...this is what we get instead of a lightrail?

wow thanks alot.

I think we have a lot to thank our elected officials including the mayor.

At least we can look forward to getting a mob museum and an overpriced city hall which both will bring numerous permanent jobs?

Las Vegas will continue to hold the award for being the largest US city without any culture or identity outside of gaming.

Don't you remember why Walt was choosen in the first place, he stood for the status quo. The school district and board did not want change, thats why the NY candidate opted out.

Administrators at CCSD have their own separate union, they also happen to make a lot more than the avg teacher, sad reality in todays age. Part of the problem with over assessing and programs like No Child Left Behind.

If you want change then parents need to get more involved with what is going on at their local school it can only happen at a grassroots level.

How many parents ever have watched or gone to one of the CCSD board meetings?

If you want change nationally then vote for Obama, he supports education reform.

One more thing, teachers starting salary needs to be 40k and title 1 teachers should be paid 20% more.

-charles

I think its great they are going to webcast the meetings. It should have been done 5 years ago. $125k is rather expensive to simply enable web broadcasting. I hope for this rather large expense the equipment is HD ready. Many TV stations now broadcast their live signals onto the web 24x7. May be this could have been a more affordable option. Indexing is great but very time intensive and expensive. Maybe overkill for school board meetings. How about closed captioning, wil this be incorporated. I hope they are doing this all in house and not outsorcing which is always 10x more expensive. Aloso where's the web address we an view this at?

Re: Teacher drop out rate..

The teacher drop out rate is actually a lot higher for clark county:
More like 85% leave within 5 years?

Many teachers have large student loans that avg 50k. There is no way I can pay off my student loans and pay for a 300k mortgage on a teachers 37k salary.

If you want highly qualified teachers then raise the pay, if you want low qualified teachers then don't raise the pay, keep the status quo.

Pay is by far the primary reason teachers leave. The school district knows this but continues to ignore the issue. This has been identified in their own studies on teacher retention.

Teachers that started 4 years ago get modest salary increases per year avg 3% yet the new hires were getting enticed with higher salaries by moving the new hires up on the salary chart. So new hires were making the same as 3-4 yr veterans.

Too bad the union has been in bed with CCSD for so many years, for example they had negotiated salaries through 2009 and starting teachers will still make about 37k two years from now.

Newer teachers quickly learn to get their experience and then move onto a appreciative district with decent pay.

It is unfortunate that teachers only earn PERS retirement only after putting in 5 years of service. The state is saving a lot of money by having teachers leave before 5 years. Also the CCSD saves a lot of money by relying on substitutes who are paid a lot less then full time permanent hires.

Low salaries are driving some of the highly qualified teachers away. Why is it so hard to understand? I am guessing 80% of the workers in a casino do not need a college education for employment. Teachers must finish 4 to 5 years of college in order to secure a license to teach. Salaries must increase or Nevada will not have teachers at all. Wyoming is looking better every day.

Many Wyoming districts pay $45,000 base pay for teachers with an ending salary in the mid $80,000 range. They pay for doctoral degrees, Nevada doesn't. In Jackson Hole, they subsidize housing expenses. I love Nevada, but the Gibbons just doesn't get it!

What about local COMMUNITY ACCESS PROGRAMMING?

How come we don't have any public access tv stations in Vegas.

No one seems to notice or care. Do you no it costs around $500 to buy 30 minutes of local tv airtime, very expensive for local low budget productions.

A ton of money is collected on behalf of the franchise tax fees cox subsribers have to pay each month. These fees were originally designed to give tv access to the community. There is currently zero acccess to tv programming here in vegas. All money collected is diverted into city/government programming(these departments have rather large budgets too).

I hope one day the local PBS will open its doors to playing more locally produced programming. A lot of talented local stuff never gets a play here.

People believe PBS is vegas community programming, ...hardly. I love PBS but it doesn't provide enough of local producers of tv shows, docs, movies, an outlet that is desparatly for their work to be displayed.

This is another reason why vegas lacks a true sense of community. Other than gambling and expensive neighborhoods what sense of community do we have?
-av

Most new teachers try to to stay 5 years to earn PERS (retirement) and then take off for much better pay and respect. We lose our retirement if we leave before!!

Pay is a joke, too bad union is in bed with the CCSD. Why else would salaries have been negotiated through 2009 with hardly any noticeable increase in pay. This contract was done about 5 years ago. Starting pay in 2009 will be around 37k.

New Mexico now starts its teachers at 40k and housing is much cheaper there.

The CCSD had worked around the new recruit salary problem by bumping up the pay for new hires only, they get to make the same as someone who has been teaching for 3 years by putting the new hires up on the salary chart, thanks for helping those that put in the prior 3 years experience in the district without the same pay bonus.

Many CCSD teacher soon realizes that the real money to be made is to become an administrator, not much fun though. Who wants to sit around making 75k being part of the problem and not get to teach the kids.

Teachers who work at the much more challenging Title 1 schools get no extra pay or incentives, another reason there is very high turnover at especially these, the most at need schools.

The community college is not much better either, starting pay is around 36-38k. Not very competitive with industry wages, and doesn't do anything to help pay off a 50k graduate degree.

Vegas is the land of low wages. You get what you pay for folks. I'd hate to be living here in 10 years with our poor planning and vision.