By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

Local school administrators found themselves scrambling last week to institute deep cuts to staffing being handed down by the Clark County School District (CCSD) central office. The proposed cuts will affect more than a dozen local teachers adding up to a loss of about one quarter of the teaching staffs of local schools. Other positions will also be cut including key school administrators and support staff.

The general extent of the budget cuts were formally announced at a meeting of the CCSD Board of Trustees on Thursday, March 24 in Las Vegas. Under the proposal, school employee salaries would be slashed by 7.4 percent, 2500 staffing positions would be cut, and class sizes would increase as part of a plan to save the CCSD nearly $411 million for 2011-12.

Local school administrators were notified late last week of what the cuts would mean for their specific school staffing. They were asked to submit school staffing plans for next year so that affected teachers and staff could be notified of being surplused.

Though the cuts were not a surprise, the extent of the cuts and impact that they would have on local schools came as a shock to local administrators.

“I certainly expected cuts and I knew they would be painful,” said Mack Lyon Middle School principal Rod Adams. “But what actually hit us was much worse than I expected.”

Lyon will be losing three teaching positions in addition to the school’s computer/technology specialist. This amounts to about a quarter of the school’s staff, Adams said.

“If you take one or two positions away from us, it hurts but we can absorb it,” Adams said. “But if you cut four, that has a huge impact at the school.”

Adams said that the number of electives offered to students would likely be affected. But he said he was committed to keeping the school’s music programs including strings and band.

“I’m a great believer in preserving the arts and music in schools,” Adams said. “But to keep something like band, we have to make cuts to core subjects. That means class sizes go up. It all ends up trickling down to quality of education.”

Moapa Valley High School administrators, aided by the school’s governing Empowerment Committee, had been preparing for deep cuts for the past two months. The school had already prepared for an estimated reduction of $125,000 from CCSD and for the loss of $300,000 of a three-year private grant from the Lincey Foundation that expires this year. Under that scenario the committee had already planned to cut the school’s Dean position, two of its three counselors, a teacher and a support staff position. Despite these cuts, all academic and elective programs at the school had been preserved.

But Thursday, the Committee met for three hours in a special call meeting to discuss an additional $275,000 that now had to be cut from the staffing budget. Three more teaching positions and two support staff positions were cut from the school’s staffing. The school’s Foods and Culinary program, a popular elective offering, was cut entirely for next year. In addition the MVHS Choral Music program was also cut. Other elective programs were preserved by re-arranging and stretching existing staffing at the school. One core teaching position, from the social studies department was also cut.

The committee was able to preserve the school’s block schedule by adding another class to faculty teaching schedules. This kept class sizes from increasing significantly. But it also put more burden on teacher. said MVHS Principal Grant Hanevold.

“We are asking an awful lot of our teachers,” Hanevold said. “We are expecting them to work more, have less support from office staff, do more monitoring of hallways because we have less coverage there; and on top of all of that, they will get a 7.4 percent reduction in salary right off the top. It is a pretty dark time to be a teacher.”

Perkins Elementary in Moapa will be losing two of its teachers according to principal Ken Paul. This will require the school to raise class sizes, especially in younger grade levels, Paul said.

But at a small school like Perkins the average class size numbers, often quoted by the district, can easily be thrown askew. Paul explained that, because of various initiatives, average classes sizes in grades 1 and 2 have been in the range of 16 students per teacher. The district is instituting an increase on this to 19 students per teacher next year and 21 in the year following.

“A lot of people look at that and think that it isn’t that big of a deal,” Paul said. “But at a small school like Perkins, it means we lose a teacher. That means that instead of 16 kids in the class, we suddenly have more like 30. To get to the point where we could get another teacher back we have to be pushing 36-38 students in the class. Once we’ve lost that teacher, it is really hard to get it back.”

Perkins also would lose its Literacy Specialist position. This specially trained position provides support to teachers, provides more individual and tailored instruction to students in reading/writing and helps arrange special learning experiences for students. “Last week we had a very successful Science Day,” Paul said. “Our students had a lot of fun with hands-on interactive learning. That was coordinated by our Literacy Specialist. Without that position, those types of things just won’t happen the same way.”

Grant Bowler Elementary School in Logandale also received significant staffing cuts. Principal Shauna Jessen said that the school would be losing six teachers in the proposed cuts.

“Essentially, we will be losing one teacher in every grade level,” Jessen said. “That will mean significantly larger class sizes.”

The school will also lose its Literacy Specialist position and, possibly, its computer specialist position, Jessen said.

Jessen admits that, due to economic conditions enrollment at the school has been dwindling in recent years. She said that enrollment is down by about 100 students from about five years ago. “But we have been dropping teachers as that number has declined,” Jessen said. “We have lost four teachers over the years and that has kept us in line with the dwindling enrollment.”

Now losing another six teachers at this point will be painful, she said. “It is like a cut to the jugular,” she said. “And when you put that together with a 7.8% salary cut to teachers; well, let’s just say it is not a very healty way to cultivate student achievement.”

The proposed CCSD cuts are thought by many to be a worse case scenario. CCSD budget numbers won’t be finalized until the State Legislature finishes its work in June. But CCSD officials are required to present a budget by the beginning of April.

“If I were to make a prediction I’d say that we will probably get one or two of these positions back when we have our final budget in June,” said Hanevold. “But we are planning for the worst right now and hoping for better.”