Sun File Photo
The exterior of the Clark County School District’s headquarters in Las Vegas.
Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Both teachers and support professionals in the Clark County School District will have to wait for at least two more months for their anticipated raises from a matching fund the state created last year to boost educator pay.
The Interim Finance Committee — a body of state lawmakers that makes various funding decisions between Nevada’s regular biennial legislative sessions — most recently met Feb. 8 to decide on its third round of allocations from a $250 million pot of money set aside by last year’s Senate Bill 231 to benefit educators statewide.
The committee granted requests totaling more than $50 million across seven school districts, but CCSD was not among them. The committee’s next meeting is April 11.
CCSD employees, especially support workers, have already been patient.
The finance committee put off CCSD’s request to secure 4% raises for support staff at its December meeting. Despite the package following previously issued state guidance, the committee deemed the application “incomplete” because it didn’t also include CCSD’s request for teacher raises. At the time, CCSD and the district’s teachers union were at loggerheads over a new contract for teachers.
Jason Gately, the principal officer for Teamsters Local 14, which assists the Education Support Employees Association with representing support workers, said union representatives took the delay as an opportunity to revise its proposal with the district.
He didn’t divulge details of the revised proposal, but said “our continued dialogue with the district will be advantageous to all of our members.” Talks are ongoing.
“We operate under the best interest of the members, and I want to get them their money as fast as possible,” Gately said. “They deserve it. They’ve earned it.”
Meanwhile, teachers’ share of the SB 231 money wasn’t considered this month because their new contract was not formalized until the deadline had passed to get on the agenda for the February meeting, a district spokesman said. A memo sent to teachers earlier this month by the human resources office said the supplemental SB 231 pay should hit in May, pending approval in April. Teacher pay raises will be retroactive to February or March, depending on an individual’s payroll batch group. Because the support employees are in new talks with CCSD, details regarding retroactive pay are not known.
CCSD spokesman Tod Story said the district anticipates submitting an application package that would cover teachers, support staff and school police officers at that time.
At the committee’s Dec. 13 meeting, Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno, D-North Las Vegas, who chairs the committee, “deferred” CCSD’s $58.1 million request for support staff raises, after several workers offered testimony on what the raises would mean to them but before district officials could present their case or answer lawmaker questions. She said applications for SB 231 funds were “supposed to have” a plan for budgeted increases for both teacher and support professional pay.
CCSD said at the time that the delay was “unconscionable.” ESEA and Teamsters Local 14 said in a joint statement that it was a “heartwrenching betrayal.”
State guidance on preparing applications does not mandate that teacher and support staff requests be bundled together, and communications between the state and district reviewed by the Sun show that CCSD included all the required elements in its submission for the December meeting.
The district announced Dec. 20 that an arbitrator had accepted a teachers contract after a bitter fight over several months. But while the agreement was conceptually settled enough to be announced, it was not legally executed in time to make this month’s finance committee meeting. (The agenda deadline was Jan. 8; the School Board received the contract for ratification Jan. 25.)
SB 231, passed in June 2023, dedicated $250 million statewide for two years’ worth of raises for public school teachers and support workers like classroom aides, clerical staff and bus drivers across Nevada. The state proportionally allocated $173.8 million to CCSD. It is up to the district and its unions to divide it among eligible employee groups.
SB 231 raises are in addition to salary adjustments included in contract renewals.
For teachers, the money is set to go into three streams: restoring the 1.875% state-levied increase to employee contributions to the state retirement system; and giving $5,000 increases to base pay, starting next school year, for special education teachers and for teachers at high-poverty schools that have a 5% or more vacancy rate.
The Interim Finance Committee approved $56.4 million in SB 231 requests this month from school districts in Churchill, Elko, Lander, Lincoln, Lyon, Storey and Washoe counties. In December, the committee approved $15.3 million for Carson City, Douglas, Eureka, Nye and White Pine county school districts, and in October, it granted $2.7 million to the Humboldt County district.
