We probably have enough problems with America’s public schools at the moment without dumping any more onto the pile. Many schools, particularly in New York, are being overrun by migrant children, forcing the children of citizens into overflow classrooms. Math and reading scores are plummeting to disastrous levels in many places. And that’s just in the schools where they are still recording grades for everyone. Some schools are trying to do away with grades as part of the war on merit. But now, out in southern Nevada, parents are facing yet another problem. The teachers in Clark County School District don’t want to show up for work because they claim they’re not being compensated well enough. But it’s illegal for public employees (including teachers) to go on strike in Nevada. So they’ve organized a “sickout” just as the new school year is starting, with so many teachers calling out that some of the schools simply had to close. The Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board describes some of the details and proposes solutions if the districts are bold enough to take action.
Southern Nevadans are learning firsthand why it’s illegal for public employees to strike.
On Wednesday, the Clark County School District returns to court seeking to stop a wave of school closures caused by teacher sickouts. Over the past two weeks, seven schools have closed for a day. That includes four schools shuttered Tuesday. Two other schools managed to keep their doors open despite a large number of teacher absences.
The details provided by the district in its court filing leave no doubt this is an organized effort. On Tuesday of last week, 29 of the 33 teachers and other licensed personnel at Gibson Elementary School called in sick.
So seven schools in the district were forced to shut down for at least one day because not enough teachers showed up. 29 teachers at a single elementary school out of 33 total stayed home. Last Friday, 29 of the 40 teachers at one elementary school stayed home as did 26 of 40 at another elementary school. This isn’t just impacting the education of the students (though it clearly will), many of whom are already still behind the curve from the pandemic. There are parents who are scrambling to find daycare on short notice so they can make it to work, driving up their costs further during a time of rising prices.
This is happening in a state where voters only recently agreed to increase education spending by more than $2 billion. (And Nevada isn’t that heavily populated compared to New York.) It’s all the work of the local teacher’s union.
This is not dissimilar to what happened last year in Oakland, California. More than 500 teachers called in sick, forcing 12 schools to close. They obviously weren’t sick because they all showed up at a street protest that day. They claimed that they didn’t feel “safe” because of COVID, despite most of the rest of the schools in the country already reopening and vaccinations being available for all of the teachers, including head-of-the-line privileges. Was anyone punished for that? No, they were not.
Perhaps things will be different this time. The union in Nevada was already taken to court once over this. At the time, no legal action was taken against them, but a district court judge warned that if disruptions took place, they could be coming back to face consequences. And those consequences may be on the way soon. As the Review-Journal points out, it isn’t just official strikes by public employees that are illegal in Nevada. The applicable law forbids any group concerted absence from work “upon any pretext or excuse, such as illness, which is not founded in fact.”
Unless the local hospitals in that district have been filling up at record rates or a new outbreak of the bubonic plague has been detected, that union is going to have a lot to answer for. The union officials should be the first ones marched into the courtroom. But after that, the “sickout” teachers could be brought in as well. That may seem a bit excessive, but if they’re not going to show up at school anyway, they might as well cool their heels in a cell for a bit. That sort of experience can bring about great clarity of mind for some people.
