Clark County School District officials gathered Friday morning at 3900 W. Washington Ave. to break ground on a $65.4 million replacement for Robert O. Gibson Leadership Academy, a campus that has served Las Vegas middle schoolers since 1965 and is now packed to roughly 96% of its physical capacity. CCSD Board Trustee Tameka Henry, Superintendent Jhone Ebert, and Deputy Superintendents Felicia Gonzales and Dr. Jesse Welsh all joined the celebration, according to CCSD.
The project, awarded to Martin-Harris Construction, will rise from designs by Simpson Coulter Studio into a three-story, 170,600-square-foot building with 54 classrooms spread across nearly 19.7 acres, complete with soccer and baseball fields and sports courts, according to NVBEX. Once the new building opens, the district plans to fully demolish the existing facility. The CCSD account described the incoming campus simply as a new, future-ready school for the roughly 1,111 students currently enrolled in grades 6 through 8.
Gibson's original campus opened in 1965 and later added its leadership magnet program in 2008, with much of its core infrastructure dating back decades before the district scheduled the site for full replacement due to facility dilapidation, per NVBEX and Wikipedia. That aging footprint now houses a program that has drawn national attention: in November 2021 the Nevada Department of Education named Gibson one of the state's initial Purple Star Schools for its support of military-connected students and families, and this past February, CCSD announced the academy had received national recognition from Magnet Schools of America for its theme-based leadership curriculum and student growth.
A Trustee With Deep Community Roots
Henry represents CCSD District C, which covers the Historic Westside and North Las Vegas, after winning election in November 2024 following years working as a Head Start advocate and community organizer, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Signage visible at the groundbreaking site credited America First Credit Union as a supporter of Gibson's students, alongside branding tying the campus to the Vegas Golden Knights and NV Energy.
Admission to the Gibson Leadership Academy and other CCSD magnet programs runs through an application window that closes each January, with a computerized lottery triggered whenever applications outstrip available seats, according to Pathways to STEM Nevada. That competitive process underscores just how much demand exists for a program that, even in its current cramped and aging building, has managed to earn state and national recognition.
Part of a Broader Construction Wave
Friday's Gibson groundbreaking came just a day after CCSD broke ground on an $80 million rural school replacement in Indian Springs, part of a broader wave of capital overhauls funded through the district's voter-backed 2015 Capital Improvement Program, as Hoodline reported on the Indian Springs project. That project featured the same executive leadership team — Ebert, Welsh, and Gonzales — underscoring how tightly the district's capital planning office is coordinating this stretch of campus rebuilds.
CCSD is the fifth-largest school district in the United States, managing more than 370 campuses and serving more than 300,000 students across Southern Nevada. Fitting two major groundbreakings into consecutive days illustrates the scale of logistics required to keep that many aging buildings modernized while classes remain in session nearby.
