Silver State charter school plans new campus

A Carson City charter high school is planning a new building that could triple its space and enrollment when it opens in 2011.

Silver State High School will go to the city planning commission May 27 to request approval for a permit to build the $10 million project. The Carson City Board of Supervisors also has to approve the plan.

The independent public school that concentrates on online learning also will add a junior high, expand its computer labs and grow its aerospace technology program, according to school plans filed with the city planning division.

The 60,000-square-foot school will be built next to the Carson City Airport on about five acres at 2222 E. College Parkway. It will be able to hold up to 1,500 students. Silver State currently has about 500 students.

The charter school also plans to increase its number of teachers from 30 to 40. Students have to come into school at least once a week to meet with teachers.

The school is now at the end of a strip mall at the corner of College Parkway and Highway 395. The school has expanded three times to about 20,000 square feet.

"We've just outgrown where we're at," Principal Steve Knight said.

The school also is leasing its current building. Knight said the school can operate better owning its own building.

Silver State will pay for its expansion through private bonds, Knight said.

The school opened in 2003. It is a free public school with its own school board. It is accredited and regulated under a contract with the Nevada Department of Education.

The school won't have to bus students as often with the new building, Knight said. It will have athletic fields at the school and be next to aerospace companies at the airport that help teach students.

Knight said he would like the junior high school to be sixth through eighth grades, but it might be seventh-eighth.

Silver State High School bought the land from Weikel Carson Airpark. Palmer Engineering Group prepared the school's request to the city to build the new school.

Mike Stephenson of Palmer Engineering said the new school will allow an expansion of education offered nowhere else in the city.

Silver State wants to make sure the new school allows teachers, students and parents to keep a close relationship that's important to the school, said Eugene Paslov, school board vice president.

He said that's what has attracted people to the school since it opened with 40 students.

"We still need that intimacy," he said.