Know a teacher?

Andy Matthews

Every week, NPRI President Andy Matthews writes a column for NPRI's week-in-review email. If you are not getting our emails, which contain our latest commentaries and news stories, you can sign up here to receive them.


Know a teacher?

Do you have any friends in Nevada who are teachers? What are they doing right now?

Well, if they’re like most teachers, they’re resting and recovering from a long school year, with work-related thoughts far from their minds.

And that’s exactly what the teachers union is counting on. That’s because Nevada teachers are able to opt out of union membership — but only by submitting written notice between July 1 and 15. Union officials know that many teachers aren’t interested in spending between $600 and $773 a year to subsidize a union boss taking home over $625,000 a year or seeing the union spend their money on million-dollar political donations.

The union’s tools of choice are ignorance and inconvenience. If teachers don’t know they can leave or forget during the middle of summer vacation, teachers who want to leave will be forced to give union bosses several hundred dollars a year for as long as they teach.

This is where you come in.

We at NPRI are doing our best to let teachers know about this opportunity and provide generic opt-out letters, but you know teachers we don’t. Will you send them this article or forward them this email? Will you share this article, http://www.npri.org/issues/publication/teachers-throughout-nevada-can-drop-union-membership-between-july-1-and-july-15, on Facebook and Twitter to help spread the word?

Together, we can empower every teacher in Nevada with the information needed to make the decision about union membership that’s best for them. Generic opt-out letters for each school district are below.

School district Yearly dues Link to opt-out letter
Carson City $618.60 Link
Churchill County $635.04 Link*
Clark County $773.88 Link
Douglas County $711.00 Link*
Elko County $624.00 Link*
Esmeralda County ** Link*
Eureka County $606.24 Link*
Humboldt County $577.44 Link*
Lander County $696.00 Link
Lincoln County $552.00 Link*
Lyon County $624.00 Link
Mineral County $300.00 Link*
Nye County $599.28 Link
Pershing County $628.44 Link*
Storey County $720.00 Link
Washoe County ** Link
White Pine County $600.00 Link

* letters must be sent to the school district and the union
** school district did not provide yearly dues amount by publishing deadline

Also, I enjoyed seeing so many of you at NPRI’s Spring Celebration on Wednesday evening. It was great to see many long-time friends and supporters and be meet many new friends. Also, Cato President John Allison gave an excellent speech detailing the true causes of the financial crisis and America needs to embrace free-market policies to save our country.

Thank you also to all who provided feedback on their favorite free-market books. The most popular response was William F. Buckley’s classic God and Man at Yale.

Until next time,

Andy Matthews
NPRI President


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