A year out of college, Jennifer Hiller was hired by the Clark County School District in 1994 to start what would become a full career as a passionate high school English teacher.
Hiller retired in 2024 with several advanced credentials and left behind her high-performing students. High insurance costs, however, made her “too young to retire,” she said, and Hiller returned to her position at Arbor View High School almost instantly through a critical labor shortage to collect both a salary and a well-earned pension.
“I know that I still have a lot to give to the classroom,” Hiller said of her decision to return. “I don’t really think I ever wanted to be done.”
Hiller, 54, was prepared to forgo her Public Employees’ Retirement System pension starting in August to keep teaching at Arbor View after her position was removed from the critical labor shortage list.
But when her July pension check never arrived, Hiller said she spoke with others and realized an administrative error led to her unexpectedly losing 75 percent of her income that month. It’ll take months for her finances to fully recover after she took some summer travels expecting she would break even, she said.
“My whole adult life has been given to CCSD, and this is the way it’s gonna play?” Hiller said.
She added: “I love my job. I love this district. I’ve done so much with them. It feels hurtful to be treated this way.”
Three additional longtime district educators removed from the critical labor shortage list told the Las Vegas Review-Journal they also did not receive their July pension payment. The district previously said the list change affected 160 total employees.
Some said they lost out on thousands of dollars.
“I wish I felt like I had been treated more fairly after all I’ve given to the district,” Hiller said.
What happened?
A critical labor shortage allows the school district to rehire retired employees in specific positions where the district has significant vacancies. Those workers are then paid both a salary and their retirement pension in a practice colloquially known as double dipping.
Positions as elementary teachers, elementary counselors and English teachers in grades 7-12 were put on the critical labor shortage list in December, but a Clark County School Board vote in May removed them from the list. They were removed because declining enrollment created a surplus of employees in those positions, according to a district document.
The vote caused the critical labor shortage designation to end for 160 employees effective June 30. However, teaching contracts ended on July 31, causing the district to pay employees for their 2025-26 school year work after the critical labor shortage designation ended, according to teachers who spoke with the Review-Journal.
The difference in dates left workers “technically employed” in the month of July, causing them to be disqualified from their monthly benefits under the law, according to Ian Carr, general counsel for the retirement system.
“When the CLS (critical labor shortage) ends, so too does their statutory exemption from the re-employment restrictions,” Carr said. “And then if the employer portioned out these contracts through the 31st (of July), then essentially they were still employed.”
He added that affected employees have no way under the law to recover those July funds.
“If they were still in pay status with the employer, for our purposes, they were still employed,” Carr said.
The school district in an emailed statement said it consistently tells employees that it’s up to them to notify the retirement system of any changes to their employment or retirement status.
“Because PERS administers its own retirement benefits and records, the District does not communicate status changes to PERS on an employee’s behalf,” officials said. “As stated publicly and in all employee communications, employees should contact PERS directly to ensure their records remain current and to discuss how any changes may affect their benefits.”
Asked if the district erred by not ending the critical labor shortage designation on July 31 instead of June 30, district officials said it “has always used the fiscal calendar of July 1 to June 30” for the designation.
“Under the negotiated agreement with the Clark County Education Association, licensed educators continue to receive pay for work completed during the previous school year over the summer,” officials said. “Therefore, payments made in July are for work completed during the previous fiscal year and would not reflect payments outside the CLS designation.”
Teachers who spoke with the Review-Journal said the district did not inform them that their July pension payments would be withheld.
Thousands of dollars lost
Double dipping was always the plan for George Arizmendez, who said he became an English teacher at Foothill High School through a critical labor shortage several years ago.
Arizmendez, 58, said he intended to double dip to pay off his family’s bills until he reached 65 and could qualify for Medicare. The loss of his critical labor shortage position forced him to revise that plan, Arizmendez said.
He still works at Foothill, now through a nonprofit that helps students transition to life after graduation, but he said the lack of a July pension payment has placed him and his wife into turbulent financial waters.
Arizmendez’s July payment should have been nearly $5,000, he said, which amounts to more than one-quarter of his household’s monthly income. His financial stress was magnified by his daughter’s recent wedding, which he said was “not cheap.”
“To have no recourse, to have that happen so surprisingly, it’s almost like being taken advantage of by a scammer,” Arizmendez said of not receiving his July payment. “You have that same feeling, just kind of in your consciousness all the time.”
Arizmendez said he now feels regret over staying in the classroom instead of turning toward administrative or private sector opportunities when he had the chance.
“This is not a good economy where everything is up in price,” Arizmendez said. “Costs are high and you’re trying to pay bills and you’re just trying to get by.”
Veteran teacher and administrator Jennifer Beskow said she didn’t receive more than $7,000 in expected July funds after her position was removed from the critical labor shortage list. She worked in the district for 34 years, with the last four years as an English teacher at Legacy High School.
The financial loss disrupted her plans to pay off some of her bills and acquire retirement insurance, she said.
‘No compassion’
Kathy Snyder discovered through social media last month that she would not receive her July pension payment after a 34 year career in the public sector. She said her pension was her main source of income, creating an unexpected hit to her finances.
“The next day I called CCSD, and they were like, ‘Yeah, you don’t get your July PERS. Sorry about that,’” Snyder said. “There was, really, no compassion about it.”
Snyder said she was a critical labor shortage English teacher at South Academic Center who tried to remain on the district’s shortage list by applying to nine special education positions.
Those applications only led to one interview and zero job offers, Snyder said, despite the district reporting dozens of special education vacancies at the start of this school year. She now works at a Las Vegas charter school.
Snyder said plans to pay off her bills, contribute to her childrens’ advanced degree tuitions and travel cross-country by RV were canceled due to the missing July payment.
“I’m not losing my house or anything like that over it, but it definitely affected me,” Snyder said.
Contact Spencer Levering at slevering@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253.
