I see municipal bond spreads blowing out in counties where the property tax is tied to fair market value of the real estate.
They are trying to buy up marinas around me in fla with all that new tax revenue.
state and local governments will be hard pressed to cut expenses fast enough as revenues start to recede. demands for schools and local services just continue to rise.
Even with the recent boom in local tax collections - there are still so many roads, water treatment plants etc etc that need building - if property crashes fast and hard it will be very ugly here with 2500 people per square mile.
unfortunately the public schools and the poor will bear the brunt of a local government crunch.
klastv.com
The Clark County School District is facing a shortage of more than a thousand teachers and a new survey sheds some light on the reason why.
It turns out that 40-percent of the teaching staff say they must moonlight at other jobs to make ends meet. The school district and the teacher's union conducted the survey.
Starting salaries for Nevada teachers are about $33,000 a year. The state ranked 26th in the nation in 2005 with an average teacher salary of $43,500.
When the bell rings at Valley High School it doesn't mean its the start or end of a work day for many teachers there. One teacher says working outside the classroom is the only way she can survive.
Ann Marie Perone's SUV is like her second home. "This is my life. It's a change of clothes in case something happens to the clothes I already bought and everything loaded in this small little bag and a bag to teach with," she explains.
Each morning she leaves her little castle and heads into her classroom at Valley High School at 7:00. She's a full time teacher always greeted by the smiling faces of her students. But 7 a.m. isn't the beginning of her day.
Perone says, "It can start about 4 or 5 and end at about 10 or 11. I work as a group fitness instructor at the gym 2 to 3 days a week sometimes 4, if I'm subbing, and I also am doing the Valley new teacher-mentoring program. I'm also doing the 9th grade orientation this summer."
She doesn't do all of this because she likes to stay busy. Perone is a single mother of a 2-year-old girl and her teaching salary just isn't enough to keep food on the table.
"I shower at the gym and I rush to school and get here right when we're supposed to get here. There's no earlier, there's no later, but I gotta do it to supplement my income," Perone continues.
Even with a master's degree and a couple of years of teaching experience Ann Marie still makes less than Clark County's median income of a little more than $44,000 a year.
She says, "I could actually go into the corporate world with a masters and make quadruple the money."
But she won't because she loves these smiling faces too much. "I love working with kids. I really like the feeling it gives me at the end of the day and that's basically why I'm here."
So she'll work 18 hours days with three jobs and get by with little sleep.
It might be hard to believe, but Ann Marie is actually a little better off than new teachers in the school district. Their starting salary is only $33,000, which is more than 10,000 less than Clark County's annual median income.
The same survey also found that teachers believe that class sizes are too big to meet educational needs of students.
That problem won't go away unless the teacher shortage issue is resolved.
The school district has implemented a number of rules to make sure there are enough instructors in classrooms. Those include a reduction in the number of licensed non-classroom positions.
Class size reductions for grades four, five, and six are being delayed. |
