy to try to help our school with its overcrowding by busing the freshmen from the main campus to the old Bishop Gorman High School campus on Maryland Parkway," says R. Ron Lustig, principal at Eldorado. "As long as the school district maintains its course with the campuses it's building we should be at proper capacity in no time."

Las Vegas High School senior Eric Roberts has another idea. "They should limit the amount of zone variances allowed. That's where most of the students at our school are from. They know we have good sports programs so they transfer in."

The third bell of the day rings, because this is a different day than usual, it's an assembly day. Every student in the school has been instructed to leave class and walk out to the football stadium for the Prom Court Pep Rally.

Assemblies used to be optional and at the end of the day, but since the freshmen left, the assemblies had to be relocated to accommodate the number of students now showing up.

"(At Las Vegas High) we have to have two separate assemblies to fit the whole school. The same thing, just twice in one day," Jones says.

The assembly ends loudly. Students begin a dreaded walk back to class.

As the day ends, the hallways seem more at ease. Everyone is worn out and ready to head home.

But in the middle of all this chaos, students have shown that they are prepared to cope.

"School hasn't been able to do much about it to make it easier to get around," Rivera says. "But I'm glad how well our students have been able to adapt to the halls. It's like they subconsciously know where to go to avoid the oncoming traffic."