Las Vegas NowSeven Hills Parents Win Re-Zoning Battle
Many parents are still reeling from the news that deep cuts are coming to their kids' schools. Now they're waging another battle as they try to keep their teenagers from being rezoned to different high schools outside their neighborhoods.
With budget cuts still on everyone's minds, parents packed the trustees boardroom Thursday morning to talk about another rezoning.
Though neither controversial issue was an action item on the agenda, school trustees and district officials are bracing for what will likely be a long process ahead.
"There is no choice we can make here that will be popular because none of them are good choices. But we'll try to reach a general consensus and we'll just do what we can," said CCSD Chief Financial Officer Jeff Weiler.
Weiler says the earliest the school district expects to have any kind of preliminary list of proposed budget cuts for the board of trustees to consider will be at next month's meeting, December 11, 2008.
Meanwhile, hundreds of families whose kids attend Coronado High School are celebrating a victory after the school rezoning meeting, "I am very pleased about dropping the Seven Hills area off the maps."
Some much needed good news on the education front at least for hundreds of southeast families who stood to have their kids rezoned from their neighborhood Coronado High to the under-capacity Liberty High campus several miles away.
"They were going to take Seven Hills and cut a big hole right out of it, just like a biopsy, and those children were going to be bussed," said parent Nicki Fazio.
"Seven Hills is the heart of Cougar Country and they're looking to rip that out," said Seven Hills Parent's Association President Paul Parrish.
For reasons both emotional and practical, hundreds of parents packed the school trustee boardroom prepared to argue that busing students outside their neighborhood makes no sense -- especially for a school district in the throes of a severe budget crisis.
"I don't understand that. You're going to cancel the magnet school students' buses but then turn around and bus our children who can walk to school," said Fazio. "Right now, our kids have a safe, easy and close walk to Coronado High School."
But the school district's rezoning committee has the tough task of relieving severe overcrowding at several valley high schools, including Coronado. It's nearly 30-percent over capacity with 750 students too many on campus.
But for now, the committee agreed to find a compromise that does not include moving any Seven Hills students out of Coronado.
