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Union gives OK to freeze pay raises, a deal that defends against layoffs
Friday, May 7, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.
Sun Archives
- School District, union reach agreement to save jobs (5-3-2010)
- Recruiting blitz on even as teachers await layoffs (4-27-2010)
- Clark County teachers sweating out the budget crisis (4-22-2010)
- ‘Almost catastrophic’ budget cuts on horizon for Clark County schools (4-22-2010)
- Clark County teachers face peer pressure on furloughs (4-9-2010)
- School Board rejects moving schools to nine-month calendar (3-26-2010)
- Year-round schools could face calendar shift to save money (3-16-2010)
- Teachers resist increasing pressure to accept pay cuts (2-5-2010)
- Budget crunch puts shorter school year, teacher pay cuts on table (2-4-2010)
- Gibbons: School districts should brace for 10 percent cuts (2-2-2010)
- State budget comes up $800 million short (1-22-2010)
- State budget director: Prep for another 10 percent cut (12-15-2009)
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Beyond the Sun
The teachers union tentatively agreed Thursday to a one-year freeze on pay increases based on experience, a move that will help the Clark County School District close the remaining $28 million in its budget gap.
Freezing pay hikes normally given to teachers with every additional year of work is expected to save the district about $15 million. With teachers and other licensed personnel represented by the union — 18,000 in all — accounting for 67 percent of the district’s personnel costs, the tentative deal helps to clear a major hurdle to presenting a balanced budget for approval when the School Board meets May 19.
Ruben Murillo, president of the Clark County Education Association, said the proposed deal with the district would preserve teacher jobs with no loss of benefits or pay. Under the terms of the tentative agreement, teachers will continue to earn salary increases based on educational attainment, such as completing master’s degrees.
Murillo emphasized that the proposed agreement, which requires ratification by the union’s members, is a temporary fix. Solving the underlying problem of the state’s revenue shortfall, which required the district to cut $145 million from its 2011 operating budget, is another matter, Murillo said.
The district declined to comment Thursday on the deal. In a prior interview, Superintendent Walt Rulffes characterized ongoing discussions with the Clark County Education Association as “fruitful,” and said he thought an agreement could be reached that would avoid layoffs.
The district still plans to cut about 540 teaching positions in grades 1-3 as a result of class-size increases — also a money-saving move — but expects most of those individuals to be placed in alternative assignments.
The tentative one-year deal comes after seven negotiation sessions stretching back to February.
Several scenarios had been on the table, including requiring furlough days or changing the district’s contributions to teachers’ health and retirement benefits.
The union surveyed its members on two options, Murillo said. The first option would have required teachers to take two unpaid days off, but would allow most of the district’s teachers (from the rookies to those in the upper-middle range of the experience ladder) to move up a half-step on the salary schedule. Only the most experienced teachers, those who are earning top pay, wouldn’t get salary bumps to offset the sting of furloughs.
The second option was to freeze step increases across the board. Of the more than 4,600 surveys returned, 81 percent were in favor of the step freeze.
The largest voting bloc — 35 percent — were teachers with fewer than five years experience. Teachers with 14-plus years accounted for 27 percent of the vote, followed by those with six to nine years (21 percent) and 10 to 13 years (17 percent).
“Our members supported the concept of shared sacrifice,” Murillo said.
As reported by the Sun on Monday, the district has also reached a tentative three-year agreement with the Education Support Employees Association, which represents the majority of the district’s 11,400 custodians, school bus drivers, food service workers, clerical staff and other support employees. The deal calls for freezing salaries, delaying step increases and also using the union’s existing medical contribution fund to cover a half-percent increase in the cost of employee retirement contributions and increased medical costs for current workers.
The deal will mean no repeat of last year’s sizable reduction in force, salary cut or furlough days, ESEA President Belinda “Bo” Yealy wrote on the union’s website.
The two tentative agreements would cover about $25 million of the $28 million budget gap.
Deals have not yet been reached with the unions representing the district’s 1,300 school administrators or the 160-office School Police force, which combined account for 5 percent of the district’s 38,500 employees.
The Clark County Association of School Administrators has clashed publicly with Rulffes over closing the budget gap, criticizing his decision to reduce the district’s contribution to its members’ retirement benefits while preserving a similar perk for teachers. An arbitrator sided with the administrators’ union, the district appealed and the matter is headed to court.
Teachers unions nationwide are facing similar challenges to what’s playing out in Clark County, the nation’s fifth-largest school district, said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“There’s no one right way to do this,” Lichtenstein said. “You’re juggling the expectations and pain of a lot of people.”
Lichtenstein said typically teachers aren’t just concerned about their own salaries.
Public support is also a factor. And with a contentious legislative session expected in 2011, and the district projecting a shortfall of $200 million to $300 million in state funding for each year of the biennium, it might well help teachers to position themselves as having shared some of the pain this time around.
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The right choice in an economically troubled state. Teachers step to the plate and swing for a hit. I hope the admin and support people step up and advance the base runner.
Isn't it convenient?!?!? The only thing that defies understanding is WHY WALL STREET GOT TO KEEP ITS BONUSES while the rest of America's workforce pays the bill???? This country has its head up its a$$ when it comes to priorities. Goldman Sachs sold bad debt "instruments" to Greece, but claims its doing God's work. Then Wall Street "reacts" to Greece's economic situation. Wall Street sells out the American economy but middle class workers are expected to "step up" and make sacrifices while Madoff Bloomberg defends Wall Steet bonuses. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
Why make good American citizens, who teach and form our young into intelligent adults, suffer for reasons beyond their control?
How much would our State, Cities and Counties save if they didn't have to spend our citizens money to help and put up with the federal lawbreakers in our state creating deficits that should not be there.
If we would send the undocumented immigrants back to their countries of origin how long would it take to balance our budgets in our State, Cities, and Counties. Good old Harry Reid made it possible for the undocumented aliens in our state to now recieve unemployment compensation. Is that not considered aiding and abetting federal lawbreakers? Is that not supposed to be for our citizens?
Not only would it save monies that are for the citizens our our state it would also open up jobs for over 200,000 unemployed citizens.
Students were sent home from Live Oak High School on the Fifth day of May for wearing T-shirts and other clothes that sported the United States red, white and blue. Hispanic students got upset because it was the hispanic holiday cinco de mayo and complained to the Principle which got the United States students sent home. Where and when is this going to stop? Where and when will our elected officials act like the americans they are supposed to be and start upholding our federal immigration laws?
When will our citizens stop being murdered by the illegals in our country. When will they stop taking away jobs that could be had for our young and old. When will our politicians remember that keeping our country's and our people's freedoms are why they were voted into office, and not to jockey for votes unless we the people benefit from them. When will...
How about increasing the contributions of the Casinos for education. They plead poverty but they are still paying the lowest rates compared to other states. We have one of the worst education system in the US and this will make it worse!
To be completely honest, I really do not think our kids have a snowball's chance in hell of making anything of themselves.
Look at the culture of usury and abuse where they grow up! How does one form an image of oneself when the backdrop for 'normal' is hooker, con artist and swindler? Their leaders are corrupt, blatantly and transparently.
Their schools warehouse them, bore them and convince them that learning is about taking tests and reading stuff that's no fun. Nowhere do they see human effort satisfying human curiosity to BETTER our situation.
All they see is acquiescence to the path of least resistance.
No wonder life is just an opportunity to indulge momentary pleasures, get loaded and goof off.
It doesn't look like these teachers are starving, a Louis Vuitton purse (aren't those over $1000??), a laptop, and most look well fed.
"Do what you're told and there'll be no problem!"
That's the message from the school.
"Go where your heart says" is never even heard anymore.
The human drive is to satisfy our curiosity, to develop ourselves because we ENJOY becoming ourselves, reaching and grasping from what we know to what we suspect.
Our schools are treating the Standards as the holy grail; we are going through the motions and failing because we are not going through the EMOTIONS of the learners.
"Do this!" is not really an effective strategy, but it's what we have.
It doesn't look like nevadaapllejack has anything nice to say as usual.
Just the typical snide cheap shot at those who have given their lives to helping the young ones get a clue, which still avoids the hapless applefuq.
And as we all know, teachers SHOULD be starving, as the appleass drops the hint so poignantly.
Rightfully can't expect inefficient, obsolete, costly methods of producing failures to succeed -- the objective of educational services must eventually shift from the socialized baby-sitting, school-clinic method to where it responsibly belongs, at the home.
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the kids bore the burnt of the sacrifice this year...
next year that will not happen...
here's a suggestion...
next year...
let's start with firing the the fab 5...
save a ton of dough...
and the quality of education will remain exactly the same...
When a 64 year-old teacher gives up the $2,110 for the 'step' increase, that's another small pile she will not get tossed into retirement.
When she started teaching in the 60s, annual salary was $4,650.
Whacking her now with ~ half her original salary hurts her in perpetuity because her retirement depends on income and this was to be her final year.
Nope, it's not much money for you, but for someone whose contribution to our society has been made in earnest, not for the money but for the child, this is a mighty thankless farewell.
Harley, most parents are working. Who will teach the children?
Harley, even if they weren't working, do you really expect them to be able to provide instruction in all 793 subjects?
Harley, if they can provide appropriate instruction in all 793 subjects and are staying home to mess with just one kid, don't you think something is wrong with this stupid picture you draw?
nevadaappleslices, are you really holding it against a teacher that they own a laptop? Laptops are $600-$800 and that very well could be the teacher's only personal computer. Maybe if you had your way they could pay these teachers so little that they would not even be able to afford computers so they can track grades, and develop lesson plans at home.
Computers and laptops are not luxuries anymore - they are necessities for professional adults.
the appleton
was just reeling from the Chinese knockoff of a schnazzy purse in the picture. Then he leaps to olympic-level conclusions based on one cheap scintilla of a lead to do his daily deal - bash a teacher!
applegate is misogynist, a little dull, and transparently anti-civility.
How long have you been practicing law, pomester?
Teachers should be paid a fair wage but what bugs me is that at the middle school and high school level, teachers don't seem to want to teach. Forbid if they have to give a lecture that day or lead a discussion. My children came home time after time with a "worksheet" done in class or to be finished at home and THAT'S ALL THEY DID... while the "teacher" sat at his/her desk.
Worksheets are signs of sold out teachers.
Once the 'crayola curriculum' bandits got into power, good teachers who once worked with children to help them get better at skills became things of the past.
The Standards is the excuse for not teaching the children.
The Standards stand in their way, dictating direction and specifying feicits in children.
Children can learn SO fast and SO well when they are in the flow, when they are challenged and guided and set free to be themselves with a new friend, fractions or decimals or gerunds or participles or mitosis or research on their favorite subject.
But our schools and some teachers are so Standard-based that the teaching no longer occurs from student-centered instruction, but from as has been mentioned, from a teacher sitting on ass with Standards-based assignment in case an administrator should check what they're doing whilst the district picks up the computer maintenance and operation costs in addition to salary, benefit, retirement, etc.
@nevadaappleslices
You're the prime example why Nevada is ranked at the bottom of the list. The purse is a knock off and the laptop is district issued. Happy now? Probably nothing short of abolishing public education and all social programs would make you and your ilk satisfied. You are the epitome of what's wrong with the world. What have you done in service to humanity?
By the looks on the teachers faces you don't need to read the article. The focus always seem to be on the teachers pay. The real problem is the legacy benefits once a teacher retires. I wouldn't trade my salary for theirs but the benefits blow away anything I could ever hope for. That's the real drain on state funds, not the salaries.
I know a fella who spent his life teaching school, something like 31 years, plus all kinds of summer trainings and continuing education.
His retirement amounts to about 80% of his best 3 years averaged. So he brings home a little over 3 grand.
Social security is zip because Nevada does its own.
His medical benefit is now a thing of the past, though promised and traded in bargaining for decades.
For a guy who has done so much for so many for so long, I don't think he is being compensated in retirement any better than if he'd been a baker or miner or casino dealer breathing smoke.
So Green617,
are you saying we should terminate those pesky ($$) benefit programs for our retired state workers as we did the teachers' health benefits? Just nix 'em?
So green617,
an agreement to pay some now and some later for the task is somehow unfair when it's later and time to pay?
Treacherous scoundrels. Welshing on your commitments. If you're lucky, you'll be old some day too!
So green617,
if you "wouldn't trade my salary for theirs" but "the benefits blow away anything", then the deal they made back last century to provide a service for a fee may or may not appear wise, but it was a deal.
A deal is a deal.
Fudging now when 'teach' is too old to whack you the good one you obviously deserve is a total cheap shot. Even dead people have power. Don't mess with silver, boy.
or girl, as the gender may be
wow, what a burden, giving up raises for next year when unemployment is at a high.
btw: teachers are supposed to be role models and using an impostor purse is a bad example
They all look tierd bet they can not wait for summer.
There was a time when Las Vegas was begging for teachers,they would pay to relocate and homes.Things have really turned around in the last 5 years.
Wow,gave up a raise for a whole year, i havent had a raise in three.
United_727
you haven't done anything to DESERVE a raise in 3 yr.
Don't put it on poor ole 'teach'
The reason they all look tired in that photo is that it's May. They have been going ten, twelve hours a day, plus weekends here and there to do their thing. They are spent, but still there. And not getting any younger.
airweare,boy you must know it all!! I'm lucky my dealer didnt lose out franchise last may ,smart guy.
It's okay, UNITED.
I'm a dumbass. I'm glad you still got your job. Of course you deserved a raise.
You're nicer than all those others.
Happy Mothers Day.
Sorry if my comment struck a nerve; of course it was all in fun, huh?
We're lucky we got you.