LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Nearly a dozen Clark County School District staff members aired their grievances with the district to Governor Steve Sisolak at an education round table at SECTA Monday.
Many said they had been overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and were close to calling it quits with the district.
"Teachers are under a lot of stress," said Robert Taylor Elementary counselor Brittany Robertson.
Robertson had spent eight years as a teacher at CCSD before the burden became too much to bear and she switched to counseling.
She's still with the district, but moved out of the classroom during a nationwide teacher shortage.
"I had an average of 78 kids per class," she said, "and when you have a class that large there is always going to be a handful of behavior students."
Class sizes were a commonly cited problem, and, despite a significant bump in base pay for new teachers, pay for long-term teachers and aides remained a pressing issue in the room for people like Megan Carque, an early childhood education teacher.
"Our support staff. who work with kids who are the most needed population, are getting $14 an hour," Carque said. "You can make that at an In-and-Out Burger, and what's more important to our community?"
Carque called for significant funding reform at the state level to directly benefit teachers, something the legislature attempted to do by overhauling the state funding formula during the 2021 legislative session, but wasn't enough according to many educators at the table.
Robertson said she expected to face more problems in the long haul.
"This is something that's going to take a long time to figure out," she said. "It's not going to happen overnight."
Sisolak said he'd had his "eyes opened" by the conversation.
"I learned a lot," he said. " Number one, that our teachers are overworked, more overworked than I already knew they were overworked. They're underappreciated and they don't get enough say so in the education system."
Sisolak said he would have to address claims of funding making it to the district, but not impacting teachers, students, or classes themselves.
"It's not at the individual schools or the principals so much as above them," he said.
Sisolak's Republican opponent for Governor in the 2022 midterm elections, Sheriff Joe Lombardo's, team issued a statement following the round table blasting Sisolak's handling of education.
"Under Steve Sisolak, there has been a 46% increase in school violence within CCSD, and there are 1,400 open teacher positions within the school district," Spokesperson Elizabeth Ray wrote.
Ray's statement continued to criticize Sisolak's coronavirus shut-down policies.
"Steve Sisolak only cares about education in an election year," she wrote, "and his attempts to address it now are far too little, too late."
