Nine southwest elementary schools face boundary changes

About 460 students will be switching elementary schools this fall because of redrawn attendance boundaries for nine southwest campuses.

After months of planning, Clark County School District’s Board of Trustees decided to rezone these Las Vegas schools Wednesday evening in a two-pronged effort to relieve crowding at the nine campuses.

The rezoning will shuffle some students among Batterman, Bendorf, Bryan, Hayes, Hill, Kim, Ries, Roger and Wiener elementary schools.

In addition, the most crowded southwest schools — Forbuss, Reedom and Wright — will be switching to year-round schedules in the fall to alleviate crowding.

A year-round schedule allows the schools to fit in more students by spreading them across five tracks.

With one track of students always on a break, 20 percent of students are gone at all times.

The three schools exceed their enrollment capacities by 50 percent, and each have about 1,200 students.

More development is expected in the area.

That means even these schools may need to be rezoned at the end of next school year in addition to using year-round schedules.

Districtwide, enrollment is about
10 percent over capacity for Clark County’s 217 elementary schools.

At nearly 40 elementary schools, however, staff members are teaching a quarter more students than their buildings were built for, relying on portable classrooms and even portable bathrooms.

Crowding is occurring at elementary schools throughout the district but is concentrated in the southwest, where eight schools have enrollments that are 111 percent to 151 percent of their capacities.

Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.