DOUGLAS COUNTY, Nev. – The trustees of the Douglas County School District (DCSD) voted on Tuesday to direct Superintendent Frankie Alvarado on the school consolidation scenario he will present at a Town Hall meeting with the community on Wednesday.
The trustees voted unanimously to have Alvarado present the consolidation of the “southern” schools, with a focus first on merging C.C. Meneley and Scarselli elementary schools. The combined enrollment at those two schools is 612; ten years ago, it was 955. The projected savings would be $894,626 annually.
The Board discussed converting elementary schools to be K-8, an idea that was unpopular among the students and public who spoke during the meeting. Also discussed was adding a fifth-grade band to middle schools.
DCSD faces a shortfall of $5.2 million in the next school year, with a possibility of it rising to $6.9 million by 2027. Their current goal is to save $2.5 million, so there will be further cuts that need to be made to keep the District out of a continuing financial crisis and declining enrollment.
Early on in the consolidation discussions, merging the lake schools into one campus was taken off the table, with grades K-12 moving to the current Whittell High School. The savings in that scenario were just over $188,000, the cost of retrofitting the high school to accommodate smaller students. Those students had already gone through one merger with the closing of Kingsbury Middle School and students split between Whittell and Zephyr Cove Elementary School.
Alvarado presents the approved scenarios to the public on Wednesday, Jan. 28, then the board meets again on Tuesday, Feb. 3, for a special 4 p.m. meeting at Douglas High School.