By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

LAS VEGAS – One of Nevada’s top rookie teachers found out the hard way that the demise of “last in, first out” was greatly exaggerated.

A month and a day after being named one of Clark County schools’ “New Teachers of the Year,” Edward Savarese learned he was losing his job because his salary was needed to help give veteran teachers a raise.

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News of young, talented teachers receiving pink slips caught many Nevadans (and some education reformers) off guard. They had been hoodwinked into thinking that state lawmakers had replaced “last in, first out” – the practice of basing teacher layoffs on educators’ years of experience instead of  effectiveness – with a merit-based approach as part of 2011 education reform legislation.

It turns out the supposed “reform” was only smoke and mirrors.  At the prompting of the state’s teacher unions, Democratic lawmakers wrote the reform law so that seniority could remain one of several factors in determining layoffs, and layoff policies would remain a topic of local collective bargaining.

In Clark County, the school board and teachers union have been trying to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement for some time. That means the old agreement – with the “last in, first out” policy intact – is still in full effect.

So when an arbitrator ruled earlier this year that veteran Clark County teachers should be given a raise promised in the old contract, a layoff of roughly 400 teachers became necessary. So Savarese lost his job.

“It drives me nuts how the union protects the mediocrity,” the fifth-grade teacher told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Savarese’s story has a happy ending. An administrator at another Clark County elementary school “spotted his name on the layoff list and snatched him up, calling him for an interview before the pink slip even reached his mailbox,” reports the Review-Journal.

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But the newspaper reminds readers that “one happy ending doesn’t change” the reality that the unions have succeeded in “keeping bad teachers in the classroom, sacrificing educational quality and competition in favor of maintaining industrial-era work rules and salary schedules.

“‘Last in, first out’ provides job security for teachers who either won’t or can’t inspire their kids, based simply on their cobweb count, while ensuring that some top-performing, less-experienced teachers will get the ax. And we’re still stuck with it. It’s one more law the Legislature needs to fix,” the editorial concludes.