By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
The decade-old fight for a new gymnasium at the Moapa Valley High School (MVHS) has re-surfaced once again in the community. Parent groups and community organizations are planning to attend an upcoming Clark County School District (CCSD) Board of Trustees meeting next month to make numerous community requests for the much needed facility. The plans were discussed by the Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB) at a meeting held Friday, January 21 in Logandale.
“There needs to be a community-wide effort on this,” MVCEAB member Lindsey Dalley said in the meeting. “It is difficult and awkward for our school administrators to get into the fray with CCSD on this. But parents and other community leaders can go down there and beat the podium on this issue. That is exactly what we need to do.”
High schools in the district are usually equipped with two gymnasium facilities, according to MVHS administrators. A main gym accomodates the crowds which attend larger sporting events. An auxiliary gym then handles team practices and smaller games and events. Even rural schools like Virgin Valley and Boulder City have auxiliary facilities which are used to relieve the busy sports schedules.
But MVHS was built with only one gymnasium. Because it was considered a small rural school when built, the local gym was built to a size that is equivalent to an auxiliary gym at a larger school, MVHS Principal Grant Hanevold said.
“There is this misperception by the CCSD that a smaller school has fewer athletes involved in the programs,” said Hanevold. “But that is not true. Though we have a much smaller student body, we have the same number of kids who play sports as the larger schools. But there also seems to be a misperception that people in small communities are tiny and that we can somehow fit more people in a gym than a large school can. Obviously that is also not true.”
Being limited to a single small gym causes a host of scheduling and logistical problems, Hanevold explained.
For example, a single gym can’t accomodate the six school basketball teams that need practice time. Practices often start at 6:00 a.m. and go until 8:30 p.m., Hanevold said.
In addition, since they cannot be scheduled concurrently, games often run late into the evening on school nights sometimes going as late as 10:00 p.m..
“Our students are already saddled with late nights for all “away” games because of travel times,” Hanevold said. “But unfortunately, even the home games make for late nights for our students. That is where access to facilities has an impact on academic achievement.”
There are also safety and crowd control concerns. Hanevold stated that MVHS is very high in attendance at the games. Often the gym is filled beyond capacity.
“The annual Homecoming Assembly has to be scaled back so we can fit in the gym,” Hanevold added. “Graduation packs the gym way beyond its capacity – and we are limiting each family to a mere six tickets. I am sure we are in violation of county fire code on events like these.”
The push for another MVHS gymnasium has been going on for more than ten years now. A gym was pledged to local residents during the campaign for a school bond issue in 1998.
“I can remember sitting in that room in a town hall meeting when they promised us that a gym would be part of the 1998 bond,” said Mack Lyon principal Rod Adams. Adams served for many years as Vice Principal at MVHS.
Voters in the Moapa Valley voted overwhelmingly to pass the proposed 1998 bond. Then in the decade after the bond was passed the MVHS gym was pushed further and further down the agenda until it eventually seemed to drop out of the CCSD sights altogether.
School records show an ongoing history of correspondence over the years between various MVHS principals and CCSD officials asking for status on the new gym. Each time the responses were increasingly unclear.
In 2008, as the district was preparing to put a new bond on the ballot, some activity on the gym started to take place again. Crews were sent out to survey the ground for a new building. Ruth Johnson, then a CCSD Trustee, announced at the 2008 MVHS Commencement Ceremonies that she was working closely with CCSD facilities department to see that MVHS got a new gym.
But later that summer, the bond issue was removed from the ballot and all activities on the new gym suddenly stopped.
Late last year the issue was discussed in a meeting of the MVHS Parent Advisory Council (PAC). As a result, PAC member Kay Barlow wrote a series of emails to CCSD officials once again inquiring on the status of the project. Barlow was encouraged to attend a meeting of the district’s Bond Oversight Committee (BOC) to inquire further on available funds.
In response to this, Hanevold and a small group of community members attended the BOC meeting in December and spoke during its public comment period requesting information on funding for the new gym. They were told that the item would be placed on the agenda for the January meeting and answers to the request would be given at that time.
But upon returning to the BOC meeting last week, Hanevold learned that the item had been removed from the agenda.
“They said that our requests would be answered by memo from staff,” Hanevold said.
As of Friday’s MVCEAB meeting, Hanevold had still not received the memo.
Hanevold said that he had concluded that going to the BOC on the matter was futile.
Although school funding is tight, administrators felt that there is still some hope for funding the facility. Hanevold said that there is still $200 million in facilities funding that is still not spent, though it has been allocated to other projects.
“Moapa Valley residents should know that, after all of the history on this matter, they are currently number 52 on the list of priorities,” Hanevold said.
MVCEAB members expressed curiosity about the projects that had been placed higher on the priority list and what place in seniority these projects occupied. Hanevold said that it was quite possible that some of the $200 million could be reallocated to projects with a more urgent priority.
It is estimated that the gym would cost $7.2 million to complete.
Hanevold said that he had related his experience at the BOC meeting back to the MVHS School Empowerment Team, a group of teachers, administrators, parents and community members that oversees the budget and goals of the school. Hanevold said that he asked the team if the matter ought to be pursued further.
“They felt that we needed to take it to the community,” he said. “They tought that we ought to bring out Moapa Valley residents in droves to a CCSD Board meeting and get some attention to this matter that way.”
Thus, the School Empowerment Team is organizing a community-wide effort to attend a board meeting next month. The team has identified a list of community organizations each to present a case for the new gym. These include the MVCEAB, the MVHS Booster Club, Rotary Club, County Parks and Rec, Chamber of Commerce, Moapa Valley Performing Arts Council, teachers, coaches, students and Metro and Fire Department who would speak on public safety issues. A letter of support is also expected from Commissioner Tom Collins.
A representative from each group would formally request three minutes on an upcoming CCSD Board of Trustees meeting agenda during public comment period.
“It seems a good idea to me to pack the (CCSD) board room with Moapa Valley people who will applaud enthusiastically for each comment,” said Dalley. “The fight for this needs to be a community fight because it affects the whole community.”
