Back to school: CCSD battles absenteeism, safety ahead of new school year

The new school year begins Monday morning after a summerlong effort by the Clark County School District to fill classroom vacancies, battle chronic absenteeism and improve safety.

Despite labor shortage challenges, district officials say they are entering the new year with a positive attitude. A decline in student enrollment and uptick in teacher vacancies have both stabilized as 294,000 students return to classrooms with teacher vacancies falling to just over a thousand short of the desired numbers.

“We’re extremely excited. To all our educators, support professionals, licensed professionals and administrators — very grateful for the work that we are doing, the hard work to prepare for our students returning on Monday,” interim Superintendent Brenda Larsen-Mitchell said at Thursday’s board meeting.

Teacher vacancies

Teacher retention and recruitment have been top priorities for CCSD as it enters the 2024-2025 school year with approximately 1,030 classroom vacancies. CCSD has over 18,000 teacher positions in the district to fill every year.

District officials said 94 percent of classroom teacher vacancies have been filled, according to a number provided in late July.

The district is also proud of how it’s been able to keep teachers in the district, said Jason Ginoza, CCSD’s assistant human resources officer.

“It’s nice to know that 93 percent retention rate means that people want to stay, and that’s a nice data point or statistic to advertise when we’re looking to recruit people,” Ginoza said.

Chief Human Resources Officer RoAnn Triana said providing support to employees, a common curriculum across grade levels and new mentorship programs contribute to a high retention rate.

Teacher salaries

Angie Joye, 44, believes teacher retainment starts with a good salary. Joye has been teaching elementary school in the district for the past nine years, and teaches at Mountain View Elementary School.

In 2023, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo signed an educational funding bill into law that increased per-pupil spending and teacher salaries. Before the pandemic, the CCSD salary wasn’t competitive with California’s, but now, Joye feels it is. Retainment is headed in the right direction, she said.

“In the last two years, I feel like the district has been making moves to make the salary more attractive,” she said. “To retain teachers here, you’ve got to keep that salary competitive.”

Joye also identified educator satisfaction as an issue. She commended CCSD for working with the teacher’s union and the state legislature to improve that satisfaction, but there’s still work to do. CCSD and the state have to continue to “aggressively” fund education, she said.

For Joye, empty classrooms besides her own make it difficult for her to stay. Teaching a smaller class size is easier on the educators and promotes a desire to stay, Joye said.

“Recruiting is definitely important, but making sure we have a stable salary for teachers, and that teacher well-being plays a huge part of it. I think that will be what will keep teachers here,” Joye said. “All eyes are on CCSD.”

Student enrollment

Student enrollment has been gradually declining since the 2018-2019 school year, with the district dropping just below the 300,000 student threshold during the 2023-2024 school year.

CCSD projects enrollment will be at 294,667 students for the 2024-2025 school year, but that number won’t be finalized until months into the new school year.

District officials attribute the declining enrollment to lowered birth rates and in-and-out migration, calling Clark County a “transitory” place.

The COVID-19 pandemic also played a role in the declining enrollment rate, said Greg Manzi, an assistant superintendent.

But the decline has since stabilized.

“While we did have a decline — we were over 320 (thousand) at one period of time — we have since in the period of the pandemic maintained and been fairly stable with our enrollment,” Manzi said.

A national decline in birth rates is one reason for the drop, said Rick Baldwin, a district director who studies demographics and zoning. Students born in 2007 or 2008, before or around the Great Recession, are graduating high school or in their senior year. Those classes are around 25,000 students large.

While large numbers of students are exiting CCSD, smaller numbers are entering it, Baldwin said. Kindergarten classes entering the school system are only about 16,000 to 17,000 students.

For the past seven years, Clark County has seen a 1 percent annual decrease in birth rates, Baldwin said.

“We are projecting that trend is going to continue for several years,” he said.

Chronic absenteeism

Chronic absenteeism is defined as a student missing 10 percent or more of the total enrolled school days. The percentage of students who are chronically absent, which hit a peak in the 2021-2022 school year, has been gradually declining.

Although the district didn’t meet its desired target for absenteeism, overall rates have decreased across all student groups, according to a presentation delivered at Thursday’s board meeting.

UNLV professor and psychology Chair Chris Kearney attributes absenteeism to a number of issues, but again, the COVID-19 pandemic is a big player.

High levels of youth anxiety and depression compiled with a large social disconnect are two driving factors for absenteeism, Kearney said.

A spike in mental health issues occurred post-pandemic. Social anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts were already on the rise for adolescents, but the pandemic caused further negative impacts, Kearney said. As social media communication rose during the pandemic, so did feelings of isolation.

“People were not interacting socially with other people in real-life kind of settings, and that has largely lingered over the past few years,” Kearney said.

At the meeting, trustees approved a presentation about chronic absentee levels and trends. While chronic absenteeism in the district is still high, the trustees and district leadership noted it was headed in a positive direction.

Kearney agreed.

“The district has done a better job of that over the past year,” he said. “They just need better outreach efforts to families and students who have been out of school for a long period of time.”

The district’s attendance officers completed over 38,000 home visits during the 2023-2024 school year, with over 12,000 students maintaining perfect attendance throughout last school year.

Contact Ella Thompson at ethompson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @elladeethompson on X.