Ray Brewer
Exterior of the Clark County School District main office in Las Vegas, Nevada Thursday, August 31, 2023.
Friday, Sept. 1, 2023 | 5:06 p.m.
The unions for administrators and support professionals of Clark County School District issued a rebuke against the Clark County Education Association today for what they see as swipes against them as the teacher union continues its fight with the district over a new contract.
In a joint statement, the two unions said they “want divisive rhetoric to end.”
The Clark County Association of School Administrators and Professional-Technical Employees and the Education Support Employees Association said they “are disappointed with recent comments from leadership of the Clark County Education Association (CCEA) who continue to make false, misleading, and disparaging public statements meant to divide educators, support professionals, and administrators instead of working towards our common goal of educating students.”
The two unions officially settled their contracts with CCSD in early August, before the school year started. CCEA remains locked in battle.
“CCASAPE and ESEA want to officially state that we stand with our fellow educators and hope that a contract settlement will occur soon that validates their hard work, dedication, and professionalism to our nearly 300,000 Clark County School District (CCSD) students,” their statement continued. “In the meantime, CCASAPE and ESEA respectfully request that the CCEA rhetoric, intended to denigrate colleagues from other CCSD bargaining groups, immediately come to an end.”
CCASAPE Executive Director Jeff Horn said in an interview that he was moved to make the statement following several public comments from CCEA leadership “continuing to criticize the fact that we actually represented our members and got a fair deal with the district.”
“Negotiations are always a give and take, and we believe that we received a fair contract based on the money that’s available for negotiations, and we believe that ESEA did the same,” he said, noting that CCSD’s highest-paid, central administrators — those above principal and director levels — are not represented by his union.
CCASAPE’s new two-year contract includes a 12% pay raise — 10% in the first year and 2% in the second — and a 13% health benefit contribution increase — 8% in the first year and 5% in the second. Administrators will also get column advancements on the district pay scale worth about 5% each year if they complete a certain amount of professional development. They may also see various internal compensation adjustments, such as adjustments to special stipends.
ESEA’s new two-year contract includes setting a $15 per hour pay base for all support positions; an 8.65% pay raise plus a one-step advancement on the salary schedule in the first year of the contract; and a 2% raise plus another one-step advancement on the salary schedule in the second year. Workers also got 20% increases from the district’s contribution to their health benefits — 15% in the first year and 5% in the second – and various internal compensation adjustments.
The first-year pay raises for both groups are inclusive of a 1.875% increase already provided effective July 1 to offset a recent change to the employee contribution rate for the state public employees retirement system.
ESEA President Jan Giles said she was offended by a statement that CCEA Executive Director John Vellardita made this week to the Nevada Independent about ESEA “selling out” its members by agreeing to negotiate a separate agreement with CCSD on raises above and beyond their new base wages with money specifically allocated this Legislative session. Support union representatives agreed to acknowledge the June 2025 sunset date written in the contentious $250 million statewide matching-funds bill, Senate Bill 231.
As the Sun has reported, other districts that have recently settled base contracts have similarly included placeholders that say as-yet undetermined SB 231 raises, beyond any base raises, will be negotiated separately, with the sunset noted.
“What they're doing elsewhere doesn't deter our efforts,” the Independent quoted Vellardita as saying. “We don't care that the support staff here is prepared to sell their members out and have them give up a raise two years from now.”
In an interview, Giles said ESEA does not intend to do that.
“They are demeaning our contract negotiations, which we feel turned out great for support professionals. It was the highest increase financially for support professionals in the history of ESEA,” she said. “They're totally discarding all the hard work that we did and they’re pitting us against them, which is not what we should be doing right now.”
CCEA has taken a hard line that it wants 18% across-the-board teacher raises over two years — 10% in year one, and 8% in year two — along with pay differentials for special education and “hard-to-fill” positions, among other demands, and that the SB231 funds need to be rolled into the compensation package.
CCSD has been hesitant to commit to presumably permanent raises with funds that officials insist are not guaranteed past 2025, although they have said the district is willing to distribute SB231-funded raises under a separate agreement with the sunset date noted.
CCASAPE and ESEA combined represent more than 14,500 employees.
