Garcia says low pay keeps teachers away

Terry Webster

Thursday, May 10, 2001 | 10:31 a.m.

In its quest to get 1,500 to 2,000 new teachers for the upcoming school year, the Clark County School District has hired approximately 200 so far, Superintendent Carlos Garcia said Wednesday.

Garcia told the Las Vegas Sun Editorial Board that the district has had hundreds of candidates reject contracts this year, more than any other year.

"In 99.9 percent of the cases, they told us our salaries stink," the superintendent said.

The starting salary of $26,847 just isn't bringing candidates, Garcia said.

Holding a list of starting salaries that compares large districts throughout the country, Garcia said Clark County can no longer "steal" teachers from other districts, as it once was able to do.

Garcia is still standing by his prediction that the district could fall short by as many as 500 teachers this fall.

"If I have to fill those positions with substitute teachers for the whole year, the students are going to suffer," he said.

Joyce Haldeman, the district's executive director of government and community relations, said a proposed $2,000 incentive for new teachers will do little to help the district now.

Gov. Kenny Guinn is proposing a $2,000 signing bonus for new teachers this year, an amount that would increase to $2,500 next year for new hires.

School officials said they are concerned that the best and brightest teachers are already considering offers and Clark County will be left with the leftovers.

Essentially, the district already is cutting teaching positions by increasing classroom sizes, Garcia said.

At the secondary level, the district is upping the student to teacher ratio from 31 to 32, which will slash about 130 teaching positions.

An additional 19 positions will be eliminated by increasing the elementary magnet school teacher ratio from 25 to 28 students.

Also, secondary level magnet schools will go from 28 to 30 students per teacher.

Increasing class sizes also places an additional workload burden on teachers, Garcia said.

Human resources wants to hire teachers now, said Walt Rulffes, the district's chief financial officer.

"But we have to be cautious because we don't want to hire staff if our enrollment is not going to go up,' Rulffes said.

The longer the district waits the more likely it will hire in line with projected enrollment increases, he said.

The district, which has about 231,000 students, historically has grown by about 15,000 students every year.

archive