Transformed Macy’s in Las Vegas is ‘like Hogwarts’ for charter school students

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

Longtime Las Vegas locals knew it as Macy’s. About 200 children now know it as school.

Western Youth Leadership, Engagement, and Empowerment Middle School, or WYLEES, is one of the valley’s newest schools.

It’s unique not just as a charter school that only teaches grades 6-8, but because it occupies the third floor of what used to be the Macy’s department store at the Boulevard mall at Maryland Parkway and Twain Avenue.

To get to class, students enter through ground-floor side doors, then bounce up the stairs or ride an elevator to a secured, 46,000-square-foot school.

Coming here isn’t like going to a shopping mall, but “like Hogwarts,” said Mike Taack, WYLEES’s founder and head of school.

WYLEES opened this month and already f