It’s hard to take teachers’ cries of poverty seriously once you know their salaries.
The Clark County School District (CCSD) and the Clark County Education Association are locked in negotiations over teacher pay. To build support for their cause, many teachers have publicly denounced how little they earn.
One example is kindergarten teacher and union executive board member Kristan Nigro. She has worked for the district for about a decade. She sounds like a caring teacher and even helps run a school garden. Good for her. But she is very upset about her salary. This summer she drove for Uber Eats to help pay her bills.
“No educator should have to do that,” he complained.
Quick: Imagine how much Nigro earns.
Let’s put it in this context, the 2021 median household income in Clark County was $63,700. That’s for households, not individuals. Given this, you would expect Nigro to only make $40,000 or $45,000 a year. No.
In 2021, he earned $66,500 in pay, according to the priceless Transparent Nevada. Her total compensation was $92,700. Unlike most other full-time employees, teachers have a portion of the summers off.
She is not alone. Kelly Edgar is a long-time district music teacher. In a recent opinion piece, she spoke in very personal terms to push the union’s wage demands forward.
“I didn’t become an educator expecting to be rich, but I’m not a martyr,” she wrote. “It is not unreasonable for someone with specialized training and advanced degrees to insist on a living wage so that we can own a home, pay for food and health care, and support our families without the need for a second job.”
Edgar earned over $100,000 in salary in 2021. His total compensation exceeded $138,000. He is right about one thing. She’s not a martyr, even if she wants you to think that she is.
Then there’s Chris Percy. He is a teacher at Fremont High School. His wife is a kindergarten teacher. They have two kids.
“Between the two of you every pay period, you’re pooling pennies to try to make it last until the next paycheck,” he said.
Assume that both he and his wife earn minimum teacher wage. That means your household income is more than $100,000 a year, plus benefits. If he makes six figures a year in Clark County and saves pennies, he has a spending problem. The solution is a book by Dave Ramsey.
I can already read the emails of those who disagree and keep sending them. I like to listen to all my readers. “How dare you attack the teachers?” and “You must hate teachers.”
Let me just say that those claims are skirting the issue. It would be one thing for these teachers to seek more money based on their high performance, longer school days, or willingness to teach in difficult schools. But that’s not what they’re doing. They are crying out for poverty in a dishonest attempt to harness the public’s goodwill towards their profession.
Another likely objection is: “You should write about the administrators union and their 10 percent raise.” That’s another attempt to change the subject. The teachers’ union, not the administrators, is the group threatening “labor action.”
For the record, managers shouldn’t have a union. Paying people a lot more to do the same thing is a waste of money. Given Nevada’s collective bargaining laws, that level of increase was likely inevitable. The district was right to cap next year’s raise for administrators at 2 percent.
The district is also prepared to give substantial raises to teachers as a whole. But he wants to move teachers to a traditional salary schedule, which he had before 2016. That would help most teachers earn more. But it is more complex than a general increase.
As educators say: Knowledge is power. No wonder teachers who demand a “living wage” don’t want you to know that they are already living on far more than most taxpayers.
