The Clark County School District started another academic year Monday with new things to look forward to — and things that it likely wishes to leave behind.
First the new opportunities: The district opened a brand-new high school and a freshly rebuilt middle school, and launched a team-teaching model that could be the wave of the future.
And the challenges: Contract negotiations with the teachers union are ongoing and pressured by more than 1,100 teacher vacancies.
Superintendent Jesus Jara and other officials toured the sprawling district all day, starting with an early morning visit to one of the valley’s bus yards before greeting the first students to enter the doors at Northeast Career & Technical Academy, the district’s first vocational school in North Las Vegas.
NECTA, as the school is called, is CCSD’s ninth career and technical academy. It is launching with ninth and 10th graders, and its academic focus areas include architectural design and construction technology, energy technologies, auto technology, and medical professions.
“This is part of a bigger strategy,” Jara said. “We need to offer more choice.”
Jara said there are 1,200 students on the waiting lists between all of CCSD’s magnet schools, most of which have been recognized by Magnet Schools of America.
As for NECTA, which is near Fifth Street and the 215 Beltway, “it’s a long time coming for North Las Vegas. It’s really responding to the needs of our community.”
The first day festivities also included the annual Historic Westside tradition of having the students of Matt Kelly Elementary walk a red carpet into school; a stop at the rebuilt Fremont Middle School, which has served Las Vegas students since 1955; unveiling the new “book bus,” a bus converted into a book-filled mobile literacy center; a celebration of a $20,000 grant to teach science, technology, engineering and math at Goolsby Elementary; and a peek at a team-teaching model being piloted at Silvestri Junior High, among other middle schools districtwide.
At Silvestri, Jara and Principal Yvette Tippetts showed state Superintendent of Instruction Jhone Ebert how teachers were forming communities with each other and small cohorts of students with the “Next Education Workforce Model,” a model developed at Arizona State University and being rolled out here in six CCSD middle schools.
The 400-student sixth-grade student population at Silvestri is divided into groups of about 70 and assigned to a team of three teachers for their core subjects of English, math and science. In a conventional middle school structure, each teacher would have about 140 students throughout the day.
“It’s to problem-solve issues that we’re finding in education and how we can work smarter to solve some of the issues like lack of subs, like teachers feeling disconnected from their peers, and students also feeling like they’re in such a large space that they’re not connecting at a smaller level with both the employees, the teachers and the staff, and the (other) kids,” Tippetts said.
The program is designed to allow teachers get to know their students better and also to be able to cover for each other, she said. The model also leans on flexible physical space, such as wedge-shaped desks that push together like daisy petals, with everyone facing each other.
The Silvestri library was furnished with these desks, plus high-top tables with surfaces made of whiteboard material for working out lessons without paper and small tables and flat-screen monitors on wheels for different-sized earning groups.
“The teachers are really excited about it,” Tippetts said.
Jara said that this model could be good for teacher retention, as it is designed to improve working conditions, and could be the future of CCSD.
Teacher vacancies persist
The teacher shortage led administrators to reassign 53 certified teachers who had been working in the district’s central office back into classrooms, said Jara, noting that CCSD had 1,145 teacher vacancies as of Monday.
However, Jara said this academic year started with 17% fewer vacancies than the district experience at the conclusion of the 2022-’23 school year, which ended with nearly 1,400 teacher openings.
Some teachers wearing the blue T-shirts of the Clark County Education Association teachers union started the day outside of campuses with rallies calling on the district to settle a contact dispute. Among other areas of concern, the union is seeking, 18% across-the-board teacher raises over two years.
CCSD and CCEA remain locked in bitter negotiations that have the union suggesting “work actions” if a satisfactory contract isn’t ready by Aug. 26. CCSD officials have interpreted this as a threat to strike, which under Nevada law is illegal for public employees. The district has sued the union to prevent a work stoppage. A hearing is set in Clark County District Court for Aug. 22.
Jara said teachers were within their rights to stage the kinds of demonstrations they did before school on Monday.
However, “bargaining and the negotiations don’t happen in the picket line,” he said.
“They happen at the bargaining table and I welcome the leadership of CCEA to get to the bargaining table so we can get this job done so our teachers can get compensated as they deserve.”