CCSD to consider closing historic Goodsprings Elementary School
Smallest rural school in district down to two students
Students head into the schoolhouse after a flag raising ceremony at Goodsprings Elementary School in Goodsprings, Nev. Wednesday, March 30, 2022. Photo by: Steve Marcus
Monday, April 6, 2026 | 11:35 a.m.
The Clark County School District is considering closing Goodsprings Elementary School, its oldest and smallest rural school, at the end of the year.
Goodsprings, located about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas, has sent its children to the two-room schoolhouse since 1913. But the school has been steadily losing enrollment over the last 15 years, CCSD facilities chief Brandon McLaughlin said today. This year, it had two students. Next year, it is projected to have only one.
If the CCSD School Board votes to close the school, that student and any others to move into the tiny community would attend school 12 miles away in Sandy Valley.
The School Board will consider the closure proposal on April 23. The district will hold a neighborhood meeting in Goodsprings on Tuesday.
Middle and high school students from Goodsprings have long already gone on to Sandy Valley schools after the fifth grade, and the principal splits her time between the two sites. Sandy Valley, which is about a 20-minute bus ride away, has a K-12 campus that was largely rebuilt between 2020 and 2023. Busing the younger students to and from Sandy Valley would be cost-neutral, McLaughlin said.
“They have nicer, newer, bigger facilities out in Sandy Valley,” he said.
Goodsprings has two staffers: one teacher and one part-time employee who handles custodial and food service. The teacher has already accepted a job at Sandy Valley and the district is working with the support staffer on finding a new position.
McLaughlin said CCSD and Clark County have been in chats on how to repurpose the schoolhouse for community use. The Las Vegas-Clark County Library District already has a branch in a modular building a few yards from the school.
The school opened in 1907 inside a tent. Its current building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is one of Nevada’s oldest continuously used schools.
“Goodsprings Elementary School has been a unique and special part of the Clark County School District as the school is woven into the fabric of our beginning,” said Goodsprings and Sandy Valley Principal Tammy Flanagan in a statement. “We are proud of the education it has provided our students for more than 100 years.”
Goodsprings was a mining boomtown at the turn of the 20th century. It now has about 300 residents, and gets a tourism bump from fans of the postapocalyptic role-playing video game Fallout: New Vegas, which pays tribute to Goodsprings and its Pioneer Saloon.