Clark County School District special education teacher Lynn Bozzano poses for a photo at Durango High School Friday, Jan. 12, 2024.
Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Theresa Hayter completed all but a dissertation for a doctorate in mathematics before coming to teach in the Clark County School District 16 years ago.
Under a recently accepted new contract with CCSD’s teachers union, she is due for a 10% raise next month and another 8% in the fall. That will bring her salary to about $78,000 next school year.
They’re historic gains compared to the raises CCSD teachers typically get out of a new contract. But they pale in comparison to what new hires with the same qualifications would make, according to the same agreement. A new hire with the exact qualifications as Hayter would make about 31% more, or $107,000.
That’s because in a few days, CCSD will have two pay scales: one for teachers hired after Jan. 31, 2024, and one for those hired prior.
As of Feb. 1, teachers who are new to CCSD — whether freshly minted college graduates or seasoned professionals from outside the district — will be walking on at wages that may be tens of thousands of dollars more per year than teachers who have been in CCSD for years, even if the established local teachers have comparable education and experience.
Lynn Bozzano has taught for 13 years, 12 of them in CCSD. She will earn about $72,000 as of this fall, which includes a $5,000 bump because she teaches special education.
If she was to start this fall, she’d earn about $99,000.
“I’m not complaining about the raise itself. It’s great. And even the $5,000 (for teaching special education) is wonderful, but a new teacher will get that as well,” she said. “So I still feel like my value, my commitment to CCSD, hasn’t been acknowledged.”
CCSD and the teachers union, the Clark County Education Association, announced in December that an arbitrator had accepted a compromise presented by the two sides.
All teachers will get 18% raises across the board between this academic year and next. The new entry-level salary will be $54,000 this year. Retroactive pay dating to July will land in March.
Special education teachers, plus teachers at low-income schools with the highest vacancies, will get another $5,000 starting next year.
CCSD was quick to point out, though, that the new contract did not have a “lookback” that would have reset currently employed teachers on a pay scale better reflecting years of experience and advanced education.
Such a lookback was touted by both CCSD and CCEA to address salary “compaction” — fueled by off-and-on pay freezes and shifting pay structures over the years — that made for only small pay gaps between newer and many senior teachers. It would have led to potentially significant raises for the majority of teachers.
About two weeks after announcing the contract was a sure thing, CCSD released the new pay scale.
“I was furious,” Hayter said. “As soon as I saw that number right there, I was like …”
She trailed off.
Going forward, CCSD will give credit on the pay scale for what teachers have when they are hired, but that wasn’t the case when they hired Molly Cronk.
Cronk started teaching in 2020, just after earning a master’s degree. With next school year’s raise, the first-grade teacher will be earning about $60,000.
If she was hired next year, she’d make about $80,000.
“It seems like the superintendent is telling us that it’s out of his control. But the union has not fixed it either,” said Cronk, who said she dropped her CCEA membership two years ago after the union didn’t help her appeal her salary placement. “So it’s kind of like both parties are just blaming each other, and now the teachers are just left wondering what to do to get the pay that they deserve.”
“If the superintendent is so eager to get this fixed, and that’s his biggest priority, then I feel like the union – who is in support of teachers – should also have this as one of their biggest priorities,” she added.
‘The deal that CCEA wanted’
Superintendent Jesus Jara said earlier this month that his negotiator said they would have a deal if CCSD would consider dropping the lookback it had been proposing for months.
The district had already completed nearly half the year without a new contract. Jara apologized to teachers and called the concession “unfortunate” but said he agreed to it to give teachers the raises they will get.
“The inequities in the salary schedule are going to grow,” he said. “There’s going to be teachers that are going to get placed on a salary schedule higher than the current teachers in the Clark County School District, which is unfortunate, but that is the deal that CCEA wanted.”
In 2016, all teachers became subject to a new pay scale that was based on an internal professional development system. The complex and unconventional “professional growth system,” which CCEA negotiated with then-Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky, places less emphasis on years of experience and college degrees previously earned.
Although new hires will be placed based on the new pay scale, existing teachers remain bound to the “professional growth system” for advancement.
CCSD had initially offered to review all of its teachers for a new scale. In July, it said 78% of teachers would receive an increase based on their experience and education. Later, it said it would review teachers hired after the start of the 2016-17 school year because that’s when the “professional growth system” started.
“This has resulted, for example, in teachers with 10 years of experience being on the lowest levels of the pay scale,” the district said in August. “We firmly believe that these inequities must be corrected in this contract for the good of the organization and our students and to address teacher retention. Historic opportunities require historic remedies. With this historic opportunity, we must right a wrong that has persisted too long.”
CCSD said that realigning teachers hired since 2016-17 would benefit about 9,000 people, roughly half the teacher corps.
The union frames the lookback issue differently.
In a Jan. 8 email blast, the union accused CCSD of wedge politics and said that in a 2022 union survey, there was no discussion about “some look back.” In the same message, it said it would add a lookback to 2025 contract negotiations.
And in a Dec. 22 email to its membership, CCEA said it proposed to have a ‘salary placement review’ next year and that those eligible would see an adjustment the year following. (Jara said committing to something outside of the 2023-25 contract timeframe wasn’t feasible.)
CCEA said CCSD was “elusive and disingenuous” about the proposed lookback. The union said its objective was “to ensure that there was funding available for our key demands where EVERYONE benefited and allowed us to be able to address the recruitment and retention issues our district is facing with the high vacancies. We accomplished that.”
The union’s executive director and spokesman have not responded to multiple requests for comment on behalf of their members regarding teacher feedback to the new pay scale, or why the union didn’t demand a lookback in the newest contract if it’s amenable to one in the near future.
CCEA Executive Director John Vellardita did respond to Molly Cronk, though. She shared the email thread with the Sun:
Cronk reached out to Vellardita asking him if the inequities would be fixed, because she is considering leaving CCSD over not being paid for her advanced education.
“You accepted your contract placement in 2020. You didn’t have to or you could have reached out and challenged it. You apparently did not dispute it. You also received a bump in pay when the salary schedule increased the starting pay to $50,000 in 2022. You left CCEA in 2022,” he responded. “Members determine our contract agenda for negotiations now in the future. Non-members do not.”
Feeling left behind
Physical education teacher August Reich, who is in his second year in CCSD and fifth year of teaching overall, would be hired on around $82,000 annually next year, given his experience and master’s degree. Because he is already a CCSD employee, he’ll make about $60,000. His wife, who is also a teacher, is in an identical position.
He said he got his master’s at 22 thinking it would be an investment to keep him at higher pay grades for his entire career. But like Cronk, because he had the degree when he got here, it didn’t move him up the pay scale. It would if he was a new-to-the-district teacher.
“I’m almost being punished for getting my master’s and doing all this just a few years earlier,” Reich said.
Reich said waiting for a beneficial change in the next contract negotiation is one option. The other is leaving, then returning after three years, when he would be considered a “new” employee.
Lynn Bozzano says it feels like the value of veteran teachers has diminished with every contract.
She was an accountant before becoming a teacher. She is now the special education department chair at Durango High School and is partway through a second master’s degree. She said she loves Durango and her students. She’s also considering her future employment options.
She said CCSD’s teacher shortage stemmed from how both upper administration and the union viewed experienced teachers. And she said she fears “animosity that doesn’t need to be there” toward better-paid new hires.
Bozzano said the move to the professional growth system, followed by a 2022 union and district agreement to bring up starting pay but only give currently employed teachers bonuses, then a new pay scale that leaves out CCSD’s currently employed teachers, were three strikes.
Patience for “next time,” she said, has not been rewarded. She said she’d rather be put on the scale “right” than get a 10% raise.
“It’s just frustrating that the union (is) saying, that’s the district’s fault, and the district’s saying it’s the union’s fault. Neither one of those things helps me,” Bozzano said.
She is missing an opportunity for about $28,000 more in income by being an existing, not new employee. For Reich, the gap is $22,000. For Cronk, $21,000.
For Theresa Hayter, who teaches geometry and pre-calculus at Green Valley High School in Henderson, the difference is about $29,000. Her husband Jason Spiker, who teaches science at Green Valley, faces a similar situation.
His master’s degree and 16 years of experience would be worth about $88,000 if he was hired next year. Instead, his raises will bring him to $70,000 – an $18,000 difference.
Spiker said he wasn’t saying he made too little, or too much. He’s saying the new system is unfair.
“Whoever’s responsible for that does not have the interest of current teachers in mind,” he said.
