Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Pay teachers more

Saturday, April 2, 2005 | 9:20 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

WEEKEND EDITION

April 2 - 3, 2005

Putting education first. So who is going to do that?

It wasn't that long ago when some political opportunists climbed aboard the public's natural desire to educate its children and swaggered forth with an "education first" plan to require the Legislature to fund public education before it did much of anything else. And, quite naturally, the voters agreed.

Somewhere along the line, though, the political will to put their money where their mouths were seems to have vanished with last year's elections.

I refer to an excellent series of articles that appeared this past week in my Green Valley News. It was also published in various other weekly newspapers that I am privileged to publish and that one day soon will be available to readers around the entire Las Vegas Valley. But, for now, Abigail Goldman's eye-opening stories about the cost of teaching in the Clark County School District is limited to Boulder City, Henderson and the South Valley.

So, for those for whom the new weekly newspapers have not reached your door and for those who may not yet have read Abigail's enlightening words, let me give you the highlights which, you will soon see, are the low lights of a public school system with the mandate to educate in the country's fastest-growing school district.

It is not enough that Clark County has a demand for at least 3,000 new teachers each year. That's kind of old news since the only change is the number needed, not the ever-demanding responsibility to find the qualified teachers necessary to fill the positions created by an unprecedented school-building program and a population boom that doesn't know how or when to subside.

Couple that with an increasing demand in our neighboring states for additional teachers and it is easy to see how the supply of new teachers available will cause the cost of obtaining them to go right through the roof. Yes, we compete with California, which pays at the top end of the scale. Other neighboring states pay a little less than we do but, as you will see in a moment, that doesn't tell the whole story.

Nevada has been trying over the past few years to put more money into teacher pay. It stands to reason that the higher the compensation, the better the chance we have of getting the best teachers available. And the higher the starting salaries are, the better chance we have to compete with all other states to fill the voracious appetite we have for new teachers each year.

For a long time, Nevada and other states have been recruiting in the Philippines for skilled nurses because our schools, for any number of reasons, are not producing enough people in the field to fill the ever-growing need for such skilled professionals, as our baby-boomer generation continues to tax the health system unmercifully.

Since the nurse-recruiting programs have worked so well, school districts around the country, including our own, are scouring the Philippines for teachers as well. I am sure they will teach as well as they nurse but the irony should not be lost on us. We have to go outside our own country to find qualified teachers -- who will work for what we are willing to pay -- to teach our children. Am I the only one who finds humor in that one?

In the past, Nevada has been able to find good teachers because we have been willing to pay a little more -- whether it was signing bonuses or increases in the pay scales -- but today another law of supply and demand is making it nearly impossible to get the quality people we need to move to Las Vegas to pursue teaching careers.

Las Vegas is not alone in the recent spike of real estate prices. For a very long time, the ability of Clark County to keep the cost of living low enough to make our not very generous teacher pay scales livable was a major advantage in our quest to compete for the best and brightest of the teacher generation. But now things are different.

The price of a once affordable home in Clark County has skyrocketed and the salary of starting teachers has not. Add two and two together and even a D-minus student can tell you that we are no longer an affordable city for young teachers.

It is easy to say that we should pay our teachers more money. So I will say it. We should pay our teachers more money, not only to place the proper value on their work in our society but also to enable us to attract the best available given the fact that we compete with states who are willing to pay more.

But we need to do more than just adjust the salaries. We need to come to the realization in this community that to honor those in whose trust we place our future -- and an educated next generation -- we need to do all we can to provide them housing they can afford based on the salaries we are willing to pay with our tax dollars.

Simply put, like the top companies that don't give it a moment's thought when they have to put together a complete package to entice the employees they want, we have to decide to do the same thing for our teachers because they are every bit as valuable to society as a top CEO. In fact, much more so.

All that means is that now is the time and Carson City is the place for those politicians who talk about putting education first to actually walk that line toward educational excellence.

So come on leaders, put education first. And put your politics last.