Ray Brewer
Exterior of the Clark County School District main office in Las Vegas, Nevada Thursday, August 31, 2023.
Friday, Sept. 15, 2023 | 2 a.m.
CCSD-CCEA contract roadblock
The contract the Clark County School District has proposed for teachers is more than $40 million more generous than the one the district says the Clark County Education Association is advocating for, according to a Sun analysis of both packages.
The difference largely comes down to how money from Senate Bill 231 is used, with the teachers union wanting it to be baked into ongoing salaries and assuming no sunset.
District officials have consistently said the bill authorizing the money to match raises for teachers and support professionals limits the funding to the next two years, pointing to language that sunsets the funding stream in June 2025.
However, they have said they will give teachers the raises that SB 231 envisions, with the sunset date noted, and have offered to set aside two-thirds of CCSD’s $173.8 million share of the $250 million statewide pot for teachers.
A side-by-side comparison of the negotiation details released by the district showed that as of Aug. 31, CCSD’s proposal totaled $634 million over the two-year life of the contract, not including SB 231 money.
CCEA’s ask totaled $708 million, including SB 231 money, to make it appear like CCSD is proposing less than the union’s ask.
However, according to a memo from financial analysts for the state Legislative Counsel Bureau to the superintendents and chief financial officers of all 17 school districts, which the Sun received through a public records request, CCSD is due to receive $173.8 million in SB 231 funds.
Two-thirds of that total amount is $114.7 million, assuming the state approves CCSD applications that would allot every dollar. (Lawmakers on the Interim Finance Committee, who review district proposals for SB 231 monies, have not yet parceled out funds to any district. It next meets in October.)
Added to CCSD’s $634 million subtotal, that gives CCSD $748.7 million for teacher compensation — $40.7 million more than CCEA is seeking, at least over the next two years.
What contract teachers get, however, is far from decided.
CCSD declared an impasse in negotiations Tuesday after 11 bargaining sessions with CCEA failed to produce a compromise. The contract matter will now go to arbitration.
As of Tuesday, CCSD officials said they had brought their Aug. 31 offer up to 11% raises across the board over the next two years, bumped up their proposed pay differentials for certain special education and “hard-to-fill” positions, and maintained that they planned to place teachers hired after August 2016 on a new pay scale — a cutoff date that they said CCEA wanted — that had potential for significant raises, based on teachers’ college degrees and years of experience.
The district said CCEA had not budged from its demands, which notably include across-the-board raises of 18% over two years. The union represents all 18,000 teachers in the school district.
“CCEA never moved from its original unaffordable, budget-busting, and inequitable demands to benefit its most senior members while leaving those educators placed on the salary schedule inequitably to continue working for wages that do not honor them for their experience and education,” the district said in a statement announcing the impasse.
CCEA has not publicly released a comparable side-by-side comparison.
However, slides shown at the union’s last large membership meeting, held Aug. 26 on the UNLV campus, declared that “CCSD’s proposal is fool’s gold” and “big on promises and light on details.”
The meeting was closed to the public and media, but an attendee shared images of the slideshow with the Sun. Union leadership has not responded to repeated requests for comment on behalf of their members.
Negotiations have gotten so bitter between the sides that it has moved to the legal system.
Clark County District Court Judge Crystal Eller issued an injunction Wednesday against the union to cease sickouts that resulted in single-day closures of eight schools over the course of a week.
Eller said the coordinated calling out of teachers at a single school, such as a 70% callout rate Wednesday at Newton Elementary in Henderson, is considered a strike. Strikes are illegal in Nevada for local government employees.
CCEA has since appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court.
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