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West Wendover school children are not being short changed by the Elko County School District, said Superintendent Jeff Zander in an interview Wednesday.
“The plan we have adopted addresses the single most pressing problem in West Wendover– the shortage of space at the elementary school,” Zander said. “The is where the bottleneck is and has been for quite some time.”
This month the Elko County School board approved the West Wendover School project.
The $28.5 million project includes a new elementary school in West Wendover and a retrofit of the current school to serve as a junior high. The school is expected to house 750 students in grades first through fifth. The current elementary building will be renovated into a sixth- through eighth-grade middle school.
Pay-as-you-go school tax revenue through the end of fiscal year 2013 is estimated at just over $39 million, according to the five-year plan.
The need for a new school in West Wendover was acknowledged almost since the the West Wendover Jr/Sr high school opened in 1996.
However the project was sidelined in the late 1990’s when the price of gold collapsed and tax revenues in Elko County subsequently plunged. Talk of the new middle began again in the mid 2000’s but again the economy turned sour in the Great Recession and all building projects were put on indefinite hold.
In the meantime West Wendover made due with stopped gap temporary trailers that now house about 50 percent of its elementary students.
The elementary school was designed in 1983 with a capacity for 300 students. At that time education was shared between the Elko County School District in Nevada and the Tooele County School District in Utah.
By 1985, when it opened it was already over crowded. West Wendover was in the first stages of the gaming boom that saw the addition of three later four major casinos. And its population once limited to three trailer parks was moving into new housing subdivisions and apartment complexes.
With the splitting of the school system in 1996 back into Nevada and Utah halves, the over crowding at the elementary was temporarily relieved. but by the middle 2000’s most of West Wendover’s grammar school children were back in portable classrooms.
While the expansion plan is said to solve the overcrowding issue at the elementary it has not escaped criticism especially for the retrofit to the middle school.
“See the master plan as it has been explained to me is that the district is now going to “retrofit” the elementary to house 6th through 8th grade.” wrote one anonymous parent in a letter published last week, “Of course the actual building isn’t big enough to house almost 300 junior high sized children, along with a full staff of core and elective teachers. So your 12 year old daughters will now get to make the trek across the parking lot a couple times a day to attend elective classes at the high school with the 18 year old senior boy. The other option is to just get rid of junior high electives like, band, art, music and computer tech classes all together. Of course the kids should be able to have their P.E. classes in the elementary gym. Not sure how many junior high sized kids you can fit in the elementary gym but hey they can just go play on the monkey bars. Oh and speaking of the gym, if you have a child who is going to be in junior high, don’t plan on them getting to be able to attend any assemblies as the facility doesn’t and won’t have enough bleacher space for 300 eleven to fourteen year old kids to sit.”
Those objections are simply not true Zander said and added that the new middle school would have a new full sized gym as part of the project.
“Anyone who has any question or criticism of the project can call me directly at 1-775-738-5196,” he added. “Or they can e-mail me : jzander@ecsdnv.net. We are not trying to put anything over anyone and even though some might not believe this West Wendover is not being short changed by Elko.”
