The Meadows School is a non-profit, coeducational, nonsectarian, independent college preparatory day school located in the

Summerlin Summerlin is a master-planned community in the Las Vegas Valley of Southern Nevada. It lies at the edge of the Spring Mountains and Red Rock Canyon to the west; it is partly within the official city limits of Las Vegas and partly within uni ...

area of

Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vega ...

. The campus serves just under 900 students in grades pre-k through 12 spread among four divisions – Beginning School (Pre-K), Lower School (Grades K-5), Middle School (Grades 6-8), and Upper School (Grades 9-12). For the 2019-20 school year, The Meadows has an estimated enrollment of 864 students and a teaching staff of 97 faculty, with an average student to faculty ratio of 11:1. Class sizes are limited to 18 students in the Beginning and Upper Schools and 20 students in the Lower and Middle Schools. The Upper School offers students 21 AP courses and in 2019 had 31 National AP Scholars or AP Scholars with Distinction. In 2016,

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

named The Meadows School the #2 most challenging high school in Nevada, and the #97 most challenging private high school in the country. Since its first Upper School Commencement in 1991, 100 percent of graduates from The Meadows School have been accepted into four-year colleges or universities.

History

Meadows Lane temporary campus

At the time that The Meadows School opened in 1984, a permanent campus site had not yet been found. In lieu of a permanent location, Goodman raised $300,000 and purchased 5,000 square feet of temporary modular buildings that were set up on a parking lot behind a car dealership. The lot was loaned to the School by Board Member Fletcher Jones, Jr. and was located, coincidentally, on Meadows Lane in northern Las Vegas. These buildings served as the School’s classrooms until the permanent campus was opened four years later.

Scholar Lane permanent campus

In 1985,

Carolyn Goodman Carolyn Goodman (née ''Goldmark'') is an American politician who has served as mayor of Las Vegas, Nevada, since 2011. She is the second female mayor of Las Vegas and is married to former mayor and attorney Oscar Goodman. She is the founder, pr ...

was introduced to William Lummis, the nephew of

Howard Hughes Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business magnate, record-setting pilot, engineer, film producer, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and richest people in t ...

and the Chairman of the Board for the

Summa Corporation Summa Corporation was a holding company for the business interests of Howard Hughes after he sold the tool division of Hughes Tool Company in 1972. Its holdings included casino hotels, aviation businesses, and television channels. After Hughes's d ...

(rebranded as the Howard Hughes Corporation in 1994). The

was in the early stages of developing the northwest area of Las Vegas, later known as

. Recognizing the correlation between strong communities and good schools, the Summa Corproation donated 40 acres of undeveloped land to the School for a permanent campus. Construction on the new campus began in the fall of 1987. The permanent campus was situated on Scholar Lane, a street name chosen by the students for their new school. While the construction of the

campus was underway, the

also provided additional funding to the School to add new modular buildings to the temporary campus to accommodate its growing student enrollment, which by 1987 had increased to 200 students in grades K-8. One year later, at the beginning of the 1988 school year, Lower School students moved into The LeOre Cobbley Lower School building on the new campus. Middle and Upper School students followed suit in December of that year and moved into classrooms created from the previous modular buildings on Meadows Lane, which had been relocated to the permanent campus.

Athletics

Interscholastic sports

The Meadows School is a member of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association (NIAA) Southern conference and participates in athletics at the Division III level (with the exception of its Tennis and Bowling Teams, which compete in Division I-A). It offers students a variety of interscholastic sports to choose from, including

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

, soccer,

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Sum ...

cheer Cheering involves the uttering or making of sounds and may be used to encourage, excite to action, indicate approval or welcome. The word cheer originally meant face, countenance, or expression, and came through Old French into Middle Engli ...

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cov ...

, and cross country in the fall season;

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

, wrestling, and

bowling Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), though ...

in the winter season; and

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

track & field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping eve ...

, and

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

in the spring season. The school has also offered

swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...

and dance in the past but has not fielded teams in recent years due to lack of interest. The Meadows School also offers many of the same interscholastic sports at the Middle School level as a member of the Red Rock Athletic Conference.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Meadows School, The Educational institutions established in 1984 High schools in Las Vegas Private high schools in Nevada Private elementary schools in Nevada Private middle schools in Nevada Buildings and structures in Summerlin, Nevada Schools in Las Vegas Preparatory schools in Nevada 1984 establishments in Nevada