CCSD Continues To Toll Budget-Loss Bell

(Lori Piotrowski) – At a packed meeting yesterday [March 24, 2011], parents, teachers, and a multitude of union members waited to hear what the Clark County School Board would decide. Where, oh where, would the cuts be?

We’ve learned the CCSD tune, and it’s a trendy little ditty. We must save the children, the children, the children! Yet, the second verse, that most people mumble through, says the opposite: We’ll cut the teachers, the teachers, the teachers! And the third, that nobody ever hears: We’ll keep the admin, the admin, the admin!

The economic budget bell has been tolling for months, and on the CCSD Web site this morning, the school system is still advertising big-bucks positions in the administration. The CCSD could decide to put a moratorium on hiring until they learn what the final budget will be, but it looks as if the administrative jobs are just too important to go unfilled.  

And while bemoaning the cuts to teacher pay and how students and teachers will suffer in larger classes, CCSD is looking to hire more teachers. Under the Licensed Personnel tab, CCSD is listing 27 types of teachers they’re looking to hire, along with five categories in Related Services. Yet, last night, the school board insisted that 2,500 jobs would be lost.

Maybe this is a case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing. But with the negative public voice CCSD puts on the budget situation, it’s difficult for us non-CCSDites to understand how they justify all these new positions.