Nellis wants to sever ties with CCSD, replace with new charter school

The roar of a red-white-and-blue Thunderbird F-16 jet followed by even louder enginew noise from a pair of stealthy F-22 Raptors breaks the calm and quiet of an overcast, 83-degree day at Nellis Air Force Base.

It is Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day. A few minutes before the jets fly over, kindergartners decked in green follow a teacher single file down a sidewalk beneath a shade structure on the campus of the base’s 1953-vintage elementary school.

A layer of blue paint on the side of the structure’s eaves is peeled and blistered where it covers wood that has baked in the sun for decades. A few steps away, five Big Wheels and a red Radio Flyer wagon are parked in a neat row, waiting for their young riders to get out of class.

The scene offers a glimpse of life for military kids who go to an old school in the middle of an Air Force base.

After 10 years of pleas and false hope that the Clark County School District would replace Lomie Gray Heard Elementary School with a new school in a quieter part of the base, Nellis officials now want to sever ties with the school district and have a new charter school built, joining eight other Air Force bases around the country that have charter schools.

Each of the charter schools on Air Force bases exist because of unique situations and conditions within their respective communities, according the Nellis project documents.

On Jan. 8 Nellis officials posted a request for proposals for a charter school to build, operate and staff a new school for at least 800 students, grades K through 8, closer to where airmen and their families live at the base. Rent for using Air Force land would begin at about $26,000 per year with 3 percent annual increases under a 25-year lease.

According to the Charter School Association of Nevada, charter schools are innovative, educational institutions that by law are free, publicly-funded schools operated by nonprofit organizations. A charter school must inform the community of its public school status and have a fair and open admissions process. It must use a lottery if more students apply for admission than can be admitted.

“Peak-hour traffic and security concerns … would also be reduced since students who reside on-base would be able to walk to school or would have a much shorter transportation route,” reads the project’s environmental assessment. “Construction would consist of a single- or multi-story, approximately 70,000-square-foot facility with classrooms, a gymnasium, playground, 300-space parking lot, and landscaping, located on an approximately 3- to 10-acre site.”

Since the preferred alternative calls for demolishing Heard Elementary School after the district’s lease expires in April 2016, bulldozers rumbling there and at a new school site north of Las Vegas Boulevard will add to the sound of daily operations at the base.

If construction isn’t completed by fall 2016, the school’s 600 students who are military dependents and live on base, plus 100 more who live off base, and 20 students whose parents are school administrators and staff will have to attend nearby public schools that already are overcrowded. The staff of teachers would also most likely be relocated at other district schools, a school district spokeswoman said.

The main reason for replacing the district’s “antiquated” school, according to project documents, is that when the lease expires next year, precious land in the heart of the base would be available for “emerging mission-specific development.”

Base officials wouldn’t say last week what those “emerging missions” entail. And the 99th Air Base Wing commander commander, Col. Richard H. Boutwell, known as the mayor of Nellis, has declined a interview request about the charter school until a contract is let.

Yet one reason for the change, buried deep in the 90-page assessment, is “because of its age, Lomie Gray Heard School does not meet the health, safety, energy conservation, and sustainability standards that other CCSD schools currently meet.”

That doesn’t surprise County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak, who visited the school in December. “I was shocked how old the school is,” he said Thursday, adding that he thought the school “needed an enormous overhaul.”

“I’m glad somebody is addressing it,” Sisolak said. “I would have thought the public school district would have rebuilt it.”

The school is one of the oldest active schools in the district.

District Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky said the Air Force made the decision in November regarding the school because it needed the land for something else. The school district could not build a new school at that time because the bond rollover had not been approved. The state Legislature recently passed a bill that will allow school districts to roll over a construction bond. The bond is expected to raise about $3.5 billion over the next decade for the Clark County School District.

The Air Force built the school in 1953 and transferred the buildings to the school district in 1970 to comply with Nevada law. If the lease expires in 2016, then ownership of the buildings will be transferred back to the Air Force.

Orginally named Nellis Air Force Base Elementary School, the then K-5 school was renamed in honor of Lomie Gray Heard when she retired in 1971 after 21 years of serving as the base school’s principal. She died in 2009 at age 103.

Over the next 45 years, the school deteriorated to the point that maintenance costs skyrocketed, averaging $61,000 per year in the past four years primarily for upgrades to heating, air conditioning and insulation in classrooms.

By comparison, Bozarth Elementary School, constructed in 2009, and Stuckey Elementary School, constructed in 2010, have spent about $23,000 and $19,000, respectively, for maintenance over the last 4 years.

If the Air Force were to come back and want to continue the relationship with the school district, Skorkowsky said a new school would be included in the district’s 10-year plan.

A second alternative described by Nellis officials calls for negotiating a short-term lease with Clark County School District to continue to operate Heard Elementary with a boost in curriculum in science, technology, engineering and math and possibly arts.

“No military funds would be used to improve the school. Responsibility for administration, teachers, staff, maintenance, upkeep, upgrades, or improvements would lie completely with CCSD,” according to the second alternative description.

Skorkowsky said he felt the school district had a good relationship and worked closely with the base. As an example, he said the district worked with families newly deployed to the base and helped them get their children into magnet school programs no matter the time of year they were deployed.

The superintendent was not aware of any complaints about the quality of education by the Air Force.

In fact, the school is described as a five-star school for education in the environmental assessment, and is listed as a four-star school in independent reviews.

The district’s accountability report for 2013-14 gives it a four-star rating for growth in achievement and reduction in achievement gaps with 69 out of possible 100 points, on par with the 70-score for Ober Elementary School in Summerlin based on the Nevada School Performance Framework.

Heard Elementary had no incidents of bullying or violence to students or staff, and no reports of weapons or possession and use of controlled substances or alcohol. Ober Elementary, on the other hand, had 11 confirmed incidents of bullying but no reports of weapons or violence to students or staff.

In its request for proposals for a charter school, Nellis specifies that percentages of teachers with advanced degrees and more experience exceed those of other local schools. It calls for a science, technology, engineering, math curriculum.

Review-Journal writer Francis McCabe contributed to this report. Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2.