Students practice on the field where a section of bleacher has collapsed due to a fire at Sunrise Mountain High School Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022. WADE VANDERVORT
Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County School Board gave final approval to changes to policies dealing with the superintendent’s contract.
Although the changes don’t amend policy to name Superintendent Jesus Jara, they do bring the School Board’s policies into alignment with the newest version of his contract, which goes into effect Monday.
The most significant policy changes would remove specific timing elements of regular benchmarks — the last version of the policies had the superintendent’s annual performance review in January and approving annual goals by February — that tie into the superintendent’s contract to make them “in alignment with the superintendent’s contract and/or between the end of the school year and beginning of the following school year.”
One of the terms in Jara’s new contract, for example, is that the School Board conduct his annual evaluation by Oct. 1.
A split board voted in October to extend Jara’s contract by three and a half years and give him a $75,000 raise, about a week after giving him a “highly effective” rating along similarly divided lines.
Board members weren’t unanimous in amending these policies, at least at first.
When the School Board gave initial approvals last month, one opponent — former member Danielle Ford, a Jara critic whose term ended this month after she lost reelection in the fall — said the changes were specifically on Jara’s behalf; she also said she didn’t want to vote at all since the final vote would be after she had left office. A proponent — current member Lola Brooks, who has consistently supported Jara and clashed with Ford — said the amendments provided flexibility regardless of who’s superintendent.
Thursday’s vote fell on a 7-0 line with no debate because it was part of the consent agenda, a roundup of administrative items that is typically voted on in a single motion with no discussion.
New high school to be designed
CCSD is a major step closer to opening its first comprehensive high school in nearly 20 years after the School Board approved an architectural design contract for a new school in the southwest valley.
The board unanimously approved a contract worth just under $9 million Thursday with Henderson-based TSK Architects to draw up the high school planned to open in 2027 near Cactus Avenue and Buffalo Drive.
TSK’s website shows an extensive history with CCSD, with the firm designing about 15 newly established and replacement schools that have opened over the past 15 years.
The school at Cactus and Buffalo is anticipated to be around 294,000 square feet and has a tentative total budget of $220 million. It is one of two comprehensive high schools on the capital improvement plan that CCSD has been working through since 2015.
The new school will be closest to Desert Oasis High School, which is 2 miles east, and Sierra Vista High School, which is about 4 miles north (TSK also designed Sunrise Mountain High, which was the last comprehensive high school established in CCSD when it opened in 2009). Desert Oasis and Sierra Vista have about 3,000 students each, according to enrollment data.
CCSD had planned to build the Cactus and Buffalo campus sooner, along with a comprehensive high school on the northwest side, but in 2019 put both off in favor of two new career and technical academies. The first of those, Northeast Career and Technical Academy, is set to open this fall. South Career and Technical Academy is slated for 2024.
Sunrise Mountain bleacher replacement
The saga of the fire-damaged bleachers at Sunrise Mountain High School appears to have taken a positive turn: The scorched stands — which created a bleak backdrop through the football season and then some — have been removed and will be replaced at a cost of more than half a million dollars.
The bleachers burned under unknown circumstances last February, opening a blackened, drooping crater overlooking one of the football field’s 20-yard lines. CCSD entered into a $590,700 emergency construction contract with CG&B Enterprises in December to replace the stands, the district said in a notice of the expense attached to the Thursday School Board agenda.
At the start of the school year, some six months after the fire at the northeast side school, the district said CCSD had been working with insurance providers to obtain the necessary reports, including an engineering assessment and inspection by the stands’ manufacturer. Temporary chain link fencing and caution tape blocked the damage as the insurance process played out, but people found ways around them.
“The nuisance of the charred and warped football field bleachers at Sunrise Mountain High School poses a life, health and safety risk,” the district’s notice said. “The school has had incidents of entry into the barricaded area. The longer this remains in place, the higher the possibility to run into a greater risk for injury to the staff, students, and public.”
It is unclear when the new bleachers will be up and ready.
