‘Most awesome place’: Students embrace new Las Vegas elementary school

Thomas Elementary School marks the last of 14 Clark County schools created with the same identical structure.

The $42 million project is part of the district’s Capital Improvement Plan, which identifies schools that need replacement. A ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday morning celebrated the new school at 1560 Cherokee Lane.

The new building’s 86,000 square feet can hold 850 students and has 53 teaching stations. The former building had 41 teaching stations, Brandon McLaughlin, who heads construction and development, said during the ceremony.

“If you’re gonna spend a lot of money, this is the place to do it,” principal Michael Stosek said, commenting on the high needs of the school’s community in the Paradise area of Las Vegas.

“There’s only so much you can do with a building designed for a different era,” he said. The old building was built in 1966.

Trustee Brenda Samora praised what she saw as a shift taken in recent years to build more interesting, brighter schools.

“I think that changes how students take in their class time,” she said.

Stosek said the school, whose full name is Ruby S. Thomas Elementary School, received a certificate of occupancy just 12 hours prior to the first day of school. Over the year leading up to the new building, the school moved three times. Stosek called the temporary trailer park campus, which would heat up to 125 degrees on the pavement, “insane.”

“It was hideous,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “The kids rode buses for the first time and that was a mess.”

Stosek’s favorite part of the new building is the outdoor space, a welcome change from the old location’s sinkholes and broken sprinkler system.

Parent Elizabeth Javier said the change had been hard on two of her children who have autism. But now, she said, her youngest enjoys the new building.

Julian Patton, whose son is a third grader at the school, called the school “the most awesome place in the world.”

“All the teachers, for all of that confusion, made it so smooth,” Patton said. “So to come into this place after dealing with all of that, knowing the kids deserve it, there’s no words. It’s like a movie every day we come to school.”

Contact Katie Futterman at kfutterman@reviewjournal.com.