As the stipends for teachers in special education and Title I schools come to an end, a new bill in the Nevada Legislature could revive extra pay for hard-to-fill positions.

Assembly Bill 398 would provide additional compensation to teachers in hard-to-fill positions on a monthly basis. It defines hard-to-fill positions as teachers in a Title I school with a vacancy rate for teacher positions of 15% or more for high school, 12% for middle schools and 10% for elementary schools. It also includes teachers who work in special education or subjects suffering from a critical labor shortage.

Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, who sponsored the bill, said that it provided a “targeted solution” to address teacher vacancies.

“Our children perform better when we have qualified teachers in every classroom, and by providing additional compensation for hard-to-fill positions, we are making an investment in our children, ensuring every student has access to a high quality education, no matter where they live,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

Teacher vacancies are far higher among Title I schools, which are low-income schools that receive federal funding. Of the school district’s 700 teacher vacancies, 570 are in Title I schools, Interim Superintendent Brenda Larsen Mitchell told the State Board of Education in January.

The bill’s text said that the compensation was a “temporary solution to ameliorate the urgent problem of high teacher vacancy rates, which are detrimental to student outcomes.”

The bill, introduced last week, comes as the stipend for Title I and special education teachers ran out before reaching the full $5,000 amount.

CCSD and the union, the Clark County Education Association, agreed last year to allocate a limited amount of funding to giving raises to those educators. Starting July 2024, all licensed employees working in special education or Title I schools with a 5% or more vacancy rate received an additional $5,000 spread over 24 pay periods in a pro-rated amount. It was set to end when the money ran out.

Employees received an email on March 7 that the money would be coming to an end in March and April, depending on different employee groups. That means that employees will not receive the full $5,000.

Last week, CCEA Executive Director John Vellardita said that the stipend had positive results in reducing vacancies. There was a 53% reduction in vacancies in Title I schools and 26% reduction in special education when the school year started in August, Vellardita said.

He and Vicki Kreidel, president of the National Education Association of Southern Nevada, both worried that without the stipend, teachers would leave those roles.

The money for this bill will come from the State Education Fund, provided through legislative appropriation from the State General Fund. It will cost $50,287 for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, and $63,744 for 2026-2027, according to a fiscal note document provided by the Nevada Department of Education.

At Tuesday’s press conference, CCEA President Marie Neisess thanked Yeager, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro and the other legislators who had worked to improve teacher pay.

“Our top priority is ensuring every classroom has a qualified teacher,” Neisess said.

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