60 CCSD support professionals reassigned at ‘surplus’ meeting

The Clark County School District reassigned 60 support professionals during a “surplus” meeting last week.

The district holds meetings twice a year — in the fall and spring — where employees are involuntarily transferred to other sites based on student enrollment.

For this spring’s surplus, the majority of the employees affected were Title I aides, according to the Nevada State Education Association, the parent organization that oversees the support employees union.

There were also approximately five to 10 campus security monitors affected, a union spokesperson said.

Next school year, dozens of schools will lose their Title I designation and federal funding, which provides extra staffing and resources to campuses that have a high percentage of students living in poverty, after the district decided to change the threshold for which schools qualify for that funding.

Surplus meeting on Friday

The surplus meeting was held Friday for support professionals, a job category that includes roles such as school secretaries, food service workers, campus security monitors, paraprofessionals and aides.

There wasn’t a spring surplus for licensed employees — which include teachers, school counselors and nurses — unlike previous years.

The nation’s fifth-largest school district, which has about 40,000 employees and more than 300,000 students, is facing staffing shortages and has seen its enrollment drop for five consecutive years.

As of Wednesday, its hiring website advertised 1,400 licensed job positions and 109 for support professionals.

Friday’s surplus meeting lasted nearly two hours. Each employee spoke with district staff in order to make their job selection from a list of open positions.

In total, 60 support professionals out of nearly 13,000 were part of the spring surplus, the district said in response to a Las Vegas Review-Journal inquiry.

Of those, 54 employees selected new positions, five selected no position and one separated from the district.

Changes are generally for next school year, but in some cases, could take effect sooner.

Employees with the least seniority are reassigned unless someone else volunteers. Those affected can choose from vacant positions they’re qualified and eligible for.

A common practice

The surplus process is common nationwide and dates back to the establishment of teachers unions, according to Bradley Marianno, an assistant professor of educational policy and leadership at UNLV.

Surpluses can be found in almost every collective bargaining agreement — though they may be called different things in different locations — and most unions and school districts negotiate on how to handle them, he said.

Marianno said members of the public may question why there is a surplus situation when they keep hearing about teacher and support staff shortages.

The reason? Growth is happening unevenly in Clark County, with some areas growing quickly and others losing more students, he said.

There’s also discussion to be had about whether seniority is the best way to determine who will be reassigned, Marianno said.

Legislature considers surplus bill

The Nevada State Education Association is pushing for a bill during the state legislative session related to surplus.

The union says contract language for procedures like surplus should take precedence over language in the state’s 2017 reorganization law, which was designed to give individual schools more control in areas like staffing and budgeting.

“SB251 would create a consistent application of the surplus process across the district and will help resolve any employee confusion with district work practices,” the union said in a statement.

A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed a statement about the majority of affected employees being Title I aides.

Contact Julie Wootton-Greener at jgreener@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2921. Follow @julieswootton on Twitter.