Security camera upgrades at Eldorado High School located in the east valley of Las Vegas. Tuesday, July 12, 2022.
Thursday, July 14, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The $26 million that the Clark County School District is spending on security upgrades to fencing, entrances and surveillance cameras at Eldorado High School is roughly a quarter of its available reserve funds, but the district is giving few details on what exactly those upgrades entail.
That CCSD would invest heavily in security at the east valley campus is no surprise, as officials have continued to say Eldorado would take top priority in a districtwide safety review after a student allegedly sexually assaulted and attempted to kill a teacher last spring in her classroom there.
“Due to the recent events at Eldorado High School, as well as nationwide,” the district upgraded and expanded the number of cameras, added perimeter fencing and created a single point of entry at the 50-year-old campus, according to a brief prepared for today’s School Board meeting.
But the report doesn’t get into specifics about the previous or new security infrastructure at Eldorado, and a district spokesperson said in a statement that the details on these upgrades “will not be disclosed except to those who need to know.” The spokesperson did confirm that the $26 million figure was accurate.
The “emergency security upgrade” cost $26,275,700, according to the district document. At a June meeting of the district’s Bond Oversight Committee, Mark Campbell, a director in the district facilities department, said the Eldorado work would be covered by reserve funds, although he didn’t have a price tag at the time.
State law allows local governmental entities to fast-track major expenditures in the event of a health and safety emergency without undergoing the usual contract approvals — in this case including final approval from the School Board, which will only receive the report as an informational item.
With more than 350 schools and 300,000 students, the nation’s fifth-largest school district is under constant construction, either to expand or modernize facilities. CCSD razed and rebuilt or built from scratch 41 schools just between 2017 and 2021, according to a 2021 update on the district’s current capital improvement program. Only 29 of these projects cost more than the Eldorado security upgrades.
The district’s newest elementary school, Hannah Marie Brown Elementary in Henderson, opened last year at a cost of $28.7 million. And Eldorado itself received a new ventilation system and roof in 2018 for $11.1 million.
Bonds cover most major projects, although the district can also tap a reserve fund for capital projects. In May, the School Board received a report from the district finance office that $100 million would be made available for a range of campus projects, including safety measures.
Security improvements, and specifically standalone camera installations, are common around the district, though with widely varying price tags. Going through the standard bidding process, CCSD recently green-lit a $1.2 million upgrade set to begin this week at Durango High School. For that, contractors will install the cameras and cables, and build or renovate nine small equipment rooms within the campus to house the infrastructure, according to a summary of the contract award.
In April, the district awarded a $192,000 contract to upgrade cameras at Valley High School. Also in April, it posted an advertisement for bids to upgrade the cameras at Lawrence Junior High School for an estimated $97,000.
The district also turned to emergency spending protocols this summer to spend $99,970 to upgrade cameras, fencing and the main entrance at Clark High School.
“Each school community has unique needs based on current infrastructure,” the district said. “To provide security enhancements, aging infrastructure must also be repaired or replaced in order to support the security technology. The cost will vary from school to school.”
The reports for the emergency expenditures at both Clark and Eldorado use nearly identical language in broadly describing the scopes of the projects: “substantially increasing the number” of closed circuit television security cameras, “providing a secure controlled single point-of-entry system at the front of the school, and adding site fencing to secure access to the remaining entrances. Adding these security feature upgrades are a life safety necessity for added protection of students and staff.”
The district said in its statement that keeping further details close to the vest was within best practices “to prevent people from planning ways to circumvent the security measures.”
“While we would like to disclose security details so that our parents, students and staff members feel more assured, doing so would allow those who intend to cause harm an advantage,” the district said.
For the assault at Eldorado, a 16-year-old boy was charged as an adult with 15 felonies, including attempted murder, for allegedly beating, strangling and sexually assaulting his teacher in her classroom after school on April 7. It was the lowlight of a year marred by record campus violence, and happened not long after district officials pledged to crack down on offenders and review physical security measures in the wake of a string of hard lockdowns, brawls and beatings around the district. District officials said they would prioritize high schools, then middle and elementary schools.
Separately, CCSD installed an “instant alert system” — or portable panic buttons — around Eldorado within weeks of the attack, adding a program onto wearable microphones that were already in use for a prompt solution.
And outside of Eldorado, the district spent $100,350 to test out another style of wearable instant alert system during summer school at nine high schools, with the potential to permanently expand panic buttons districtwide.
The School Board meets at 5 p.m. at the Greer Education Center at 2832 E. Flamingo Road.
