A man with a Clark County Education Association union T-shirt is removed from a Clark County School District meeting after causing a disturbance at the Greer Education Center Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. The teachers union (CCEA) and CCSD are currently in contract negotiations.
Friday, Aug. 25, 2023 | 4:24 p.m.
Teachers no closer to a new contract and their desired raises are set to meet Saturday to vote on “work actions.”
Clark County Education Association leadership announced about a month ago that the union was giving the Clark County School District a deadline set for Saturday to have a contract the union felt it could ratify or members would decide on whether or not to take “work actions.”
But after several bargaining sessions, the last one occurring Aug. 18, and other recent dramas –a Thursday school board meeting where union members again loudly interrupted until two teachers were cited for disorderly conduct, and a Tuesday hearing in Clark County District Court where the school district sought but failed to get an injunction to block any strike – there is no contract yet to ratify.
At Thursday’s school board meeting, like at the Aug. 10 school board meeting, the union brought several hundred protestors, most of them in matching blue union T-shirts, to demonstrate along and occasionally in Flamingo Road outside of the School Board meeting space. (A CCSD Police spokesman estimated Thursday’s crowd at about 1,500 people.)
Inside, President Evelyn Garcia Morales completed routine meeting-opening tasks, and the board was about to start public comment on agenda items, when a teacher started a chant of “CCSD is on fire, Jara is a liar.” Dozens of people in the room wearing union shirts joined in.
Garcia Morales immediately called for security to ask the teacher to leave. The police and private security presence was even more visible than at the prior meeting, when top district staff and Board members left the room twice amid union chants and heckling.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we don't want a repeat of last week,” she said, barely audible over the continuing chants. “This is a business meeting. We cannot conduct business. CCEA is clearly interrupting (the) business of our organization. It is very clear that CCEA has intentions to ensure that we do not conduct this meeting.”
Police approached the woman who started the chant and appeared to talk to her for a few minutes before leading her out of the room in handcuffs.
“He’s gonna pull me out!” she shouted.
“You are interrupting a business meeting. This is disruptive conduct,” Garcia Morales said.
A man who repeatedly called out “sinverguenza” – Spanish for “scoundrel” – was also cuffed and taken out. The two teachers were cited and released, but they were not arrested. A district spokesman said they were cited for misdemeanor disturbance of a meeting; a photo of the ticket the woman posted to social media showed a citation for disorderly conduct.
Another teacher, the union vice president, was removed from the room but not arrested or cited after approaching the speaker's podium to chide the board, overtaking a parent waiting to speak on an unrelated matter.
After the three teachers were removed, many audience members heeded two of their colleagues’ urges to leave. The union then rallied in the parking lot. From there, the meeting went on largely uneventfully.
The union has staged several rallies in recent weeks as it remains at odds with the district on a new contract.
Among other demands in the bitter negotiations, CCEA is seeking 18% across-the-board pay raises over two years. The union is also seeking additional compensation for special education teachers, teachers in high-vacancy, typically low-income schools, and an increased pay rate for teachers working extended-day hours at certain campuses.
CCSD has offered 10.5% raises across the board over two years, additional pay for certain special education teachers and teachers in “hard-to-fill” positions, plus placement on a proposed new pay scale that the district says emphasizes college education and years of experience more than the current scale. Reclassification on the pay scale would be by request only, but the district has said that it could result in significant pay increases. CCSD has also proposed lengthening the school day, and thus teacher contract time, by 19 minutes.
Union leadership has suggested “working to rule” as a kind of work action, meaning teachers would only work the 7 hours, 11 minutes a day specifically outlined in their current contract and not taking on additional work. CCSD, in a lawsuit filed in July, has argued that “work action” is a veiled threat to strike, which is illegal for public school teachers and other local and state government employees in Nevada. (As of Tuesday, a judge said the district’s charge was premature.)
Saturday’s union meeting is set to take place at Cox Pavilion at UNLV.
