LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Clark County School District parents gathered Monday night to ask why a proposed school couldn’t expand to meet the demand for the developing south valley, but officials pointed to new data that shows growth isn’t the only issue.
Rick Baldwin, CCSD Director of Comprehensive Planning, showed concept art for the new entrepreneurial academy to parents and residents at a meeting inside the Sierra Vista High School library.
“We are recommending a choice selection school with a program to be programmed around entrepreneurship and innovation in education,” Baldwin said. “It will be to our knowledge, the first of its kind in the nation, and a really exciting opportunity for students interested in going into a business or entrepreneurship.”
The program, located near West Cactus Avenue and South Buffalo Drive, is centered around making classrooms based on growing creative industries in content creation and digital marketing, according to school officials at the presentation. Staff said they expect 1,500 students to be enrolled in the school, which is planned to open by the fall of 2028, with the possibility of expansion years after.
Parents at the meeting asked why the entrepreneurship school couldn’t be built more on the vacant land sooner rather than later, pointing to capacity issues at nearby schools. Baldwin pointed to the school district’s data which suggests more classrooms wouldn’t be better for the community.
“That enrollment could detrimentally hurt Sierra Vista and Desert Oasis High School, as well as this new school,” he said. “If it can’t sustain it doesn’t have the student population coming in in the future, and again, that 10-year time horizon to sustain that population and the enrollments within all three schools, we are very careful not to cause too much strife.”
The district’s data, according to Baldwin, suggests a slowdown in projections of classroom sizes and number of students nationwide.
“Our total county population is growing annually, but we are seeing Clark County School Districts are seeing fewer and fewer students coming into the system each year,” Baldwin said. “Birth rates have been declining in Clark County by 1% annual decrease each year for the past eight years in a row.”
Nicole Smith, a CCSD parent, said she attended the meeting to echo concerns from the community about the capacity of some of the schools in the area.
“I love the area in which they selected, but I think one of the questions that I continue to have is the 1,500-student minimum,” she said. “Do we need to maybe increase that size a little bit even from the very beginning? From what I understand from the meeting today, there are space additions that they can expand in the future, if necessary.”
The school district plans to hold two more meetings on the proposed entrepreneurship school, and then take the item to the next school board meeting on Feb. 22. Those meetings will take place on:
- February 11, 2025 | 5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m. Gunderson MS Library, 10155 Marnie Street, Las Vegas, NV 89178
- February 12, 2025 | 5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m. Desert Oasis HS Library, 6600 W. Erie Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89141
