KVIG Informative

Christina Radosevich has taught musical theater at Thurman White Academy of the Performing Arts for eight years. This spring, her principal told her the program’s budget couldn’t keep her position — because she had the least seniority in her department.

Radosevich learned she was being “surplused” from Thurman White Academy of the Performing Arts after her principal told her she had the least seniority among staff in her department, making her position the one the school’s reduced budget couldn’t sustain.

Being surplused doesn’t mean immediate termination. Radosevich will remain in her current position for the rest of this school year, and Clark County School District has implemented a hiring freeze on outside candidates specifically to preserve open positions for surplused employees like her. But whether a position matching her license and experience will actually be available elsewhere in the district by fall remains uncertain.

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Radosevich said checking the district’s job postings has offered little reassurance. She described finding almost no open positions listed, despite widespread reports across CCSD schools of similar staffing cuts happening simultaneously.

Radosevich wrote a letter to Superintendent Jhone Ebert urging district leaders to prevent what she called a “brain drain” of educators the district worked hard to recruit, and asked leaders to look for alternative funding options rather than let a mass exodus of teachers happen. She wrote that increasing class sizes in an already strained system is a disservice to students.

Thurman White Academy of the Performing Arts is working to save its musical theater program specifically, according to Radosevich, even as her own position within that program remains unresolved.

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Radosevich has begun preparing for the possibility she won’t find a position within CCSD, building a resume website and updating her professional materials in case she needs to apply elsewhere.

Eight years of teaching musical theater didn’t protect Radosevich’s position — seniority rules did, and she didn’t have enough of it. Her students may still have a program in the fall. Whether their teacher is still the one running it is a question the district’s own hiring freeze hasn’t answered yet.