Sunday, April 23, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Classroom aides and other support staffers at some elementary schools are in line for $7,500 bonuses.
The recruitment and retention incentives, which the Clark County School District School Board will consider Thursday, are for education support professionals — a category that includes classroom aides and nonteaching staff like front-office workers — who work next year at one of the 23 schools that CCSD calls “Transformation Network” schools.
District staff and the Education Support Employees Association have agreed to the terms, which are pending the School Board’s approval. According to meeting documents, CCSD is setting aside $2.6 million for the bonuses.
These bonuses would only apply to the 2023-24 school year and be prorated for staffers who join a school after the midyear mark. The payments are only for staffers who are assigned solely to a specific Transformation Network site, so roving employees who work districtwide, like bus drivers and maintenance technicians, would not be eligible.
The Transformation Network is a cluster of 23 schools where students have generally performed at the bottom of CCSD’s 231 grade schools on state reading exams.
The School Board has already approved $1 million for recruitment, retention and performance bonuses of up to $20,000 combined for principals and assistant principals at the same schools. Administrators will get flat recruitment or retention bonuses of $10,000. They could earn $5,000 to $10,000 more if they improve their school’s star rating or “index” score — which is how the state Department of Education rates overall school quality — by certain amounts.
Teachers have been resistant to similar bonuses. Earlier this year, the Clark County Education Association sent out a memo to its membership firmly pledging to seek improvements to base pay, not one-off bonuses that do not contribute to long-term salary stability or count toward pensions. The teachers union also blasted bonuses as undermining collective bargaining.
The proposed support staff bonuses are for recruitment and retention but not performance, meaning that the employees and their students do not have to make particular achievements for the payments.
New CCSD contact feature
CCSD has launched a new customer service platform on its website called Let’s Talk.
Let’s Talk allows visitors to the district website to submit written questions, comments or concerns to more than 20 departments through the CCSD’s Contact Us page.
The district said it plans to launch a “Let’s Talk Assistant” chatbot in the future.
Summer school classes and teacher mobility
As bills continue to move out of the Nevada Assembly and Senate and closer to becoming law, here are a couple of schools-related proposals that remain in play:
Senate Bill 340: This bill, which cleared the Senate Wednesday on a 13-8 vote and has since been referred to the Assembly Committee on Education, requires that all public schools offer summer school. It doesn’t make attendance a requirement for students or staff, just that districts present the option for those who want it. This wouldn’t be a change for CCSD, which already offers free summer school for credit and enrichment for all ages and is enrolling now.
Senate Bill 442: This bill, which unanimously cleared the Senate on Wednesday and is now with the Assembly Committee on Education, is a recruiting mechanism that allows teachers licensed in other states to accept a job in Nevada without additional coursework, exams or application materials. The bill would enact the Interstate Teacher Mobility Contract in Nevada, a national compact that is already enacted in Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky and Utah. Legislation to activate the compact is pending in 14 more states, including California, Florida and Ohio, in addition to Nevada.
Career exploration activity books
CCSD and Workforce Connections, the local workforce development board, have partnered to create children’s activity books to promote in-demand career possibilities.
The “NV My Future” and “Workforce Blueprint for Kids” booklets, which will be used in elementary schools, feature activities like word puzzles and coloring pages that highlight Southern Nevada’s target industries: health care services, manufacturing, information and communication technologies, transportation and logistics technologies, clean technologies, business and financial services, creative industries, and construction and energy.
The activity books can be downloaded for free at nvmyfuture.org.
