EDITORIAL: District bureaucrats brave the beach in search of new teachers

It’s a lot more fun to waste someone else’s money than your own. Just look at the Clark County School District’s recruiting efforts.

The community has heard for years that we are suffering a teacher shortage. There are more than 1,350 openings for licensed personnel, mostly teachers, on the district’s website. At Cheyenne High School, there are 31 openings. Carroll Johnston Middle School needs 26 more people. Tartan Elementary School in North Las Vegas wants to hire 11 more teachers, including two teachers in each grade from kindergarten through third grade.

The district should be doing everything it can to maximize recruiting efforts. That’s not happening.

As the Review-Journal reported this week, the district spent around $37,000 to send 17 staff members to Miami for a “recruitment” trip. The event took place during the week of Fourth of July.

The staff members, a mix of recruiters and principals, stayed at a beachfront hotel for five days. But they booked a conference room for just two half-days during that time. In total, district employees talked with two prospective hires. Neither filled out an application. Even the many district students who are struggling with math could tell you that doesn’t add up.

From the start of the past school year to the beginning of this one, district employees made almost 40 out-of-town trips. In most cases, just one or two employees went. Excluding employee pay, the cost of all out-of-state recruiting trips approached $160,000. That means the district spent almost a quarter of its total trip budget on this one unproductive Miami junket.

Not exactly a good return on investment — for taxpayers. But you can be sure the employees had a great time. And since they were spending someone else’s money, why would they concern themselves with the little details? That’s doubly true in this case. More than 75 percent of the cost was paid for by COVID money from the federal government.

Would this be acceptable in any privately run organization? Doubtful. The district’s response to this exposé was laughable.

“Although the district did not see the success it hoped for on this specific trip, CCSD continues to make major strides in recruitment,” a district official wrote in an email.

Perhaps recruitment officials just need to try a more exotic location. Maybe they’d have more success in the Bahamas or on a cruise ship next summer. Surely that’s where the would-be teachers are hiding.

Where’s the Clark County School Board? Inept, as usual. This is just another reminder that you can’t fix a broken, unaccountable system simply by dumping more money into it, even if those involved ended up with great suntans.