Clark County school cuts force dilemmas for principals

The school librarian or the auto shop class? One had to go.

"What do I do? It was a two-day tug of war," said Chaparral High School Principal Dave Wilson, swiveling toward the large whiteboard covering his office wall. He obsessed over the board for weeks after scribbling down the names of his 89 teachers.

One by one, he circled 14 names.

Those are the teachers he can't afford to bring back this fall. The cuts mean the end of photography, early childhood, fashion and food programs. Each core subject also will lose a teacher, increasing class sizes into the 40s and even 60s for senior government and English, Wilson said.

"Talk about gut-wrenching," he said.

The last and hardest cut to make - the librarian.

"You think of librarians as coming with the flagpole," he said, acknowledging the cut won't be popular.

But 180 students take auto shop.

"We're already running as lean as we can and have no money set aside to replace lost textbooks or broken technology," Wilson said. "My other budgets are zeroed out, so I can put every dollar toward instruction."

He's in a pinch shared by most of the Clark County School District's 357 principals, forced to make tough decisions after already having lost 1,015 teaching positions through attrition and mass layoffs at the end of last school year to cover the cost of mandatory teacher pay raises.

The district had sought to freeze all employee salaries in 2011-12 and 2012-13 to remedy a severe budget shortfall, but the Clark County Education Association was able to save pay raises for teachers in arbitration, costing the district $70 million.

The list of school-level cuts isn't finalized yet. Most schedules won't be completed until early August when principals return to school, said Karen Stanley, assistant superintendent for curriculum and professional development.

She didn't want to speculate on the extent of cuts to course offerings, as those decisions are made by each principal. But, she said, electives are usually the first to go because they aren't required classes.

In early June, the impact of one of the first cuts was protested by choir students on the sidewalk outside Arbor View High School in northwest Las Vegas.

"We had to cut a program," said Principal Kevin McPartlin, noting that choir had the fewest participants at 60 students. "We couldn't make class sizes go any higher and still expect positive things to happen in the classroom."

TURNAROUND SCHOOL SQUEEZED

One would think that Chaparral, of all schools, could have avoided cutting teachers and elective programs.

Chaparral was one of a few campuses exempted from the summer's mass layoffs. Superintendent Dwight Jones shielded Chaparral, near U.S. Highway 95 and Twain Avenue, because he didn't want to interrupt the school's "turnaround," funded by a federal program giving three years of grants to the poorest performing schools to replace principals and the majority of staff.

Starting in 2011, Chaparral received $1 million a year on top of normal funding for the turnaround. But that money must be used for professional development, among other things, and not spent on hiring teachers, Wilson said.

Turnaround school or not, Chaparral is being squeezed. The source of the squeeze is simple and universal. School budgets are shrinking while the cost of teachers grows.

The average cost of a teacher at Chaparral will go up $4,696 this school year, Wilson calculates . The increase is driven by two things: mandatory teacher raises and the resulting layoffs, which eliminated the newest, lowest paid teachers.

A teacher will cost about $73,000, on average, compared with last year's $69,000, he said.

Principals aren't given a set number of teachers at the beginning of a school year, but instead have a dollar amount to "buy teachers," Wilson said. And the district is giving schools fewer - making principals staff at 93 percent of expected student enrollment instead of 100 percent. Wilson has $864,000 less this coming school year than he normally would for personnel. His school budget is $7.65 million, with teachers the primary expense.

"Those are my numbers," Wilson said, walking into the photography classroom, stripped of all the equipment and top-of-the-line Apple computers. "I wish it were different."

NO LAYOFFS BUT FEWER TEACHERS

Las Vegas High School Principal Debbie Brockett, on the other hand, will be able to keep all of her school's electives and teachers after losing a physical education teacher in the mass layoffs. She lost positions but not people, doing so by not replacing teachers who resigned or relocated over the past year. But that will come at a price for the school at Sahara Avenue in far east Las Vegas.

Some teachers will be pulling double duty, such as her Spanish teacher, who is picking up French classes after that teacher left. Almost all teachers will have more students, increasing class sizes from 33 to 41 in core subjects. Electives will see even more students.

"It's played hell on our teachers," she said.

Brockett wonders whether the teachers, although willing, can endure.

"I'm worried about when October comes around and exhaustion sets in," she said, predicting that teachers with 15 to 20 years under their belts will "see the light at the end of the tunnel." Retirement.

But she's worried the newer teachers won't see relief ahead, leaving the school and profession.

"Every day, I look at my computer screen, hoping all my teachers are still there," she said.

'THEY COME FOR THE ELECTIVES'

For Wilson, he can't ignore the inevitable effect these cuts will have on Chaparral's turnaround, which started with a quick jump last year, graduating 100 more seniors over the previous year's 260 seniors. Police incidents decreased by 90 percent last year, causing Las Vegas police to call off its full-time unit kept in the area.

"I'd like to say that kids are excited to come for math and science," Wilson said. "They come for the electives. That's what they love about coming to school."

Wilson, however, is able to keep Chaparral's band program - the largest in the district with 600 students - orchestra, choir, ROTC, four foreign languages, art and all advanced placement courses.

But what if the district's budgetary problems worsen?

"What do you do?" Wilson asked. "What do I do?"

Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.