Clark County School District has told substitute teachers their work hours could be capped at 720 per year, after the district acknowledged it failed for years to implement a 2023 Nevada law granting some substitutes retirement benefits. The admission has left substitutes like Kimberly Johnson bracing for a sharp drop in income.
CCSD says a recent internal review found that previous district leadership never carried out the requirements of Senate Bill 434, the 2023 law that established Public Employees' Retirement System benefits for substitute teachers who work more than 719 hours in a school year, according to KSNV. A separate local report confirmed the same internal findings, noting that following an internal review of its budget procedures, CCSD discovered it had not yet carried out the law's requirements, according to fox5vegas.com.
Substitute teachers received an email Wednesday notifying them their hours would be capped at 720 per year unless they qualify for PERS benefits, per the station's report. Johnson, who is not classified as a substitute on special assignment, said she expects to hit her hours limit by mid-January and then be unable to work for the rest of the school year — a limit she said could cut her yearly income in half.
Substitutes Describe Financial Strain
Brandy Christensen, who works at rural schools near Moapa and Mesquite, said she already works two jobs and may stop working for CCSD altogether, citing high grocery costs and the stress of the situation. She said Mesquite has very few substitute teachers at each school, making the loss of hours especially disruptive in that community.
Under the district's current framework, only substitutes on special assignment qualify for PERS when they work over 720 hours and choose to opt in, while other substitute teachers, including Johnson and Christensen, will simply be capped at 720 hours per year. Those eligible SOSA employees must work fewer than 720 hours if they decide not to opt into PERS benefits, and substitutes on special assignment who do opt in do not need to cut their hours to keep earning toward retirement. Some non-PERS-eligible substitutes may reach the 720-hour threshold as soon as January.
Enrollment Options
The fox5vegas.com report states that participating substitutes' mandatory contributions were expected to begin with December paychecks, reducing their take-home pay by approximately 12 percent, and that the district would allow eligible substitute teachers to either opt in or opt out of the program.
The Law's Sponsor Weighs In
The Law's Sponsor Weighs In State Sen. Dina Neal, who sponsored SB 434, said the legislation was intended to provide long-overdue benefits and protections for substitute teachers. Neal has since said that if the district had followed the law when it was written, all substitutes exceeding 720 hours would already qualify for benefits, and noted that in 2023, the only substitutes exceeding 720 hours were long-term substitutes. She said other districts across Nevada have already implemented the law, and that CCSD should not penalize substitutes for the district's own failure to do so. Neal has asked the district not to make cuts to substitutes' hours until lawmakers reconvene in February.
Sen. Dina Neal said CCSD has accrued penalties for failing to implement the law. CCSD said its leadership team had consulted multiple Nevada state and private attorneys as it works through the fallout. Neal also said roughly 1,500 substitute employees are affected. CCSD plans to absorb the PERS costs centrally for the 2026-2027 school year, then fold projected position costs into individual school budgets starting in the 2027-2028 school year. District officials also said they will collaborate with legislators to determine whether the state law can be amended during the 2027 legislative session.
District Says No Shortage Expected
CCSD maintains a large pool of substitute teachers and said it paused intake of new substitutes because of its high teacher classroom fill rate, while evaluating whether to begin accepting new substitutes again. The district does not anticipate an overall substitute teacher shortage. Day-to-day vacancy substitutes, who are considered intermittent and ineligible for PERS benefits, may work up to 719 hours per year without triggering enrollment.
The staffing strain isn't new to CCSD. As of April 2024, the district had 5,039 substitute teachers, with an average of 12,077 shifts needing to be filled by substitutes every month, according to KTNV. District paperwork from that period also reported 992 vacant positions, prompting the Board of School Trustees to designate certain roles, including licensed teaching jobs and bus-driver positions, as critical labor shortage areas through June 30, 2026.
Substitute pay and benefits have been a point of friction in Carson City before. In 2023, CCSD testified against a separate bill that would have required a $450 monthly health-care stipend for long-term substitutes hired for 30 or more consecutive days, citing its existing policy that long-term substitutes qualify for health care after a year on the job, according to Nevada Current. That measure, an amended version of Assembly Bill 282, ultimately raised its consecutive-days requirement from 15 to 30, with supporters estimating nearly 1,000 substitutes statewide would have qualified.
