Megan Griffard’s early education career included a stint teaching at Mojave High School before she left to pursue her doctorate out of state. She returned in 2022 to find the Clark County School District battling a staggering 1,367 vacant teaching positions. 

“When we were growing up, you were a career teacher. You could rely on it being a steady paycheck, decent benefits, good retirement and a fairly stable work environment,” explains the UNLV assistant professor and education policy expert. “Now, people who go into the profession of teaching don’t last as long because the job itself has gotten substantially harder. The public perception of teachers, especially after COVID, has gotten unfairly negative, and you also just can’t support a family on a teacher’s salary anymore.”

CCSD’s shortages remained above 1,000 through 2024, but the district is now reporting a stunning turnaround as it enters the 2025-26 academic year with 800 new teachers and just 280 reported vacancies. It’s an encouraging development, but some educators in the Valley are still sounding the alarm. 

Vicki Kreidel, an elementary teacher at Lomie G. Heard Elementary and former president of the National Education Association of Southern Nevada teachers’ union, is among those who continue to worry. The 23-year classroom veteran says the pandemic represented a “fundamental shift” in student behavior that only exacerbated the region’s classroom staffing woes. 

“So many educators that I know personally are looking for a way to exit teaching because it doesn’t feel like a safe place to be anymore. It takes time away from your family, and if you don’t have a family, you’ll have time to do nothing but work, even in the summers,” Kreidel says. “For many of us, the payoff isn’t enough to stay in the profession anymore.”

Kreidel and Griffard’s experiences are echoed in a 2024 fact sheet from the Learning Policy Institute that ranked Nevada in the bottom quintile of all U.S. states in categories like school vacancies, performance-related job insecurity, professional development resources, expenditures per pupil, and an abysmal average student-to-teacher ratio of 21-to-1. 

The analysis combines some of those metrics with federal and state data on working conditions and compensation to arrive at a composite “teacher attractiveness rating.” Nevada’s score of 2.2 ties Arizona and Colorado for second-to-last nationally, with only Florida’s 1.7 falling below that. 

Griffard acknowledges that Nevada policymakers and education leaders have come to recognize the issue and its many overarching causes. Still, she believes we’re still firmly in the middle of the modern vacancy crisis, especially at schools in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. 

Tim Hughes, executive director for the Nevada chapter of Teach for America—a national program that recruits and trains recent college graduates to teach in low-income communities—is among many local stakeholders who are working toward a solution.

“Twenty years in, we have 800 alumni still in Nevada, and 350 of them are still teaching in the classroom today,” Hughes says, adding that the last two years have yielded nearly 100 new teachers.

Having worked with Teach For America since 2009, Hughes was present when Griffard was a participant from 2012 through 2014. He recently touted the program at a July 31 CCSD teacher onboarding event at M Resort, alongside representatives from other professional development pipelines like the UNLV-based Nevada Forward Apprenticeship Program.

UNLV Associate Dean of Academic Programs and Initiatives Kenny Varner launched the Nevada Forward Apprenticeship Program in 2021 as a pilot with just 36 participants on the premise of providing free tuition and “removing the hurdles” that previously stifled their prospects for career advancement. It now serves more than 1,200 students, many of whom are already employed by CCSD as paraprofessionals or in other teaching-adjacent roles. 

“We became a registered apprenticeship, which usually makes people think of electricians, plumbers and carpenters. We use that same mindset of giving them additional skillsets while they’re still working,” Varner says. “Most recruitment and retention efforts focus on that 18-year-old high schooler who’s going to college, but we know around 60% of them leave within the first three years. We find people who’ve already made a long-term investment in schools but couldn’t afford to finish their education.”

Nevada Forward got its start thanks to a mix of pandemic-era federal funding from the American Rescue Plan and the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. Varner says UNLV has since diversified its sources to stay afloat at a time when federal support is far less reliable.

On that front, a recent scare came when the U.S. Department of Education withheld nearly $7 billion in funding for several key national programs, including initiatives geared toward teacher retention and development. The administration capitulated on that decision last month following vocal opposition from both sides of the aisle. 

According to the National Education Association, Nevada is expected to receive just over $61 million from that pool. The largest share comes from a $19.6 million chunk set aside for the Supporting Effective Instruction professional development grant program.

Kreidel is encouraged by the reversal, but adds that the education system remains “under attack” in the current political landscape. For her, the retention issue could be further addressed by bolstering mental health offerings for educators.

“I’m now dealing with some stress-related health issues that I believe are directly related to my career. I have an autoimmune disease, which directly affects how I feel day-to-day, and a lot of educators I know have conditions like that,” she says. 

It’s one of many compounding concerns that Griffard says should be prioritized going forward if districts like CCSD hope to maintain their recent staffing gains. 

“Research shows that it is more economically efficient for school districts to focus on retaining their teachers, versus those same districts having to spend huge amounts of money every year to recruit and onboard new ones, which takes up a much bigger portion of the budget,” Griffard says. “That’s a piece that’s still missing, because many are still going to other careers or retiring early.”

As Kreidel prepares to teach third grade for the first time this year, she offers some advice for younger educators. 

“Have a hard line and make a boundary. There were days in the past when I would spend the entire weekend working in my classroom, but I don’t do that anymore,” she says. “If you go into the profession and don’t fight the urge to give it everything you have, you’re not really doing yourself or your students any favors. You want them to see you modeling a healthy work-home balance.”

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