First new prototype elementary school opens doors to Las Vegas students

LAS VEGAS (KLAS)– An elementary school on the east side of the Las Vegas valley has recently replaced the old layout of the school with a completely new and updated design.

Mountain View Elementary was originally built in 1954 and served students near Nellis and Lake Mead Boulevard for decades. But now a much-needed upgrade has been implemented.

“They took things from our imagination and turned them into fruition,” Mountain View Elementary principal Cecilia Harge French said. “Every aspect of the building is a learning opportunity.”

Mountain View Elementary is a two-story building centered around a courtyard. The school mixes formal and informal teaching spaces to meet modern learning styles.

Collaborative spaces such as a learning staircase, wall designs, and the geometric features of the lighting, are all thoughtfully crafted to enhance students’ comprehension of shapes, angles, and measurements in real-world contexts.

Safety was also top of mind in the building with controlled entrances and exits.

“It’s exciting to work on schools of the future like this because you don’t really know what tomorrow’s learners are going to need so you try to have good a crystal ball of what next evolution going to be,” Brandon McLaughlin said. “The buildings fit like a mitten not like a glove so they are able to be adaptable over time so it is not so prescribed that I have to move a wall it’s just I have to use a classroom slightly differently.”

A ribbon cutting was held on Wednesday, Sept. 4, to celebrate the opening of the rebuilt school which cost about $27 million.

The next construction projects for the district will be replacements for Red Rock Elementary Brinley, Woodbury, and Garside Middle schools. All of which will be rebuilt in 2025.

Those schools will use similar designs to that used at Mountain View Elementary. CCSD plans to replace more than 30 aging schools throughout the district over the next decade.

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