Bipartisan support for a bill to protect teachers advanced out of the Assembly. Hopefully, it will be amended for statewide application and not just Clark County.
Instructors would gain new rights
By ED VOGEL
REVIEW-JOURNAL CAPITAL BUREAU
CARSON CITY -- Fewer Clark County teachers will leave their jobs early because of rights they would gain in a bill that won unanimous approval Friday in the Assembly, its sponsor said.
"This will provide job security for teachers," said Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas. "In my experience, the morale (among teachers) is very bad. One reason is their salaries, and the other is they are tired of how they are treated."
Under Assembly Bill 459, teachers could bring a representative, such as a lawyer, with them when an administrator holds a hearing on their performance or discusses complaints against them. The hearings could be tape-recorded.
In addition, the bill would require the school district to develop a policy forbidding its administrators from "intimidating, humiliating, abusing or mistreating teachers."
Administrators who violate the policy would be subject to loss of pay and suspension.
Also, the school district could not transfer teachers to other schools as a form of discipline.
The bill would apply only to the Clark County School District.
The teachers bill of rights was one of about a dozen bills passed Friday in the Assembly. Members spent most of the day approving amendments to dozens of other bills on which they will vote Monday and Tuesday.
Under a legislative rule, most bills must pass one of the two houses of the Legislature by Tuesday night or they will be declared dead.
A lawyer who often represents teachers in disputes, Segerblom said during an earlier hearing that the Clark County School District hired 9,500 new teachers in the past four years. During the same period, he said it lost 6,000 teachers who quit, retired early or were fired.
"You want to treat the teacher with dignity and respect so they will stick around," he said.
Segerblom said he thinks his bill will win approval in the Republican-controlled Senate because all 15 Assembly Republicans backed the bill. He speculated teachers who feel they have been abused have been contacting all legislators.
In a floor speech, Assembly Minority Leader Garn Mabey, R-Las Vegas, said he hopes the bill will help teachers who for one reason or another have been deciding to leave the school district.
"If they work hard in that school, they deserve to stay in that school," Mabey said.
