Extra pay for ‘hard-to-fill' teaching jobs provided in legislation announced Tuesday in Carson City
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Teachers who take open positions in public schools that have proven to be hard to fill will be rewarded with extra pay under legislation announced Tuesday by Democratic leaders at the Nevada Legislature.
Teachers for Title I schools and special education vacancies are immediate goals of Assembly Bill 398 (AB398), introduced Tuesday by Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, a Democrat who represents District 9 in southwest Las Vegas.
'We know that too many of our schools in critical subject areas are struggling to attract and retain talented teachers. This bill provides a targeted solution, offering additional compensation to the educators who step up to teach where they are most needed. Our teachers are the backbone of our public education system,' Yeager said at a news conference in front of the Nevada Legislature in Carson City.
'We must never give up on our public education system, never give up on our teachers, and we must never give up on our children. They are the future of our state and they are the state's future leaders,' Yeager said.
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo reminded Democrats that they cannot ignore charter schools.
'Parents deserve the right to choose the best education for their children. Period. I will only sign legislation that protects school choice and expands opportunity – nothing less,' Lombardo said in a post on the X social media platform.
CCSD school board selects new superintendent
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro joined Yeager outside the Legislature to support the effort. Her efforts last session through SB231 were applauded for investing in education and addressing teacher vacancies.
Marie Neisses, president of the Clark County Education Association (CCEA), said, 'Our top priority is ensuring every classroom has a qualified teacher. Speaker Yeager is championing legislation that addresses teacher shortages, particularly in Title 1 and special education.'
The bill doesn't specify exactly how much more money teachers would earn.
Lawmakers would determine how much money is available to school districts statewide, which would be appropriated from the general fund or from the Education Stabilization Account. AB398 also contains restrictions on funds that cannot be used, including weighted funding that currently provides 'Victory services' and 'Zoom services.'
The money would be apportioned by the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Las Vegas hotel rooms would be cleaned daily under proposed Nevada law
A fiscal note attached to Yeager's bill indicates it would require an additional $50,287 in the 2025-26 fiscal year and $63,744 for the 2026-27 fiscal year. The ongoing cost is estimated at $127,489 every two years.
Specifically, the bill defines 'hard-to-fill' positions: '(1) teacher positions at certain Title I schools; and (2) teacher positions and other positions filled by licensed educational personnel whose duties include actively teaching pupils in certain subjects which are suffering from a critical labor shortage.'
'Make no mistake about it, our children perform better when we have qualified educators in every classroom,' Yeager said.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Hamilton Spectator
19 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
A US territory's colonial history emerges in state disputes over voting and citizenship
WHITTIER, Alaska (AP) — Squeezed between glacier-packed mountains and Alaska's Prince William Sound, the cruise-ship stop of Whittier is isolated enough that it's reachable by just a single road, through a long, one-lane tunnel that vehicles share with trains. It's so small that nearly all its 260 residents live in the same 14-story condo building. But Whittier also is the unlikely crossroads of two major currents in American politics: fighting over what it means to be born on U.S. soil and false claims by President Donald Trump and others that noncitizen voter fraud is widespread. In what experts describe as an unprecedented case, Alaska prosecutors are pursuing felony charges against 11 residents of Whittier, most of them related to one another, saying they falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering or trying to vote. The defendants were all born in American Samoa , an island cluster in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. It's the only U.S. territory where residents are not automatically granted citizenship by virtue of having been born on American soil, as the Constitution dictates. Instead, by a quirk of geopolitical history, they are considered 'U.S. nationals' — a distinction that gives them certain rights and obligations while denying them others. American Samoans are entitled to U.S. passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for the Selective Service. They can vote in local elections in American Samoa but cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections. Those who wish to become citizens can do so, but the process costs hundreds of dollars and can be cumbersome. 'To me, I'm an American. I was born an American on U.S. soil,' said firefighter Michael Pese, one of those charged in Whittier. 'American Samoa has been U.S. soil, U.S. jurisdiction, for 125 years. According to the supreme law of the land, that's my birthright.' Confusion over voting is not just an Alaska problem The status has created confusion in other states, as well. In Oregon, officials inadvertently registered nearly 200 American Samoan residents to vote when they got their driver's licenses under the state's motor-voter law. Of those, 10 cast ballots in an election, according to the Oregon Secretary of State's office. Officials there determined the residents had not intended to break the law and no crime was committed. In Hawaii, one resident who was born in American Samoa, Sai Timoteo, ran for the state Legislature in 2018 before learning she wasn't allowed to hold public office or vote. She had always considered it her civic duty to vote, and the form on the voting materials had one box to check: 'U.S. Citizen/U.S. National.' 'I checked that box my entire life,' she said. She also avoided charges, and Hawaii subsequently changed its form to make it more clear. Is U.S. citizenship a birthright? Amid the storm of executive orders issued by Trump in the early days of his second term was one that sought to redefine birthright citizenship by barring it for children of parents who are in the U.S. unlawfully. Another would overhaul how federal elections are run, among other changes requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship. Courts so far have blocked both orders . The Constitution says that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.' It also leaves the administration of elections to the states . The case in Whittier began with Pese's wife, Tupe Smith. After the couple moved to Whittier in 2018, Smith began volunteering at the Whittier Community School, where nearly half of the 55 students were American Samoan — many of them her nieces and nephews. She would help the kids with their English, tutor them in reading and cook them Samoan dishes. In 2023, a seat on the regional school board came open and she ran for it. She was the only candidate and won with about 95% of the vote. One morning a few weeks later, as she was making her two children breakfast, state troopers came knocking. They asked about her voting history. She explained that she knew she wasn't allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections, but thought she could vote in local or state races. She said she checked a box affirming that she was a U.S. citizen at the instruction of elections workers because there was no option to identify herself as a U.S. national, court records say. The troopers arrested her and drove her to a women's prison near Anchorage. She was released that day after her husband paid bail. 'When they put me in cuffs, my son started crying,' Smith told The Associated Press. 'He told their dad that he don't want the cops to take me or to lock me up.' A question of intent About 10 months later, troopers returned to Whittier and issued court summonses to Pese, eight other relatives and one man who was not related but came from the same American Samoa village as Pese. One of Smith's attorneys, Neil Weare, grew up in another U.S. territory, Guam, and is the co-founder of the Washington-based Right to Democracy Project, whose mission is 'confronting and dismantling the undemocratic colonial framework governing people in U.S. territories.' He suggested the prosecutions are aimed at 'low-hanging fruit' in the absence of evidence that illegal immigrants frequently cast ballots in U.S. elections. Even state-level investigations have found voting by noncitizens to be exceptionally rare. 'There is no question that Ms. Smith lacked an intent to mislead or deceive a public official in order to vote unlawfully when she checked 'U.S. citizen' on voter registration materials,' he wrote in a brief to the Alaska Court of Appeals last week, after a lower court judge declined to dismiss the charges. Prosecutors say her false claim of citizenship was intentional, and her claim to the contrary was undercut by the clear language on the voter application forms she filled out in 2020 and 2022. The forms said that if the applicant did not answer yes to being over 18 years old and a U.S. citizen, 'do not complete this form, as you are not eligible to vote.' A dispute entangled with a colonial past The unique situation of American Samoans dates to the 19th century, when the U.S. and European powers were seeking to expand their colonial and economic interests in the South Pacific. The U.S. Navy secured the use of Pago Pago Harbor in eastern Samoa as a coal-refueling station for military and commercial vessels, while Germany sought to protect its coconut plantations in western Samoa. Eventually the archipelago was divided, with the western islands becoming the independent nation of Samoa and the eastern ones becoming American Samoa, overseen by the Navy. The leaders of American Samoa spent much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries arguing that its people should be U.S. citizens. Birthright citizenship was eventually afforded to residents of other U.S. territories — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Congress considered it for American Samoa in the 1930s, but declined. Some lawmakers cited financial concerns during the Great Depression while others expressed patently racist objections, according to a 2020 article in the American Journal of Legal History. Supporters of automatic citizenship say it would particularly benefit the estimated 150,000 to 160,000 nationals who live in the states, many of them in California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Alaska. 'We pay taxes, we do exactly the same as everybody else that are U.S. citizens,' Smith said. 'It would be nice for us to have the same rights as everybody here in the states.' Legal questions over status to be tested anew But many in American Samoa eventually soured on the idea, fearing that extending birthright citizenship would jeopardize its customs — including the territory's communal land laws. Island residents could be dispossessed by land privatization, not unlike what happened in Hawaii , said Siniva Bennett, board chair of the Samoa Pacific Development Corporation, a Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit. 'We've been able to maintain our culture, and we haven't been divested from our land like a lot of other indigenous people in the U.S.,' Bennett said. In 2021, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to extend automatic citizenship to those born in American Samoa, saying it would be wrong to force citizenship on those who don't want it. The Supreme Court declined to review the decision. Several jurisdictions across the country, including San Francisco and the District of Columbia, allow people who are not citizens to vote in certain local elections. Tafilisaunoa Toleafoa, with the Pacific Community of Alaska, said the situation has been so confusing that her organization reached out to the Alaska Division of Elections in 2021 and 2022 to ask whether American Samoans could vote in state and local elections. Neither time did it receive a direct answer, she said. 'People were telling our community that they can vote as long as you have your voter registration card and it was issued by the state,' she said. Finally, last year, Carol Beecher, the head of the state Division of Elections, sent Toleafoa's group a letter saying American Samoans are not eligible to vote in Alaska elections. But by then, the voting forms had been signed. 'It is my hope that this is a lesson learned, that the state of Alaska agrees that this could be something that we can administratively correct,' Toleafoa said. 'I would say that the state could have done that instead of prosecuting community members.' ___ Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska, and Johnson from Seattle. Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this report. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? 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San Francisco Chronicle
26 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
A US territory's colonial history emerges in state disputes over voting and citizenship
WHITTIER, Alaska (AP) — Squeezed between glacier-packed mountains and Alaska's Prince William Sound, the cruise-ship stop of Whittier is isolated enough that it's reachable by just a single road, through a long, one-lane tunnel that vehicles share with trains. It's so small that nearly all its 260 residents live in the same 14-story condo building. But Whittier also is the unlikely crossroads of two major currents in American politics: fighting over what it means to be born on U.S. soil and false claims by President Donald Trump and others that noncitizen voter fraud is widespread. In what experts describe as an unprecedented case, Alaska prosecutors are pursuing felony charges against 11 residents of Whittier, most of them related to one another, saying they falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering or trying to vote. The defendants were all born in American Samoa, an island cluster in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. It's the only U.S. territory where residents are not automatically granted citizenship by virtue of having been born on American soil, as the Constitution dictates. Instead, by a quirk of geopolitical history, they are considered 'U.S. nationals' — a distinction that gives them certain rights and obligations while denying them others. American Samoans are entitled to U.S. passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for the Selective Service. They can vote in local elections in American Samoa but cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections. Those who wish to become citizens can do so, but the process costs hundreds of dollars and can be cumbersome. 'To me, I'm an American. I was born an American on U.S. soil,' said firefighter Michael Pese, one of those charged in Whittier. 'American Samoa has been U.S. soil, U.S. jurisdiction, for 125 years. According to the supreme law of the land, that's my birthright.' The status has created confusion in other states, as well. In Oregon, officials inadvertently registered nearly 200 American Samoan residents to vote when they got their driver's licenses under the state's motor-voter law. Of those, 10 cast ballots in an election, according to the Oregon Secretary of State's office. Officials there determined the residents had not intended to break the law and no crime was committed. In Hawaii, one resident who was born in American Samoa, Sai Timoteo, ran for the state Legislature in 2018 before learning she wasn't allowed to hold public office or vote. She had always considered it her civic duty to vote, and the form on the voting materials had one box to check: 'U.S. Citizen/U.S. National.' 'I checked that box my entire life,' she said. She also avoided charges, and Hawaii subsequently changed its form to make it more clear. Is U.S. citizenship a birthright? Amid the storm of executive orders issued by Trump in the early days of his second term was one that sought to redefine birthright citizenship by barring it for children of parents who are in the U.S. unlawfully. Another would overhaul how federal elections are run, among other changes requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship. Courts so far have blocked both orders. The Constitution says that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.' It also leaves the administration of elections to the states. The case in Whittier began with Pese's wife, Tupe Smith. After the couple moved to Whittier in 2018, Smith began volunteering at the Whittier Community School, where nearly half of the 55 students were American Samoan — many of them her nieces and nephews. She would help the kids with their English, tutor them in reading and cook them Samoan dishes. In 2023, a seat on the regional school board came open and she ran for it. She was the only candidate and won with about 95% of the vote. One morning a few weeks later, as she was making her two children breakfast, state troopers came knocking. They asked about her voting history. She explained that she knew she wasn't allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections, but thought she could vote in local or state races. She said she checked a box affirming that she was a U.S. citizen at the instruction of elections workers because there was no option to identify herself as a U.S. national, court records say. The troopers arrested her and drove her to a women's prison near Anchorage. She was released that day after her husband paid bail. 'When they put me in cuffs, my son started crying," Smith told The Associated Press. "He told their dad that he don't want the cops to take me or to lock me up.' A question of intent About 10 months later, troopers returned to Whittier and issued court summonses to Pese, eight other relatives and one man who was not related but came from the same American Samoa village as Pese. One of Smith's attorneys, Neil Weare, grew up in another U.S. territory, Guam, and is the co-founder of the Washington-based Right to Democracy Project, whose mission is 'confronting and dismantling the undemocratic colonial framework governing people in U.S. territories.' He suggested the prosecutions are aimed at 'low-hanging fruit' in the absence of evidence that illegal immigrants frequently cast ballots in U.S. elections. Even state-level investigations have found voting by noncitizens to be exceptionally rare. 'There is no question that Ms. Smith lacked an intent to mislead or deceive a public official in order to vote unlawfully when she checked 'U.S. citizen' on voter registration materials,' he wrote in a brief to the Alaska Court of Appeals last week, after a lower court judge declined to dismiss the charges. Prosecutors say her false claim of citizenship was intentional, and her claim to the contrary was undercut by the clear language on the voter application forms she filled out in 2020 and 2022. The forms said that if the applicant did not answer yes to being over 18 years old and a U.S. citizen, 'do not complete this form, as you are not eligible to vote.' A dispute entangled with a colonial past The unique situation of American Samoans dates to the 19th century, when the U.S. and European powers were seeking to expand their colonial and economic interests in the South Pacific. The U.S. Navy secured the use of Pago Pago Harbor in eastern Samoa as a coal-refueling station for military and commercial vessels, while Germany sought to protect its coconut plantations in western Samoa. Eventually the archipelago was divided, with the western islands becoming the independent nation of Samoa and the eastern ones becoming American Samoa, overseen by the Navy. The leaders of American Samoa spent much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries arguing that its people should be U.S. citizens. Birthright citizenship was eventually afforded to residents of other U.S. territories — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Congress considered it for American Samoa in the 1930s, but declined. Some lawmakers cited financial concerns during the Great Depression while others expressed patently racist objections, according to a 2020 article in the American Journal of Legal History. Supporters of automatic citizenship say it would particularly benefit the estimated 150,000 to 160,000 nationals who live in the states, many of them in California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Alaska. 'We pay taxes, we do exactly the same as everybody else that are U.S. citizens,' Smith said. 'It would be nice for us to have the same rights as everybody here in the states.' Legal questions over status to be tested anew But many in American Samoa eventually soured on the idea, fearing that extending birthright citizenship would jeopardize its customs — including the territory's communal land laws. Island residents could be dispossessed by land privatization, not unlike what happened in Hawaii, said Siniva Bennett, board chair of the Samoa Pacific Development Corporation, a Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit. 'We've been able to maintain our culture, and we haven't been divested from our land like a lot of other indigenous people in the U.S.,' Bennett said. In 2021, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to extend automatic citizenship to those born in American Samoa, saying it would be wrong to force citizenship on those who don't want it. The Supreme Court declined to review the decision. Several jurisdictions across the country, including San Francisco and the District of Columbia, allow people who are not citizens to vote in certain local elections. Tafilisaunoa Toleafoa, with the Pacific Community of Alaska, said the situation has been so confusing that her organization reached out to the Alaska Division of Elections in 2021 and 2022 to ask whether American Samoans could vote in state and local elections. Neither time did it receive a direct answer, she said. 'People were telling our community that they can vote as long as you have your voter registration card and it was issued by the state,' she said. Finally, last year, Carol Beecher, the head of the state Division of Elections, sent Toleafoa's group a letter saying American Samoans are not eligible to vote in Alaska elections. But by then, the voting forms had been signed. 'It is my hope that this is a lesson learned, that the state of Alaska agrees that this could be something that we can administratively correct,' Toleafoa said. 'I would say that the state could have done that instead of prosecuting community members.'
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Derek Dooley, former Tennessee coach and Vince Dooley's son, eyes GOP Senate run in Georgia
Derek Dooley, a former University of Tennessee football coach, said Friday that he is considering a Republican run for U.S. Senate in Georgia in 2026 against Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff. The trial balloon shows how Gov. Brian Kemp's decision not to run for the seat has left Georgia Republicans looking for other options to face off against Ossoff, considered the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent up for reelection next year. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Dooley, 56, said he would decide on a bid in coming weeks. 'Georgia deserves stronger common-sense leadership in the U.S. Senate that represents all Georgians and focuses on results — not headlines,' Dooley said in a statement. 'I believe our state needs a political outsider in Washington — not another career politician — to cut through the noise and partisanship and get back to real problem solving.' The announcement, first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, came as other declared candidates stumped before the state Republican convention in the northwest Georgia city of Dalton. Among Republicans who have declared their candidacies are U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, Insurance Commissioner John King and activist Reagan Box. Other Republicans who could run include U.S. Reps. Mike Collins and Rich McCormick, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and state Sen. Greg Dolezal. Attacks on Ossoff were among the most reliable applause lines during Friday afternoon speeches at the convention. 'Folks, President Trump needs backup, he needs backup in the Senate,' King said. RELATED STORIES: Gov. Kemp announces decision on Senate run in 2026, ending speculation Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene rules out run against Ossoff for Senate With Brian Kemp not running for Senate, which Georgia Republicans could challenge Jon Ossoff? Dooley has never run for office before. His appeal wouldn't be based on his career 32-41 record at Louisiana Tech and Tennessee, but his status as the son of legendary University Georgia coach Vince Dooley and Kemp's long ties to the Dooley family. As a teenager, Kemp was a frequent guest in the Dooley home, and roomed with Derek's older brother, Daniel Dooley, at the University of Georgia. Kemp has the most effective Republican political organization in Georgia, and he would likely give Dooley a big credibility boost. Kemp and President Donald Trump have been trying to agree on a mutual candidate to back for Senate in 2026, hoping to avoid the conflict that plagued Kelly Loeffler's unsuccessful run, where she lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock in a 2021 runoff. That, along with Republican David Perdue's loss to Ossoff on the same day handed control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats. Trump had preferred then U.S. Rep Doug Collins instead of Loeffler. Then in 2022, Trump anointed Georgia football legend Herschel Walker as the Republican nominee, but Warnock turned back Walker's flawed candidacy in another runoff. Kemp only swung in to help Walker in the runoff. The effort to screen 2026 candidates has already produced some results, with U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene saying she wouldn't bring her right-wing positions to the Senate campaign trail. Dooley would be far from the first sports figure to run for office. His father was frequently discussed as a possible candidate, but never took the plunge. But other coaches have gone far. Former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville was elected to the Senate in 2020 from Alabama and is now running for governor. Former Ohio State University coach Jim Tressel is currently that state's lieutenant governor. And University of Nebraska coaching legend Tom Osborne served three terms in the U.S. House. Dooley walked on in football at the University of Virginia and earned a scholarship as a wide receiver. He earned a law degree from the University of Georgia and briefly practiced law in Atlanta before working his way up the college coaching ladder, becoming head coach for three years at Louisiana Tech and then moving on to Tennessee. Dooley recorded three consecutive losing seasons in Knoxville before he was fired in 2012 after losing to in-state rival Vanderbilt. After that, he has worked as an assistant coach for the NFL's Miami Dolphins and Dallas Cowboys, the University of Missouri and the New York Giants. Most recently, Dooley was an offensive analyst with the University of Alabama. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
