Chamber report says low pay hurts teacher retention

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2003 | 9:25 a.m.

Low pay is the main reason Clark County can't find or keep enough teachers, according to a report released Tuesday by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce.

The report's findings came as no surprise to officials of Clark County's teachers' union, which has fought for pay increases from both district and state sources.

"How many different ways do people need to hear this before it sinks in?" said Mary Ella Holloway, president of the Clark County Education Association. "We keep saying it over and over, now the chamber is saying it. We need to move beyond just saying it and get people to understand it."

In the chamber's survey of 115 teachers and school counselors, 88 percent said low pay was a significant part of the retention problem. An annual pay raise of 6 to 15 percent would be necessary to significantly reduce teacher turnover, the survey found.

The chamber organized the focus groups as part of its Business Council's Workforce 2010 program, which seeks to help reduce teacher attrition by identifying causes and potential solutions.

Assembly Assistant Minority Leader Josh Griffin, R-Henderson, said it's essential for the overall health of Nevada's economy that businesses to take a more active role in solving the problems facing Clark County's schools.

"When top companies decide where to set up shop, what they want to know about is the availability of an educated work force and the quality of the public schools for their employee's children," Griffin said. "We know we need to diversify our economy and bring in new businesses, but we're not going to be successful at doing that with the underfunded education system we have now."

The Clark County School District, which has 14,500 teachers this year, has an attrition rate of about 6 percent, lower than most businesses. But when the replacement teachers are added to the new hires needed to staff the ever-growing district, the recruitment load climbs to 14 percent, the study found.

The district's annual budget of more than $1.2 billion has seen cuts of nearly $90 million in the past two years. Faced with a $12.6 million budget shortfall, district officials in May decided to increase third grade class sizes from 19 to 22 pupils, a savings of more than $3.3 million. At the high school level, schools try to keep class sizes to no more than 32 students although many go over, district officials said.

The district's financial difficulties have also restricted pay increases.

With starting salaries hovering around $27,000, Clark County has a difficult time competing with neighboring states for teachers, said George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the district.

The district hired more than 1,500 new teachers for the 2002-03 school year and plans to do the same for next next fall, Rice said. This year's recruiting will be particularly difficult because it won't be known until late spring if lawmakers will continue a $2,000 signing bonus for new teachers approved by the Legislature in 2001, Rice said.

"We can't promise the money if we don't know it's going to be there," Rice said. "It's too bad because the bonus has really helped us in the past with our recruitment pitches."

The chamber also evaluated perceptions of the quality of education in Clark County. Of the teachers and school counselors surveyed, only 25 percent called the quality of education in Clark County inferior to other large metropolitan school systems. But when the same question was posed to members of the chamber's Leadership Las Vegas program, nine out of the 10 participants said the quality of education in Clark County is "sub-par."

The two groups' divergent perceptions reflect the difference between "being in the trenches and watching from outside," said Agustin Orci, deputy superintendent of instruction for the School District.

"Teachers and counselors know firsthand that we're doing more with less, and that we could go even farther with the appropriate resources," Orci said. "Unfortunately other members of the community sometimes see only a small piece of the puzzle."