DON McDERMOTT / PVT A view of the proposed high school site west of Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church on West Gamebird Road. Advertisement

Nye County school board trustees, faced with projected 9.75 percent annual increases in high school enrollment, decided unanimously Thursday to build one large, new high school, with the probable location on Gamebird Road just west of Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church.

The existing high school on Calvada Boulevard will then be turned into a second middle school, according to the plan.

The school board received the 80-acre high school site near the west end of Gamebird Road from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management a year ago after paying $54,654 in mitigation fees for desert tortoise habitat and going through the necessary environmental and cultural reviews.

"Our high school was built for 650. Right now we have about 1,370 (students)," school board clerk Tracie Ward said. "So we're using the A and B building and we also use the community college."

Great Basin College has classes where high school students can receive dual high school and college credit.

Nye County School Superintendent Rob Roberts said he expects it could be probably three years before the new high school would be built. That would put it into the 2009-2010 school year when projections show high school enrollment ballooning up to 1,811 students.

Middle school enrollment is growing at a slower rate, 6.49 percent, Ward said, but that still means an increase from 1,261 middle school students to 1,523 by the 2009-2010 school year. The existing Rosemary Clarke Middle School on North Blagg Road was opened in September 2002, but already needs modular buildings to keep up with growth.

It wasn't a coincidence the discussion came during a spring school board meeting, Ward said.

"Every spring is when we look at how many modulars do we need to add to keep up with the growth we're getting this year," Ward said. "We look at the growth and its part of figuring out the budget, how many kids are going to come in and decide what we need to do next and one of the things we need to do next is find more room for students."

Roberts said building the new high school wouldn't have been possible without the passage of county ballot Question 1 on Nov. 7, which extended the school district bond initiative past the year 2008. Roberts said he'll have a better idea of the cost once trustees decide how large a school to build. He'd recommend building a high school for 2,600 students.

"Once you determine the number of students we have to determine how much money we can bond for in 2009," Roberts said. "That should happen in the next 90 days."

The new high school, which Roberts expects will still be called Pahrump Valley High School, will include state-of-the-art vocational education classes, which includes a lot more today than just wood shop and machine shop.

The school district also has 60 acres near the new Hafen Elementary School, which opened in 2002, but the feeling among school district officials was that site would be on the far south end of the Pahrump Valley, requiring more busing costs and problems with parents picking up children after extracurricular activities. Trustees, however, didn't officially vote on the school site Thursday.

"We'd have the same problems we have at Rosemary Clarke Middle School; 17 miles in the other direction is the high school. Gamebird is more centrally located to the population of the community," Roberts said.

The discussion comes as school board trustees are waiting to go out to bid for the new Floyd Elementary School, to be located on 12 acres donated by America West Homes on Susquehanna and Jane Street, about a mile and a half east of Terrible's Lakeside Casino. Estimates are the construction of Floyd Elementary will cost $12 million. It should be put out to bid for 30 days in late May or early June, Ward said.

Roberts said there was some discussion about a preference for smaller high schools, perhaps having two high schools, something the superintendent didn't feel was practical.

"You need a high school you're going to have for a while, then you're going to have a need to expand it," Roberts said.

"There was a lot of discussion about smaller high schools being more academically suited for students. People know the children more by first name if there's fewer of them. But at the same time you have to look at the cost per student, the size of the community, what the likely growth is. There's a lot of economic considerations when constructing a school that will probably cost at least $50 million."

School board trustees will have to select an architect to design the new high school. Then they will have to proceed through the design phase. The actual construction could take a year, he estimated.

Roberts showed school board trustees floor plans, as an example, of a two-story school in his former home in Washoe County, with industrial arts components. It includes two gymnasiums, an indoor theater, cafeteria, library, multiple athletic fields and a wing for the construction trades.

As another sign of growth, school board trustees Thursday voted to spend up to $400,000 for new bleachers at Pahrump Valley High School. Bob Whimpey, maintenance and operations supervisor, said the existing bleachers are unsafe. He added the capacity is only 600 seats, the enrollment at the high school is over double that and may reach 1,700 students in two years.