Security camera upgrades at Eldorado High School located in the east valley of Las Vegas. Tuesday, July 12, 2022.
Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County School District has released the construction agreement with the contractor handling the $26.3 million in physical security upgrades at Eldorado High School, but the document is so heavily redacted that it sheds little light on what precisely the district is installing — maintaining the stance that itemizing the expenses would be a safety risk.
“The documents contain sensitive and confidential information pertaining to the prevention of and response to acts of terrorism, crisis and emergency plans, and emergency management,” the district said in a note attached to the 67-page contract with Roche Constructors, which the Sun received by filing a public-records request. “Release of this information may compromise and jeopardize security and law enforcement efforts. Confidentiality of this information is critical to providing for the health and safety of CCSD students, staff, and the community.”
The document includes seven pages outlining the project’s scope and a six-page “detailed budget breakdown” dividing the work into subcategories. While these reveal that the subcategories ranged from $5,000 to about $17.7 million, redactions obscure what those categories were and the components that comprise them. Similarly, the scope is almost entirely blacked out.
The school district has broadly said the work at Eldorado includes more surveillance cameras along with associated electrical upgrades, added perimeter fencing, and a single point of entry for the 50-year-old east Las Vegas campus. The contract said the work can take up to 408 days, or about 14 months, to complete.
CCSD has previously said that keeping details close to the vest was within best practices “to prevent people from planning ways to circumvent the security measures.”
Eldorado is the site where a student allegedly sexually assaulted and attempted to kill a teacher in her classroom last spring. The district had already seen a record spike in hard lockdowns, brawls, beatings and other violence throughout the region, and after the Eldorado attack, officials said the school would take top priority in a wide-ranging safety review.
CCSD entered into the agreement with Roche Constructors on June 2, according to a brief informational report prepared for the July 14 School Board meeting. Because CCSD arranged for the Eldorado work under state-authorized emergency spending protocols, the School Board did not vote on or discuss the upgrades.
This has also been the case for apparently less extensive work at 12 additional high schools. Informational reports for upgrades at Clark, Canyon Springs, Cheyenne, Cimarron-Memorial, Desert Oasis, Desert Pines, Foothill, Legacy, Mojave, Rancho, Sierra Vista and Sunrise Mountain used similar language as the report for Eldorado, although the highest price tag of those schools was $1.6 million.
The agenda for next week’s School Board meeting indicates four additional high schools — Basic Academy, Bonanza, Chaparral and Western — are in line for security cameras. A total of $4 million will be spent on the four schools, bringing the grand total to $44 million for security upgrades at 17 schools.
Expenses per campus vary widely — Clark’s was about $100,000, while Rancho’s was $861,000 and Canyon Springs’ was $1.6 million. The district has said that is because each school has unique needs based on current infrastructure.
