School Board Meeting 8/10/2021

001[Music] bye [Music] shop to order at 602 and we're going to start with a flag salute trustee karine and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay and with that we're going to go to item 2 which is a round table discussion among the board members and staff with input from the public to address the following topic presentation and discussion on the american rescue plan arp elementary and secondary school emergency relief uh acronym esser esser funding to include the law and plan on the use of funds this again is for discussion only so no action will be taken and uh who's leading us off here valerie and aj good evening president cass opio cassiopo my apologies and trustees um this evening uh we will

002be presenting on the essers and specifically sr3 which has a requirement for um a public public input chance for public input um really quickly and i i in some ways hijacked a little bit of that this is valerie's presentation she's done all the great work with us but i i just wanted to take uh a couple minutes just to review again kind of where we are and and so mrs dockery is going to talk very broadly about what you can do with these funds and and what is available and clearly we are not in the same position as others with how we have determined to use those our hope to use those funds so over the past 14 years our general fund per people revenue has increased at 1.2 percent per year so as you

003know that's far less than costs and so that you know thinking about the long-term impact of that and where we are and what we've talked about that that's an important number due to the impact of full day kindergarten that gets a little more complicated but it actually ends up being less than one percent in the past three years our per-pupil amount has decreased on average compounding at um minus 0.88 percent through the 1970s and 1980s it was going up at 9.2 percent per year so it's a really really substantial difference from where we are now we have cut about five million dollars in expenses from the general fund in the past three years um and due to the impact of kovid um the legislature did add money back to education but not enough to offset

004the impact of the new funding model which we've we've discussed in the past and just a reminder of kind of where we ended up we are a district that is considered in a whole harmless state our revenues on a per-pupil basis are less than what we received in fiscal year 20. um and so that's pretty significant unlike some districts like clark county which has a significant increase in overall funding so the choices that they are making with how they use ester funds and their recommendations are very different than the recommendations i i should say very but there there are differences in the way we're expect hoping to use funds and i've shown you this image before um but just a reminder that that that per pupil funding amount is going to be relatively flat in

005the blue going forward and so one of the uses of ester funds that mrs docker covers is about maintaining programs and so that that is a primary way that we are looking to use these funds and with that um bit of detail in raincloud oh you have one i'll let mrs thank you good evening board members and community um for the record again i'm valerie dockery i'm the director of grants and special projects for the school district and um in in terms of this american rescue act and the funding we've received we've actually received actually three pots of money the first part we're not discussing tonight which is the very first round of funding and that was spent in the last fiscal year so we were able to use that to cover many of the

006expenses associated with the coronavirus and that has been been spent down to basically um very little left going forward so what we're talking about tonight is um what we call sr2 the and what every time they added to this relief act they changed the the cult the name of it so it's very confusing so the first one um that was signed the second one that was signed in december of 2020 it was called the coronary corona response and relief supplemental appropriation krisa like we need more acronyms and under that the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund sr2 and then in march of 2021 just a few months later they signed into law the elementary and uh the american rescue plan which we call arp and the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund so

007they kept the porsche the name of the portion that goes to schools public schools the same but they changed the overall name of the bill so in providing funds under both of these they the us department of education has priorities for this funding and the priorities were pretty virtually the same for both both pots of money sr2 and sr3 so here we have um addressing learning loss through evidence-based improvements that's their big priority in sr3 it's 20 has to go to learning loss trying to help students who have suffered learning loss due to the pandemic the money can also be used for school facilities repairs and improvements planning for long-term closures including providing meals to eligible students now our students are all getting free breakfast and lunch through the national school lunch program so we

008don't really need these funds to address that addressing unique needs of special populations purchasing educational technology and any activities authorized under esea the elementary and secondary education act which would include title one for poverty school schools in poverty title two for professional development title three which is um services for english learners title four which is innovative programs mckinney-vento which serves our homeless youth the perkins career and technical education any of those things idea special education could also be we could support those those programs with these funds we can also coordinate with other state and local entities to prevent prepare and respond to covet 19. then the us department of education this there's more um more so there's i think 16 altogether areas that you can utilize the funds for providing social and emotional mental health

009services providing summer learning and supplemental after-school programs including online as you'll see as we go forward last summer's summer school program was funded under sr2 conducting then this is where we're really going to hover where we're spending most of our funding conducting other activities necessary to maintain the operation of services employ existing staff increase instructional hours that were reduced due to covet and coordinate activities and that's so this covers just the basic operations of a school district we can also purchase cleaning supplies we can train staff on sanitation to minimize the spread of infectious disease we can have procedures to improve school preparedness and we've done all of these things just not with these funds administrative expenses which represent an increase over previously budgeted amounts we don't have anything where we're going to be claiming

010there and indirect cost using the negotiated restricted rate so for carson city that's 7.13 that's a rate that um we can take on any uh federal grant um that's that that the district can use to just maintain again payroll all the things that you have to run in order to maintain a grant the services out of my office a grant analyst the work that i do is all covered under that negotiated restricted rate then on top a layer on top of that is the nevada department of education has also and the state board of education also has priorities for these funds and they're very similar and they overlap so if you are addressing them these state board priorities you're addressing the federal priorities and vice versa we have closing the opportunity gaps for students that

011are traditionally underserved accessing access to tech technological capacity for educator students and families social emotional support for students educators and staff and response to covet 19 access to high quality professional development access to high quality instructional materials for educators and students supporting of parents families and communities safe efficient equitable reopening of schools and access to adult education and workforce development so again going back to this slide we're going to be hovering tonight on the blue conducting other activities necessary to maintain the operation of and employ existing staff so under this there's there's requirements for this funding um they don't just you know it doesn't just land up in one of aj's accounts you have to provide applications and certain materials our strategic plan for instance that's what you have to have a strategic plan um

012that you must you must tie to your the needs and the use of funds you have to have a district needs assessment which we completed last year for sr2 you have to have a safe return to in-person instruction plan which all of you are knowledgeable about from previous meetings you have to have stakeholder input and you have to have a district use of plan of funds plan which i will put together which will match our after tonight which will match our funding plan to our needs assessment and our strategic plan so sr2 was four million four and twelve thousand one hundred and eighty one dollars that was available it's available through september twenty thirtieth twenty twenty three and that's important as you look at how how we are looking at spending this money because we're

013not looking at spending this money just in this fiscal year and that includes this excuse me the summer of that year and then sr3 is million nine hundred sixteen thousand three hundred and eighty seven dollars available through september of 2024 including that summer and it's important to note that these funds are on the federal calendar so um they are actually available um the federal calendar runs from october 1 through september 30th and so when and when we looked when we got these funds we got them so late last year um including yes or two that really what our budget planning has been has been for fy 22 this fiscal year and beyond um and there's a link to uh if you would like to see what every district got in the state in terms of

014this funding under this relief plan under all three of the funding plans the first one that i spoke about the chrisa and then um and um the cares act excuse me and then esser two and three you can click on this link and go to this link and you can um look at all the um what every district in the state got under all three pots um and this was based on uh all three pots were based on a percentage of funding that was provided to each district under the title one allocations to the state the state stake him up with a formula and awarded the funds based on how they award title one which is for funding for poverty schools so i'm going to let aj talk do you want to talk about this

015you want me to okay so our first one is our chrisa sr2 funding plan and i'm going to let aj talk about some of these pieces okay so one of the things that is complicated about this and really it forced us to do a lot of planning and forecasting on costs is that the state wants us to budget this out as long as we're going to use it so sr2 here you'll see there's actually two years of budget but within sr3 you're actually going to see three years and so as much as there are things written down here and there are costs associated with them i i would ask that when it comes to fiscal 24 you don't come back to us and say you said you were going to use it on this because

016things changed right and we don't know exactly how that's going to play out right now this is our our best estimate next year is is really clear and then the years after based on how things change and maybe in fiscal 24 after the legislative session things really improve and then maybe we can do more with some learning loss towards the end so i just i don't want you to get too held up on exactly what you see here but as what you see especially for fiscal 22 this is how we're planning on uh or suggesting we use it and this is what we would be submitting to the department of education so first one distance ed teacher so as you know pioneer has opened themselves up into this pioneer academy and so they are servicing

017more kids online and so we have used those funds to pay for that position we have three teachers on special assignment within humanities or social studies gate and cte um that's listed there but you can see that's actually going off into fiscal 23. um and actually maybe it'd be easier i'll just talk about fiscal 22 and then i'll just add in 23. sorry um one high school counselor um salary and benefits for them uh all 12 of our social workers would be paid for by us or two 11 of our esl staff and those were staff that in prior year were paid for by the zoom grant um and then in the yellow mrs dockery put that in there so you could see specifically what we're talking about um for things that are kind of

018more related this idea of learning loss and even though it's not necessarily required in sr2 it's still i think important to see what is kind of new and extra on top of what the normal kind of normal year normal staffing is so running the summer school program about 65 000 and then running transportation for that program um indirect costs so as valerie stated it's kind of this overhead for actually taking care of the grant and running it behind the scenes and then carson montessori school also gets an allocation of those funds the the change in um fy 23 the the addition again of the three tosas and then the work based learning coordinator position is also added in in fy23 those learning loss components go away because those will actually shift over to s or

019sr3 [Music] for sr3 in the first two years 22 and 23 we have the 10 positions across the district and that's very much related to the learning loss activities and again 20 of the total of sr3 has to be dedicated toward learning law so these are truly all new things that we're doing actively and on top of our normal activities five distance education staff to support programs at pioneer and carson high one el assistant director then the after-school programming for this year transportation for that programming uh planning on purchasing chromebooks the next round of chromebooks and software to support staff and students during that time all within fiscal year 22. when you get to fy 23 we add in class size reduction teachers so this is effectively teachers that were paid under the class size

020reduction funding last year it's not that they will go into the general fund this year but in the following year again because our revenues are flat but our salaries are increasing we need to move some more costs out of the general fund so these costs are coming out of the general fund and moving into sr3 and then when you get to fy24 again a couple ships the the social workers they move from sr2 to sr3 and the esl staff that were zoom funded that then became sr2 funded they now become sr3 funded in fy24 in all three years you'll note that the chromebooks also carry through that entire times the plan is keeping that program going keeping those purchases happening um i i will say that you know there are probably going to be more

021opportunities that we're aware of other opportunities coming up for technology and maybe that can supplement some of this as well so um again a lot of these things i think are going to change over the coming year um as as we all kind of figure out where where we are so um clearly i think it just in my final point i'll let valerie take over again is that there when you get to fiscal 24 there are still a lot of positions that if that federal funding i should say when that federal funding goes away we have to figure something out right and the fortunate thing is that we are a couple years down the road there so there's a lot of time to plan that out um and there's another legislative session before we get

022to that point so it's just something that you know to keep in mind we're trying to keep the the programming that we have in place all the supports we have for kids in place as long as we can until we until we have time to maybe sort out what are maybe some different ways to do some of these things so aj can ask you a question yes when you look at the class size reduction is there's a study of what that would look like if we started to kind of as people retire maybe we look at increasing class size are we looking at what those numbers are and what that impact would be because i think that's going to help us as a board really figure out that's that's a lot of money no that

023that's a really good point we at this point uh we've not gone through that but but clearly you're talking about that's about 300 students that would be in classes of 25 say so you're gonna be spreading that out amongst existing staff that that could be problematic so then looking at um what those ratios are and trying to trying to keep those ratios where we want them to be but that's a really good point that's ultimately that's the exercise we're going to have to go through as time well and that's going to help us advocate for additional funding to the legislature because if it just looks like oh we have these federal grants so we'll just shift it over here for a few years but actually what we're looking at is we're impacting you know what

024i'm saying i think we're going to need that information because we're going to have to make sure people understand exactly what that means because on a spreadsheet it sounds one way but the real world implications are going to be pretty bad for our kids any other questions for me otherwise i'll let mrs dockery take over and you can have questions at the end so so yes so we're up here yes thank you um yeah and i think a lot you know when also that aj didn't talk about is that in that last session so much was dumped into the general fund dollars and but not really enough to support some of these programs and that's why we're trying to prop them up with some of these other funds class size reduction was always a separate

025allocation it's no longer zoom el funding was a separate allocation gate was a separate alec those are not you know those are not true anymore so um so it's just there's a lot going on here yeah and i just want to be clear i'm not advocating that we don't support these programs what i'm saying is we need to be very clear about what the impact of these cuts are to our district other questions um comments from anybody just to kind of follow up on what mike walker said is one of my main concerns and i think i've expressed it before is what happens down the road and what planning needs to take place between now and then like mr walker was saying that is my main concern because we're going to be what five million

026dollar deficits every year going forward for how many years i don't know and so i think the sooner we can make a plan the better off we're going to be because there's some programs we have to do right i mean like the esl yeah you can't cut that you know and there's other programs that cannot be cut so that's my main concern but a good presentation thank you i'm guessing that the fiscal year 25 this is not just our district problem this is going to be a state wide problem correct everybody's going to lose their funds so yeah absolutely everyone will lose their funds the the difference comes into the impact of this change in the funding formula so for the districts that are in this whole harmless state like we are that that's where

027your revenues are not going to be increasing for such an extended period of time and you're you're back feeling with these estro funds that's where the real problem is for districts like clark you know they're all of their funds are going to be additional things i quite honestly i don't know they're gonna they have a billion dollars to spend i have no idea how they're gonna do that um but whatever they bring on will go away but they're otherwise their normal programming would remain i guess that's the concern for fiscal 25 down the road right are these you know these few counties hold harmless is that going to be enough pressure on the legislature to act that's that's th that's the question because they have so much clout and in washoe and clark and right

028um and so the smaller districts in this funding formula are not um as favored in the new funding formula thank you and aj and valerie i think it's a rhetorical question but it's not like we have enough money to cover all our expenses like you said we're obviously short even with this but if we have a banner year for whatever reason and we don't have to spend a certain amount of money say in that first fiscal year can that be carried over to a later year or is it kind of a once you set it up that's how it has to be used no we will put in our application um for fy 22 and we will say in there what we're earmarking for future the state will say you need to we want you

029to spend it all this year they would like you to do that but the tidings amendment allows us to to you spend it over three years so we can carry forward into um 20 into three years for us or three and two for s or two because technically sr2 came out last year right so so we'll be able to do that and extend it um they would prefer we spent it all at one time but we there's we can't and that wouldn't be it we wouldn't be serving the needs of the district if we did that um so we'll be able to the other important point with this is that for those of you um like mr walker who are familiar with federal funding there's no supplanting issues here in most federal funding for example

030under title one i couldn't pay for a class size reduction teacher because that's something that's in the general fund it can't be funded under these emergency relief funds there is no supplements a plan so we do have flexibility to move things around um and we're also not subject to um to um risk assessment um issues where um we're putting in too many amendments they think we're we're putting in too many minutes so we can change this up as we need to and have some flexibility to meet the needs as they change over time thank you rich if i'm hearing right every year you have to put an application for the funding the first application sr2 application we actually submitted last year but now we have to go back and revise it because we didn't know

031about it we didn't have sr3 and we didn't have it we didn't have the funding amount so we will go back we will submit sr3 it's due september 10th we'll submit before that date and then we will go back and revise sr2 so that it reflects um the changes that we've made and then at any other time um throughout the year we can make a change if we need to but then um for the next fiscal year we'll we'll submit a new budget um well that it's a it's a carryover process you know we we've closed the fiscal year and then we ask for the money going forward right uh you know i've written numerous grants in the past myself and some of them you have to do every year and they're not guaranteed that

032you're going to get in the next year so i didn't know if there's s or money this is guaranteed to be set aside for the districts this is an allocation and we we are getting the whole nine million dollars 9.9 this year but we don't have to spend it all this year so we are guaranteed this amount of funding um and but we and we have three years to spend it we have two years to spend yes or two okay good thank you any other questions on the board anything from you folks if not um we i know we have some public here and this um we've allotted some public input so um if anybody from the public would like to ask any questions please come up to the microphone and again just state your

033name for the record is that on okay good evening my name is sheila story i'm the chief nurse for the school district and school nurse at carson high school um thank you for allowing me to speak this evening i first want to say that last year was a busy year for us and we did it we got through everything i would like to report that with all of our added responsibilities with cover 19 testing contact tracing and everything we did we also did complete all of our health screenings in accordance with nrs we were with uh within 90 about 93 as a district compliant with our immunizations we did do our medicaid reimbursement we completed every single thing we were required to complete for a school year um along with all the coved and everything

034so i think my my staff did an excellent job at each of their schools this year we're kind of heading in the same direction in regards to wanting to comply with all the nrs's with height and weight screenings or not vision and hearing screenings immunization compliancy medicaid reimbursement they also like us to reintroduce the teledoc systems within our office along with covid testing students who are symptomatic and then also with the directive from the governor director 48 continue to cover test individuals who do not have both vaccinations for athletes but also other school activities which we are happy to do and happy to help out with but i will say last year was very very tiring on our health services staff and we need support we need support this year to get through all of

035this i mean i i stay awake at night going how are we going to do this how are we going to continue to do every single thing that is absolutely required of us in accordance with nrs along with kova testing along with contact tracing we need help and also our nurses need to be compensated for their time and as i read this esser money i do believe that we um we will we are a coordinator with local entities to prevent prepare and respond to covet 19. we are um um let's see here where else is see here i have this all i have this all planned [Laughter] um we want to we we're there for the social and emotional support of our students and let me give you an example so you have a student

036who thinks they possibly came in contact with someone with covid19 they are scared they're frightened they're crying their parents are upset and you know what we provided last year with doing the abbot by next testing and the ties testing we offered them a peace of mind we offered them sure come on in our door is open for you we will take you in we will test you we will give you your results and then we will ease your mind if the if if the results are negative so with their social emotional i believe we truly did help faculty staff parents and students with just having a relief that they knew that they were negative along with the education that we provided to them in regards to what they do if symptoms start to occur how

037long they have to stay home who to follow up with we were a great educational source just not for our school district but also for our community okay so social and emotional we truly did help them out all right we are also um we are there to support parents families and our community okay yes i apologize i i should have made a statement that we're we're still going with the three-minute rule okay and i didn't give you a warning i apologize no worries so anyway in closing i just want to let you know with this esser funding you cannot forget our department we need assistance i cannot do it this year i did 12 to 13 hours last year i didn't sleep it was an extremely difficult year we did it and our nurses did

038it and our clinical aides did it we did a great job but with this esser money i want our department in this funding source thank you any other input i mean i would just say to sheila i think we we appreciate and acknowledge the amount of work that went in and we have teachers saying the exact same thing they were doing digital learning in-person learning and ieps at night and early in the morning and so last year was so crazy for everyone in education and i think one of the things that when we look at this funding it's a godsend because it's going to allow us to kind of extend which would be a very painful year for this school district without that funding and so how we use the funds it's not which is

039most deserving we're trying to lessen the impact of some pretty dire circumstances and so just understand that that we're trying to support all of our employees as best as we can with very limited resources and so hopefully you all know how much you're appreciated thanks mike laurel question for aj with our funding for the nurses are because my understanding with assessor funding um is that you're telling us where you're budgeted but we still have our general fund which is still budgeted and we still have our budget for nursing staff is that that's being paid for through the general fund correct yeah okay i mean effectively if you if you move the nerf nursing staff into that grant you would just be moving whatever something else from that grant back to the general fund at this

040point and that this is a finite amount of money it's only good for a certain number of years so what we put in it we need to be careful too because it's going to end in in 2024. so you know we can add we can add more things or more staff um like in our learning loss with our interventionists right that we have in there right now but they're right now we only have money for a certain period of time for that stuff and is i mean and i know there's a nursing shortage just like there's a teaching shortage but maybe there's something we could do to work with one of the nursing schools and maybe we could bring in some nursing students who were able to do some of that covid testing and maybe

041take some of those things off of the hands or even like vaccinations whatever i mean we could get a little bit creative and see if there's partnerships we could forge so sheila story for the record i we are a preceptor for orvis school of nursing and we do take on nursing students on thursdays and fridays in the fall they are limited in regards to what their scope of practice is within the clinical setting our health offices are community standing it is a clinical setting and we only have them on thursdays and fridays wnc does not do community health clinicals i was just checking i have a kind of a conflict i am related to sheila but i do have a couple questions is there any possibility of getting some money for nurses through this esser

042and i think based on my understanding of it i think any nursing related activities would qualify as an eligible expense the issue goes back to if if we would use these funds to to pay for that then something else has to come out of the grant and it has to go into the general fund where those nursing costs came from there's effectively at this point it's almost like esther is the or in the general fund are one and so it almost doesn't matter where you pay for it there's just a finite pot of money you can only pay for so much you know and we can we can also keep our eye out for other funding sources that are coming down the pike i know there's a big mental health grant coming out of the

043state soon we're keeping our eye on that that may have a health services component in it so we'll obviously be keeping our eye out for other sources for other pieces um within here besides esser two and three well and i'm just thinking if there is a mental health grant then that may be some swapping with our social workers and the nursing staff i i do like the nursing staff coming out of the general fund because that's something i i hope we as a district continue to have i not very many districts have registered nurses as school nurses and i'm really grateful that we have that because i know even before covet there are so many things that they do each day to provide for this the students we have type 1 diabetics we have kids

044who are needing medications throughout the day that they they take care of it it's not the bandage um thing that you think of growing up and and and going to school what a school nurse does they they're absolutely vital and i think that that's really important that we keep that so part of me says i don't want it to be grant funded because i wouldn't want it to go away so um you know i mean just on that same thought just kind of like where i was kind of going with the conversation maybe it's kind of like we were talking with the school librarians and maybe it's looking at workload and how do we lighten some of the load so if they're so overwhelmed that they can't get to what they need to do i

045mean trust me if our rns walk away we don't have a line of our ends to replace them with i mean i've been going through this all summer trying to hire a nurse for my school so maybe that's something that as a district we need to look at what is it so maybe it's not that we use s or funds to pay a salary because that's just going to move money from one category to the other maybe it's what are some pieces that you need support with and how can we think creatively to support that and so if there are student nurses in there maybe it's some kind of teaming up where maybe you know some schools have students who have tube feedings and they need a nurse there or medications that require something all

046day but sometimes you don't have that caseload and so maybe lana has a little bit of time and she could run over and help out at the high school for an hour and give sheila time to catch up on whatever she needs to do so maybe we need to start coming together and looking at some of those resources in addition to just funding to support the employees no it's a challenging time with limited funds we get it and and you know all these pieces of our puzzle are equally as important so shiela to your point we understand i mean if we could find a way to do something more i think everybody's i think everybody's looking for that so aj i just i i think you're going through that i'd like to you know keep

047them in mind for sure because they do provide a critical function i think one of the unfortunate things that has happened with this funding that has come out there's been a perception across the state that this money is is all there's all this extra money and now you can do whatever you want and the department of ed has actually put that out there when in fact in the smaller districts that is not the case it may be the case in washoe and clark but it is not the case in the small rurals so there has been a perception i get i get emails daily about how i can spend my esser funds i get calls daily from people on how to spend esser funds right and and it's just not this panacea that is being

048is out there the perception is out there for the smaller districts it's as aj's explained that's not the reality unfortunately for us um it is the reality in the in washoe and clark it is not the reality for us and just to echo what we talked about earlier after the legislative session there was a lot of you know patent themselves on the back that they put so much money into education when really it was just restoring the cuts that were made and so i think that that's that's partially restoring partially restoring yeah not even fully restoring them so there that's something and then there are there are nine districts who are out of 17 that are in the hold harmless that have received less funding unfortunately they're they're probably you know us douglas and elko

049are the largest counties um it's it's gonna take um some some advocating on behalf of public education um in order to help get that chain turned around by the time this fund is runned out there we go any other input from anybody in attendance mr cassiopo i had received one public comment that was provided via email thank you this public comment is provided from uh beverly singleton she's a special ed para at fritsch elementary she'd like to offer input on how a portion of the sr funding should be utilized i believe there's a need for staff that can give extra support to the general ed students to help fill the gaps due to learning loss these are the students who may fall through the cracks so used to say they are the average students that

050often don't get extra support because they aren't ell or on an iep after missing months of in-class instruction whether due to the shutdown or hybrid learning many are struggling to catch up to pre-pandemic expectations teachers are doing their best to meet the needs of all their students but it can be overwhelming secondly we need better ventilation systems in some areas according to an article on physics.org dated april 5th entitled studies show mass ventilation stop covet spread better than social distancing and she provides information from by robert wells from the university of central florida a new study from the university of central florida suggests that mask and a good ventilation system are more important than social distancing for reducing the airborne spread of covet 19 in classes this research excuse me research was also published in

051the journal of physics of fluids when we have areas in schools with no windows and insufficient ventilation we're doing we aren't doing our best to protect students and staff thank you thank you any additional comments related to this workshop no mr cassiopo thank you i just wanted to point out um that we have 10 i brought this slide back up we have 10 teachers and paraprofessionals to provide interventions during today to any student any student that needs it and and this was something that the principals requested they requested this extra staff to work during the day and also money to do um before and after school programs and transportation for those programs and those requests came directly from the principals to um to do just what the email was talking about was to provide those

052extra supports okay thank you okay any additional comments okay seeing none i appreciate your time thanks for the presentation we just have some resources up here um just if you would like to um uh take a look at these of course anyone is is um you know can call me or email me with questions about the funding i'd be happy to help the department of ed has a website for federal relief funding um on that website there's links to the um a fun there's a funding memorandum on sr2 there's um a quest there's a lot of information on the american rescue plan there's a guide for school districts and planning to use these monies and then there's also frequently asked questions from the department of ed so lots of resources and i'm happy to answer

053any any questions that anybody might have they can give me a call or email me great thank you valerie thank you aj okay we're going to go ahead and adjourn until seven o'clock when we'll start the um the the board meeting itself so we'll see everybody back here in about 12 minutes [Music] ah [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] we're going to go ahead and get started um it's seven o'clock so we're going to call this meeting back to order item three is going to be adoption of the agenda as submitted this is for possible action so moved motion in a second any board comment on this agenda any public comment on this agenda renee anything from you no mr cassiopo thank you okay seeing none all in favor aye aye the opposed okay

054motion carries item four superintendents report this is for information only richard thank you mr president members of the board members the community welcome i'd like to let you know that on september the 2nd at 6 00 p.m we will hold our joint meeting with the board of supervisors so we're in the current work effort of establishing an agenda if any members of the trustees have items that you'd like to see on the agenda please let me know and i'll work with a city manager to make sure that those items are addressed i also wanted to let not only trustees but also members of the community know that there are some changes to school vaccine exemptions this does not mean the coven 19 vaccinations but these are school related immunizations that are required to attend school

055the the new forms that have been devised and will be used will be available at the individual schools and some of the other changes are that the religious exemption must be renewed annually i know in the past this was something that was done once and then that was kind of it for the career of the student but legislate legislation has changed that part of it and so religious exemptions must be renewed annually and with regard to medical exemptions that particular process will require documentation from a physician which must be attached to the form so again these new forms can be obtained by attending your local school and asking for one our staff is in the process of returning to work at their school offices and classrooms first day of school is august the 16th which

056is a week from yesterday so it's exciting times as we get ready to start school again and with that i just wanted to take a little bit of time knowing that this school's school year's return has elicited a number of very strong emotions and i'm happy to report that we are returning to school five days a week and in person which is significantly different than our last year we are also happy to report that all of our educational programs will be operational so transportation nutrition ieps all of the aspects of school that you have come to expect will be working and operational and these are all good things these are all great things for our kids for our community and i wanted to add that with the most recent change with the information that we

057received from the governor the school district is not requiring students to wear face masks in the coming school year however staff must wear face masks and as must all adults who are in the building whether or not you're a parent whether or not you are a volunteer whether or not you are just there visiting as a vendor or have some other business at the school adults must wear face masks in the building the next item is that students and staff both must wear face masks while on the buses and that's part of the governor's mandate so please remember that last year with regard to student health it was a different time we had a hybrid schedule we had two core cohorts of students that were both at home and at school everybody wore face masks

058and under all of the newness and the uncertainty that went on with last school year we were able to keep our schools mostly open we had one occasion early in the school year where transportation was closed for several weeks and that was because we didn't have enough people to operate our buses and that was after we had several cases of covet we were also able to um only have one school that was actually closed for two days and again that was because conditions were high right at the weekend and staffing and also the concern that we might have students that would cause a greater outbreak we did close that school for two days we had other situations in the school district where we had students that were sent home because they were symptomatic we had

059staff who were sent home because they were symptomatic and we also had several classrooms that when we found there were students that tested positive that were sent home so all in all um i i want us to be able to have some optimism and some encouragement as we move forward into the school year i had a report today from the principal at carson high school they held freshman orientation today he didn't stop and count and give me numbers but he said looking up into the faces of the students there were about half of the audience that were not wearing face masks and half that were and so kids are kids are managing kids are figuring out how to live within a very uncertain world i know that there's been a lot of fear a lot

060of uncertainty a lot of care and i'm not saying that we shouldn't all be that way i'm just saying that we have to take into account how people are feeling how they're expecting us to respond to them as school leaders and we'll take the school year a day at a time and as conditions change we're certainly going to modify our conditions as we did last year if you remember about once a month during the first half of the school year we brought more students back to the schools and made those changes as we knew more about what was happening so there's a number of things that have happened this year that we don't have this year one is that a number of our students a number of our staff number of our community members have

061been vaccinated so that's one thing that's different that's a different variable that we need to take into account this year and so as things continue to change we're going to be sensitive to our friends from the health department and working with them closely taking their guidance their advice and certainly trying to do the best thing for our community so with that mr president members of the board that ends my report great thank you superintendent stokes and i did i got reminded i need to mention um that we are in a public building and the mandate i think it's 48 and it references back to 45 that masks are required in a public building um with that said we're gonna move on to item five board reports board member comments this is for information only and

062mike start with you so mark twain has geared up for an exciting school year and they would like to announce that they will be having their kindergarten meet and greet on friday the 13th from four to five so they hope to meet a lot of their new kindergarten families and see their smiling faces thank you don dr conley from eagle valley middle school the principal want to announce uh back to school boot camp which is this thursday august 12th uh 3 to 4 30 pm will be for the sixth graders and then after that 4 30 to 6 p.m will be for seventh and eighth graders limited parking due to the construction so he asks for the parents and everybody to be patient uh it will help get everybody through if you update your registration

063online and then from carson high school blue thunder marching band they are in their second week of band camp and they will conclude band camp this friday with a presentation at 6 p.m for parents and whoever else would like to come on the football field and they uh they're ready to go there's actually a football game august 20th friday a home game so the band will be there and i assume the football team will be there as well it'd be good to have a football team if there's a game okay um laura before we start with you i know stacy is participating remote do we still have her trusty wilkie can you hear us yeah i can hear why don't we go to you stacy for an update nothing for me all right laurel okay

064for fritsch elementary school on august 13th they are having a back-to-school open house and the pta will be doing an ice cream social which is a wonderful event from four to five thirty and then on that same night if you have time and the stomach for it um at fremont elementary school they are also having a back-to-school open night pta ice cream social so um i will be double dipping if you will from the two different ice creams that night um also fremont would like us to know and like to announce to parents let me get it pulled up um that they are also on monday august 16th they will meet their students outside um with kinder and first in the front of the building and second through fifth in the back parking lot and

065so if anyone has questions they are happy to have them call the school to make sure you know where to meet your teachers outside that first day of school and then just i'd like to take a little minute to thank our staff and and all of our staff this time last year before school started there were a lot of unknowns and there were a lot of fears and there were staff that had health concerns of their own that they put aside their fears to come back to school to teach our kids and they showed up and and they did a great job we have kids who at the high school who took their ap exams and have some of them are getting their scores back and these kids pass those a few tests when the

066teachers have them for half a third of the time that they did they couldn't even cover all the material um that was on those tests so i i know um it's gonna it's we're not off this ride yet but i just wanted to put it out there that i appreciate all our staff who showed up last year and and who always put what was best for the kids first and i think that is um it was an unusual year and i know that there's kids that had struggles and and there's kids but it's still better than it would have been they've been all fully remote the whole year so i just i just want to thank everyone for their efforts and um and wish everyone a successful year this year as well thank you richard

067yes from wardrobe bray the appearance would like everyone to know that the friday august 13th they're having their back to school night at the greeting meet meet and greet and family barbecue students can get their teacher assignments that night and meet the teacher and see their classroom and then the families are then invited to the back playground to enjoy a hot dog and chips they want to remind people that first day of school is august 16th and then on sunday september 19th uh there'll be boardroom bray day at the reno aces and tickets will be on sale soon so just watch the link on parent square if you want to go and get tickets for for that game and also i just want to take a minute to welcome the teachers back to school they

068start tomorrow and i hope they have a successful year under these trying difficult times that they're going to be facing again this year i think and also i'd like to welcome the kids back to school next monday and hopefully have a successful year i also wanted to uh i had the opportunity to in the new higher orientation this last week and we had a new person who was kind of coordinating the event mary pray she did an excellent job and i think for the first time out uh she's to be commended and i just like to give her the kudos that she deserves for putting on such a good event for the new teachers and i think she'll be a great asset in that position so that's my report great thank you yeah the new

069hire event was was well put on it was well attended it was it was fantastic so it's nice to see the year starting i think uh certainly from my my perspective i'd love to see it starting a little differently but we are where we are but i do hope we have a successful year and we can come together and help these kids be the best they can be the only report i have tonight is i just wanted to take a minute to congratulate somebody from northern nevada um anybody who follows the olympics knows that we had kind of a local celebrity krista palmer she won a bronze medal in the three meter springboard for diving she was i believe she was born in carson city went to school in douglas county and uh i just

070clipped the nevada appeal but uh i don't know anybody that's ever won an olympic medal so this is pretty exciting she was one of my daughter's old gymnastics coaches as she was transitioning to diving so i just wanted to say congratulations to crystal palmer and with that um did we cover nasby updates i guess the only update i would let you know um that renee will get be getting a message we did have a request today from one of the counties to extend the deadline for acceptance of the nazbe nominations um we didn't see a reason to not grant that extension given that most districts are dealing with the back to school um just just all the business busyness at that time so that will be something that's coming out it's going to be like

071i think until five days later but we're in a good position but just letting you know that there's an extension there it'll be okay in all districts thank you um item six association reports do we have any in person or remote then remote mr cassiopo okay seeing none we're going to move on to item seven uh this is an informational update from carson city health and human services on conditions related to covet 19 in the carson city area and the quad counties this is for discussion only and we have uh dustin dustin booth and nikki are you both coming up or yeah perfect good evening members of the board uh for the record my name is dustin booth i am the disease prevention and control manager at carson city health and human services i'm also

072an epidemiologist tonight i wanted to talk to you briefly about quad county and carson city data so this chart here represents a snapshot of the quad county seven day moving average throughout the pandemic starting last march all the way through the beginning of august the second chart takes a closer look over the last several months starting with the decline in january and a fairly flat curve until beginning of july then we see the increases case the seven-day moving average here in the quad county here is a uh this the this chart shows the carson city specific seven day rolling average for july at the beginning of july carson city was at less than 10. by the last week of july carson city reported a rolling average of 23 cases this chart shows the number of

073actual cases per mmwr week so starting at the beginning of july we had five cases by the end of july week 30 we had 57 cases for the month of july 68 of the cases were reported in the last two weeks [Music] this chart shows the age breakdown for carson city for the month of july 22 of the reported cases were aged 0 to 19. 53 of the reported cases were aged 20 to 49. 19 of the reported cases were aged 50 to 59 and six percent of the reported cases were 70 or older [Music] among the cases in july with completed information the most common known covalent exploding 19 exposures were in the community at 41 or that and then the household at 22 [Music] this chart shows the breakdown based on the state

074dashboard of the percent of population that is vaccinated in in each county for carson city we're at a 51.93 percent douglas county at 45.93 lyon county is at 38.64 and story county is at 15.07 percent in the news there's been a lot of reports about breakthrough cases in the quad county region since february we've had 133 documented breakthrough cases which is less than four percent of our total cases in the quad county during that time frame we've had two individuals that were breakthrough cases that have been hospitalized however none of these individuals have passed away [Music] the short and sweet any questions yeah start with the board any questions from any members of the board richard i wish you had that in front of us i don't think we do but uh how many cases

075are uh for like about a term under the 18 juvenile cases and if we have some uh how sick are they getting if you know yeah so we break it out by 10-year age groups so if i were to look um so the um 0-19 so that um it's 22 percent of the cases when we look it down from zero to nine it was seven percent of our cases in july and from 10 to 19 it was 15 of our cases in july i do not know of any anybody under the age of 19 in our region that has been hospitalized [Music] and dustin of the folks locally i guess that that have covet i mean there's there's mixed opinions and there's a lot of data out there and we're trying to just understand it

076for our community because a lot of folks have some strong opinions and and you know they have a right to have these strong opinions but what are we seeing in terms of those in our community that have it um are these otherwise healthy individuals do they have pre-existing conditions do we have a breakdown that talks us through some of that um so you know so in sort of i guess in july you know um 96 of our cases are you know individuals that are you know unvaccinated the age ages you know the majority of them are the you know 20 to 69 years old um and so they you know it varies in regards to underlying conditions um i don't have those direct stats but we do if we're able to talk to individuals we

077do collect that information um to to you know assess what their you know underlying conditions are because that helps give guidance in regards to you know isolation um after you're positive currently if it if you basically don't have any underlying conditions it's you know it's a 10 day isolation if you do have underlying conditions and the more underlying conditions you have then then it would usually look at a 20-day isolation because those individuals can't clear the virus as easy and so that they could be infectious up to 20 days okay um feel free to ask any other questions but i'm just i mean it's interesting to me because i truly you know i know what i read um this delta variant that everybody's talking about now from i don't know if it's a fair question

078to you guys but is it is it more dangerous than the other one we had i mean i'm kind of curious our cases aren't overflowing yet a lot of attention is being made to this and and you know we're subject to say the governor's directives and whatnot so i'm just trying to get a sense of a comparison between what we had and where we're at now yeah so in regards to to variants of concerns the delta variant is would be one of them um when somebody tests for um for code they that not in all cases but in in if you test through our office um and then there's a sample through private labs that get sequenced for um for variance or what variant made you sick so based on those the statewide sequence analysis

079that's done it's not um that we're seeing you know over 80 percent of our cases have been sequenced for the delta variant so it is it has taken off it is um most likely the variant that's circulating it is um you know the this variant has mutated to be more infectious so it produces more viral particles so that then when somebody's sick they can spread it to more people so that um initially was around what they call an r out of two so each person makes two people sick now it's predicted that it's an art out of nine so now one person can make nine people sick in theory so that that's sort of that more infectiousness and so we've see we've seen that with um you know in the as the delta variant moved

080moved in and people returned to you know summertime activities of doing doing things and you know that they didn't do last year because we're open now that there are you know um more opportunities for engagement you know with uh somebody that could you know make you ill i think another thing too is is with our um the you know it's hot out so people stay inside plus our weather our smoky weather has not been um very favorable for outdoor activities so a lot of people stay inside so that you know this vibe you know like any other respiratory virus it spreads spreads inside okay you have something go ahead with uh health and human services i think quit testing is that correct so we had um had had stopped testing at our facility due to

081due to the demand however the demand has has increased and so we are we currently offer uh testing um at our at the health department three days a week um and then we've also um for during our vaccination events we schedule uh testing either before a vaccination event or after a vaccination event to utilize the resources that we have uh we partner with the guard to help us with vaccination then they also help us with the testing and i'm just curious if somebody tests at a private doctor's office do those results come to you guys so you can track it yes okay thank you what are what are the trends you're seeing say in washoe county because you know we're such we're so close we all go into washoe county several times a week sometimes

082yeah i mean washoe i think that you know they're they i think they reported that they um that their you know their rolling average has has increased just like our quad county region has um ours is nowhere near where theirs is um and you know we um communicate with the health department there in regards to cases what we call outer jurisdiction cases so they transfer them over to us and we transfer to them um and you know staff haven't really provided me update besides just that normal activity of any um like concerns about washoe i just know that their that their numbers have been increasing just like um our quad county region has and one of the other worries i have is last year there was a there was a slow response that felt like

083in our schools for contact tracing and so i'm just wondering are there have we kind of really clarified those lines of communication with our schools in case there is an outbreak in one of our schools and yeah yes so so last year when we go back to the beginning of school we were you know the health department we we did it we worked with each school district to end their our key contact in each school district my second semester we worked with those key contacts to put it at the school level because it was there was a delay and so we looked at it you know it's more import it the school nurses or you know whoever the schools are designating to know where those kids are they know it it shouldn't be left to

084us to get a classroom you know a seating chart and try to figure that out what of what where that is we we um did that and it worked really well here at carson city sheila and her staff were really great and uh we look forward to that with this next school year we're working with um sheila and her staff [Music] i've heard a lot about this delta variant and what i've read and researched and everything it seems like that people who get it are not getting as sick as the first version is that correct and what are we seeing in the younger population are they getting very sick or is it like mild cold or do you have any idea um [Music] yeah you know i don't my staff didn't provide me any any

085update in regards to the to the kids you know they do know that they you know obviously it's you know this is a novel virus most of us do not have any protection to it so when when uh we get it we get ill and you know the the it all depends on that individual the severity of their illness um but um at least for the month of july i staff had shared with me um any children that had been hospitalized at least especially for carson um that um but it doesn't um i'm but they haven't really shared with me any differences that they've seen with kids versus adults i just have a clarifying question on your side slide if you can go back to it um where it showed carson city cases just to

086make sure that i'm understanding it because at first um i'm not sure where this one is just to make sure this the 26th because you said five and you did that the 26 is the day of july so so for for um we report on what's called mmwr week morbidity mortality weekly report okay and so each week of the year is assigned a week so week 26 was the beginning of july okay week 27 through week 30. thank you depending on the year there's i was trying to figure out is that july 26th what is that so that makes sense thank you yeah so there's usually with mmwr weeks there's usually 52 but some years we do have 53 weeks okay that is definitely an upward trend i know you're not showing a slide on

087november december obviously was our big months what were the cases in in that area i was just compared to the numbers now um so if you go back to this the top chart here yeah um that that's showing our the surge that we had during the winter months and um you know last year in july the state saw an upward tick we didn't hear locally but the state did see that um after fourth of july but our biggest surge was during the the winter months which we see respiratory illnesses at that time okay usually you're looking at close to 300 during that time the rolling average was the seven day rolling average it's a better way to um to look at that because it because of the delays in lab reporting that some days there

088may be low labs and then the next day there's a whole bunch of labs so by by looking at that seven day moving average it's a better way to look at look at uh case counts thank you appreciate it okay nikki do you have anything to add good evening nikki director carson city health and human services just to add on to that also um we have changed our staffing so we're now working five days a week instead of seven so on mondays you may see a very large number but that does not mean that that you know that monday is especially um worse than other days it it means we're catching up and so i just wanted to put that interest perspective for all of you okay richard when this first broke out this covet

089there was a lot of false positive testing going on tests that was occurring has that improved the testing has improved where you get less uh false negatives does that make sense i'm sorry false positives that was my mistake yeah so so right now there's two types of tests that that individuals can take an antigen-based test which is similar to what if you were during to see your physician in regards to an office test for flu they shove it uh swab up your nose it looks for flu antigens um when you're when you're ill same thing with covad it looks for covet antigens um and then then there's the pcr test um so the pcr test um the the lab that we use which is the state public health lab they do use a multiplex test

090that looks for flu a flu b and and um sarsko v2 and that that really hasn't changed over the time but by besides adding the influenza component to that it hasn't really changed so you know the fda approves the the tests for each each company that does that and so on the pcr they look for you know what they call the ct value so it has to be 40 cts or less uh to be considered a positive if it's above 40 it should not be considered it should be considered a negative and then the antigen is is just a a line on a card that it looks for that thanks so i would just add that the the pcr is like your gold standard and those are the tests that we run through our testing

091events and at the health department all right i think that's all we could come up with thanks for your time i'm sure you get a lot of questions but is there a way if anybody wants to contact you um how do we get in touch with you for questions or whatnot yeah so if anybody would like to to reach out you know they can call the health department at 775-887-2190 and um during business hours we usually have somebody i'll always have somebody at the front desk to answer that and they can transfer you up to me and then in addition we still have our hotline available and that is um 434 1999. 1988. no i think it's 1988. okay stand corrected um so anyway um general questions can go to that hotline those individuals have

092been trained to answer questions and that is also how somebody can get tested at our facility and then on our website it does have all of our events so anybody can get on the website and find out where our events are we do serve four counties so we do rotate between counties but any carson city residents can go to a testing or vaccination event at any of the other counties all right thank you very much because it's discussion only we're we're not taking public comment um we're gonna have public comment next thanks yeah i just want to thank the carson city health and human services for all of your efforts over the last year and all of the information that you have provided to the community and the testing and vaccination events that you have

093put on i i it's it's i know you said you were working seven days a week and i want you to know that your efforts are appreciated and we really appreciate the collaboration that we've had with the schools and just the open dialogue and to be able to figure things out thank you so we're going to move on now to item eight which is public comment and again i think most of us have been here enough now we just asked that um public comments be kept to three minutes not to exceed three minutes and not just to repeat the person in front of you um this is for items that are within the jurisdiction of this board that are not already marked for action because we will be taking public comment on action items so

094with that if you want to make public comment just come on in state your name or excuse me come on up to the microphone state your name and i do have a list of folks that signed in so i'm going to go with them first but if you didn't sign in you're still welcome to come up and make public comments so we'll start out with karen stevens mr stokes members of the board in reading through the school reopening plan i was inspired to write a piece that i call imagine imagine a virus so deadly that it has to it has never been isolated and that you have to be tested to know that you have it imagine a virus so contagious that you are told you should wear no mask one mass two masks three

095masks in 95 mass mass between sips on the bus on the train on the airplane in the gym around your grandchildren around your around your grandmother anyone for that matter imagine a diagnostic test that is so precise that it can't tell the difference between a cold virus or a virus particle or a cold particle or a virus particle imagine an experimental emergency use vaccine injection for a virus so deadly that you are threatened coerced shamed bribed given free doughnuts free hamburgers uh fear-mongered and forced to take it to keep your job imagine a childhood that is filled with fear anxiety and trauma from a virus that a child has a statistically zero chance of dying from imagine that a childhood of stressed perceived threats a reduction of breath flow creates a positivity of autoimmune conditions

096lupus asthma allergies and chemical sensitivities among other things of course imagine a social uh society that is unwilling to protect our precious children from governmental and medical tyranny imagine a world where the dictates of just a few become the mandates of the many where your constitutional and god-given rights as human beings have been extinguished [Music] imagine no more there is no reason [Music] we have been moved into the new one world order wake up before it's too late stop promoting useless mass chemical bioweapon injections and racist crt curriculum [Music] thank you yeah [Applause] next we have sorry if i mess up your name barges any was i close oh it's bahar bahar's annie thanks yeah hello okay cool hi my name is buhari jazani and oh i just graduated from carson high school and i

097support the district's decision to focus on equity 100 for the people in this room that disagree i want to talk about why implementing equity in tara schools is not only beneficial but crucial and i also want to take a minute and talk about why critical race theory is important at first my plan was to come up here and explain equity in a very moderate way and then kindly ask people to support it but after some thought i realized that that won't accomplish much i believe everyone in this room is capable of understanding equity and it's not a groundbreaking idea for example implementing equity entire schools can look like giving more resources and class time to visual learners who may not be as prioritized as auditory learners or giving more class time and encouragement to female

098stem students rather than solely focusing on their male peers this is equity and it's a simple concept everyone in this room is intelligent and capable enough to understand it and i believe the only possible reason one would disagree with implementing equity in terrorist schools is if they are comfortable with inequality equity makes the privileged uncomfortable but it's the only way equality can be achieved you can say you want equality in our schools all you want but in order to create a truly inclusive environment where students of all genders races sexualities and religions are equal you must take steps to satisfy the disadvantaged groups this means teaching critical race theory and yes critical race theory will make some students uncomfortable but it is still crucial and must be taught understanding the intersections of racism and our

099criminal justice system and our government in general is just as necessary as understanding basic biology or math it's crucial and it must be taught in order to achieve true equality and equality means not promoting a colorblind system because saying that you want your schools to be colorblind is equivalent to saying that you don't want your kids to learn about the historic struggle of people of color within this nation and carson city school district equality means not hiring esl teachers that will tell parents of students of color to stop teaching their kids their native language because it confuses them ccsd this means not consistently and disproportionately putting students of color in lower level classes equity means making change and making people uncomfortable in order to achieve equality how can equality be accomplished if we remain comfortable

100in our position of inequality the answer is it can't once again i completely support the district's decision to focus on equity and so should you thank you thank you let's remember everybody gets for three minutes whether we agree with them or not let's not have any undertones please thank you okay next we have john vettel uh members of the board stokes appreciate the opportunity to say a couple of things uh ladies and gentlemen the school board i'm concerned about a youngster's lack of knowledge needed to secure the knowledge is needed to secure their future my son graduated high school just six years ago believe it or not and started how few folks his age know even know what we celebrate on the 4th of july yet your superintendent has just hired a director of equity

101in curriculum and instruction folks equity in a curriculum means critical race theory i'm here to tell you that we don't want our kids brainwashed with racism and that's exactly what critic critical race theory is racism i suggest you reject that garbage and instead implement a new hillsdale college curriculum that they just came out with it covers k-12 it's available i believe it's free and it's rather in-depth the equity director that you hired mrs macy could be reassigned to implement that hillsdale college's new curriculum seeks to immerse students in american history and the american political tradition it includes lesson plans and primary source documents k-8 addresses the american founding the american civil war declaration of independence and united states constitution while high school units include the principles of america equality in america and progressives of progressivism

102and the state folks you represent the citizens of carson city they demand solid civics education and they reject the racist critical theory and thank you for your attention [Applause] thank you john next we have lee elliott i speak from the podium because i have to you all know what this is i'll tell you what the last board meeting i spoke of there was four of the individuals up there that could care less what anybody was saying i was watching i have i've had the opportunity to study people for a very long time living in hollywood and on stage and so i'm going to make mine very simple and clear by the way i have a couple other books if you want to take them home and and study them and read your constitutional rights okay

103the supreme court new york times versus sullivan ruling 1964. and see there when she was talking your eyes were like riveted on her and glint it was great i loved it the united states supreme court unanimously ruled in favor of the newspaper the court said the right to publish all statements is protected under the first amendment the court also said in order to provide libel and public official must show that there was said against them was made with actual malice that is with knowledge that it was false or with recklessness discard up for the truth the court also asserted america's profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited robust and wide open free and open debate about the conduct of public officials the court reasoned was more important than

104the occasional honest factual errors that might hurt or damage officials reputations okay you're all looking away a couple of them are looking away okay i tell you what it's going to explode i talk to a thousand people a day i get calls from parents i don't even know what are we going to do about the mask what are we not going to do about the mask what is real what is not real you better take notice people you guys are under our thumb now you're on our dime i hate to say it that way but it's the truth we love our kids we as adults should be ashamed of ourselves we're taking the smiles away from our children and the three minutes that you have pegged as enough is enough is unconstitutional but i'm not

105going to go for that tonight okay people should be able to speak freely openly like this young lady back here i loved it what she did it was her right her constitutional right we don't stand up now as adults as a parent i tell you what our kids are going to walk around going wow look at that i can't do this thank my time's up thanks lee so next we have patricia tune hi my name is patricia tune i want to talk to you about september 17th but as an rn i just have to wonder if this really kills coped and if it does which i doubt how long it has to stay wet just an fyi because people use that and they wipe and they think that it's not working it has to stay

106wet like for two to four minutes just fyi that was just free medical advice i guess so um i'm here to talk about september 17th it's fast approaching and it's constitution day congress passed legislation requiring any federally funded schools and federal agencies to hold educational programs and to teach the constitution on that day i was public schooled my children public school my daughter was a public school teacher for several years and none of us had ever heard of this i just recently learned of it so i'm kind of surprised on august 5th i sent an email to you regarding this day and asked about the plans to fulfill this to fulfill this federal requirement i haven't heard back from any of you but i know it's less than a week already constitution is an american

107federal observance that commemorates the formation and signing of the united states constitution by 39 brave men on september 17 1787 they risk their lives their families and their fortunes for us our constitution is the most influential document in american history yet so many have never read it and many that take the oath to um protect uphold and preserve the constitution have never even read it our constitution serves as the basis for other similar similar documents around the world while most constitutions last less than 20 years ours has endured for centuries i think that's incredible i believe the difference in ours is because our fam ours is founded on the creed that all men are created equal not equity equal and that they are um endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights among those life

108liberty and the pursuit of happiness our constitution recognizes these rights our god given by our creator not by the government our constitution gives us no less than the owner's manual to the greatest form of government the world has ever known we the people we are the government if you doubt this look around how many people are flooding into our country and how many are fleeing to get out we can say what we want we have a great country and so it saddens me when our young people don't understand our history and how much freedom we have versus the other countries just look at our borders they can't get in fast enough we can't be that bad so in 2016 president obama stated and i quote with pride in our diverse heritage and our common creed

109we affirm our dedication to the values enshrined in our constitution we the people must forever breathe life into the words of this precious document and together ensure that its principles endure for generations to come i end quote constitution day is a day that is that federal federal state and local officials as well as leaders of civic social and educational organization organizations are encouraged to conduct ceremonies and programs that bring our community together that reflect on the importance of active citizenship and i think this is a great time to let nevada shine i look forward to seeing what you have planned for our schools thank you patricia uh next we have bob mathers and shelly van sickle i'm gonna set my timer again so i know i have six minutes good thanks awesome okay so i

110wanted to bring my kids to the meeting tonight so they could share their own statements but i also didn't want to play the mask game so i'm going to go ahead and read them for them and also in response to the gal who spoke for critical race 3 i thought you guys said that carson doesn't have critical race theory in their schools she just said she's glad that you guys have it and she's for that so that means you have it in your schools no that means somebody said we have it okay she just graduated so she's a student so i guess she knows what she's talking about so this is my son connor mathers he's nine his statement is i don't want to go to school with a mask on and i don't see

111my friends smiles i can't think with a mask on because my face is too hot they make me sad they make me mad and they make me frustrated i don't want to go to the store with a mask on thank you for getting rid of them for the kids now get rid of them for the teachers this is my four-year-old i asked her what she wanted to say she wrote down her own version and i wrote what she said she said i don't like wearing masks they make me sad i can't see smiles i don't want masks i don't want to wear masks on the plane we're going to florida maybe in october because i don't want to wear a mask either but she said i don't want to wear masks on the plane it's

112hot wearing masks she's four both of my children do not like wearing masks um i was also talking to one of my cousins in fallon she has children in a private school the reason we keep discussing masks is because you guys flip flop more than flip flop pouchy no mass yes mass no mask yes mass no masks in school but teachers have to wear masks no masks on you have to wear masks on the bus give me a break like we're all over the place um other counties didn't have masks they had schools open just peachy keen so i was discussing with her just yesterday i said that i've been going to school board meetings for like three months they're listening and not doing anything the parents are asking and um she mentioned that her

113kids say they really don't even mention covet anymore like it has just disappeared for them and i'm glad for that and she's she moved from vegas and she said i feel so grateful we got to fallon when we did and got to the school we get to go to it's all day school no masks after school programs like normal kids being kids i feel awful for the kids who feel helpless and hopeless they're truly the innocent ones adults are ruining their lives i just wanted to put in another plug for the commonwealth that i'm going to be participating in i'm not putting my kids in public school until you guys figure this out it's for ltinevada.org it's a god-based family-centered agency-driven leadership education until masks are completely completely out of the system my kids are

114not going to school you're saying there's no masks currently there's going to be a second wave and a third wave and a fourth wave and another variant forever covet is not going anywhere masks should not be enforced if people want to choose to wear them that's up to them but they shouldn't be forced teachers shouldn't be forced to be wearing masks right now either what is that telling the kids you guys don't have to wear masks but i guess the parents and the teachers are really contagious so they have to wear masks none of this makes any sense and wearing the masks on the bus they're going to get them get their stuff all over their fingers and they're going to go in the classroom and it's going to get all over the place anyway

115wearing masks on the bus is not going to solve anything all that teaches the kids is well kovid hangs out on the bus but it doesn't hang out in the classroom um i also echo the sentiment that we need guidance counselors at every single school you guys chose to wear masks to implement masks like i said fallon no masks multiple counties no masks you guys literally chose to muzzle our children and have them in masks because you're hiding behind sisalak when the county commissioner's office and the school board and the sheriff are on the same page that's when changes can be made our school board and our county commissioner and our sheriff are on the same page as sysolak i don't agree with anything syslock is doing we are 49th in education in the state

116we are 49th in unemployment the numbers just came out he is totally destroying our state and you guys are on board with following him to destroy our state i don't want masks in the schools i don't want them to be forced i don't want vaccines to be forced if people want to choose to get the vaccine that's totally up to them if they want to choose to wear the mask that's totally up to them but you guys cannot be forcing this you can't be making people wear them if they don't want to wear them and with the the guidance counselors the traveling social worker that's bologna literally every single school needs to have a guidance counselor we have a lot of really messed up kids and teenagers clearly because teenagers are the ones who should

117be ready to overcome the world and do everything and they're the ones who are wearing masks the majority of the time this is something you guys chose you decided to instill this fear in our kids it needs to go away it needs to go away and i don't want it i don't want my children to see this on a regular basis and if money is the concern you guys need to figure that out take some money away from superintendent stokes and the the administrators and all the other employees who are getting way overpaid every single phone call i got home from fremont was for a fundraiser i lost count of how many fundraisers they had every single paper gets translated into spanish they have flyers and newsletters and papers it's all translated into spanish that's

118money that can be saved stop thank you stop enabling the kids and teach them english next we have deborah gibbons is this on okay um board members my name is deborah gibbons i'm a longtime citizen here in carson city i do not have kids in school now but my son did go through the schools here in carson city i wish i had paid closer attention to what was being taught to him being a business owner i was very caught up in my own business but now that i am retired i plan on spending a lot of time on trying to make sure that our kids are educated with history with real history bob woodson has a wonderful project he's got going i don't know if the critical race theory is being taught under the 1619

119project uh they have different names for things and i do have to say it is very interesting to see when eyes look at you and when eyes do not look at you from board members and it's a as if are you listening or are you not listening this gentleman in particular has looked at the ceiling almost all evening long and we're members here that have either kids or grandkids in the school district here excuse me in the school district here and to read the body language as far as what's coming from you elected members here it's um it is it's a little disheartening that's all i have to say thank you any additional public comment yes please i'm heather co and i been listening to several doctors one is dr cody messner from tests children's

120hospital and he made it very clear that all this coveted money not one study on masks none and nothing for children who are not dying of this and yes this variant is like a cold that's all it is and i know that because several of my son's friends have got it and didn't know they had it second of all i listen to a beautiful young girl talk about something that i know for a fact is already implemented in this school system because my son goes to school at carson high school and my daughter started with this she is a straight a student until she got an english teacher that filled her because she didn't write a paper that was politically correct and this is getting the point of being ridiculous she's proof after listening to

121her that you are teaching racism and you're allowing this okay it's the most racist thing in the world is equity equality is what we want we want everyone to be treated equally and i'm sorry that's too much for anyone to ask of teachers not to make such an issue out of their own personal political views and that is what's happening i've experienced my children have experienced it and i want it out and i want an option if you're going to teach garbage that will make children hate one another divide one another so that my kid doesn't have to listen to it maybe he could make up for the year he lost that would be nice thank you [Applause] pepsi strasbourg i'll reserve most of my comments for item nine but i just wanted to congratulate

122the school district and the superintendent for not enforcing mask after governor came out with his ridiculous directives i this morning i got a call from a parent who said she was pulling her students out of the school district after looking at directive 48 i mentioned to her what the carson now article said about mask and she was slightly relieved her concerns then moved on to the testing protocols that are in directive 48 but we have not heard how that is going to be implemented in the schools we want to get more information of those protocols and i would urge the school district to get the parental consent prior to any testing being done on school children thank you so much any additional in-person public comment okay seeing none i'm going to close in person public

123comment do we have any remote public comment yes mr cassiopo thank you this comment is from a parent of a student at carson high school i'm hoping based on the governor reinstating the mask mandate that carson city school district will be implementing this as well the governor is following the recommendation from the cdc there has been a substantial uptick in cases as well as the new delta variant which has amazed your cause for concern students teachers and other school district staff deserve to be protected wearing a mask is not a difficult thing to do it's much better than catching covet and winding up sick on a ventilator or worse please listen to the cdc and our governor and require masks for all students teachers and other school district staff my family is vaccinated but we

124are more than willing to do our part and wear a mask to help curb this deadly pandemic nobody likes to wear masks we're all sick of it but it's important that we look out for ourselves and one another it simply wouldn't be fair for anyone to put the lives of others at risk there are a lot of people in the schools every day and it's impossible to socially distance therefore it's more important than ever to wear a mask it is yeah we close public comment uh this request was provided to be put in the record for uh heather ritman it's uh un regarding under seven hard truths of critical race theory there's two pages of um comments here mr president it's far too much to read but i will include it in the um record

125for the minutes and i can also provide a copy to the trustee so that you guys have that as well okay thank you this comment is from asia hensley thank you to the board for the opportunity to speak they're submitting the public comment by email because they cannot risk the possibility of being in a room of unvaccinated unmasked people as i have underlying health conditions that would make fighting covet very difficult should she get it she would like to express my cons extreme concern and disappointment regarding the consideration of not requiring students to wear masks while attending school this year at the very least to start the year so students have been traveling and active in other riskier situations through the summer as a parent she's worried for her son as they currently not eligible

126to receive a vaccine and will be sitting in full capacity classrooms this year many students around them if not all will not be vaccinated if masks are not required no doubt most of them will be without masks kids will do not do the responsible thing and wear a mask by choice my sons will be wearing masks regardless why do why would we not do everything possible to keep our kids and communities safe especially when this delta variant is more transmissible and showing up in kids more than ever it doesn't make sense to not wear a mask when our area's vulnerability is considered very high and our infection rates are at least as high as last school year and we wore masks then i invite every board member and superintendent stokes to visit the high school

127during lunch time or even just between classes to see how safe you feel in that environment without your mask i don't particularly like wearing a mask either but science has proven they help stop the spread when worn properly that's a whole other issue of itself honestly i feel defeated at this point and don't know if this comment will make much of a difference because others are yelling louder right now but it's worth a shot all i can hope is that the board will make their choice wisely based on the facts and statistics provided by the various health agencies we have access to masks in groups like classrooms should be worn at least until we have heard immunity and low transmission rates thank you this comment is from joyce newman thank you for the opportunity to

128provide comments regarding the district's mask policy for students i wish i could have been there in person but i'm one of those people in a high risk group immunocom immunocompromised and over 70 years of age and even though i've been vaccinated i'm aware of the many breakthrough covet cases among vaccinated people and have chosen to be cautious i know these are difficult times and the board is faced with tough decisions on august 3 the district announced on its website that mask would be required on august 6th it announced they would not be required i wonder if parents are as confused as i am the agenda on the august 10th meeting indicates that the school mask issue is set for discussion only at this meeting i noticed that school is scheduled to begin on august 16th

129but that the next board meeting isn't until the 17th it appears this board has already decided to not require masks in schools is that right where is the science supporting that decision i'd suggest you call a special meeting to revisit the matter and seriously consider the cdc's recommendations as you know there is a lot of information out there much of it compiled by the centers for disease control major research and clinical hospitals like yale university the cleveland clinic and children's hospital of los angeles among many others to support a decision to require masks for school children first i would like to respectfully suggest that there are several questions board members might want to ask themselves how many children in the district live with grandparents how many children parents grandparents are immunocompromised or live with people

130who are how many carson city school children over the age of 12 have been vaccinated how many of the children's caregivers have been vaccinated how many coveted cases and deaths are you willing for children and caregivers to suffer to avoid having children wear masks how many of you have children or grandchildren in carson city schools here are some of the many many recommendations i was able to find in a very short time cdc recommends universal indoor masking for all teachers students staff and visitors to schools regardless of vaccination status emphasis added kids and young people are a concern a recent study from the united kingdom showed that children and adults under 50 were 2.5 times more likely to become infected with delta says dr yildram a yale medicine pediatric infectious disease specialist and vaccinologist according

131to the cdc the delta variant is more contagious does this make children under 12 who are not eligible for the vaccine at greater risk for becoming infected the delta variant is estimated to be up to two times more contagious than the initial sars covid2 virus there is concern that because we don't have a vaccine approved for children less than 12 years of age that group is at more risk right now three minutes too long i don't know we have more yeah we yes this comment is from uh mr don williams uh mr williams is extremely disappointed by your decision not to require pupils to wear masks in schools when carson city and surrounding counties have high rates of covid everyone should be required to wear masks indoors until rates go down significantly i'm a taxpayer

132and active voter 35-year resident of carson city and 39-year resident of northern nevada who retired as the direct research director of the nevada legislature with considerable experience in education and health policy please correct your decision and protect the children and their families this comment is from julie over our middle school and high school students are vaccinated but our fourth grade nine-year-old son is not excuse me nine-year-old is not she attends fritch elementary i'm writing to express our discomfort with allowing no masking especially in light of the inability to social distance with the school at full capacity coven 19 infection rates are higher this year than last year with a dangerous variant spreading rapidly if parents do not want their children following the cdc mass guidelines they should opt for online school we science-minded folk who

133follow the rules should not suffer because of those who choose ignorance i'm afraid for our family's safety please consider doing the bare minimum to protect our community require masks in full capacity classrooms this comment is from haley woodward miss woodward is emailing in regards to the newly announced update that does not require students to wear face masks inside the classrooms of the schools within the district as a fully vaccinated healthcare worker here is why i think this is unacceptable hospitals are understaffed and the remaining staff is overworked as the coven numbers rise once again in northern nevada there's the need for more staff to care for these patients all healthcare workers are burned out and the hospitals are struggling to provide safe nurse to patient ratios meaning that more medical errors are bound to happen

134and each patient will be given will begin to get inadequate care cdc guidelines along with the carson county guidelines state that all persons vaccinated or not are required to wear face masks in all indoor facilities schools are in fact an indoor facility so these guidelines should apply the guidelines also state that there should be six feet in between each person how do you plan on accomplishing this with 30 students and one teacher in a small enclosed classroom the cdc along with the academy of pediatrics are advocates for wearing masks inside the classroom the vaccination is now available for anyone over the age of 12 meaning that a large group of students do not qualify to receive the vaccine without the vaccine any additional protection should be required to avoid the spread of this deadly virus

135the coronavirus is a real thing and we should leave it to the medical professionals not the governor with no medical education to set the guidelines to prevent the further spread of it i hope you take what has been written in this email into consideration and make the right choice of requiring masks in the classroom this comment is from jennifer diganji first of all thank you for all your hard work the last two years to keep our children as safe as possible during the pandemic i was reassured that that an education system would base their decision on evidence-based science i got to teach my children about doing hard things masking to keep us and others safe i was shocked to learn this year that masks will not be requi will not be mandated despite cdc guidance

136the delta variant typically infects five to eight people versus last year's virus that typically only infected two others this is closer to what to that of chickenpox with delta higher viral loads are making children sick in places where masking is not required in some places they are running out of pediatric beds we have a small rural hospital here with only eight beds there is only one pediatric icu in northern nevada at renown i hope we never see them run out of ventilators or picu nurses who are able to manage a ventilator on a child all this to say we were lucky last year as a community in regards to pediatric severe infections however basing decision making on this on last year's virus is faulty when you are dealing with a more contagious virus masking is

137not perfect but it decreases viral load so that even if you get sick hopefully it will be it will be less sick and if there is universal masking the statistics improved vastly by my kinder student last year thanked me over and over again for letting her go to school i'm not sure how to tell her that it is actually more dangerous this year but others will not be wearing masks to help keep her safe because it disrupts their comfort and rights and the school district is not willing to follow science to keep her as safe as possible please don't make school a place of trauma for many students their this is their safe place they should feel as safe as possible and be able to trust the adults to make the hard decisions let's allow

138kids to continue magical thinking and allow the adults to base their decisions on science to keep the children as safe as possible so they can learn please reconsider a universal masking mandate to keep our kids as safe as possible this comment is from alisa uh cunia i'm not sure how to say the last name as parents of two children under the age of 12 we are very concerned about the recent decision the district made to allow unvaccinated students to attend school without mask we have a few questions we would like the trustees to consider and respond to what criteria is guiding your decision on the current masking policy at carson city school district why is carson city school district not following the recommendations from the cdc three why is the carson city school district not

139following the recommendations of the aap four in the zero four eight directive please explain how the mask policy for carson city school district is not more permissive than state or local health directives five has the district considered the confusion and potential bullying students will face because students will be masked or not masked in addition there will be added responsibilities teachers will have in managing conflict with students and parents we all want to keep our children safe and in school keeping all students and staff in mask at least until they can be vaccinated is the most logical and successful way to do this this comment is from natalie reinhold as a previous student i come to you with great concern that the children of the carson city school district will have masks optional this year with

140a recent spike in coveted 19 cases the cdc has recently changed its guidance regarding this issue to recommend wearing masks indoors i believe it is unfair for a child to show up to school and worry about sitting next to an unvaccinated individual who is not wearing a mask this will cause unnecessary stress for some after all of the trauma they have gone through in their education the last year and a half we cannot control if students and their families are being safe outside of the classroom regarding the worsening pandemic but we can make the children feel safer when coming to school by requiring masks to be worn i recommend starting the school year off wearing masks and if things go well we can remove the requirement it is already hard enough being a child in

141school let alone with some kids will be wearing masks and others will not those who are or are not will hear comments from the other side making a conducive learning environment difficult and uncomfortable consistency is key the children have been out of school long enough wearing a mask to keep them in school and to avoid another shutdown is worth ensuring an in-person education mr cassiopo i have others that have come in via email okay this comment is from russell fullerton mr fullerton is curious as to why the school district is choosing to be reactive versus proactive when it comes to protecting our children not requiring masks for students inside school district buildings unless there is an outbreak why are you willing to put your children's lives at risk i am doing everything in my power

142to protect my children but it seems that the school district is not last year we chose to have student to have our student attend full-time distance learning and it did not go well having to attend summer school to make up credits we have another child at home who has who was to attend kindergarten this year but we have decided to not have him attend due to being immune compromised i would ask the school district to reconsider this decision about students wearing masks i know it's uncomfortable and annoying i hate them too but they save lives so again i ask please reconsider this decision this comment is from miss rogue mcduffie with the rising cases and the emerge of a third wave i would like to urge that the school district mask mandate for students be

143reconsidered while our pediatric case numbers are currently on the low end we are really are we really willing to wait for our numbers to spike before we react do we really want to risk exposure and overwhelming our health system by potentially risking a breakout in our schools among populations who are not eligible for vaccines at this time mr cassiopo that's all i have great thank you renee so we're going to close public comment remotely so all public comment is closed i do appreciate everybody's time um i get it it's a challenging topic um but anyway we're going to move on to item discussion and possible action on courses approved for dual credit in the carson city school district in accordance with nrs 389.160 to include approval of a memorandum of understanding mou with national education

144equity lab this is for possible action and we have tasha fuson presenting thank you president cassiopo members of the board uh nrs 389.160 allows high school students who have completed courses offered by a nevada community college or university to receive dual credit towards our high school diplomas we currently as a district have mousse with western nevada and the university of nevada reno and articulated programming with those two and she schools to offer dual credit for our students with the passage of senate bill 160 during the 81st session dual credit courses have been expanded to include courses from institutes of higher education outside of the state of nevada or outside of enshi so we are seeking approval to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the national education equity lab to add a offering entitled poetry

145in america the city from whitman to hip hop at pioneer high school for the upcoming year students who choose to take this course will receive three college credits from the arizona state university and an arizona state university transcript upon successful completion of the course the course will fulfill an english high school english requirement for graduation once approved by this board i then have to submit our request to the state board of education for final approval that submission will go on the state board of education agenda on the september 30th board meeting so i am at this point in time in your packet what you have included is a copy of our existing master course list of all the dual credit courses that are available to students in our district typically students who access these courses

146or take these courses are in our jumpstart program at the high school as you know our current jumpstart program allows students to enter into the program their freshman year take courses at the high school this coming year we've added a second year for those freshmen that will take courses in the sophomore year but but our original program really started with um seniors have an opportunity to take the first year of college courses they typically take english 101 english 102 math 126 math 127 etc and then we expanded that to juniors starting that first year so that then when they complete uh the two years they have their associate's degree before graduation that's why this entire pretty much the entire catalog almost of wnc is listed it's because with our current program our students take in

147that junior year excuse me for that cohort group of students that are looking to earn their associate's degree before graduation they take the required courses that they need to fulfill the high school graduation requirements and then they're pretty much given open access to the wnc catalog to customize the courses that they take to align with their four-year college degrees so we strongly recommend to them again students that they they research what it is that they want to get their four-year degree in and they take the courses that align to and be able to be transferable up to unr so that they're not taking courses that won't necessarily help fulfill those four-year requirements in addition to that wnc works really closely with the students to make sure that they're available unr was our edu 110 class

148originally so that's the intro to introduction to education and this particular mou will allow us to add um the the um additional list of courses that you have in that uh mou but the only thing we're asking out of that list um on the mou is specifically to add the walt whitman so it's an english 194 class although the the equity lab offers the myriad different options on that list on the mou we are not adding that for our state so just so you know the process at the state level is that individual districts have to go to their school boards get approval to add a specific course it goes into our course list right and then our students can access it they are looking to streamline this process at the state level to where

149eventually the state will approve all the courses instead of having 17 districts have to do individual approvals that then go to the state board so we're hoping to see that happen soon as in this year but currently we're still on our own our old plan and that again requires us to individually adopt course by course so again that's important even though the equity lab offers i think there's um you know eight different courses on that um mou we are only looking to add the first and so on page 39 of the master course or the dual credit list that you have you'll see it highlighted that it's literally specifically that one course so it's and by the way i do apologize for the fact that it has six question marks i didn't know what the

150actual number of the course was so if you want to write that in is eng so in our actual application to the state it will say eng194 and again the title is poetry in america the city from whitman to hip hop so that is my request of the board mr president i'll make a move that the carson city school district board please go ahead go ahead just a clarifying question tasha with the memorandum of understanding we're only asking for um the first one under a a um page one but the other ones will why would they then be included in that memorandum of understanding is that in case the state approves them another district submits for those for approval then would i would still have to bring it in front of you because of our

151own board policy that requires you all to approve individual courses in this particular setting it is a standard mou that they offer so they'll offer them to us i can have them i can ask them to remove them but they included that because they wanted us to know in future purposes should we want to add any of their courses we don't have to resign and mou with them we i would then bring it in front of you as the board to say we now want to offer a g do you approve for us to offer aag you know essentials of personal finance and then we would add that to our master course list so the important piece for our community and for our school district is in reality this master course list that's included here

152these are the courses that have been approved by the board previously and then therefore subsequently approved by the state board and what we are allowed to offer dual credit offerings i am very excited i just want you to know that that the the new bill was passed into law and will be added to nrs because we've had several occasions throughout the years that i've been with our district where families have requested um us to reconsider different dual credit options outside of our ng system for instance and i can't remember exactly what language it was but a few years back we had a family that had um you know that the student had learned this is not accurate but it's not like dutch i mean it was it was a it was a language that you'd

153heard of but wasn't you know something that is taught uh off or through many places and they had found a course that was offered through duke university and remember that right and the student wanted to take this course and had been approved to take this course but we could not allow them to have dual credit for it even though it was from uh you know a fairly a prestigious college and was very um you know a high-level course course of rigor for the student but because it was outside of ng we couldn't allow that so this particular uh bill that was that was signed into law will now allow us to explore some opportunities for students outside of enshi the one caveat to that is that the course cannot be offered at the nc institution

154so the reason for the 194 is specifically because why would we want to offer an english 101 or a 102 class from arizona state university when our nc schools have that course and we already have the ability to offer it in our students to take it through our state colleges so that that is the piece to this is that the course can only be utilized from the out from an outside college if it doesn't exist within the nc system so it's another piece we've got a bunch of notes there yeah i have a few questions um i guess my first question would be is why this course why was this selected from the equity lab i cannot answer that question from the equity lab i can tell you um why they picked that course i

155can't answer that but what i can say is what the purpose of the national equity lab is um that they are working with all of these you can see these colleges the level of you know cornell university howard university bernard college university of pennsylvania georgetown university of california davis etc they were working with universities across the country to be able to bring dual credit course offerings to students all throughout the country not all states and not all districts have the advantage that we have of having a robust early college studies dual credit program for students we're very fortunate that way and we're extremely fortunate that we have such a good partnership with wnc but not all districts and not all schools especially rural schools have access to that so these are all online courses right

156or there's an online component and then they hire so it's actually going to be offered by our teacher at pioneer high school who will be the teacher of record who will teach it utilizing that curriculum and so it makes it more accessible to students all throughout the country so that is their mission and then also to to give students a taste of what it is to take a course from harvard or yale where they might not have access to or think about ooh could i be competitive at that college um and then therefore maybe apply to those colleges that they wouldn't necessarily think about outside of their state so it gives them an opportunity to see if they can be competitive and a different situation a different dual credit situation so i know that that

157is their purpose and what they were striving to do why they picked that specific course i'm not sure i know why our staff picked that course it was purely because the teacher that we have that's going to teach it was really intrigued by the the course title so i went oh i would love to talk about whitman and hip right that sounds like something our kids would really like and connect to so that's why that individual course was selected not for any other reason then we had staff that was interested in teaching it and it was felt that the students would connect to it it is an optional course students are not required to take it it is simply available to them should they choose to take that early college studies thank you i have

158a couple more i guess i'm uncomfortable have you reviewed the curriculum or has it been peer reviewed by other teachers besides the one teacher who wanted to teach it so it has been reviewed and approved at the state level in terms of the department of education for our state is actually the entity that brought the opportunity to counties in the state we have seen the curriculum in terms of the course syllabus and the materials that students will be learning we have done a crosswalk with state standards to make sure it's allied to our state standards so our students can earn that that high school english credit i have more sorry um i guess i'm a little uncomfortable uh going out of state and sending nevada public money out of state to arizona is there any

159place in nevada that this course could be taught from another college here in nevada or university no and that's the only reason we can get it approved and that we can offer it if it was offered by an nc school and in chi college then we wouldn't be able to offer it that's the way the legislation is written would it be possible for the board i don't know maybe not want to but to review the curriculum before we approve the mou you are welcome to take a look at um the documents that we have yes but i and i'm happy to share them with you but i i would also want to point out that in the 84 pages i'm not 84 excuse me 30 39 pages of courses uh that we have the board

160has not individually reviewed the curriculum for all of those courses happy to show it to you i mean it's not it's not a problem it's not of a it's nothing that is a secret it's just um it is a college course and our students have access to numerous college courses would it be and i guess it would be up to the student and the family to make the choice whether or not they wanted to take it it's not a required course for students so tasha um i guess just to get right to it the elephant in the room right people here are saying if you use the word equity equity apparently equals critical race theory and we've heard all this stuff and you know i am i have to admit my own ignorance i i've

161been looking this stuff up as fast as i can reading as much as i can and going through tylenol like it's going out of style there's just a lot to absorb a lot to understand and i'm trying to be as responsible as i can as a trustee and so i've only had a couple of days to look at this and it's just a title and i guess what jumps out at me is is with a group given these times right now you know with a group uh the national education equity lab they're obviously interested in equity um that that's where i i i'm just a little a little nervous to jump in too quick because once you know once we adopt something like this people are going to say there you go now you're teaching

162crt and i can go to sleep and i'm fine with what people think it you know people can think what they want but i just want to make sure that this course like all other courses are the main reason for it is to give our kids options to educate our students give them opportunities but not create a situation or a teaching that causes them to to to to align with somebody else's train of thought i guess what i'm trying to not say but i need to just say it is i want to make sure they're not trying to teach critical race theory until i'm not saying it's good or bad because i don't know enough about it until we understand as a district if that's something we would even adopt and i'm not even sure

163i'm just rambling but i mean that that's kind of i know what people are wondering and what they're asking that's what i thought when i first saw this was you know we're off we offer like 30 english courses on this list already well yeah and i'm approximating it might be 25 but why 31. it is because our staff and our school requested to have that as an option for their students it it's curriculum that intrigued the instructor it's curriculum that intrigued what they thought would appeal to students it's not a required course again students and their families have the opportunity to choose whether or not they take this course or not it simply provides greater access to early college classes for students i don't think that we can i don't think that it is our

164place to to determine what is caught taught in college level courses if it was a required course for our students to take for high school graduation then i would be very concerned and i could understand your concern there it is offering another option to the very long list of early college study courses to students simply saying they now have access to another course to take should they choose to do so for college credit um again i would i would say out of those 39 pages i don't know and i cannot guarantee that if every course that's taught at wnc doesn't have portions of what our community would would determine or label as critical race theory that is not the basis of this course this course is about poetry from walt whitman and about hip-hop i

165mean it goes up to hip-hop but again i'm i'm happy to show anyone who's interested in the course syllabus it's not something that we're trying to not be transparent with but it's it's not even a history course it's a poetry course so i guess that's my my my perspective is simply we want to have opportunities for students again parents and and students themselves can choose if this is an option that they want it's not a required component but um i mean it's absolutely your your choice of whether or not you want to give us direction or give me direction permission to enter into the mou if you would like to have more time to to look over materials etc that is completely i mean it's 100 okay it's your choice i'm happy to provide you

166with what we have sure oh thank you question follow-up kind of kind of on his i'm guessing that some concern may arise from the fact that this is a memorandum of understanding with the national education equity lab could you please explain what that is um i haven't i i what is the national education equity lab is it an organization um i i know just because everyone thinks equity not everyone but there is a significant population that thinks equity is a code word for crt and if you can explain it that would be helpful so the national equity national education equity lab as i a consortium i i don't know really quite the correct word for it but it's an organization that has worked with all of these colleges again to get them to come up

167with courses that can be offered to students throughout the country for a very low price it is 250 for a student to take a course obviously even at western nevada community college or western nevada college the course to take a course of three credit courses is about twice that amount by time you add the student fees etc you know and at unr even more expense than that so this is a very low cost option to students to give them an opportunity to have access to again a course in a college that isn't necessarily in their hometown i don't know of any research materials political agenda anything that has come to light or been you know something that i i found to be of concern about the national education equity lab as you know we use

168the word equity a lot in education i understand that our community uh in in the room and and some of them at home might not like the word but in in the world of education it's used often simply to provide access to students to to programming right so the intent of the national equity lab and working with these colleges was just that to provide an opportunity for students to have access to college-level courses i don't think there was anything more um behind that offering because i am aware that there are several counties in the state of nevada that do not offer any ap classes or any dual credit opportunities so i can see why the state would and the state department of education would be saying that this is equitable and fair to students in

169those school districts and that they would then have the opportunity to take class college level dual credit classes so um to to me i don't think um and and i'm guessing there's probably some concern you know i i think the concern with critical race theory that that people have and and the awareness that there are racial issues discussed in a school you you talk about martin luther king day as early as kindergarten um and every time that something is racially discussed it does not mean that it is that there's a critical race um theory going on and and maybe there's some people with concerns about that but to me when i i look at this and i see this is an equity lab that equity just like aj uses vertical equity in our funding and

170horizontal equity in our funding this is the type of it whatever the what the organization is um it is it is making that opportunity for dual credit classes to be available to students irrespective of where they may live and what their local high school may have the opportunity to provide so i don't know maybe am i overstepping tasha by explaining that natal thank you trustee crossman that is that is what i have read that is what i am understanding of of the intent their purpose their mission their outreach well and the question i would have is when you look at college level courses they are you know post k-12 they are adults there are a number of topics which could be controversial in all social studies english classes and so just because this contortion is

171named equity why is this the one and why aren't we asking to see syllabuses of every single one of these college courses which we have no idea about so you know this is we are a school district we're required to provide equitable services and education to all students that's the law that's what we took an oath to do when we took this and so we can't cancel words because somebody is associating them with a meaning that's different than what we're using it for and so i just question why this is the one we want to pull out if we have students who are interested in english courses and hip-hop and this is going to get that high school senior directed towards a college or a career let's spark that interest that's that's what we have

172these courses for so that's my thought uh richard we uh took your time over so please continue i guess uh the district will be paying the 250 is that correct that's correct so we have set aside dual credit funds so for any of our students who are involved in the jumpstart program we are paying their course fees currently our [Music] foundation thank you our foundation has collected the money and is paying for resource materials in this particular case the fee for the course includes the materials and i happened to kind of do the research on this the best i could before i came to the board meeting and actually it's a non-profit organization that historically serves under underserved students or population i also watch several videos and it doesn't seem like a bad course but

173i don't know the underlying things behind it you know if it teaches something that our community has expressed they don't want taught and that's why it's asking to maybe see the curriculum before we made a decision just to make sure that we're not approving something that our community does not want to be taught i appreciate that and i would simply same response again happy to share that with you but again it's an option for a student to take the course the family and the student would have to opt in to take the course um they would have access to the course syllabus it it is not a captive audience that we place into this course and say here's what we're going to teach you but i'm happy to share that syllabus with you don did

174you have any thoughts sorry i if i i missed you if you did i'm good with it i mean it's just i i think i agree with you it's a choice we're not forcing anybody to take this class it's nice to have choices i think it's okay i'm just going to point out too that and she has a women in literature english class that they offer which some people might be opposed to that so um right and tasha help sorry for a 194 course now that we're doing it we've kind of revamped our jump start system a little bit where you know we kind of you can start sooner what level of english is this i mean would a would a sophomore be taken as a junior and you might have said this and i

175apologize no i didn't thank you that's an excellent question um currently pioneer high school's plan is to allow enrollment for juniors and seniors okay all right thank you unless you have any more questions from the board i heard a motion when we started this a day and a half ago i moved that the carson city school district board of trustees approved the list of courses from western nevada college university of natal reno trekkie meadows community college sierra nevada college and the national education equity lab as dual credit courses for the carson city school district to include approval of a memorandum of understanding with national education equity lab we have a motion in a second any further board discussion any public comment i saw three hands go up so we'll take them whoops one at a

176time pepsi strasbourg is for the approval of a course called poetry in america the city from whitman to hip-hop i like to know what is the driving force behind this poetry course who requested the course is certainly not the students who has taken this course who can give us direct feedback i was troubled when i took the video course over the weekend from the harvard university unlike what i heard earlier it is a history course poetry interpreted by intellectuals with the context of history in this case it was for san francisco and the chinese community i urge you to get a taste of the course before your approval the nevada school board meeting is on september 30th and so there is no hurry to decide tonight there are 11 other courses listed in the memorandum

177none appropriate for students in k-12 college credits are wonderful they are great to for their school children but they can learn advanced science mathematics engineering to be career ready and compete in the world stage i looked up national education equity lab the ceo leslie cornfield states it became clear to me that the greatest civil rights issue of our generation is education and education equity i do not want activism in the school curriculum as i said before many times in this school board meetings equity is critical race theory when was the school board and parents told about this group national education equity lab what vetting has been done i have not heard in the discussion before this that any vetting was done the memorandum says that the education equity lab will manage the recruitment of students

178will coordinate the delivery of college courses provide student study halls and community building sessions provide updates on students progress to the teacher who can better support the students when did community building become part of k-12 education when did the school district delegate the teaching responsibilities to third parties when did parents agree to have third parties teach their children i urge the school board to reject the memorandum and the addition of any poetry courses focus on the basics so we can raise the national ranking from the 49th level focus on stem classes to compete with china students do not need to be indoctrinated in k-12 schools thank you hello my name is richard nagle i just this to me i i think you need to really go back and do your homework on this go to

179their website look it through thoroughly and see what's going on thoroughly vet this this is our children we're playing with you know this is not this is like gasoline we got to take care of it make sure it's done properly and done right i appreciate mr cassiopa and mr varners and mr crossman's attention to the detail of like this is really fast and i we had a great sales job today i thought it was one of the best sales pitches i've heard in a while but then again don't buy a pig and a poke you know know what you're buying okay because this is a long-term arrangement you're going for and and when you go into a long-term arrangement you should thoroughly understand that the rules of the contract that you're getting into and what

180you're actually buying and can we get something cheaper better local with an agreement with unr you know this seems like it's only good in arizona why would we want to use it here our kids are going to go to unr again it really causes me questions and food for thought about the website because i went there and i only had a few moments to look at it before we came here and it really raised more questions and gave answers so i i seriously urge to just take your time on this i mean you have you do have time to to deal with this and come to a reasonable decision a reasonable choice that you can understand and won't say oh shoot later okay that's all i'm asking thank you guys appreciate that um this course

181is not off offered by and then she systems that we already have agreements with and that is why that's correct we couldn't if it was offered through those schools we couldn't you wouldn't be asking us for approval correct so um this particular course and i do want to point out that this mou is not a a contract we're not required to or offer this course from year to year to year it is our choice of whether or not we want to offer this course um the again it's taught by our teacher on our it is simply that the curriculum the the materials are provided by arizona state university the um when it says that the college or the national equity lab will to the gentleman's point will manage recruitment and onboarding process what that means

182is they're the ones who do the outreach to different districts and state boards across the country saying here's what we have to offer this is what it is so that you don't have 10 different schools or however many different schools are represented in here coming in and talking about their their individual respective courses so they're the the entity that is promoting the opportunity for students to access these courses their partnership is with these colleges so the college in this particular case arizona state university will be the the institution that awards the credits for students our students who would participate in this would get an asu transcript that shows those courses we know from working with our partners and and she that when a student takes courses on a college transcript that are above 100 in

183level because anything below 100 is considered remedial anything above 100 is transferable so if our one of our students chose to take this and decided to go to an nc school the nevada systems of higher education wnc unr which is primarily where students go would accept that credit as a transfer credit from arizona state university that's done very um often uh that's why again we make sure with our students who are doing their jump start and their associates degrees with the western nevada we make sure that their transferable credits to unr so the same thing occurs we do have students in our current jump start program who do go to like uc davis who go to orgasm oregon state so their their transcripts from the college whatever college is issuing that transcript is the important

184piece and that's what gets transferred to wherever it is that they choose to go for their continuing education so in this particular case in essence the national education equity lab is simply the the organization that is putting this opportunity together it's not really the institution in terms of of who we'll be working with with the curriculum arizona state university owns that curriculum and our teacher ends up being an adjunct professor for that one period to arizona state university so it's our teacher who then utilizes that curriculum and actually then ministers the grades etc good evening kevin schwartz um so i'll try to keep this brief um anyone who's been to college knows that not all college courses are you know created equally you know just because it's taught at a university doesn't mean you know

185it's a rigorous class you know and a value if you've ever been to college and you know had a few of those courses yourself um the one of the issues i have is calling it it's a choice because only the you know the parents and the child get to decide who who goes to the to the class but it's funded by the taxpayer so that requires all of us to foot the bill for that course and if that course is teaching something that the community who pays for it uh disagrees with i don't really think that's a choice then so i appreciate the board um asking some questions uh wanting to look at the syllabus i think that's that's a good idea i don't think there's any rush to push this through tonight maybe give

186us all a chance to review the syllabus ourselves and come back and and review the issue later so thank you thank you any yeah don oh sorry hold on any additional public comment okay i'm going to close public comment bring it back to the board don the state board of education has approved this correct no sir um the next step that we would take is after the local school board if districts current the current process is that of uh districts want to offer dual credit opportunities to their students we go through the process of getting our local school board to approve it then we submit an application package to the state board of education the state board of education then reviews those materials and ultimately has the approval authority for whether or not it can

187earn dual credit in our state the state is looking to shift that because again what is occurring is you have 17 different districts typically going through the same process to adopt the same courses and so there's a process in place that hopefully by the end of this year the initial approval authority will go through the state the state will then put out a list saying here's all of the the courses that are approved and then it will still be upon the districts to put that in front of the local school board but it will just the flow will go the opposite direction okay richard just so the board knows also i watched several videos and one from the professor who developed this course at harvard and she did stress several times throughout the video that

188it is a rigorous course and just so everybody knows it apparently it is a very rigorous course okay thank you so we have a motion in a second we've had public comment i'm going to call the question all those in favor all right opposed i vote opposed so um it's three to two in person but i'm not sure where stacy's at on this i vote yay so the vote is 42 so motion passes thank you stacy okay we're gonna move on to item 10. actually before we do let me check do we need a break okay item 10 informational update on staffing for the carson city school district for the 2021-2022 year this is for discussion only we have dr delfin testing there we go good evening uh president cassiopo trustees and our audience tonight

189i come before you to uh finish what i started last time i was up here is to report on staffing with regard to this fall so let me play the slideshow here real quick so our current numbers of staff we have 480 teachers 346 esps or educational support personnel 47 administrators and about a grand total of 873 staff as of today now that number is going to rise as we fill our vacancies oops sorry so what are our current vacancies is uh we have 18 teachers that we need to hire um that looks like a lot but let me just explain we have seven classroom teacher openings and six special education teacher openings and five for our esser funded learning loss interventionists which are tosas or teachers on special assignment i do want to reassure

190the board that the classroom teachers the first two bullets we have a contingency plan for those vacancies currently we have student teachers we have folks that are in alternative routes to licensure that are ready to go for these positions if we can't find a full-time person in time for next week so this is something that we do every year it's not unusual that i have student teachers placed at every site practically across the district ready to serve as uh the teacher of record so as valerie dockery i just want to stress i hope that there's a plan to make sure we have licensed teachers in all of those classrooms before we fill the tosa positions of course i would much rather go without a tosa position than put a long-term sub in the classroom and

191then a kid misses out on their education for the year or the quality of education thank you trustee walker that is the marching orders the principals got before they uh went ahead and hired a tosa that the classrooms were filled those vacancies so yes we have done that to the best that we can on the classified or esp end we need 18. um it has been tough to find special education paraprofessionals we just had a bus driver resigned today so i need three we will be getting our pers affirmation with regard to critical need for retired bus drivers and special education teachers sometime this week so i do have one in the wings as a retired bus driver to come back and then we have two regular special education not special education regular education peras

192i'm proud to say we were only down one custodian because in the beginning of hiring season we had more custodians to fill but we're down to one one safety officer library media technician and one bus attendant any questions on the esp safety officers at what position is that that's not our school resource officers uh thank you for the question trustee crossman this is a revamped position a safety officer isn't what it is uh uh looking like on paper it used to be somebody that walked the school grounds and made sure you know halls were cleared and you know everything was safe doors were locked but what we're looking for in this safety officer trustee crossman is somebody who actually uh handles a high-tech safety operations which means they're under mississippi who needs assistance with all

193the cameras whether they're in school or on buses all the entrance and exit key cards that we are using in some of the buildings keeping track of software as we need to update our security across this the entire district it's more i.t related really than somebody who's walking the grounds but thank you for the question we have uh dean opening at uh eagle valley the dean uh that was there got promoted to a vice principal ship in douglas and we have one nurse that we need district-wide so the attrition and and just so you know i pulled this data different from maybe mr stokes when he was in hr i pulled it from january so the numbers looked big because we had 92 total staff that left the district for one reason or another but

194i like to go in january as my starting point because that to me starts the hiring season i could have pulled it later in the year in the spring and this number would be about in the 70s but i'd like to pull in january just to start the year so with that you can see that we've had 33 resignations from the teachers in 17 retirements on the espn 26 resignations and 12 retirements three resignations from administrators and we had one staff that passed away so since january 1st we've had 92 staff leave for one reason or another now that said i was getting asked why did they leave so this year i have some information for you out of all those 92 i put a breakdown for you as far as where people actually migrated

195to or left for whatever reason so the majority 34 found employment elsewhere what that means is basically teachers who shuffle around different districts across nevada so the majority of our educators who found employment elsewhere either went and lived or found work closer to home or got promotions or what have you so we we typically do this what i call the inter county dance every year and that number is pretty normal that i see every year in our classified ranks or esps they usually go to a different employment or business or company they they usually don't stay in education very few do if they're jumping out from the district nine for personal reasons and those are mostly medical six relocated out of state four we really don't know what happened to they just didn't give us

196a good reason just so you know my staff asked principals too as far as where people went to or what reasons they had for leaving we had three new moms that want to stay home with their kids three going back to college three miscellaneous that were just random reasons of course one death which equals 92 staff any questions on this slide so where do we find our staff the biggest jobs website is indeed and we're on it i say i also pay yearly subscriptions to college career centers across the nation so we're advertised in about 400 500 plus universities across our great nation we're on carson now we do social media mr davis helps with that as well we're on linkedin we're on facebook our own website's a great uh recruitment tool word of mouth

197is huge but the last two are really our strong our strength in carson city is growing our own people and with our own student teachers and they're all candidates that really come from our own school district so that said that's been really our strength over the years especially how we've been able to move parapros into teaching we have been able to get our own students going through edu the education class that started years ago and now it's you know coming to light and we're reaping the rewards of new teachers coming on board and the little known fact that we do have some alternative routes to licensure people that i've been working with for many years and these are people who already had their bachelor's degrees in some other field who now want to be teachers

198we've got a great female engineer from bentley who migrated from that company and became one of our science teachers at pioneer for instance and so these are second or third career folks that have decided teaching is their actual passion questions on that i just want to say thanks for this slide and the one before i mean those are the questions i kind of you know i keep thinking of is why are we losing people right and how are we attracting them one question i have i guess is several years back when we restructured our salary matrix if you will we bumped up our starting salary for first year teachers how do we how do we sit with i mean i'm guessing others probably over the years have maybe made some adjustments too or we have

199they caught up to us or passed us or where are we at with entry level salaries we're still in in in the pack uh we obviously can do better we can offer more but that's something that of course it depends on our budget which is ever shrinking it'd be nice to be at 50k as a starting point but i know that's a dream but that would certainly entice a lot of new teachers money does talk incentives go come and go but actual starting salaries make make a lot of noise especially with cost of living here in northern nevada it's getting not cheaper it's getting a lot more expensive as you know also want to apologize typically i have a slide as far as where our candidates have come from what states what universities how many

200have applied our new system online system for applications of that query broke so i'll provide that to you on an email when it's not broken and give you a rundown of where our applicants are coming from but i can't provide that this evening any other comments thank you a good presentation by the way and i was wondering the last time you provided this information about how many retirements and how many people resigned and as i went through it there was looked like five special ed paraprofessionals resigned i think there's like four retirements and i'm just wondering was there a certain reason these five retired is it i know it's a hard job but was there one common theme not being paid enough too much work what was our theme behind them all resigning this year

201i'm not sure i'm going to be able to answer that mr varner um i remember dr pruzinski sitting in my office and she was looking at her personnel file my first week at carson city school district and she looked up from under her reading glasses and looked at me she goes jose you'll know when you know meaning you'll know when you want to retire so the retirement i understand right right as far as those peras and maybe some some of those special education teachers i have heard of course it's it's a tough job and you know the kids can be a handful but for their own reasons they decide to leave on their own behalf i know just by my own experience after 14 years of being at carson city school district is the most

202mobile group that i have as far as mobility are special education teachers i see more of them uh ebb and flow and move districts more so than any other group of people well the reason i ask is just sort of like mr walker brought up earlier about is there something we need to do change to retain these people because i know anytime you hire a new employee there's a cost involved there's a cost of training that's involved it's not cheap to bring a new person on and train them and stuff like that and so i was just kind of wondering if there's some common thread through there that we could address why these people were resigning so we maybe we could change it so we could uh retain people a little bit better i want

203to give a shout out to dr lennox she is putting together a great pd development for all our paras this year regarding special education and how to handle our difficult students and that has come to a great support uh by the classified association because they they want more training so one of the keys is educating our own people to retain them and i want to again shout out to dr lennox for doing that i think we as people don't know how to handle some of these human development things sometimes and we need additional supports training what have you to be able to do our jobs well i know when i was principal you know i didn't deal with half the things i did as a vice principal so the more training i got the better

204i was at the job so i think that's part of retention mr varner to be honest is to continually learn and be better at what we do so that we feel confident in our jobs i think no one wants to feel insecure while they're conducting whatever job that they're doing whether you're a parapro or a principal or superintendent we all want to be feeling confident about what we do so we're constantly looking at what it takes to retain our hardest to fill um we are also up against a lot of shortages you know that are national and she doesn't produce enough teachers for us uh across the state not even for for just clark county let alone carson city so given all those um obstacles i i i have to say that we go back

205to growing our own people and making sure that we are all recruiters i mean that's really what we do i recruit wherever i go and i think we just need to get used to that in education is you know when somebody is uh needing some work or maybe a career change that we try to steer them towards education in some way whether it's in the uh educator realm or support staff realm just one other quick question or i'll shut up extra interviews or does somebody conduct an excellent interview with the employees that are leaving our district i used to have a lot more exit interviews i can tell you i don't have as many now as i used to but they can fill out their own exit interview sheet if they feel like it i

206i can tell you i haven't seen that many i don't know why i just know that we offer it but i've not really conducted very many of them any other board questions back to you jose all right well that's all i have thank you very much for letting me chat thank you and good luck thank you we need your efforts okay item 11 discussion and review of ccsd policy 303 superintendent of schools for discussion only this i believe is the policy that um trustee wilkie asked for us to review um i think last time we pulled up might have been 300 and it wasn't what she was looking for but this one just to find superintendent of schools assigned responsibilities and if you look on here it was adopted in 1979 so it's been sitting

207around for a while not that it's necessarily out of date it's just uh it's been around for a while so any thoughts uh on this this again is for discussion only so we're not we're not voting on any changes or anything but certainly if you have some thoughts on what it needs mr president it looked pretty thorough when i looked through what the requirements of the superintendent are if we're gonna edit it i would say number four we probably would wanna update board of school trustees to carson city school district trustees yeah i saw that across the board it just read it doesn't read the way we would we would say things now laurel any thoughts just agreeing with mike to update the language a little bit but it's not yeah i don't see anything

208that's out of date myself i think it's pertinent mike thanks i mean i guess the question i would have would be for mr stokes is there anything in there that anything glaring that you're saying i'm now spending the majority of my time on x as opposed to this type deal thank you mr walker i i think that all of these items are pertinent in terms of daily activities or at least things that occur annually i think to go too much further into [Music] some of the specifics would actually you know just be maybe a sub category under these general ones so i i can't think of anything that comes to mind immediately no thank you and my thought would be i'd rather not do subcategories because then it lends the need to update more often

209okay so other than just changing some of the wording um such as board of school trustees to you know our usual language carson city space wouldn't have anything specific yeah stacy i'm sorry um out of sight out of mind i guess um any thoughts story of my life um i i just wanted to really i wanted everybody to look at it because we are going to be hiring a new superintendent so i wanted to make sure that everybody was on board with it the only thing that i think that and i don't know how you guys feel but something may be in there about the strategic plan since we've been doing that constantly that would be my only bullet point but i thought it was pretty good i think it it allows us to to

210put out the information for looking for a new superintendent so but i just want to make sure that everybody else did too no i think that's a good point um maybe under item four of assigned responsibilities might be one place where we could add um you know interprets and communicates the strategic plan it also would lend itself to number 10. you probably could fit it in there because that kind of encompasses all areas yeah yeah i'd be fine with incorporating it into both four you know four and ten i don't think he has to go everywhere but i think it's important enough to say a couple of times and this has my name to it richard but are my do you want me to provide you some notes or do you have this thank you

211mr president i've taken a few notes as you folks have been talking i think i can probably work up a draft and bring it to another meeting or i could meet with any of you if you had interest i was just going gonna suggest since we're already gonna change the language on number four might as well just incorporate it in there and then it's just one revision if that's all we're gonna make we use board of school trustees and two three four so i mean that is kind of highlighted at the once and then took it out of my brain so and it's my fault i'm just i'm just looking at it even going um i mean maybe it's the programs of instruct maybe under 10 is where the strategic plan fits but also maybe

212it just fits under all duties as may be specified by law regulations the state board the rules and regulations and the directions of the because really the the strategic plan is one of the directions from the board of trustees so it seems to me that it fits right under 12. and maybe in the future they're not going to have it and so maybe we don't need to add that in there maybe it's just refresh the language any other comments from mr stokes i'd say if you have any more comments just forward them to to renee and she'll get them to mr stokes or directly you okay we'll bypass renee okay all right thank you let's move on to item 12 discussion and review of nomination material to be submitted to the nevada association of school

213boards nasbee to be considered for recognition during the 2021 annual conference this again is for discussion only and i believe this packet we have in front of us had all the letters in there except maybe the veterans school board member of the year did that get completed yeah i think is that is that what this is here okay perfect um and i'm assuming everybody's had a chance to review these and i'll go through them for proofreading yeah please do it but we do have a little bit of time so yeah exactly we have a little more time now get them to you okay fair enough any any more thoughts on this topic on this agenda item seeing none approval of the consent agenda this is for possible action i move that the carson school district

214board of trustees approved the consent agenda as submitted second okay motion we have a second by trustee crossman any board uh discussion on this topic seeing none any public comment on this topic any remote public no mr cassiopo okay board all those in favor aye any opposed okay motion carries item 14 are informational items this is for discussion only no actions going to be taken any board questions related to 14 seeing none item 15 requests for future agenda topics seeing none move on item 16 we are adjourned thank you everybody [Music] so [Music] you