Teachers let go

New Chaparral High School Principal Dave Wilson is in the process of laying off 14 members of his 89-person teaching staff. It appears the list will include the school’s librarian.

The Great Recession continues. Tax revenues are down, and with them school budgets.

To his credit, Clark County Superintendent Dwight Jones came up with a simple way to avoid these difficult layoffs. He proposed eliminating raises for existing teachers – simply leaving teacher pay where it was for two years, from 2011 to 2013.

Many in the private sector would love to be making what they were a few years ago. But the Clark County Education Association – the teachers union – turned down Mr. Jones’ proposal. Instead, they demanded raises, went to arbitration and won.

That means the average cost of a Chaparral teacher will go up by more than $4,000 this year – from last year’s average of $69,000 to an average of $73,000.

Principals aren’t assigned a specific number of teachers. Instead, they’re given a dollar a mount with which to “buy teachers.”

Because the Legislature’s efforts to eliminate “last in, first out” layoff mandates have also been largely stymied by the union, the staffing problem is exacerbated when the youngest teachers – whose skills may be very high but whose salaries are lower because they haven’t collected so many seniority raises – are laid off, effectively raising the average cost of the remaining, older teacher corps.

As a result , class sizes in core academic subjects will go up from 33 to 41. In elective subjects, class sizes will be even larger.

Because an arbitrator ordered the school district to provide teachers with pay raises the system can’t afford, 1,015 teaching positions have been eliminated for the 2012-13 academic year, a reduction in force that will be felt on every campus.

And these losses were completely preventable.

Mr. Jones wanted to save every last one of these teaching jobs. If teachers had agreed to a pay freeze – as school administrators, police and support staff did – the school district would be hiring right now. Instead, the raises demanded by the unions will cost $64 million next year – enough to cover 1,000 jobs.

The 2013 Legislature must take steps to fix this mess. Dump seniority-based layoffs. Give school districts flexibility in times of fiscal stress; let them decide what their class sizes should be. Stand up to the teachers union.