Clark County Schools Sends Layoff Notices to 1000+ Educators

When it comes to the world of working in public education it seems like all of the old rules are going down the drain. It used to be assumed that when you worked in any civil service job, but especially in certain safe jobs such as police, fire services or public education your job was relatively safe, provided you did not do anything that was deemed to be monumentally stupid.  After all the workers in public education have long enjoyed the protection of providing an essential community service. Most people are willing to go without a vacation or stretch their old car a little bit longer, but they are not wiling to let their children go without a proper education, because that sets them up for failure later on in life. Teachers have also long enjoyed the protection of strong unions that have negotiated them built in raises for their work, health care that is mostly paid for by their employer and tenure to further protect their jobs. On used to assume that a teacher, once hired had a job for life. That assumption can no longer be made for workers in school districts across the nation.

Those old assumption are dead. Governments from the top down are collecting less and less in the way of tax revenue while at the same time battling the rising costs of essentials such as power and gas. This means that they have less to give to their schools and smaller budgets, coupled with the same rising costs, has led to a situation where many schools are having to make job cuts in order to get by. Some districts have only had to make relatively modest cuts in order to get by while other schools are being forced by their situation to go a more drastic route when it comes to cutting back their budgets by reducing their staffing.

Well, it looks like this time the bad news is coming to the teachers in the Clark County School District and the news is fairly massive. The school district has voted to send out layoff notices to 1,015 educators in its school system. The layoffs are slated to impact both in classroom teachers and literacy specialists in the schools. The cuts break down in the following categories: 840 teachers and 175 literacy specialists. For the time being the school is not saying which teachers will be cut, or if certain programs or facilities can be expected to take the brunt of the cuts when the layoffs go into effect.

While these cuts do represent only about six percent of the total employees in the district who hold a license, it is more than likely a high percentage of the teaching staff, as schools hold many licensed workers inside their walls. All of this is being done in order to help the school district to shore up what is truly a monumental hole in their budget. The school has to make up about $64 million before the budget for the new school year goes into effect.