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Las Vegas-Area District, Teachers Union Make Deal, Avert Strike

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas-area teachers' union has struck a teacher pay deal Wednesday with the country's fifth largest school district that organizers say will avert a threatened teacher strike Sept. 10.

 

Members of the Clark County Education Association threatened to walk off the job next month over a dispute about paying teachers more for continuing education.

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Union leaders and the Clark County School District announced at a news conference late Wednesday that the district will fund the salary increase for continuing education, in addition to honoring a commitment for 3% raises and more money for health insurance.

 

The deal came days after the school district filed an emergency court motion to block the strike and have a judge issue an order against it. If the order was imposed, the striking union could have faced fines of up to $50,000 a day.

 

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Though the Clark County School District had initially maintained it did not have the money to fund all the initiatives, Superintendent Jesus Jara said Wednesday that the district was "trending better in our finances,"

something he credited to interest earnings and managers not filling some positions at the district's main office. He said the deal would not affect classroom sizes, which the district has committed to shrink.

 

The deal came days after the school district filed an emergency court motion to block the strike and have a judge issue an order against it. If the order was imposed, the striking union could have faced fines of up to $50,000 a day.

 

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The school district is the fifth-largest in the U.S. and has 18,000 teachers and 320,000 students.

 

The dispute follows similar teacher walkouts over low pay across the country in recent years and comes as teachers in Chicago are inching toward a possible strike in late September.

 

Gov. Steve Sisolak said last Friday that he was "really angry" with the situation and scolded the school district for failing to calculate how much money it needed to make column advancement payments, in addition to funding the promised pay and insurance increases.

 

The governor attended Wednesday's news conference and made a joke of forcing Jara and John Vellardita, the education association's executive director, to shake hands for the cameras.

 

The deal still needs to be ratified by the union's executives and the school district's trustees, but both sides say they expect that will happen soon.