By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org
    
LAS VEGAS – Nevada’s Clark County School District is expected to begin reinstating hundreds of teaching jobs it was forced to cut last year due to expensive salary requirements for veteran teachers.
    
Arbitrator Jay Fogelberg ruled late last week that the nation’s fifth-largest school district does not have to continue giving teachers a pay raise based on the terms of a contract that expired after the 2011-2012 school year. Fogelberg’s decision reverses a previous arbitrator’s ruling, and will save the district about $38.6 million over the next two years, reports the Las Vegas Sun.
    
“Last school year, the cash-strapped district cut 1,015 teaching positions to offset the cost of teacher pay raises forced on the district by a different arbitrator’s ruling on the 2011-12 contract,” reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
      
School officials say the decision will allow the district to bring back about 415 of those teaching positions. And the jobs appear to be back for good, because teacher salaries will remain frozen until a new contract is in place, which could take months or even a few years to negotiate, reports the Review-Journal.
    
In his ruling, Fogelberg said his decision was impacted by the larger class sizes that have resulted from the pay raises. He indicates that he was influenced by district leaders’ “good faith” assurances that the savings will be used to add new teachers.
    
“The budgetary constraints have created teacher-student ratios in Clark County that, by most any form of measurement, have resulted in an evisceration of quality education,” Fogelberg wrote in his ruling, according to the Sun.
    
Even though Fogelberg’s decision will result in hundreds of more teaching jobs (and union dues payers), and presumably lower class sizes, the Clark County Education Association viewed the ruling as a defeat.   
    
Being the masters of spin that they are, teacher union leaders will use the ruling to help make the case for their two percent margins tax increase proposal – purportedly to help fund K-12 education – that is currently being considered by state lawmakers.
     
“As long as the Legislature doesn’t adequately fund public education, school districts will continue to have challenges to meet the needs of the student population,” CCEA Vice President Vikki Courtney told the Sun. “This ruling is a wakeup call for teachers, and it should be one for CCSD and the community.” 
     
While the district’s 17,000 teachers and licensed staff members won’t have to repay the part of the raise they’ve already received, they will go back to 2011-12 pay levels later this month.
    
The news isn’t all glum for union members. Fogelberg’s ruling also relieved teachers of their responsibility to pay roughly $360 in annual contributions to the union’s retiree health trust account, which is flush with cash, reports the Review Journal.