Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Letter to the editor:

Teacher shortage shouldn’t be a shock

While reading Ian Whitaker’s story on the Clark County School District teacher shortage (“CCSD enters school year lacking hundreds of teachers,” Las Vegas Sun, Aug. 24), I have to laugh. Did no one in the district see this coming?

The district has frozen pay or tried to roll it back for years. It has refused to properly fund health insurance, resulting in exorbitant rate increases that are causing teachers and their families to skip medical care. Teachers are increasingly expected to provide their own supplies and curriculum materials, plus supplies and often food for their students. Some teachers spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars a year on books, programs and materials (the majority which is not eligible for a tax write-off). Plus, educators are subject to increasingly unrealistic standards of student performance.

Staci Vesneske says in the article that “a bridge takes a long time to build.” Yes, it does, but it takes even longer when on the other side of the river you are slowly destroying the footbridge for existing teachers. Teachers were told they would face a pay freeze for the upcoming year at the same time new teachers were being offered thousands in incentives to join CCSD. While many teachers are struggling under mounds of student loan debt, programs are being proposed to pay tuition to fast-track teachers into classrooms.

For CCSD and other districts to stop bleeding teachers faster than they can replace them, they need to begin honoring the employees who have proved effective and loyal. As a former teacher, it would not have taken the new professional development programs to have kept me in the classroom. It would have taken fair pay, reasonable benefits and, most of all, respect.