Clark County School District trustees discuss the hiring of a new superintendent during a school board meeting at the CCSD Greer Education Center on East Flamingo Road Wednesday, March 6, 2024.
Thursday, March 28, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County School District is asking Nevada lawmakers next month for its full $173.8 million allotment under a special state fund for educator salaries.
If the state Interim Finance Committee approves CCSD’s request when it meets April 11, the district will be among the last in Nevada to get its share of the $250 million set aside under Senate Bill 231, passed and signed into law in 2023.
According to CCSD’s application, submitted March 11 to the finance committee, the proposed amounts and effective dates vary depending on the various employee groups.
Teachers
All teachers in CCSD would get salary bumps of 1.875% to restore last year’s state-levied increase to employee contributions to the state retirement system.
A memo sent to teachers in February by the district’s human resources office said the supplemental SB 231 pay should hit in May, pending approval in April. These raises would be retroactive to February or March, depending on an individual’s payroll batch group.
Additionally, special education teachers in CCSD would get $5,000 increases to base pay, as would teachers at high-poverty schools that have a 5% or more vacancy rate.
The $5,000 differentiated pay would start in August or September, depending on payroll batch, the district said.
Teachers account for $114.7 million of CCSD’s total request.
Support staff
All support professionals would get 3% salary increases.
The across-the-board 3% would begin in June and be retroactive to January.
“Hard-to-fill critical positions” — a category that includes aides in special education programs and workers in the skilled trades — would also receive $4,250 salary increases.
The differentiated pay for hard-to-fill workers would go into effect in July.
Support employees’ piece of the pie totals $58.1 million.
Police
All front-line CCSD police officers would get 4.1% salary increases. Under the law, police officers are considered support staffers.
Police raises would begin in July.
Taken separately from other support staff, officers’ SB 231 raises total $1.04 million.
“We are committed to ensuring district employees are equitably and competitively compensated,” interim Superintendent Brenda Larsen-Mitchell said in a cover letter accompanying the district’s submission. “We thank the Legislature for allocating these funds to facilitate increased take-home pay for our hard-working employees.”
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 and left it up to the district and its unions to divide it among eligible employee groups.
While CCSD submitted all eligible employee groups at once for the April meeting, it had initially submitted the support professionals’ package only for the December meeting. But 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. Support staffers said at the time that they were crestfallen at the “heartwrenching betrayal.”
All CCSD unions have since settled their contracts. And with the extra time, the support staff union revised its request, moving away from across-the-board 4% raises without differential pay to the current proposal.
SB 231 raises are in addition to salary adjustments included in contract renewals. They last through June 2025 unless lawmakers renew the funding source, a note that CCSD is making in contracts about all proposed SB 231 raises.
The Interim Finance Committee — a body of state lawmakers that makes various funding decisions between Nevada’s regular biennial legislative sessions — generally meets every other month. CCSD did not have another application complete in time for the February meeting, when the committee last considered districts’ requests, but the law allows districts several opportunities to request funds.
CCSD’s package included brief fiscal analyses breaking out how much would be distributed this year and next school year for support, teaching and police employees, plus the complete new contracts for unions representing all three groups.
Between October and February, the committee green-lit disbursements for 13 of Nevada’s 17 school districts; only CCSD and the rural Esmeralda, Mineral and Pershing county schools have yet to receive disbursements.
CCSD spokesman Tod Story said that all representatives of eligible employees were amenable to building a unified package for the April meeting.
“All parties — the district and the bargaining units — agreed, based on the timelines of the negotiations and finalized contracts, that the April meeting was the appropriate time for submission for SB 231 dollars,” he said.
Still, it’s been a long wait, especially for teachers who didn’t have a new contract until December.
High school teacher Laurents Bañuelos-Benitez said he wasn’t surprised by how long it has taken to get the SB 231 raises.
“The district always seems to be dragging their feet when it comes to getting teachers the money they are owed,” he said. “The recent contract negotiations are evidence of that.”
In advance of the finance committee meeting, the school board is scheduled to vote today on amending the support employee and teacher contracts to allow for the distribution of SB 231 funds. (The board gave its OK for SB 231 funds for police earlier this month.) The board meets at 5 p.m. at its headquarters, 2832 E. Flamingo Road in Las Vegas.
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