Kids win in Grand Slam

Outside, Andre Agassi and Jerry Seinfeld step out of the same limo as an announcer coaxes over the P.A. system: "This is the big one! Everybody scream!"

Inside, the Porsche SUV used on "The Sopranos" sells for $90,000, $15,000 more than a dinner in Washington with Bill Clinton and Jack Kemp.

All in all, it was just another night at Agassi's Grand Slam for Children, the 12th such event at the MGM Grand Garden to prove that Las Vegas' penchant for celebrity worship and over-the-topness can be applied to building schools as well as trendy nightclubs.

Agassi described the event as not just a concert "but a movement" and announced that the event had raised a combined $8.1 million. The total was bumped up another million by a last-minute donation from Tuscany Suites and Casino owner Charles Heers.

The benefit featured surprise performances by the Goo Goo Dolls and Daryl Hall and John Oates, as well as billed headliners Seinfeld, Kelly Clarkson, Carlos Santana and Matchbox Twenty (The show was set to end with a duet of the Santana and Rob Thomas hit "Smooth.")

Tony Bennett kicked off the show with "They All Laughed" and "Fly Me to the Moon," which he introduced as Agassi and spouse Steffi Graf's favorite.

Agassi's foundation isn't unique in its celebrity connections, and other charities have searched for their own versions of Emeril Lagasse cooking for a $100,000 per-couple weekend on a Lake Tahoe ranch.

"But I don't think anyone else has as much fun as we have," said Lagasse, who added that he auctions his services only for his own foundation and for Agassi. "Eight out of 10 times, Andre buys the package himself," he said with a laugh.

Agassi's benefit is certainly Las Vegas' showiest display of philanthropy, and it's the one with the speediest results for about 580 students. His favorite-son status and direct connections to the casino industry marshaled construction of an entire K-through-12 school in just six years.

"People say, 'If you had all the money in the world to make any change, what would you do? I always say, 'Take the bureaucracy out of the school system,'" said "CSI: Miami" star Emily Procter, who was lending her star power to the auction for the seventh time.

The nondescript exterior walls of the Andre Agassi Preparatory Academy, on Lake Mead Boulevard just west of Martin Luther King Boulevard, mask facilities rivaling private academies such as The Meadows or Alexander Dawson.

Every classroom has touch-screen SMART Boards, and a full-production TV studio is in the final phases of construction. NBA players have tested the new basketball court.

"It's brick and mortar, you can feel it," said Michael Ferensowicz, a vice president of Tamarack Resort, which is partnering with Agassi to build a Fairmont Resort in Idaho.

But the impressive buildings don't fully explain Ferensowicz's support of the foundation: "You can come here and not only feel the brick and mortar, but you can feel the love."

A ceremony Friday at the charter school was more low-key than Saturday's hubbub but just as important to those close to the cause.

Pesky winds and rapidly cooling weather derailed plans for a dramatic unveiling of a bridge connecting two campus buildings. It's a bridge students won't walk on until the day they graduate, and so far, says one school official, it hasn't been trod upon by anyone but construction workers and Agassi himself.

The bridge marks the completion of a $20.4 million high school and gym, new space that will allow this year's 11th graders to become seniors at the school next fall.

When the school opened in 2001 with classes for third- through fifth-graders, Agassi began a race to build the rest of it in time for the first fifth-graders to graduate in 2009.

The bridge is also symbolic in one of its prominent displays of corporate synergy. It carries the name "William J. Hornbuckle III," the late father of Mandalay Bay president and foundation board member Bill Hornbuckle.

Speaking of Agassi's manager, Perry Rogers, Hornbuckle told observers at the scaled-down ceremony: "Perry said, 'I gave you a deal on the bridge.' What they fully well know is they've got me for life."

High-placed allies may become even more important now that the sexiest part of the school construction is finished. Hornbuckle acknowledged "a great deal of charitable competition" after the launch of high-profile projects such as the Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Institute.

Agassi says he was proud to receive a recent designation from Clinton, who has visited the school and devoted three pages to it in his new book, "Giving." Agassi surprised Saturday's audience by announcing that a second academy would be built in Camden, N.J.

That effort may answer the question of whether the school can be duplicated without Agassi's unique ties to Las Vegas.

Hornbuckle said one of the foundation's strategies is to "bring others in, like-minded folks (or) like-minded athletes, and say, 'Look, we can help you get there if you have the time, energy and dedication.' ... If you could get some of these guys to step up to the plate and do more, then I think it's a model worthy of replicating."

Agassi Prep still needs to pay down more than $10 million in construction costs, and it wants to double its operational endowment. And then there's the scholarship money needed to get that Class of '09 into targeted universities such as Stanford and Yale.

"To deliver them on the doorstep to college and not get them in would be traumatic," Hornbuckle said.

With so many resources concentrated upon about 580 students, school supporters may need to battle donor's fatigue as the novelty wears off.

Admission to Agassi Prep is handled through a lottery.

About 800 students apply for about 50 spots. The lottery is weighted so that three-fourths of the slots go to youngsters within a two-mile radius of the school. The area is gradually becoming less residential thanks to new neighbors such as the FBI headquarters, but it still has more than its share of distressed single-family houses.

The student body is 98 percent minority. School officials have not yet had to set a cut-off for maximum annual income and haven't heard of anyone moving into the neighborhood just to better their chances of admission.

Agassi Prep doubles the $5,300 per pupil it receives from the Clark County School District. Parents sign a contract pledging participation and guaranteeing to get children to school by 7:30 a.m. for a day that's nearly two hours longer than those at public schools.

As Agassi left the bridge ceremony Friday, he was stopped by the mother and grandmother of first-grader Yirayah Lanier, who was rendered so speechless by the introduction to his benefactor that he couldn't get his own name out.

"That's O.K., buddy," Agassi told him. "You can tell me when you're ready."

If things go well for Yirayah, there will be plenty of chances in the years to come.

Contact entertainment writer Mike Weatherford at (702) 383-0288 or mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.