Mount Charleston’s tiny elementary ready to reopen after big community push

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

Inside Earl B. Lundy Elementary, two teachers are putting the finishing touches on their classrooms, carefully arranging pallets of fresh textbooks and bright art supplies on shelves and in cabinets.

After two years of silence, the small mountain school that serves Mount Charleston’s tight-knit community will welcome students back Monday — a remarkable comeback for a place that seemed unlikely to reopen.

The school sits at the heart of the mountain’s Old Town enclave. When Tropical Storm Hilary in 2023 devastated Lundy’s grounds, utilities and foundation, the Clark County School District shuttered the facility and decided to bus its displaced students 40 miles down the mountain to Indian Springs for school.

The storm damage was so extensive that repairs initially seemed impossible, but the community didn’t stop fighting for its school. Hesitant CCSD school board members eventually approved millions in repairs.

Monday, the school will reopen with eight students in attendance.

Superintendent Jhone Ebert said crews spent all spring and summer bringing Lundy back to safety standards.

“Every single one of our children deserves to have a safe learning environment, and that is inclusive of our rural schools, our urban schools, our suburban schools,” she said.

Michelle Muehleisen will teach the multigrade class for the older children — those in third, fourth and fifth grades. As the school’s “responsible teacher,” she is the liaison with the principal, who is splitting his time between Lundy and the Indian Springs K-12 school.

Unless their parents chose to send them elsewhere and provided their own transportation, Indian Springs was where CCSD bused the youngest Mount Charleston children during the Lundy closure. Middle- and high school-age students from Mount Charleston have long gone to Indian Springs.

A veteran teacher of more than 20 years, Muehleisen will be in her first year at Lundy. She was also at Indian Springs last year and in Las Vegas before that. Like her new students, she is a Mount Charleston resident who can walk to the schoolhouse.

She’s looking forward to class sizes that are much smaller than when she taught in the valley.

“I’m able to really get to know the students, know what they need and be able to do that more one-on-one (instruction),” she said.

The CCSD board voted in February to allot up to $7.8 million out of bond funds for Lundy’s repair. District Chief of Facilities Brandon McLaughlin said this week that the project was going to come in “well under that.”

The storm that battered Mount Charleston in August 2023, just a couple of weeks into the school year, destroyed Lundy’s parking lot and threatened its foundation. Storm flows bypassed historic runoff channels and created a new drainage path through the school’s campus. The district said the building was unsafe.

The decision to reopen Lundy was not made quickly, coming in December after continual community advocacy and changes in the school board’s composition after the 2024 election.

Before agreeing to the repairs, the board deadlocked in June 2024 on whether to reopen or permanently close Lundy.

Then it decided, on a slim majority, to pursue a partnership with the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District to build a classroom annex and playground on the grounds of the nearby Mount Charleston Library. The library board, however, was cool to the idea.

The school board — by then with new membership — ultimately approved extensive foundation remediation work to address areas that had been deeply exposed by rushing water. This critical repair was necessary due to foundation sagging that had caused cracking throughout the building.

The district also replaced the air conditioning unit and septic system, both of which were washed away during the flooding. Additionally, the school’s electrical system required significant upgrades as part of the restoration effort.

To prevent future damage, workers built embankments and strategically placed rocks as erosion-control measures around the school property.

They also restored the school’s southwest entrance, including replacement of the paving, accessibility ramps and handrails that had been damaged.

The restoration also addressed exterior wall patching where damage had occurred and interior flooring replacement in areas affected by water intrusion and foundation movement.

Ebert came on board in April, after some key staff and school board leadership that had overseen the closure and votes against reopening had departed. But she did not criticize the process.

“We make a decision, and then we reevaluate where we’re at, and then we pivot to move forward on behalf of children,” she said. “I believe the school board, at all times, is focused on our children. Information continues to come in over time, so you reassess.”

 

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