Time has passed for stopgap classrooms

Carson City has enough students in modular classrooms to populate an entire school.

With more than 900 elementary- and middle-school children attending the "temporary" structures, it would appear the time for stopgap measures has passed.

As outlined in an article in Sunday's Nevada Appeal, the district is facing three choices:

-- More portable classrooms.

-- Multi-track schedules.

-- A new school.

The first two we consider to be short-term fixes. Portable classrooms have been the answer since the failure of a $48 million bond in 1996 that would have built a high school and elementary school.

Since then, voters have supported bonds to repair and upgrade aging buildings and, last fall, to build permanent addition at Bordewich-Bray to replace modular classrooms that had been infested with mold.

While both were needed and appreciated, Carson City voters have not been asked in six years to approve the property-tax dollars necessary to solve the shortage of classroom space for the forseeable future. It has been more than 10 years since a new school was built.

Not only are Carson schools already over capacity, a proposed 300-unit apartment complex near Empire Elementary School could mean squeezing in 150 to 400 more students.

There's never a good time to ask for more taxes. But the clock is always ticking on another year of students asked to make do.

Although it's the school board's responsibility to ask voters to step up for another bond issue, it should be Carson City parents who are telling the school board the time has come to solve the schools' crowding problems.