CCSD staff, teachers already feeling impact of budget deficit

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – Concerns are mounting over staff cuts at the Clark County School District as it deals with a budget deficit.

The district has yet to publicly say the amount of its shortfall. One school has already taken action to address the deficit, which is impacting an untold number of schools. There are more than 300 CCSD schools.

“Having to come to work and not knowing if this is going to be your job for much longer is stressful,” Marc Erbisch-Westcott said.

He’s a special education teacher at Don and Dee Snyder Elementary School located in the far southwest valley.

“Our support staff is also affected by this. A lot of them have lost some of the extra hours that they were working before, and so they have to try and make ends meet with a loss in their income because they’re not salaried employees. They’re hourly,” he said.

On Friday, CCSD Interim Superintendent Dr. Brenda Larson Mitchell issued a press release to district employees where she acknowledged there was a “central budget deficit.”

In that letter, Larsen Mitchell stated an 8% raise in teacher salaries that was agreed upon last December wasn’t included when the current budget was approved earlier this year.
Erbisch-Westcott says his principal has started to make adjustments to reflect that.

“We’re looking at having some teacher surplus. We’re not able to afford in our budget the number of teachers we have on staff right now,” he said. “There’s one less teacher in that grade level which means all the classroom sizes go up.”

He said the practice of surplus is when a teacher is moved to another school.
Nevada Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert was at a Las Vegas elementary school for an event on Tuesday when 8 News Now asked her about CCSD’s financial situation.

“We need to understand what has transpired, right? Understand what the root causes are. We hear different things are going, and so looking into where the district is with the allocation of the funds,” Ebert said.

“Do you have any faith that the current leadership in the district will be able to solve this?” Reporter Joshua Peguero asked.

“You said we were going to talk about Pre-K, Joshua,” Ebert responded.

Governor Joe Lombardo announced last week he would investigate CCSD’s budget issues.
Nevada lawmakers approved a record $12 billion investment into state schools last year, with CCSD getting a huge chunk of that.

The district’s budget problems led to the departure of former Chief Financial Officer Jason Goudie, who said last Friday he was fired without cause.

The interim superintendent stated in her press release that CCSD is working to identify and correct all budget issues as quickly as possible.

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