Nevada School Districts Face Teacher Shortage Ahead of New School Year

Nevada is struggling to fill hundreds of teacher and staff positions as children get ready for the start of the new school year. The Nevada State Education Association estimates that there are still around 3,000 teaching positions open throughout the state’s 17 school districts.

The president of the Nevada State Education Association Dawn Etcheverry told ABC News, “We don’t have teachers for the classrooms, and I’m worried about lunch workers who aren’t going to be there to serve our kids meals that they need and have missed throughout the summer. And in our second-largest district, we don’t have bus drivers to start the school year. So kids will already go on a rotation of one week without a bus driver every four weeks.” 

Etcheverry, who is also a music teacher, explained, “It’s hard to spend time one on one teaching a child how to do a fingering on a recorder when you’ve got 40 sitting in your classroom. Or let’s talk about a geometry teacher in a high school who now has 48 kids and they’re trying to read all the proofs.”

The lack of staffing has forced schools to make difficult decisions, including upping class sizes. Clark County School District, which is home to about 320,000 students, has also increased teacher pay by $7,000 and offered $4,000 relocation bonuses to entice teachers from neighboring districts or outside the state. Other states are facing similar problems, with some rural parts of Texas implementing a four-day school week due to personnel shortages.

Join The Discussion

Related Posts
Total
1
Share