School district wants your ideas on how to spend $4.1B

CCSD (Ronda Churchill/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

The Clark County School District wants the public to think like a trustee as it drafts a priority list of how to spend $4.1 billion over the next decade on new schools or replacements and renovations for aging facilities.

For the past two weeks, district officials and School Board members have hosted a series of meetings across the Las Vegas Valley asking parents, taxpayers and even state lawmakers how they would use the money to address overcrowded classrooms, outdated technology, early childhood education, year-round calendars and other issues facing the growing area.

The district plans to issue an initial round of debt, about $500 million, next month or in November to fund the construction of 14 new or replacement schools set to open in August 2017 and 2018.

However, at its Sept. 24 meeting, the School Board will consider a much larger list of needs and trade-offs that will determine which growing neighborhoods get brand new campuses, whether to renovate or replace some of the oldest schools in the district, what resources rural areas should receive and how much to invest in high-speed Internet, computers and other technology.

“We want to know what the public thinks about the capital program and how to shape the guiding principles of how we’ll spend this money,” Jim McIntosh, chief financial officer of the district, said Tuesday.

“At the end of the day, what we’re hoping to prepare is a very high-level, 10-year facility master plan,” he added. “Not a very detailed one, but one at the high level to say, ‘We’re going to build more schools versus modernizing schools’ or ‘We’re going to build schools larger (as) opposed to building them smaller and at a higher cost.'”

The district has invited residents to share their priorities through an online survey at capitalimprovementplan.ccsd.net. The website also includes a presentation that McIntosh has made at recent public input meetings.

As of Tuesday, about 1,000 people have completed the survey, McIntosh said.

Contact Neal Morton at nmorton@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279. Find him on Twitter: @nealtmorton.