EDITORIAL: School construction plan doesn’t adequately address growth

Nevada lawmakers and Gov. Brian Sandoval threw the Clark County School Board a lifeline this year when they approved a bond rollover intended to address the overcrowded system's capacity crisis. Now the School Board very well might cut that lifeline.

Today trustees are expected to vote on a 10-year, $4.1 billion construction plan funded by the rollover, which allows the Clark County School District to extend its existing bonding authority without a new public vote. Southern Nevada's economic recovery triggered a new wave of enrollment growth in public schools just as the system ran out of construction funds, forcing many campuses to shift to year-round schedules and fill their playgrounds with portable classrooms.

When Gov. Sandoval signed the bond rollover into law in early March, surrounded by lawmakers and education officials, he put the urgent need for new schools into perspective: "Thirty-two new schools in the Clark County School District could be built today and immediately filled with students."

Yet the plan before the School Board, unanimously recommended last week by a bond oversight committee, calls for the construction of just 28 new schools, including only one high school — not right now, but over 10 years. Those new schools are projected to cost about $1.5 billion, 36 percent of the available funds. The rest of the funds — about $2.6 billion — will be used to replace existing schools, renovate others and make system-wide technology upgrades. Some of those renovations will add permanent capacity to existing schools through new classroom space, but the plan before the board all but ensures that the school district's capacity problem will remain unsolved into the near future.

"We will have six or seven high schools that have over 3,000 students enrolled this year," Rick Baldwin, director of zoning and demographics for the school district, told the bond oversight committee members last week. "High school sites will be needed in the next few years, and we need to start that process now. It would be a travesty to not include at least a few high schools and middle schools."

Today the school district will present to trustees the results of a survey of nearly 2,000 residents that shows more support for renovations than new construction. Public input is important in any process that involves spending public money, but respondents no doubt were motivated by parochial concerns. People want their neighborhood schools to benefit from the bond program, even if the need isn't urgent.

If trustees adopt the recommended plan, they'll do a disservice to the system and their constituents. These bond funds were approved, foremost, to address enrollment growth. The plan before the School Board doesn't do that. Trustees need to make sure it does.