At the Sept. 12 meeting of the Washoe County School Board, trustees discussed facility resources and enrollment in Spanish Springs, specifically Bohach Elementary School, which has “moderate overcrowding.”
The board chose to rezone the school’s enrollment boundaries. Bohach was built in August 2020 with the specific aim of alleviating overcrowding in six nearby elementary schools. Since then, Bohach has taken on a great many students and has had to build four portables to compensate for the 825 students enrolled today.
Prior to deciding to rezone Bohach, the board discussed building an additional elementary school on district-owned property near Oppio Parkway. The design for the school has been completed, and if approved, could open as soon as the 2025-26 school year.
Trustee Joe Rodriguez said he supports the creation of a new building due to the increasing growth in the area. “The growth out there is ridiculously fast,” he said. “I mean you have apartments going right up against Bohach now. I don’t think rezoning is the answer.”
Trustee Adam Mayberry said he believes Bohach is more than moderately overcrowded.
“Respectfully, from my perspective, it’s majorly overcrowded,” he said. “[In] rezoning, I would think that a lot of families would have some challenges leaving a new school and going into an older school. Why would we wait and see? We know there’s going to be growth out there.”
Chief Facilities Management Officer Adam Searcy said a merit to a “wait and see” approach would be to gain additional data on enrollment trends.
“Despite the rampant residential population growth that everyone feels on the roads, the student population growth is not corresponding,” Searcy said.
“That’s fair,” Mayberry said. “But Bohach is significantly overcrowded and needs to be addressed.”
Trustee Jeff Church proposed that waiting might lead to cost savings for the district, suggesting that once the housing bubble pops, building prices could go down.
“Were gonna spend $50 million and $1 million a year, for a school, when we have 1950s and ’60s schools that desperately need remodeling and rebuilding?” Church asked. “At the same time, can we afford to bond this school with other schools all at the same time?”
Searcy said yes, and there are capital resources available for many more facility modernization projects.
Trustee President Beth Smith said that she also worries about how building a new school would affect modernization plans in established neighborhoods, but nevertheless the crowding needs to be addressed.
“This is a difficult position,” Smith said. “It’s a big decision to make. I think depending on where this goes, we would have to very closely monitor this.”
Trustee Colleen Westlake raised concerns with the overall price tag, allocation of resources, and workforce availability.
“We don’t have the workforce,” Westlake said. “If we use the workforce to go build the new school, there’s no workers to go modernize these other schools that so desperately need them. We need to consider before we move forward. We need to have it looked at, moving those other schools around, and taking one off the modernization table and out of the equation and out of the expense for every year to keep those lights on and building a new school. I don’t know why we’re not thinking about that.”
Searcy said that while they could find workers to construct the projects, the district may end up paying a premium due to a lack of competition from other contracting firms.
Church said the issue would extend to finding employees of the school as well.
“Bus drivers, custodians, teachers, you name it … we can’t get them now [for the schools we have],” Church said.
Rodriguez moved to approve the build, but did not receive a second from other trustees.
“As much as I’d love to build, the data doesn’t support it for me right now,” Mayberry said. “I’d like to wait and see.”
Mayberry and Church supported the option to wait and see, postponing the decision for one year.
Smith disagreed, saying that postponing would cause the school to remain overcrowded for two school years, and would prefer a rezoning.
“We have to offer something to these families.”
The motion to wait and see failed.
Trustees ultimately decided to begin the process to rezone the elementary schools to alleviate overcrowding at Bohach Elementary by moving students to other, less crowded school sites.
