norman
country-financial
March 29, 2024 5:00 am
Your hometown Newspaper since 1987.
Search
Close this search box.

CCSD Officials Reply To Safety Concerns At Area High Schools

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

Crucial safety updates for the high schools in both Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley are in a holding pattern until state school safety funding is ironed out and until a school district-wide safety assessment can be performed by an outside contractor.

That was the message given by Clark County School District (CCSD) officials at a meeting of the Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB) on Friday, January 18.
“As soon as we know the amount that our county is getting from the governor’s budget for school safety, then we can begin to move forward,” said Dr. Jennifer Cupid-McCoy, chief of staff to the CCSD Superintendent and head of a special CCSD school safety committee.

But even after that, the updates to the rural northeast county schools will have to wait while a priority list of safety concerns is compiled by the CCSD, Cupid-McCoy said. She explained that an outside consultant would be called in to complete a comprehensive school safety assessment of the district. This contractor would send representative into a large number of CCSD schools with safety concerns. They would observe the movement patterns of visitors, students and staff within the school facility and use that information to determine threat levels at each school. Then a priority list could be created for safety improvements district-wide, Cupid-McCoy said.

“The intent is to have actual experts come in, assess each school and help create a plan that would apply across the board, district-wide,” Cupid-McCoy said.

Though a request for proposal has not yet been released on the assessment project, initial estimates came in at around $292,000, Cupid-McCoy said.

But MVCEAB members said that the needs at both Moapa Valley High School (MVHS) and Virgin Valley High School (VVHS) are more elemental and urgent than that. Those two schools, along with the Las Vegas Academy near downtown Las Vegas, are the only three schools in the district with open campuses, MVCEAB members said. Those schools needed to be locked down immediately, they claimed.

“You locked your doors at home when you left, I’m sure,” said MVCEAB member Teresa Holzer in a comment directed to Cupid-McCoy. “That is what wise people do to ensure a basic level of safety. But in our schools those basic security premises are just not there. Our school is left unlocked. It’s wide open. We don’t need a $300,000 study to tell us that. We are asking you to just lock the doors, in a very basic way.”

The MVHS School Operational Team (SOT) has been asking for updated security at the school for more than two years now, according to MVHS Principal Hal Mortensen. Concerned about the increased number of single shooter incidents that have taken place in small-town schools around the country, the SOT approached CCSD administration in the Fall of 2017.

By that time, the SOT had already worked with the Metropolitan Police Department to do an initial security assessment of the school. Among other risks identified, the assessment found that there were too many access points at the school, Mortensen said.

“We have an open campus,” Mortensen said at the meeting. “Our quad is wide open. You could drive a vehicle right into the middle of the quad if you wanted to. That was identified as a big problem.”
At the SOT’s request, CCSD sent an outside contractor to the school to bid on a proposal to fully enclose the quad area of the school. The bid came back at $78,210.

The project was then presented to CCSD facilities officials. But they responded that it would have to be a site funded project, meaning that the SOT would have to elect to use school instructional funds to complete it.
“They told us that we are not in a high crime rate and we don’t have a graffiti issue out here, so they wouldn’t fund it; it had to be site funded,” Mortensen said.

Repeated request from the SOT, and subsequently from members of the MVCEAB, were given a similar response.

At Friday’s meeting, MVCEAB members expressed frustration to Cupid-McCoy that their requests had all gone unheeded.
“These things should have happened 10 years ago,” said MVCEAB member Diana Walker. “At this point, we have already done the legwork for you. We have had experts from metro come in to do a site assessment and we have got a bid on what is needed. We are asking for only $78,000 to get it done. That is way less than your coffee budget at CCSD. It is not extravagant. We just want our kids to be safe.”

“We are feeling like we are not a priority out here because other schools have locked doors and our door is wide open,” said MVCEAB member Annalyn James. “It is very concerning to me becuase I have children that go here and I am concerned for their safety. My kids are precious to me and I send them to a school every day where it is open and not locked. They are not protected. I worry about that.”
CCSD Chief Operating Officer Rick Neal, who was also in attendance at the meeting, explained that no one at CCSD was disputing the importance of the project. Rather they had to heed a larger set of priorities across the entire district, he said.

Neal said that the district has seen a flood of school safety requests that have come in after recent school shooting incidents in Las Vegas. These requests have added up in the tens of millions of dollars, Neal said.

“We are just trying to get our arms around them all,” Neal said. “That includes situations in urban areas where we have fences around the buildings but don’t have fences around the thin-skinned portables that we keep putting out there to try and get more kids in the schools. We have a huge number of requests and each of those 360 school principals in the district are equally focused on their one location as you are on yours.”

Neal said that if the district is going to reprioritize its capital expenditures, then an assessment must be done to determine the top priorities of need. “If we just start spending now at the point of contact, when the assessment is done and comes back and we have not hit our number one priority, we may be out of money by then.”

Bowler principal Shawna Jessen expressed concern that a district-wide assessment might tend to overlook the risk at the rural schools in Logandale and Mesquite. “My plea would be that we look at the assessment on our schools not in the same light as the 300 urban schools,” she said. “We don’t look like we are in any danger, compared to other schools out there. But we have different kinds of things that make us vulnerable. So just keep us as a priorioty because we do tend to get overlooked.”

MVCEAB chairperson Shari Lyman said that it would be helpful to the board just to know that there was a game plan, that there is a priority list and that the local schools are somewhere on the list.

Neal responded that such a list has not yet been created because the assessment has not taken place.
“Well that is why we are here then,” Lyman said. “We are forcing you guys to create the list.”
Lyman emphasized the urgency that the security weaknesses at the local schools be taken care of quickly.

“If the big ugly happens at any of our eight schools in northeastern Clark County, I am not going to be the one in front of the camera answering the questions,” Lyman said. “But I will be the one there asking the questions! You guys will be answering the questions; the trustees and the administrators will have to answer for it. And those questions will not be easy. You will be liable; everyone in the district who knows that there is a safety issue and a problem and hasn’t done anything about it; they will be legally liable for that.”

Print This Article:

Share This Article:

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Screen Shot 2023-02-05 at 10.55.46 PM
2-21-2024-fullpagefair
4 Youth Service WEB
2-28-2024 WEB Hole Foods St Patricks
No data was found
2023 WEB BANNER 2 DEFAULT AD whitneyswater
Mesquite Works Web Ad 10-2020
Scroll to Top
Receive the latest news

Subscribe To Our Weekly Newsletter

Get notified about new articles