Teachers union escalates fight with school district

The teachers union has suspended its joint ventures with the Clark County School District in an escalating public relations battle over contract terms, according to two recent union letters to the superintendent and School Board.

The letters were sent in response to Las Vegas Review-Journal stories published Sunday about the huge salaries drawn by union officials and the union's questionable spending of $2.4 million in taxpayer funds. The Clark County Education Association accuses the district of trying to conduct a smear campaign through the media.

"You have chosen this path," union President Ruben Murillo wrote on Feb. 29 to Clark County School District Superintendent Dwight Jones.

Murillo contends that Jones has "embarked on a calculated campaign to smear Clark County Education Association's reputation and bargain through the media in order to force teachers to accept concessionary demands."

The parties are deadlocked over the terms of a new contract for teachers. The union is fighting to protect pay raises awarded to teachers for continued education and seniority. The district argues it needs teachers to take a pay freeze -- as other employee groups have done -- to save $78 million over two years and balance the district's budget.

However, the matter is out of both parties' hands.

An arbitrator will decide on the contract, and nothing either side says or does now will have an effect because arbitration hearings have concluded.

"Turning their back on the district only does a disservice to the hardworking teachers who pay to be represented by the union," said district spokeswoman Amanda Fulkerson on Friday in a statement responding to the union letters.

Teachers pay $768 each annually to be union members, and about 12,000 out of 17,500 nonadministrative licensed staff belong to the union.

The union's withdrawal from collaborative efforts comes as the district reforms how it judges teachers' effectiveness and develops standards that will replace the decade-long pass/fail system of No Child Left Behind. Until now, union members have been on every committee to represent teachers' interests in molding the district's reforms.

Last week, the district unveiled its new School Performance Framework, which ranks every elementary and middle school from one to five stars. High schools soon will be ranked too.

Murillo served on the committee to create the ranking system. However, he and some teachers have objected to being ranked, contending it causes competition and not collaboration, which is the district's goal.

"We intend to keep teachers engaged and informed as we move our reform plans forward," Fulkerson wrote, even if "their union bosses would rather choose to leave them in the dark. It's time to put student achievement first and stop passing blame for bad adult behavior."

The questionable behavior she refers to is that of current and former union leaders.

The most current figures, for 2009, show the teachers union spent 36.3 percent of its $4.1 million budget on nine leaders. Such compensations, ranging from $139,785 to $208,683, aren't business as usual.

Five teachers unions for the country's six largest school districts spent 3 percent to 7 percent of their budgets to compensate their leaders in 2009, according to their reports. That same year, then-Executive Director John Jasonek earned $632,546 in compensation for running the union and two related organizations.

Murillo and current Executive Director John Vellardita originally defended Jasonek but changed their position on the union website after the Review-Journal's stories were published. Murillo wrote that Jasonek's compensation was "excessive" and that the union has "no justification" for it.

Murillo did not return calls for comment Friday.

In his website posts, Murillo did not address a district request for an accounting of how $2.4 million in taxpayer money was spent.

The district gave the money to the Clark County Education Association's Community Foundation to run continuing education programs for teachers from 2006 to 2011. But Jones said the district hasn't received "reliable accounting" for how that money was used. Jones has ordered legal counsel to review the matter.

In Murillo's Feb. 29 letters to the district, he attempts to push a wedge between the superintendent and Clark County School Board members by alleging Jones had fed information to the newspaper. He asserts that this will make it "difficult to cooperate" with the district.

"We ask you (School Board), is this what you want?" Murillo asks.

Fulkerson dismissed his accusations. Anyone can get the union's financial reports to the Internal Revenue Service online, and the documents that the district did provide were simply responses to the Review-Journal's public information requests, she said.

"We are a taxpayer-funded entity and must follow the Freedom of Information Act," she said.

Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.