Letter: School district breakup would hurt teachers

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 | 9:03 a.m.

Some Republican legislators have expressed a desire to break up the Clark County School District into several small school districts. The plan would supposedly bring efficiency, lower costs and create greater involvement between parents and administrators.

It would not only create a large disparity in funding resources for older areas of the current district, such as Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, but favor areas such as Green Valley and Summerlin that are wealthier and have newer schools already in place.

I see this as a clever, conservative Republican ploy to again shaft teachers. The creation of new districts will nullify all current union contracts, and I envision all current personnel having to reapply for teaching positions in any of the districts they would reside in or plan to move into. No district would be obligated to negotiate with any teachers union. Without union representation, teacher hiring practices, protection and benefits would be at the whim of district administrators. Current teacher certification requirements could easily be eliminated, thus allowing greater hiring flexibility.

This is an underhanded way to establish new salary schedules, perhaps implementing a much higher beginning basic salary with all additional raises coming from a merit-pay system. Eliminating the top brackets of the current salary schedule would allow for creating a larger starting salary than currently exists; this could be used to attract a plentiful supply of newer teachers. Merit-pay increases would be at the whim of administrators and "good ol' boy" favoritism.

VIRGIL A. SESTINI

Editor's note: The writer is a retired biology teacher who taught in the Clark County School District.