Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Teachers forced to moonlight

More than two out of every five Clark County School District teachers find it necessary to work a second job during the regular academic year, according to results of a survey obtained Monday by the Sun.

Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes said he wasn't surprised by the survey findings - a teacher sold his wife a pair of Capri pants Saturday at a woman's boutique.

"She greeted me and said she was one of my teachers," Rulffes said Monday of the encounter at the Coldwater Creek clothing store. "She told me she was working weekends to make ends meet."

Moonlighting teachers are not new to Clark County, but it's becoming increasingly common for educators to acknowledge they are delivering pizzas, serving cocktails at casinos and even performing as exotic dancers.

Salaries for new teachers crossed the $30,000 threshold for the first time this year. For the 2006-07 academic year, rookie teachers will earn $33,000. About half of the district's 16,000 teachers have fewer than five years' experience.

Nevada ranked 26th in the nation with an average teacher salary of $43,500 in 2005. In Clark County a teacher with eight years' tenure and 32 academic credits toward a master's degree earns $43,554.

School Board member Susan Brager-Wellman said she's run into teachers working second jobs at the Outback Steakhouse and Bed, Bath & Beyond.

"Every time I see them it breaks my heart," Brager-Wellman said. Any raises, she said, are consumed by the rising cost of living.

The dependence on second jobs was revealed in a survey of more than 8,000 district educators sponsored by the Clark County Education Association and the School District.

The annual survey was intended to measure teacher satisfaction with their principals. The question of whether teachers considered second jobs a necessity had not been asked in past years and was added to gauge employees' sense of financial stability.

Overall 71 percent of the survey respondents said they agreed or strongly agreed that their school was a "good place to work and learn." And 66 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that teacher performance evaluations were fair.

Those percentages are "too low," Rulffes said.

"I get too many messages from people who are dissatisfied with the way they are treated - we are a long way from 100 percent," Rulffes said. "We have to make sure that staff, students and patrons are treated with respect and dignity."

As for the survey findings indicating that many teachers spend more than10 hours each week of their own time on school-related work, "I hope this will dispel the myth that teachers have a short work day," Rulffes said.

Mary Ella Holloway, president of the teachers union, said the survey results could prove valuable.

"It's going to be helpful if when we get our teams together and go into the schools that have problems, we're really able to mediate," Holloway said. "And when we go into those schools that scored well and find out what they're doing right, we copy them for all the other schools. That's going to be the difference."

The districtwide results were distributed late last week to teachers and administrators by George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources.

In a memo attached to the results, Rice said teams of teachers and administrators will visit schools to "examine individual survey results, celebrate areas which meet or exceed expectations and assist in improving the conditions which did not meet expectations."

In joining forces for the first time on the survey, the teachers' union and School Board agreed to keep results for individual schools private. In the past the union traditionally made public school-by-school results for its annual survey, singling out principals with the highest and lowest approval ratings.

Some teachers were critical of that arrangement, saying they had been told the individual results would be made available to them.

"This is a way to address some of the issues without having the acrimony," Rulffes said of the decision to keep the individual school results private. "It's certainly worth a try - there's no evidence the old method worked all that well. It tended to polarize the teachers and principals."

Holloway said there are still no plans to release individual school results, although teachers at campuses selected for the mediation stage will "probably" be given copies of their own school's survey findings.

Teachers accounted for 95.2 percent of the responses, while principals and assistant principals just under 1 percent of responses and other education professionals - such as counselors and school psychologists - contributed 3.8 percent. The district currently has more than 16,000 licensed personnel.

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