Back at it: Teachers air discontent over possible pay freezes

By Ian Whitaker

Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015 | 7:15 p.m.

Teachers again packed a Clark County School Board meeting Thursday in protest of an ongoing dispute over pay freezes.

It’s the second time in two months that teachers, with union help, have made impassioned pleas to board members of the Clark County School District to help resolve the conflict.

Following the example of their first protest in mid-July, teachers gathered with signs in the rain outside the district’s Flaming Road office before filing into the meeting to voice their displeasure in a public comment period.

“We are asking CCSD and this board to do the right thing,” said Autumn Tampa, a district support staffer. “Give us the raises we have earned, that we deserve and that we have been promised over and over.”

The school district and the Clark County Education Association have been tied up in negotiations since the district announced in June that scheduled employee pay raises would be sacrificed to fill a $67 million budget hole.

John Vellardita, the union’s executive director, said earlier this week that negotiations were still ongoing but that they hope to reach a conclusion before school starts Aug 24.

District officials have said little other than that negotiations are ongoing, but teachers hope the protests will spur School Board members to step in and demand the district reverse course.

“Teachers keep leaving and they will continue to leave because your actions don’t match your words,” said CCEA President Vikki Courtney. “As the board of trustees, you must use your authority to fix it.”

The union, which is also currently trying to negotiate a new salary schedule, has had no trouble marshaling teachers to the cause.

The school district is in the middle of one of the worst teacher shortages in the country, trucking in hundreds of long-term substitutes to fill vacant classroom positions left by veteran educators who are either retiring or resigning to seek work elsewhere.

“Sadly, many employees don’t even last five years before they move to another city or another state,” said Tom Wellman, a retired teacher who spent 37 years in Clark County. “There is a competitive market for teachers. You want to address the shortage in this district, then address these problems.”

“We are constantly asked to do more with less … Classroom sizes continue to burst at the seams,” said Clark County teacher Karlana Kulseth. “This district knows what all this leads to: a huge influx of teachers leaving our district.”

With the threat of losing promised salary increases, morale is low, and some have expressed fear that teachers will leave the district for more lucrative jobs in the county’s charter and private schools.

All this against the backdrop of this year’s historic legislative session, where hundreds of millions of state dollars were earmarked for education programs.

On Wednesday, more than a thousand new teachers packed into the South Point for a district orientation event. Motivational speakers and district officials there talked passionately about the role of teachers in the lives of kids, but that message has rubbed many district employees the wrong way.

“We feel like we don’t matter,” said second-year teacher Andy Lott. “Unfreezing our salaries will start to mend the divide.”