Teachers, support professionals and most police officers in Clark County School District will receive additional raises as soon as May with today’s lawmaker approval of CCSD’s $173.8 million allotment under a special state fund to boost educator salaries.
The state Interim Finance Committee unanimously approved CCSD’s request for its share of the $250 million set aside under Senate Bill 231, which was passed and signed into law last year.
Teachers account for $114.7 million of CCSD’s total award. Support employees get $58.1 million, and front-line CCSD Police officers get just over $1 million. The district submitted its request on behalf of all eligible employee groups at once.
SB 231, passed in June 2023, dedicated $250 million statewide for raises for public school teachers and support workers like classroom aides, clerical staff and bus drivers across Nevada. (Under the law, district police officers are also considered support staffers.) The state proportionally allocated $173.8 million to CCSD and left it up to the district and its unions to divide it among eligible employee groups.
SB 231 raises are in addition to salary adjustments included in contract renewals. They last through June 2025 unless lawmakers renew the funding source, a note that CCSD made in contracts about all SB 231 raises.
Today’s approvals close a loop that CCSD opened late last fall — during a year of contract talks with all of its employee groups, including pugilistic negotiations with its teachers union — when it submitted a request for support staffers only to be considered in December. At the time, the Education Support Employees Association was the only union for eligible employees that had settled a new contract with CCSD.
But despite the package following previously issued state guidance, the committee deemed the application “incomplete” because it didn’t also include CCSD’s request for teacher raises.
“I know that you know that it was very important to this committee that all employees within the school district — support staff and our educators — were taken care of, and that's why decisions were made at our previous IFC meetings to make sure everyone was included in a fair manner,” Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno, D-North Las Vegas, the committee chair, told CCSD representatives today.
The Interim Finance Committee — a body of state lawmakers that makes various funding decisions between Nevada’s regular biennial legislative sessions — generally meets every other month. CCSD did not have another application complete in time for the February meeting, when the committee last considered districts’ requests. A CCSD spokesman has said that all representatives of eligible employees were amenable to building a unified package for the April meeting, based on the timelines of negotiations and finalized contracts.
All CCSD unions have since settled their contracts.
Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, who sits on the finance committee, told CCSD leadership today it was “disappointing that it has taken so long to get you all here for all of these things.”
“It is very difficult to be in a position where we have gone half of a school year without contracts for teachers and for support staff. They are doing an impossible job,” she said. “As a product of the Clark County School District myself, I think that we owe them better than that.”
ESEA settled in August, before classes resumed this year. CCEA settled later in December and the Police Officers Association in March.
With today’s approval, all teachers in CCSD will get salary bumps of 1.875% starting in May to restore last year’s state-levied increase to employee contributions to the state retirement system. These raises will be retroactive to February or March, depending on an individual’s annual contract start date.
Additionally, special education teachers will get $5,000 increases to base pay, as would teachers at high-poverty schools that have a 5% or more vacancy rate. The $5,000 differentiated pay will start in August or September, depending on start date.
All support professionals will get across-the-board 3% salary increases starting in June and retroactive to January. “Hard-to-fill critical positions” — a category that includes aides in special education programs and workers in the skilled trades — will also receive $4,250 salary increases starting in July.
All front-line CCSD police officers will get 4.1% salary increases. These raises begin in July.
The finance committee also approved Esmeralda County School District’s $155,573 request today. Esmeralda County is Nevada’s smallest school district, serving fewer than 100 students.
The finance committee divided the 17 county school districts’ maximum proportional allotments in August and started approving SB 231 disbursements in October. Only the rural Mineral and Pershing county schools have yet to come before the IFC for their shares.