Trustees OK plan for pair of academies

The Clark County School District will spend $505 million on two new Career Technical Academies to relieve overcrowding in North Las Vegas and Henderson-area schools.

The CCSD Board of Trustees on Thursday approved the fourth revision to the district’s 2015 Capital Improvement Program, which lays out planning for facilities and maintenance.

Such academies have been popular in Las Vegas since they were introduced in the mid-1990s, according to a presentation by Chief of Facilities David McKinnis and Director of Construction Management Jeff Wagner, with 22,000 applicants for 15,201 available seats in the 2019-20 school year.

The magnet schools offer pathways in areas such as engineering, medicine and hospitality.

To free up the money for the new academies, officials recommended removing previously planned facilities additions at high schools and comprehensive high schools. A northeast academy would open near Legacy High School, and a Henderson academy would open near Liberty High School.

The district is also budgeting an additional $20.5 million toward a new 600-seat school at Maryland Parkway and Oakey Boulevard, which will house Global Community High School and a proposed secondary program — a decision that caused some controversy, as Trustee Danielle Ford said Global administrators were not warned that they might share the new space.

Other facilities priorities for CCSD include modernizing and renovating existing schools using previously planned money for elementary school classroom additions. Approximately $406 million of the available money would be spent on electrical, HVAC and painting and carpet updates for the 290 schools that are over 20 years old.