Rezoning plans weighed

Freshman Korre Heggem wants to march in the band at Green Valley High School -- not march 12 miles to a new high school clear across town.

"I would have to travel over six times the amount I have to now," the drummer said.

Heggem lives 2.7 miles from Green Valley and about 12 miles from Foothill High School, which is scheduled to open this August. A volunteer committee of parents is now carving up Henderson into zones to determine who will go to the new school and who will go to the area's other three high schools: Silverado, Basic and Green Valley.

The committee is considering three maps, one of which would send Heggem to Foothill.

"I would have to get up at 4 a.m. to get to a 6 a.m. practice on time," the 14-year-old said.

Rezoning is the often emotional process of re-drawing school zone maps to determine which students will go to new schools. Parents often object to proposed changes, saying that uprooting children disrupts their education.

Still, in fast-growing Clark County, rezoning is a way of life every year in pockets all over the district.

This year, the most controversial rezoning proposals affect the three Henderson high schools and Silverado, where roughly 11,000 students will attend this fall.

Nearly 400 parents turned out for a public meeting Tuesday, hosted by the Clark County School District's Attendance Zone Advisory Commission, or AZAC, a 15-member panel of volunteer parents.

AZAC must present a final proposal on the high school zoning changes to Superintendent Brian Cram by Feb. 15. The School Board likely will approve one, or a combination, of the proposals in March.

Forty-five parents and students spoke at the meeting, running down a laundry list of their complaints about one or all of the proposals. Among them: that the changes send kids along dangerous routes to school, that switching schools rips kids out of their social circles, that the school district built Foothill in a no-growth area.

Many parents said the changes would greatly increase their travel time to school.

Jon Gibson said his daughter Jennifer travels about five miles to Green Valley High, but she would be zoned to Foothill under one AZAC proposal.

"Why ship us 17 miles?" Gibson said. "That's ridiculous."

Other parents said they were just plain sick of being rezoned. Rezoning bounced Silverado freshman Ashley Madden around to six different schools in northwest Las Vegas before she moved to the Silverado area. Now her mom fears the 15-year-old will be rezoned again to Foothill.

"She knows everyone in the northwest because she went to school with four or five different groups of kids," Kim Madden said. "She's shy. She did not do well in school -- (the moves) affected her grades."

AZAC met again today to discuss the proposals. They said there is no easy way to cut the number of students at crowded Silverado and Green Valley without sending some students well out of their way.

AZAC members said they were trying to accommodate everyone. They offered parents some solace: the school board last week said this year's freshmen and sophomores can opt to stay at their current school, even if a zone change would send them somewhere else.

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