At Mabel Hoggard Elementary School in Las Vegas, students don’t just read about goats, potbelly pigs and reptiles in textbooks — they feed them, clean their habitats and watch them live out their daily routines just steps from the classroom. The school hosts the only zoo in the Clark County School District, an urban farm and animal laboratory that’s home to more than 150 animals across dozens of species.
The program is called A Squared, an extracurricular offering focused on animal and agriculture education, according to FOX5 Vegas. Students in the program get hands-on experience caring for, feeding and learning about the animals rather than simply studying them from afar. Fourth grader Arthur Phelps put it simply: he can observe the animals’ movements, eating, sleeping and living behaviors up close — and said that beats reading about animals in an article.
A Zookeeper With Nearly Two Decades of Experience
Overseeing it all is Michael Dancel, Mabel Hoggard’s farm and nursery manager, known around campus as the zookeeper. Dancel brings 18 years of experience working with exotic animals in Las Vegas to the role, per the station’s report. He’s told students that the quality of their work directly affects the animals’ quality of life, a lesson that ties classroom responsibility to real consequences for living creatures.
The Clark County School District publicly commended Dancel during National Zoo Keeper Week in July, recognizing his work managing daily operations and animal welfare across the campus zoo, according to a Clark County School District post. Dancel oversees habitat upkeep and student safety during farm activities, a responsibility that spans dozens of species living on an elementary school campus.
A Rare Resource in a City Without a Zoo
The animal program carries extra weight because Las Vegas hasn’t had a traditional accredited public zoo in over a decade. The Southern Nevada Zoological-Botanical Park permanently closed in September 2013 following federal inspections and animal welfare citations, according to the Las Vegas Sun, ending a run that began when the three-acre private zoo opened in North Las Vegas in 1981. Commercial animal attractions in the region have thinned out too — the Sun also reported that Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at The Mirage closed permanently in November 2022 after 30 years, ahead of the property’s redevelopment…