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StumbleSchool District’s $54 million boost could mean 900 jobs
Thursday, Aug. 26, 2010 | 1:50 a.m.
Walt Rulffes
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- Teacher recruiting ‘not pretty,’ and it’s expected to get uglier (4-20-2010)
- After years of explosive growth, schools to feel economic pinch for years to come (3-25-2010)
- Teacher pay cut might not sting recruitment (1-12-2009)
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Beyond the Sun
As students get ready to return to class next week, the Clark County School District is getting ready to do some last-minute hiring.
But the job openings aren’t because the district procrastinated; they are because of the passage of the federal education jobs fund.
Superintendent Walt Rulffes said he will recommend that the school board allow principals to decide how to fill some of the 900 new positions.
In all, the district will receive about $54 million of the $83 million that came to Nevada from the $10 billion education jobs legislation signed by President Barack Obama on Aug. 10.
Rulffes said district staff will recommend to the school board that the money be used immediately to hire about 500 teachers, 300 support staff, 50 maintenance and landscape workers and a few school-based administrators, such as assistant principal and deans.
If the board approves the plan at its Sept. 2 meeting, Rulffes said the hiring could start Sept. 3.
“This is an employment bill, but it’s also intended to help students,” Rulffes said, which is why most of the hiring will be for people who work directly in the schools.
Two years ago, when the district had to cut a number of teaching positions, individual principals were given leeway to determine which positions to cut, he said.
“Now, I think we should reverse that process and allow principals to have discretion as to how those jobs will be aligned to the needs of their schools,” Rulffes said.
However, the positions are not guaranteed to exist for more than a year.
“One of the problems with this is it’s easy come, easy go; in other words, we’ll get the money but it will disappear after a year to approximately a year and a half depending on how it rolls out,” Rulffes said.
But the district can use the federal money to restore some of the teaching positions that have been cut while waiting to see what the economy and the Legislature do in the next year, the superintendent said.
“With this federal money, while it’s only a one-year reprieve, we hope (it) will be a bridge to connect us to better times and we’ll be able to continue with some of this employment permanently,” he said.
Many of the positions will likely be filled with people already in the district’s applicant pool, Rulffes said.
“We have hundreds of teachers who are now applying for jobs that we don’t have right now,” he said. “That’s quite a turnaround from two or three years ago when we were recruiting all over the world trying to find teachers to come to Las Vegas. So at this point the supply far exceeds the demand.”
The district already has hired about 430 new teachers for the school year, but it still has a few other openings, mostly in the hard-to-fill subjects of math and science.
In addition to the potential new jobs that will be funded with the federal money, the district had 126 teaching openings at elementary schools, 37 at middle schools and 61 at high schools as of Wednesday, said Martha Tittle, the district’s chief human resources officer.
Plus, the district is still looking for a few special education teachers, Tittle said.
Officials expect to have 309,126 students enroll this year, a 350-student decrease from the previous school year.
If students don’t show up where the district expects them, teachers will be shifted at the end of September.
But that balancing will be easier since the new teachers hired with federal funds should be starting about that time, Rulffes said. Principals might choose to use the new teaching positions to fill spots that would be eliminated in that shuffle, he said.
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More wasted money. Use the money to hire security guards, metal detectors and detention areas within the schools. Our schools are battle grounds run by a group of overseers who dont seem to care about the students who are wanting to perform but focus on the students who dont want to perform and eventually drop out. It is just a waste of money, just like spending 100,000,000 on the construction of Rancho High School.
Wow!! 900 jobs for a year? Maybe...Nothing permanent just another finger stuck in the wall to repair the flood gate...and stall the inevitable.
When is everyone going to realize that money thrown like this will not last and the jobs created are not permanent? When the funds run out the jobs are gone........POOF!
Cuts will have to be made again and again...Good luck people!!!
I thought this money was only for hiring and keeping teachers. Use it only for teachers and spread it out for two years.
See? This is Republicans suck. Over 900 people to be employed and all you guys can do is complain? Very sad for the Angle supporters. If one of those jobs went to a family member and helped them stay in their home or pay the bills would it matter if it was "administrative"? Again, sad.
Give it to the firemen, and the police dept.
"Rulffes said district staff will recommend to the school board that the money be used immediately to hire about 500 teachers, 300 support staff, 50 maintenance and landscape workers and a few school-based administrators, such as assistant principal and deans."
I think this is great. Education, to me, is one of the core issues to help drive growth in this state, to bring new businesses here. For years we've been, what 48th or so in nation in education and that's not a pretty picture to attract new business. Plus, a mojodrew siad, "Over 900 people to be employed."
We have a great university here, it would be nice to have a great public school system to support it.
This is not a political statement, just one of courtesy: Thank you Mr. Ruffles and President Obama.
Well, well, well. With a little effort we can now turn this infusion of federal funds to our school system, an infusion of funds that will put 900 people back to work, into another reason to hate barry the socialist muslim kenyan potus.
I just think education is so very important today, well, always has been and I'm sympathetic to parents who have to face a public education system that is not what should be. I think public schools are critical to our society and culture because of the different backgrounds of those who attend them -- it seems like a better learning experience and should be the best possible learning experience we can give our kids. (Well, I'm not included in that "we" - My kids long ago concluded school).
There is only a single issue in this story, in my opinion: More funding for our schools and that which that funding will bring. Those getting political here are way off point, which, again in my opinion is simply getting our kids the best education possible.
gbigs: I don't entirely understand the statement "Private schools do as good or better job, and cost 1/3 what publics do." I agree that private schools probably do a better job than public schools, but that's sort of an unfinished argument, because I think parents are just about as responsible for their children's education as schools. But what I really don't understand is the bit about private schools cost 1/3 of what public schools cost. I mean they're very expensive to attend and I understand their teachers are paid more.
Don't interpret this as argumentative, I'd just like to know how you figure they cost less.
Way to go Big O. Lay $10 billion on the nation's school system and see how quickly they can fritter it away. Like Clark County most other school districts will go on a hiring spree and the Big O can claim he's created tens of thousands of jobs. The only problem is if the Bog O doesn't make $10 billion available next year all these new hires will need to be let go. The Big O is just playing the old shell game with our future. Who wins this shell game? Only the Big O.
Murrayburns:
I think the 1/3 cost argument that gbigs was making is that the private sector does a much better job controlling expenses than the taxpayer funded institutions.
If you take the entire expenses of the university & divide by the student body population of a public university and compare with private university, The private university will be lower, not sure if it will match the 1/3.
The public does not fully notice because many of them only pay attention to tuition & fees that resident students must pay to attend.
Real question is why do we not charge non-resident students the true cost to attend.
Thank you Senator Reid. Well done.
Thank you, Senator Reid. Another example of why those who support a Senate candidate who accuses unnamed members of Congress of treason and advocates "Second Amendment remedies" apparently are too unpatriotic to love their country.
Danno: Thanks. I'm probably older than many here and I attended a Big Ten University, through graduate school (BA,MA,Ph.D) as a state resident. While I had a full ticket through it all, I seem to recall that state residents paid $3 per credit hour, out of state, $11. Yeah, it was a long time ago.
I have friends whose kids are attending university now and the cost is just nuts to me, $10,000 to $20,000 a year and up.
Knocking off UNLV, however, I think is a very poor idea. I've always believed that any university with Medical and Law schools are a great credit to the community. I don't know how physicians or attorneys who graduate leave the state and I'm not sure that's very important as according to the State Board of Medical Examiners we have more than 6,000 licensed physicians in Nevada, or around 170 per 100,000. That's the latest number they have, but it has gone up every year since 1999.
Whether or not most UNLV Med School graduates leave the state I don't think is an important issue at all, considering the increase in doctors here. What difference does it make whether or not they attended UNLV.
Watch them create more 100k + jobs that do nothing but pay morons to show up. In my day people like that would be hog tied.
Harry Reid is touting the bill as saving 800 teachers jobs, but Harry for how long. $54 million is only going to keep teachers and staff on for one year, then what? We are going to be right back in the same situation. When is the district going to learn how to live within the budget if Reid keeps pumping money into a system that is broken. There is one way out, do away with the Federal Department of Education (DOE). The DOE has a budget of $1 billion dollars, that money can be divided to 50 states, that can keep teachers and staff on board a lot longer then $54 million. The country doesn't need a DOE, let the states handle educating their own kids. That is one of the problems with education in this country, state laws conflict with Federal laws. Look at Obama's "Race to The Top", $3.8 billion is going to be divided between 9 states, Nevada was not one of them, does this sound fair to you?? No. $3.8 billion divided in to 50 sounds a lot better. Its almost like Obama is ensuring some states have better educated kids than others. Reid is not doing nothing but putting a bandaid on problems that need a long term fix. If you vote Harry Reid back in office this country will just be fixed by bandaids. We need long term fixes, foreclosures is a failure, recession is still strong, economy is in the crapper, health care is only helping a few, while we all pay the price. People wake up, Reid is just selling a bill of good to get reelected, we cannot afford Harry Reid's fail policies and Obama's run away budget. Stop Obama, by VOTING HARRY REID OUT OF OFFICE. Don't let Harry Reid max out his retirement, let save a few thousand dollar, no vote on Reid and vote for Angle, she cannot do us no harm, and we will need her next year to keep tax increases to a minimum and to reduce the national debt.