Budget stalemate keeps prospective teachers hanging

Thursday, July 17, 2003 | 11:05 a.m.

Chicago middle school teacher Gregory Richter is ready to move to Clark County.

He has persuaded his wife to forgo her corporate career for graduate school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has researched home prices and has asked several elderly relatives to consider relocating as well.

All he needs now is for the Legislature to finalize the state budget so that the Clark County School District can offer him a job.

"Las Vegas has been our first choice, but every day the possibility is looking weaker and weaker," Richter said Wednesday. "As a family, we had set a deadline for this Friday. I don't know how much longer we can wait after that and still make this work."

Clark County School District Superintendent Carlos Garcia announced June 17 that he was freezing the hiring process until he knew whether the money would exist to pay salaries. If the budget impasse continues into August, it's possible the district will be unable to open schools as scheduled on the 25th, Garcia said.

Richter is one of hundreds of teachers who have applied for jobs in Clark County but have yet to be offered positions. And it's a candidate pool that's getting smaller every day, said George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the School District.

"Some of them are taking jobs in other places. Some of them say they don't want to come here because it's too uncertain," Rice said. "We're trying to ask them to hang on, put their lives on hold, even though we have nothing concrete to tell them."

Of the job offers that went out before the hiring freeze, 24 percent have come back as rejections, Rice said. In past years the rejection rate has been about 15 percent, Rice said.

The School District hires about 1,600 new teachers each year, with more than a thousand of those slots typically filled by April, Rice said. But this year the district has more than 600 vacancies still to fill with less than six weeks until the start of the 2003-04 academic year.

The number of vacancies was closer to 1,000 just a month ago, a number that spurred Garcia's decision to reassign 411 specialists to general classrooms.

Garcia has said if the budget is resolved by Friday, the specialists could return to their original assignments. But that possibility appears to be fading, Rice said.

Even if the budget is resolved in time to open schools on schedule next month, the district could feel the sting when it comes to future recruiting, said Edward Goldman, superintendent of the district's southeast region.

Nevada already has a strike against it because of the low starting salaries offered to teachers, Goldman said, which makes it difficult to compete with surrounding states that offer higher pay. Having a legislative standoff nearly paralyze the public education system doesn't do much to burnish the Silver State's image, Goldman said.

"Is it going to be harder to recruit? Very possibly," said Goldman, who organizes one of the district's largest job fairs in New York. "The people we rely on at the colleges and universities to steer their students our way aren't going to forget this, and they talk to each other. That's why it's important that we don't get painted as a state that doesn't care about education."

For Richter, his family is prepared to hold on to their Las Vegas dream for a few more days.

"I'm just waiting for the call," Richter said.