Memo: School District plans to cut 90 administrative positions

By Emily Richmond

Friday, March 26, 2010 | 11:10 a.m.

To help make up a massive budget shortfall, the Clark County School District plans to eliminate 90 school-site administrative positions – 50 elementary assistant principals, 22 secondary school principals and 18 secondary school deans.

The plan is outlined in a memo sent this morning to school-site administrators and obtained by the Sun.

Eliminating the 90 school-site positions and about 20 central office administrators would save the district an estimated $11 million.

According to the memo, individuals whose positions are eliminated will be moved to either alternative administrative assignments or back to teaching positions based on seniority, as required by the district’s contract agreement with the school administrators’ union.

The district typically prefers its employees to have at least five years of classroom experience before advancing to the administrative ladder.

That means some classroom teachers with less seniority are at risk of being bumped from their own jobs to make room for an administrator returning to a licensed personnel assignment. In turn, the teacher bumped by a returning administrator could in turn bump another teacher with even less classroom experience.

Increasing the district’s allowed student-administrator ratios at each school site will eliminate the positions. That means the administrators who remain face heavier workloads.

The memo explains that the proposed plan could change through School Board action or ongoing negotiations with the Clark County Association of School Administrators.

Individual administrators whose positions are targeted for elimination will be notified next week, according to the memo. They will finish out the academic year in their current position, returning to licensed personnel status for the 2010-11 academic year that begins in August.

The district expects to eliminate about 540 teaching positions by increasing class sizes in grades 1-3. Some of those individuals were expected to find other classroom jobs as employees quit or retire. However, the contract requirement for reassigning displaced administrators might complicate that picture.

As in past years, teachers will have the month of April to voluntarily transfer to open positions at another school. Any teachers without a position by May will be put in a surplus pool, and the district’s central office will do its best to find them a spot.

If there were employees still in the surplus pool by the middle of May, the district would shift into “reduction in force” mode, chief human resources officer Martha Tittle said this morning. That could result in teachers with less seniority being bumped from their positions by more senior personnel.

During the recent special session of the Legislature, lawmakers voted to cut education funding by 6.9 percent.

The Clark County School District’s share of the cuts comes to $123 million trimmed from the general fund, and $25 million that would have gone to capital expenses such as campus renovations and repairs.

The district currently is under budget by about $40 million in the 2010 fiscal year, and Rulffes plans to apply that savings toward the $123 million target.

The Legislature also approved letting districts put off replacing textbooks and instructional supplies for a year, a savings of $10 million, leaving Rulffes with $73 million more to cut. Increasing class sizes in grades 1-3 would save an estimated $30 million.