Posted on 05/05/2012 4:02:32 PM PDT by rhema
Your raise or your job. That’s the choice facing members of the Clark County Education Association (CCEA), the union that represents teachers in Nevada’s Clark County School District (CCSD).
The district is facing a $78 million deficit for the 2011-13 budget cycle, and needs to freeze teachers’ pay in order to avoid laying off 1,000 teachers by April.
While most people would choose their job over a pay raise—as CCSD support staff and administrators have done—CCEA members have refused. An arbitrator will soon decide whether all teachers will take a pay freeze, or if some members will get paid raises while others get pink slips.
Union members have consistently argued “overpaid” administrators should be the ones to do with less—not teachers. But an investigative report from the Las Vegas Review-Journal reveals it’s CCEA leaders who have been out- earning everyone else.
“According to IRS reports from 2009, the most recent year available, the union paid more than one-third of its $4.1 million budget toward the salaries of nine leaders, with the lowest paid official making almost $140,000,” the Review- Journal reports.
That’s well above the 3 to 7 percent an average union spends on administrative compensation. John Jasonek, CCEA’s executive director at the time, “was paid almost $209,000, but received about $424,000 in compensation from two affiliated organizations, pushing his total pay past $632,000,” which was $274,000 more than CCSD’s superintendent earned, the paper reports.
The head of the Teachers Health Trust, a health insurance company owned and operated by the CCEA, earned $546,133 during 2009, according to the Review-Journal. (Ironically, teachers might not be choosing between raises or jobs if they had agreed to switch to a comparable, less expensive health insurance plan. But too many union friends were making too much money for that concession to be seriously considered.)
“We have no justification for the fact that former Executive Director Jasonek was able to triple dip, earning additional and excessive salaries,” CCEA President Ruben Murillo Jr. writes on the union’s website. He claims to have taken steps to ensure the practice doesn’t happen again.
Union officials have refused to provide the Review-Journal with current salary information but claim “the salary/ compensations of CCEA staff is standard.”
The Review-Journal summed up the situation in a recent editorial:
“...[T]eachers who don’t find value in the union’s services don’t have to pay dues because Nevada is a right-to-work state. But the union and its members no longer have any credibility in arguing that school administrators are overpaid. ... Is the union’s leadership overpaid? That’s for teachers to decide. If they weren’t aware that their union leaders are among the Valley’s highest earners, they are now.”
That should give teachers something to think about as they await the arbitrator’s decision.
In fact, that should give teacher union members all across the country something to think about. Because when it comes to union greed, what happens in Vegas... happens everywhere. Teacher unions control public education. ■
“According to IRS reports from 2009, the most recent year available”
Your government at work. Or not.
IIRC Obamie & Co no longer require wage statements from the unions.
I live in that dump Las Vegas for 10 year and watched how they used illegal aliens to suck money out of the public, not a big casino fan but glad to see them being build around the country just to see Las Vegas becomming nothing more than the dust bowl that it is.Suck on that Harry
Public school teachers union ping
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