In need of a miracle: Hiring teachers a daunting task for Clark County School District

Terry Webster

Friday, March 16, 2001 | 5:57 a.m.

The raw numbers suggest a miracle is needed.

By fall 1,600 teachers must be hired to fill the growing needs of the Clark County School District.

Projections show the district will fall short by 500, meaning 15,000 students could be without a teacher.

It falls to GeorgeAnn Rice to overcome the projection, to perform the miracle, given the national teacher shortage and the district's handicap of low starting pay and no perks.

Rice, assistant superintendent for human resources, leads the district's teacher-recruiting efforts.

Things are not looking good.

About 400 teachers have turned down offers. Another 80 have been hired.

Rice said candidate interviews from November through February were down by 156 compared to last year. In March 2000 the district had 270 interviews. This month only 138 are scheduled. That figure includes telephone interviews.

"We've had people sign contracts, but they received better deals in other districts and backed out," Rice said.

Better deals

The "better deals" are killing the district's efforts to get enough teachers, Rice said. Clark County is losing out to other areas that offer higher starting salaries and perks such as signing bonuses, moving expenses, cellular phones or laptop computers.

As a result, the district reduced the number of job fairs it will staff this year from 80 to 36.

"There are some markets we just can't compete in," Rice said.

Skip Wenda, teacher-licensing administrator for the state Education Department's southern office, said it's a teachers' market nationwide.

"School districts throughout the country are raiding each other's pantries," Wenda said. "Districts are shelling out thousands of dollars as teachers jump from one place to another, and we still aren't solving the teacher shortage."

In the meantime, Clark County is being left out of the game, and officials blame a lack of funding.

Although the district runs an extensive recruiting program, Clark County offers a starting salary of $26,847 -- lower than other large urban districts -- and has no incentives for new teachers.

Superintendent Carlos Garcia said the district could be short 500 teachers by opening day in the fall. Based on a modest projection of 30 students per class, Garcia's estimate means that 15,000 students would be without a teacher.

"It's scaring the hell out of me," he said.

As a backup, the district is putting together an emergency plan.

"We're really hoping it doesn't come to that point, but we have to have a plan in case it does," Garcia said. "We've got about four months to work on it. Other districts I've talked to have said they never thought it would happen to them and it did.

"We may have to look at emergency licensures. If that happens, we will probably ask the Legislature to convene an emergency session to approve it. What else are we going to do?"

But that recommendation isn't likely to come from Rice, who is working on the district's emergency plan.

"I'm not even putting that on my list," she said. "That's going down a slippery slope."

Her plans will focus on hiring retired teachers and using qualified student teachers.

District officials are meeting with the Legislature, pleading for more money.

"But there has to come a point when the talking stops," Garcia said. "We have to start doing something about it. And we can't wait."

Desperate for teachers, the district is beginning to eye its own staff, including administrators.

"We will have to consider personnel that are eligible to teach that aren't currently in teaching positions," Chief Financial Officer Walt Rulffes said. "I think we will have no choice but to look at that."

Garcia said that he himself "may be teaching some classes." He added that he was only half joking.

'Pathetic'

John Jasonek, Clark County Education Association executive director, calls the situation "pathetic." The association is the district's teachers' union.

"If administrators are scared, they should be," he said. "California is recruiting at UNLV, telling students they can make more money there. It's really pathetic. And the worst thing is, we don't get that many teachers out of that college to begin with."

Jasonek thinks the district really needs to hire around 2,000 teachers. In addition to the 1,600 new teachers, there are 156 unfilled teaching positions and 93 long-term substitute teachers.

"Plus, of the 1,600 they hire, about 200 will quit in the first two months," he said.

But mediocre salaries and no perks aren't the only reasons Clark County is feeling the strain of a teacher shortage.

The American Federation of Teachers in Washington says much of the shortage can traced to an aging teacher work force and a lack of interest in teaching careers among college graduates.

Keeping good teachers is another problem.

"Teacher retention is a huge problem, especially in urban districts," AFT spokeswoman Celia Lose said. "Many districts are getting into a cycle of replacing the same people they hired one or two years before."

A study by the local union found that the district is losing between 30 percent and 35 percent of its teachers within seven years of their hire date.

"That's high," Garcia said. "But national studies show that it's high everywhere. We're about average."

The loss of a teacher has many effects.

"With the younger students, there is an educational and an emotional issue," Jasonek said. "They are losing a teacher they have grown accustomed to working with.

"For older students, it's a continuity issue. If your physics teacher leaves in the middle of the year, how can you just plop somebody else in there and expect them to pick up right where someone else left off?"

Sue Strand, the union's president, cites a national study that shows students with experienced teachers perform better. Because of high turnover, 46 percent of Clark County's teaching force has less than five full years of teaching experience.

Although the district has a national reputation as being an aggressive recruiting machine, it hasn't done a good job of keeping the teachers it hires, according to the union.

Its study found that in the past two years alone, more than 2,000 teachers of the 14,000-member teaching force have quit, a 14 percent loss.

"Once we get them here, we do nothing to keep them," Jasonek said. "Teachers come here, get experience and then go back home where they can make more money and be near their families. There's nothing holding them here."

Nationally, around 21 percent of all teacher departures are caused by retirements. In Clark County, the study found only 12 percent retire.

A survey of why teachers quit found that salaries and a lack of support from administrators are the top reasons, Strand said. The information came from questionnaires that teachers fill out when they leave.

"The top reason used to be (demanding) principals," Strand said. "But now it's becoming salaries."

Compared to the 10 fastest-growing U.S. school districts, Clark County salaries are the lowest. They range from a high of $39,974 for accredited teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District to $27,160 for teachers in Guilford County, N.C.

Other issues

Salaries aren't the only issue.

"When a system is seen as being on the upswing and is doing progressive things, they have a better time of attracting and retaining teachers," Lose said. "Teachers want to feel they are a part of a system that's working. Yes, there is a national teaching shortage. But there are districts that have no shortage at all. They have their pick and choose."

Problems arise, Lose said, when districts have high expectations for students without offering teachers the needed training, support and supplies.

"Standards matter, but it is not productive to raise assessments without having it aligned with the curriculum," Lose said. "And you need to begin laying the groundwork in middle school. If that isn't done, it's not only harmful to teachers, it's harmful to students."

The local and national unions say a lack of professional and personal support, large class sizes and inadequate supplies and textbooks frustrate teachers.

For Garcia, it all points to one issue.

"All of this comes back to money," he said.

Every chance he gets, Garcia publicly decries the district's per-pupil funding, which is about $1,000 below the national average.

"If I had that extra money, I'd offer teachers better pay, more training and more programs for our kids," he said.

Rulffes said Clark County teachers effectively aren't getting a salary increase.

"Last year, the teachers received a 2 percent increase, but they also had an increase in health insurance costs," Rulffes said. "Whatever pay increase they had was eaten up by the insurance."

The Legislature controls teacher salaries and has rejected union requests for increases above 2 percent.

The school district has a budget of $1.1 billion and a student population of 231,000. The district spends about $26.45 per day, per child -- an amount about equal to the price of day care.

During a recent School Board meeting, member Larry Mason quoted a line that Garcia uses in describing the school district's financial outlook: "The sky is falling."

But that isn't enough for state lawmakers.

Assemblyman Wendell Williams, D-Las Vegas, chairman of its education committee, voiced a common refrain heard in the Legislature.

"The district could be making better use of the money it has," Williams said.

At a recent Senate Assembly budget committee meeting, school officials spoke about financial issues stemming from a salary increase forced by an arbitration agreement.

"You had the ability to pay," Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, told school officials. "I don't want to be jerked around."

A union movement for higher salaries was quashed last month when the Nevada Supreme Court declared a business-tax initiative unconstitutional.

Teachers had hoped the measure would provide a long-term solution for salary increases. But many in the business community opposed it, maintaining that teacher pay should be performance-based.

Gov. Kenny Guinn's budget proposal includes funding for a one-time, 5 percent bonus for teachers -- an amount that the union and school administrators say is inadequate.

"It's our job to educate the lawmakers on what our needs are," Rulffes said. "We are going to continue to do that."

The district is asking the Legislature for $426.2 million, which would fund, among other things, a 2 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment for teachers and a 5 percent pay incentive for high-need areas.

Meanwhile, the district will work toward its miracle goal of hiring 1,600 teachers by fall on a recruiting budget of less than $200,000 a year.

Paul Oisboid, Molasky Middle School principal, has been involved in recruiting efforts for about 10 years. The district has no full-time recruiters on staff. Instead it relies on about 80 principals and other employees to recruit nationwide.

Today the recruiting effort remains at ground level.

"At this point," Rice said, "We feel like yelling, 'Is there anybody out there?' "

archive