EDITORIAL: Release teachers’ contract for review

The Clark County School District and the union that represents local educators last week reached agreement on a tentative contract that, if approved, averts an arbitration process that could have claimed hundreds of teaching jobs and undermined new K-12 initiatives.

So how did two sides so far apart only a few weeks ago finally hammer out a deal? How much will it cost? And what do the teachers and taxpayers who'll be forced to abide by it think of the terms?

No one knows, because no one has seen the contract. The school district and the union are deliberately hiding the deal from teachers and the public until Saturday. At that time, teachers will be given a brief opportunity to review the deal and then be required to vote on it. Only then will taxpayers be given an opportunity to examine the terms and tell School Board trustees whether the public, who'll be stuck with the bill, can afford it.

This is fundamentally wrong. Good public policy never results from secrecy.

Does the Review-Journal have the credibility to advocate for such openness? Not so much anymore. Last week, the newspaper was purchased by News + Media Capital Group LLC. It's previous owner, GateHouse Media, will continue operating the newspaper, but the investors behind News + Media Capital Group have declined to identify themselves. The lack of disclosure of the newspaper's new ownership group compromises this publication's ability to demand transparency of others.

It's difficult to ask the public to trust a newspaper that is unwilling to reveal its ownership and their ties to other private interests. Might the newspaper cover or ignore a story, or might this editorial page support a position, person or plan, because it directly benefits the Review-Journal's owners? We won't know.

The principals behind News + Media Capital Group LLC are under no legal obligation to reveal themselves. The newspaper is a private entity, not a public one subject to open meeting and public records laws.

However, like government, the newspaper's integrity depends on the public's trust. The only high ground we can claim is our decades-long advocacy for open government and access to public records. Our ownership might have changed, but our editorial position has not. And it clearly applies to the school district's negotiations with the CCEA.

One of the few provisions the union and the school district agreed on was a new starting teaching salary of $40,000 per year. A higher salary ceiling as part of the system's seniority-based pay scale also was being negotiated, as was a larger contribution from the district to teachers' health insurance premiums. That's a lot of new costs for a system with huge unfunded maintenance needs and other rising expenses. These are not developments that can be kept hidden or hastily considered.

The proposed contract should be released to the public today.