NEVADA VIEWS: Union games the system to keep teachers from leaving

Once every year, for 14 days, Clark County teachers are allowed to say no. The window from July 1-15 marks the only time in the entire year when teachers in Clark County Education Association can leave the union.

Even in the two-week interval, doing so is not straightforward — members must mail a physical letter to the union’s office stating their intent to drop the membership, or they must visit the office and fill out the letter on the spot. If teachers miss this window, they will be locked into another calendar year of membership, costing them $846.

No other membership — a gym, magazine, streaming service, etc. — traps their consumers into such a carefully engineered trap. You can cancel any of your memberships or subscriptions on a given Wednesday.

The narrow window does not come by accident. An organization that delivers services of value does not need to bury its exit door within fine print of policy and contracts. The truth is that, much like most teacher unions in the nation, CCEA has been treating its members as ratepayers constituting revenue, not professionals to be persuaded.

The union representing the fifth-largest school district of the nation, is now a politicized money operation predominantly funded by member dues that later flow into political action committees, lobbying and ballot fights, with student achievement rarely in the headlines. In 2024, CCEA reported total revenue of $11,124,607 with around $16.5 million in total assets. In the same year, CCEA Executive Director John Vellardita made $247,959 in base compensation which, added to the $32,438 in benefits, brought his total compensation to more than $280,000.

In addition to Vellardita, another five employees received six-digit salaries. The contrast is stark, as an early-career classroom teacher may not know how to prevent the $846 from being automatically deducted from his or her paycheck but the man who negotiated the two-week window makes a quarter million dollars annually.

Alongside fat salaries to union management, much of CCEA’s revenue ends up fueling the political cogs of the Silver State. In 2024, the union reported nearly $3.5 million in lobbying expenses — around 43 percent of the functional expenses of the organization that year. Additionally, political action committees associated with CCEA are also generous contributors to candidate campaigns. In just four years, the union’s Strategic Horizons PAC has donated more than $1.7 million to various super PACs. And that is just one of many channels the organization uses to ensure its political agenda remains heard in Carson City.

Despite their growing political influence, union membership rates have decreased in the district. Currently, the district boasts 19,495 licensed teacher personnel. While the total number of CCEA members is undisclosed, the amount of revenue from teacher dues suggests that they represent around half of the teacher body.

This is in line with a nationwide momentum following the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in the Janus v. AFSCME case. The court held that public employees do not have to pay or join a union as a condition of employment. What followed was a decline of union membership across sectors.

For the National Education Association specifically, this meant a loss of 203,263 members in five years, totaling more than 7 percent of its entire member pool. Much like their colleagues from other states, Nevada teachers have the chance to keep their hard-earned dollars in their own pockets.

Contrary to a common misconception, leaving the union does not result in a lack of representation for teachers, because the union has arranged to be the exclusive bargaining agent for the school district. In exchange for this monopoly, the benefits negotiated extend even to the teachers who are not members of the organization. Instead, for many educators, leaving the union really means refusing to bankroll an organization that prioritizes the paychecks of officials, donations to politics and late nights spent lobbying over student success.

The 14-day window was meant to keep teachers in. But it can just as easily let them out.

Anahit Baghshetsyan is a policy analyst at Nevada Policy.