Construction crews will be working well into the school year

Work crews are still painting doorways and laying grass seed this week at the district's eight newest schools.

But officials promise to open the buildings, even if they're filled with workers, to students by the Aug. 24 start of the school year.

"They're going to be extremely close," district facilities director Pat Herron said. "We're monitoring them -- minute to minute. It's going to be very tight."

Herron said some of the school renovation projects may not be completed on schedule.

"We're finding some contractors simply cannot find an available workforce," Herron said.

District officials are bracing for the traditional first day of the academic year and the flood of students ready to pour into its 227 schools. Crowding, as in years past, will be a fact of life in many classrooms of the fastest-growing district in the country.

Officials estimate hitting 202,388 students by the end of September. That's up 39 percent from five years ago.

Officials say the district may have most aggressive school construction program in the nation:

* Construction of new schools and renovation of old schools continue, funded by a combined $1.24 billion in bonds passed in 1994 and 1996. As of this month, 27 of 41 new schools were at or near completion.

* Three dozen schools are in various stages of renovation. The district has completed 45 renovation jobs; work is scheduled to start at another 30.

* Eleven high school track renovations are being completed. Workers are renovating playground equipment, asphalt and turf at dozens of schools.

"Overall, this has been a really successful program," said Joyce Haldeman, who oversees bond construction.

Now school officials are preparing to launch a campaign to convince voters to approve a different kind of school bond. The November ballot measure will ask property taxpayers for permission to freeze their current tax rates, instead of letting their rates drop as old school bonds retire.

The net effect would raise roughly $2.5 billion in property taxes over the next 10 years to build 88 new schools. Also part of the plan: using new room-tax and real-estate laws to collect $662 million from hotels and $356 million from homebuyers.

"The reality is that we have to have room for kids to learn," Haldeman said. "This is the most attractive package we will find."

Officials plan to kick off the bond campaign, funded by $350,000 in private money, in a Sept. 3 event.

Meanwhile, teachers will deal with crowded classrooms throughout the district when doors open again next week.

Hewetson Elementary is expected to welcome roughly 1,260 students, 55 percent of whom know limited English. Hewetson is again expected to be the largest elementary school in the district.

"We try to accommodate all the kids and we try to do the best we can with what we have," said Hewetson fourth-grade teacher Priscilla Rocha, who is running for state school board. "But we need more room. We need more buildings."

The year-round school uses five "tracks" -- five groups of roughly 250 students each -- to alleviate crowding. Only four tracks attend school at any given time of the year.

Hewetson Principal Lore Carrillo said the school will have 13 first-grade classes and 13 second-grade classes.

State law requires that first and second grades have no higher than a 16-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio. To meet the requirement, Hewetson and many crowded schools in the valley put 32 students in one classroom with two "team" teachers.

Eleven of the district's 769 "portable" trailer classrooms are used at Hewetson to catch the overflow of students.

"I would prefer to have a regular classroom," said rookie teacher Anne Marie Juntunen, 29, a bilingual instructor fresh from the Peace Corps, who was setting up her second-grade classroom last week in portable No. 37. "But I just appreciate having a job with the Clark County School District."

District officials say dealing with crowded classrooms continues to be a losing battle of catch-up. Housing developments are springing up all over the county with no relief in sight, said Dusty Dickens, director of demographics and zoning for the district.

"The valley is changing so rapidly, if there is vacant space to build, they're building it," Dickens said. "You feel like a Dutch boy, plugging holes in the dike."

As many as 50 parents a day have been calling the new Berkely Bunker Elementary School's temporary phone number, Principal Rick Slater said.

"They're chomping at the bit to get in here," Slater said.

Bunker teacher Donna Martin quietly slipped Friday into the northwest Las Vegas school, where workers were scrambling to paint the school lunchroom and put up library book shelves. Officials expect to award the school a certificate of occupancy this week.

"I'm excited," said the third-grade teacher, a 29-year district veteran. "I'm like a little kid waiting for the first day of school. I'm dreaming about it now. Remember how when you were little and you just couldn't sleep?"

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