Boles brings experience to new post

      A wave of electricity was scheduled to surge through a new elementary school in Henderson, when nearly 400 Lamping Lightning Bolts charged through their new campus on opening day Monday.
      Frank Lamping Elementary was among nine new schools -- six elementary and three middle schools -- set to open in the Clark County District this fall. The school is located at 2551 Summit Grove Drive.
      Jerry Boles, 45, who has been with the district for 15 1/2 years, will lead Lamping as the new principal. Boles previously worked at Galloway, Woolley, Clyde Cox and French elementaries.
      "(The lightning bolt) will lend itself to education," he said about the new mascot, which was chosen by the pupils, along with the school's blue and gold colors.
      "It allows us to incorporate the idea of power and a charge of electricity," Boles said. "The kids are the founding members of the school. They are going to be the ones who develop the reputation of the school."
      Boles, who was born in Norfolk, Va., received his bachelor's degree from Evangel College in Missouri and his master's from Illinois State.
      "I thought I would enjoy working with kids. It was the '70s and a lot of us were looking at what we could contribute to society. That was the ideal," he said.
      He spent three years teaching in Illinois before moving to Las Vegas. After teaching one year in a sixth-grade center and seven years at Galloway Elementary School, he decided to become an administrator, and accepted a position at Woolley and Clyde Cox elementary schools as the assistant principal for both schools. He soon made another leap 1 1/2 years later, when he was offered a position as principal of French Elementary School, where he spent the last six years.
      Boles resides in Henderson with his wife, Karin, and their two children, Jeremy, 14, and Melissa, 11.
      "I left a very good school that had the kind of things as a principal you really want," Boles said about his former staff and pupils at French Elementary and the high level of parent participation. "My goal is not to recreate Doris French. I want to create something from scratch, not borrow someone else's legacy."
      Boles said Lamping will emphasize science and technology in its curriculum, since children are presently living in an advanced society, and the wave of the future will most likely follow the same path. Pupils now can take electronic field trips via computers and discuss special projects with other children in the world using e-mail -- a pen pal process that could take weeks when letters are mailed.