The reality of teacher pay in Las Vegas

Aquick read of Victor Joecks’ claims in his Aug. 13 column (“How much CCSD teachers make will surprise you”) deserves a direct response.

Mr. Joecks uses his pet website, Transparent Nevada, from his favorite conservative think tank, the Nevada Policy Research Institute, to lambast those of us most vocal about the tragic state of professional salaries in the Clark County School District. Evidently, those at Transparent Nevada use their own system to tabulate total compensation packages. Their idea of “total compensation,” includes nonmonetary benefits such as an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) under which you can call a counselor if you are struggling with mental health.

Anyone interested in a teacher’s actual contract rate can search for any educator on the Nevada Department of Education website. They offer a teacher look-up feature that took seconds to locate those of us listed in his opinion piece. None of us brings home what he claims we make.

Other information one will find on the department’s site are the total years of service (in Nevada), the number of licenses and endorsements and where that teacher is currently employed. You can see any complaints or infractions tied to those teacher licenses. Joecks clearly didn’t want anyone to know that teacher Kelly Edgar — whom he highlights as highly paid — is in her 28th year of service to this community. He also conveniently leaves out that many of us have professional degrees.

Joecks is intentionally misleading his readers with an apples-to-oranges comparison, comparing averages while leaving out specifics. He specifically targeted certain teachers for being vocal about negotiations. My wife and I, a two-teacher household with three master’s degrees between us, have yet to cross the six-figure threshold.

A search on Glass Door shows the average salary for a Review-journal reporter (four-year degree, no licensing requirement) is $58,173. The same site search for a teacher in Las Vegas reveals just $45,449. The title “teacher” includes pre-school teachers, who are notoriously underpaid in the field. That’s where more than three years of my wife’s experience comes from. That experience did not count toward her placement in the district. We’re fighting for a fair contract because the demands on teachers are a lot higher than being asked to write a misleading opinion piece three days per week. Our salaries lag those of local reporters.

Joecks also refuses to acknowledge the actual complaint we as teachers have about the district’s offer — which wasn’t made public to us until recently. District officials are offering 6.875 percent in terms of a raise. Yet they are expecting 4.4 percent more work to be added to our day, and an additional 1.8 percent contribution to the state Public Employees’ Retirement System to be taken out of our net pay. The net result is a 0.4 percent increase. Factor in real cost increases in the valley that sit above 5 percent and what we are being offered is the opportunity to continue moving backward financially. This is a trend consistent with our last contract negotiation where we had to fight the district for a meager 4 percent cost-of-living adjustment during record inflation levels due to the pandemic — the same pandemic we served through while our health insurance was failing to pay claims and doctors were running from our insurance in droves.

I can’t explain Joecks’ obvious hatred of teachers. He doesn’t have the education or credential to speak to the situation with credible experience. Not one of us is in the field of education to get rich. We’re educated and experienced professionals who have had more than enough of being misrepresented by our district. It seems we now have folks such as Joecks to contend with as well.