Heavy agenda could mean long night for School Board

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Monday, Jan. 19, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The Clark County School Board should brace for a marathon meeting Thursday.

The agenda is crowded with two potential school closures, a proposal to limit overtime pay for some employees and an update on the budget cut projections.

Just one of those agenda items would typically be enough to turn the public comment period into a multihour session.

District staff is proposing new limits on overtime for support employees and School Police. Last year the district spent more than $14 million on overtime, and this school year’s costs so far top $5 million. Proposed changes include limiting weekly overtime to 24 hours, and offering the extra work to the lowest-paid qualified employee.

District officials say it’s often cheaper to pay overtime than to hire more employees. But as the Las Vegas Sun reported, the district also identified a dozen employees who worked at least 1,000 extra hours in a 10-month period last year, in some cases taking home more in overtime pay than in their regular salary. Of those 12 employees, five were Clark County School Police officers and the rest were support employees in the facilities division.

The School Board will also have to face angry families from Mount Charleston and Goodsprings, who say they aren’t going to let their tiny rural elementary schools be closed without a very loud — and public — fight.

Amy Brown, whose daughter attends Lundy Elementary School, said she and other families question the district’s claim it costs $195,767 — $21,752 for each of the nine students — to run the one-room schoolhouse at Mount Charleston.

The families pay property taxes that help support public education, Brown said. And the school’s enrollment is expected to jump in the next year or two as several neighborhood children are approaching school age, Brown said, making it more economically efficient.

Goodsprings Elementary, located in a former mining town 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas, is believed to be the oldest continually operating school in Nevada. It was expanded in recent years from one room to two, and has six students. District officials say it costs nearly $37,000 per pupil to run the school.

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As Congress debates how much money to pump into the struggling economy, the nation’s second-largest teachers union knows where it wants the dollars spent.

The American Federation of Teachers has launched an aggressive campaign to lobby for stimulus dollars to be directed at public schools, especially in communities where steep budget cuts are hurting students.

“We’re hearing heartbreaking stories from our members about the consequences of the cuts that are already being made, and you can draw a line right to the classroom,” union spokeswoman Janet Bass told the Sun. “To us, the stimulus money is a lifeline for making sure our children don’t lose out.”

The union hasn’t set a dollar amount because the stimulus package “is a moving target,” Bass said. “No one’s sure at this point how much Congress is really talking about.”

And it’s not just about “prying those dollars out of Congress,” Bass said. “It’s about spending those dollars wisely.”

Might the union lobby on behalf of the Silver State’s schools, even though its teachers union is an affiliate of the rival National Education Association? After all, Clark County is the nation’s fifth-largest school district, and has cut $130 million, with another $120 million in cuts projected.

Bass said, “right now this is an AFT campaign,” and as far as she knew the NEA “is doing their own thing.”

But, she added, “We want the money directed where the need is the greatest.”

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Generous online donors — and possibly a few Sun readers — helped teacher Ben Salkowe raise two-thirds of the $3,000 he needs to take his fifth grade students to spend a day at the Claremont Colleges outside Los Angeles.

Salkowe is in his second year with Teach for America, which trains recent college graduates to work with at-risk students in urban districts. He teaches at Laura Dearing Elementary School behind Boulder Station.

The Lincy Foundation, which oversees billionaire Kirk Kerkorian’s philanthropic endeavors, has offered to cover the balance for the field trip, which is planned for the first week in April.