Meadows School in Summerlin celebrates its 25th anniversary

The Meadows School, the very first facility to be built in the master-planned community of Summerlin, recently launched its 25th anniversary with a day-long event showcasing the school's academic programs and arts. The year-long celebration will conclude with a gala dinner in May 2009.

According to Tom Warden, senior vice president of community and government relations for The Howard Hughes Corp., developer of Summerlin, The Meadows School not only enjoys a strong legacy in the greater Las Vegas Valley as one of Southern Nevada's finest private schools, it has the distinction as Summerlin's very first building.

"Three years before the first families moved to Summerlin and two years before the Summerlin Parkway was completed, The Meadows School moved its campus from the center of town to Summerlin following a generous donation of land from The Howard Hughes Corp. At that time, Summerlin was only a plan on paper," he said. "Today, the school occupies a 40-acre, state-of-the-art campus that includes multiple buildings, a Center for the Arts, gymnasium complex, and athletic fields."

"You could say The Meadows is a true Summerlin pioneer and helped put the community on the map," Warden said. "In a community that values education and families, it's particularly fitting that The Meadows School was our community's very first building."

A college preparatory school, The Meadows places 100 percent of its graduates in four-year colleges or universities. In fact, the 72 students who graduated from The Meadows in 2008 are attending such institutions as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, Notre Dame, NYU, and USC. As a class, they broke many of the School's already impressive records of academic achievement and were offered more than $4 million in scholarships. Opened in 1984, the school now enrolls more than 900 students in its beginning, lower, middle, and upper schools.

The school represents the vision of Carolyn G. Goodman, its president, and other founders who desired to offer a traditional and rigorous curriculum to able and ambitious students in a private, non-sectarian, independent school setting.

The Meadows School is one of 11 private schools in Summerlin. According to Warden, Summerlin offers more educational choices than any other Las Vegas Valley community, with a combined total of 22 public and private schools.

Developed by The Howard Hughes Corp., an affiliate of General Growth Properties Inc., Summerlin began to take shape in 1990 and has consistently ranked in the country's top 10 best-selling master-planned communities.

For more information on Summerlin, visit summerlin.com or call 888-898-5015.