Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Principal helped make a name for Liberty, and school will honor his name

Liberty High School Founding Principal Emilio Fernandez

Wade Vandervort

Liberty High School founding principal Emilio Fernandez poses for a photo at Liberty High School in Henderson Wednesday, May 4, 2022.

Updated Monday, May 16, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Liberty High School Founding Principal Emilio Fernandez

Liberty High School founding principal Emilio Fernandez poses for a photo at Liberty High School in Henderson Wednesday, May 4, 2022. Launch slideshow »

As the founding principal of Liberty High School, Emilio Fernandez was part of the Henderson school when there was still bare desert at what was then the southwest edge of the Las Vegas metro 20 years ago.

He never really left Liberty, even though he retired from the Clark County School District in 2005. He still drops in on big staff meetings and attends Patriots athletic events. Now, the heart of campus — the quad — is expected to soon be named in his honor, perpetually making him an official part of Liberty.

The chatty and warm Fernandez, 72, said he was speechless when he found out. And deferential.

“I was very blessed. I have worked with some terrific administrators,” said Fernandez, who worked as a teacher, counselor, coach, dean, assistant principal and principal at nine CCSD schools over 34 years. “I’ve had some great staffs and some great kids.”

The Patriot Nation Parent Club supports the naming. Current administration, led by principal Derek Bellow — Liberty’s founding dean, and a student of Fernandez’s at Las Vegas High School in the 1980s — supports it. The Clark County School District School Name Committee, composed of School Board, district staff and community members, gave the green light in late April. If the full school board approves it at a date to be determined, the quad will become the Emilio Fernandez Student Complex/Plaza.

Bellow moved on to other CCSD schools before returning to Liberty to take the helm in 2014. He’s the most tenured principal the school has had, but he credits Fernandez for what Liberty has become.

“The seed that he planted, the foundation that he laid, is what has now sprung and become the Liberty that everybody knows and respects,” Bellow said. “I remember him telling us, in one of our very first faculty meetings when we all got together, this will be the public school equivalent of Bishop Gorman — both academically, which it’s become, and athletically, which it’s become.”

Fernandez said he went with a district administrator’s idea of making Liberty a “classical” school, teaching Greek and Roman history, as well as Latin. The school was an early adopter of standardized student attire and block schedules.

English teacher Rebecca Brasi, a charter faculty member who remains at the school, said in a letter to the school naming committee that “we faced many challenges by shifting the educational paradigm, but through Emilio’s leadership and support, we were able to keep striving toward our shared vision.”

Bellow managed to keep the quad project a secret until just before the April 26 naming committee meeting. When he called Fernandez to ask him to the meeting, the senior educator thought his protégé was going to ask him to be a substitute administrator — something he would have done because he maintains an active administrators’ license. After retirement, he worked briefly at St. Christopher Catholic School in North Las Vegas, and he stays active by mentoring youths at church.

Fernandez’s connections to CCSD go back to being a student at Las Vegas High in the 1960s. He went to UNLV when it was still known as Nevada Southern University, graduated in 1971, and started teaching English language arts at Roy Martin Middle School.

He taught and climbed the administrative ladder at Roy Martin Middle, Orr Middle, Sunset High, Clark High, Bridger Middle, his alma mater Las Vegas High, Brown Middle, Cortney Junior High and finally, Liberty. Liberty, which opened in 2003, was a dream because he said he wanted to close out his career at a high school. He has a soft spot for middle-schoolers, but high schoolers can have a mature conversation, he said. Opening a campus is also a rare opportunity.

“You get to build something that will last,” he said. “You get to hire people to make you look good, people that feel the same way.”

Then there was the name. He said his late mother was so proud that he got to serve a school “for freedom.”

Fernandez came to the United States from Cuba as a boy in 1961 as part of Operation Peter Pan, the flights of children who were sent abroad, unaccompanied, by parents desperate to shield their kids from being indoctrinated by the Castro regime. Fernandez was 12, and his sister 11, when they left their parents behind on a plane bound for Miami.

He said his father, who was also a teacher and principal, applied for visas in Spain, Argentina, Mexico and the United States. The U.S. allowed the children in first, not long after granting entry to a paternal aunt. The children stayed with their aunt and within a few months, the family reunited.

By 1962, his aunt, a school psychologist, had a job in Las Vegas. The rest of the family followed.

“I came here looking for freedom,” he said. “The whole family came here looking for freedom.”

Michelle Martin was Fernandez’s secretary. He hired her atBrown Junior High in 1996. She followed him to Cortney, then to Liberty.

In her own letter to the naming committee, she said people worked “with” him, not “for” him. And he was always in the Liberty quad getting to know students.

“Always a high five, how are your classes going, did you try out for volleyball, have you eaten, that uniform looks awful sharp, let me get that door for you, and always reminding students, Liberty HS is one big family and we all have to help and watch out for each other,” Martin wrote.