LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — If you live in Spring Valley and live or work near Buffalo and Flamingo, you may be used to seeing homeless encampments that have set up in various places in Spring Valley Community Park.

However, the problem for Spring Valley High School Principal Tara Powell is that it’s right next to — sometimes into — her school, and trash and property damage is left behind.

“Kids deserve better,” Powell said. “They deserve a safe learning environment, and right now that’s a concern.”

Powell walked us around the baseball field on the south side of campus, at the edge of the park, where he says they’ve seen the most problems.

“And here,” Powell said as he pointed to a shed on the baseball complex. “In a rip through it and I tried to get in here and take cover. Again, (the project was) fundraised by our baseball parents and it was just destroyed.”

Powell said a staff member even found someone living in a press shack built by donors to the baseball program.

“It was full of human excrement, alcohol, there was a straw of meth,” Powell said. “It was just disgusting and it was completely covered in urine.”

The cabin had to be torn down because of it: “hard earned money, they built it with their own hands, and now it’s gone,” Powell said.

According to Powell, this has always been a problem — he’s been working continuously at Spring Valley since 2012, becoming the principal in 2021 — but it got exponentially worse this summer.

“That’s why we try to always be here, pick up our kids and be here on campus,” Spring Valley parent Diana Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said her child had no safety issues at Spring Valley and was not aware of the camps in the park until I told her about them. Still, she says hearing about them was troubling.

“Hopefully something will be done,” Gonzalez said.

Powell said the school district and CCSD police have responded when there’s a problem on campus property — particularly praising the officers stationed at the school — but aren’t able to do much in the park itself.

“We have multiple monitors on campus and we’re very visible, but it’s only that one time someone infiltrates the campus that you’re concerned about,” Powell said.

Powell said he has spoken with Clark County park staff in the past but has not heard back from county commissioners he emailed recently, including commission chairman Tick Segerblom.

I contacted Segerblom by text Friday afternoon, and he replied that he had just seen Powell’s email and that “we’ll fix it!”

Meanwhile, Powell said he wants to get to the root cause of the problem and be part of the solution.

“I tell the kids all the time, ‘don’t go to the park,’ I sent them Parent Link communications,” Powell said. “How do we approach this in a respectful manner that keeps us all safe? Because we have to balance that.”