Carson City School Board 6/23/2026

001Oh, hey. Don't la and welcome to the Carson School District Board of Trustees meeting. At this time, we will call the board workshop to order. Uh, item number one is roundt discussion among board members and staff addressing the following topic for discussion only. There will be no action. This is a presentation and discussion regarding the use of artificial intelligence AI in the Carson City School District. This will be presented to us by Mr. Bringhurst. Welcome. Good evening uh superintendent and board of trustees. So for the workshop portion of the meeting today, we're going to highlight one AI tool in particular. It's an AI tool called Write On. Um, as the name would imply, the uh focus of Writeon is helping students improve their writing skills. Improving student writing is one of the things in education

002that has proven to be very challenging. Uh, it's very labor intensive for teachers to do. Students get better at writing by writing and getting feedback on that writing. And that's just a very laborintensive process for teachers to do. If you can imagine, for instance, our secondary teachers who may have over a hundred students and you ask each one of them to write a page, that's a 100 pages that you need to read and provide feedback on. And that takes a lot of time uh to do that. And so we earlier on in this this last school year, we met with Perry who uh will will be leading this presentation about this pro program that he was developing called Writeon, which really targeted that need of helping students improve their writing. We started using it with

003a few teachers and it's one of those things that a few teachers started using it and then their neighbors started seeing what they were doing and saying, "That's really cool. how do I get to use that? And it started growing and growing from there. As opposed to sometimes we bring something to the district and we roll it out to the whole district. This one we started very small and it has naturally grown and continues to grow. So, we're excited about that because it demonstrates to us that those using it in the classroom are finding it to be an effective tool for our students. And as a bonus, Perry is local here in the area. So, we have a great partnership with him and opportunity to communicate and um continue to develop the program and meet

004the needs of our students. So, we'll bring Perry up to take us through this for letting me come here to speak. I'm excited to talk about this. We'll talk about ride-on specifically, but I also want to share context about because this is a broader conversation about AI in education, thoughts about that as well. So hopefully kind of talk about both ride-on specifically and sort of thoughts about AI and education generally. Um AI and education when you talk about it begs like lots of questions, right? Um some of which like what are the jobs of tomorrow? Should we be teaching different skills? Should we be teaching AI literacy? Can AI help teachers lesson plan? Right? Like that's another thing that AI can potentially do. How do we prevent cheating with AI? Go talk to a high

005school English teacher. Uh this is really top of mind. Um but for the purposes of today, because this is what I'm focused on with Rhyon. It's how might AI help kids learn? I don't think any of these are more important than any of the others, but this is just what we're doing with Rhyon. This has been my focus with Rhyon um in the p over the past year. I do want to just be candid about my honest truth about and this is also why I started the company is like when you you know I think there's a lot of folks that say like AI is going to revolutionize education for the better and we should rush to adopt these tools and I I do want to be candid generally speaking like AI has had mixed

006results I would say when it's come to helping students learn but I don't think that is I think that has less to do with AI as a technology that's AI is a tool um I think it has to do with how it's been rolled out and the choices that some not this district are making around AI and especially just throwing chat bots at kids. Um, this is something that I'm really, this is what I think right on it is addressing. Um, and you give just a chatbot to a fourth grade kid or you could expect it to ask the right questions to become a better thinker and you give it to a high schooler. Are they going to use it as a tool for learning or are they going to use it as a tool

007to bypass learning? Right? So, these are these are the like just kind of the honest truth. But also, I think this is what motivates me uh to to build something better. And and the question that I've been fixated on from I'd say a year before I even started this company in this business is you know how do we integrate AI thoughtfully with emphasis on you know thoughtfully in order to help kids actually learn and over the course of my sort of journey figuring out what I was going to build. I was talking with this principal in Reno that a bunch of people told me to to talk with and he you know he's somebody who thinks a lot about AI education as well. um he's been going to you know certain conferences and you know

008some something rang the bell for me which uh was like oh this is this is it which is that the potential of AI can best be summed up in one word which is feedback right you could have the best teacher in the world if they have 25 kids in their class they can't give every student one-on-one feedback sit with each kid and help them think through whatever subject it is whether it is with math writer we can't you can't they can't be a tutor to every single kid you can't give a coach to every kid so when I think about what is the potential potential AI if we do it really really well and we roll it really well for student learning it's this and that's I was like this is what I this is

009what I want to do now I think the story how this connects back um that wise principal was Brandon which I had Mars hers at the time and so I think we had a really good conversation and so when we came over here he's like hey we should reconnect I want to hear what you're up to and over the following six months I started to build right on into what it is today um you know we could give feedback on math you give feedback on a lot of things. I I decided we decided to focus on writing to start with write-on for a few reasons. AI literally is like a writing machine. Like that's what these things do. They they write. So that's a good reason. And I thought like I want I think this

010will probably be good. And in particular, writing is really important to to become a better writer. I think feedback is of especially outsized importance. I think the way that you become a better writer, the most important thing oftentimes is I remember my parents used to do this for me like have an essay that write you know feedback in the margin like fix this improve that. So it's extremely it's important everywhere but I think it's especially important for writing and because of this when I talk to teachers they really struggled with teaching writing. A common reframe I heard was, you know, I gave my kids an essay or paragraph. I spent 10 hours grading it. They were giving feedback, detailed feedback because I knew this would help my kids. And but by the time they got

011it back, it was two days later and they would just, you know, crumple it in their pocket. They wouldn't even read it and like a little piece of them died. I was like, I heard that so many times like we've got to do better than this. There's got to be a better way. Um, and so this is where I thought like this is a really could be a really thoughtful way to integrate it in order to sort of figure out like you I wanted this to be obviously a great product. I sat with a lot of teachers as they they sat with students and I just talked to them like what do you do? And I think there were three themes that you'll see when I give the demo and and Kayla talk about it

012as well. The first is guiding the process. You can't just throw a chatbot in the corner and expect it to work. You have to in the case of writing scaffolding, right? You break it in. If it's a paragraph, you write your topic sentence, your evidence, your conclusion. Then you do revising and then you do proof reading in that order. Right? You have to break things into steps into the writing process. Right? The second is focusing the feedback. I see so many of these tools that just give this wall of feedback and you ask a kid like what do you do with this? And they don't know. It has to be can you use a better word here? Can you do you need to capitalize this letter? Might you introduce a stronger idea here? You really

013have to be specific. And the final thing is celebrate progress, right? In person, you do this through, you know, a high five or a smile. Digitally, it's a little bit harder, but I think you'll see we we put a lot of work into making sure that kids understand that their writing is getting better and that we celebrate that, but we do it in a different way. So, I'm going to show you a demo because I think it'll click when you see it and maybe it'll provoke questions. Um, it's really cool. But before that, um, I'd love Kaylee to talk because you've been using it in the classroom for >> Yeah. a while. >> For a while. Y go ahead and sit and turn on the microphone there. >> Okay. Hello everyone. Uh my name is

014Kaylee Davenport and I'm the ELE designate at uh Borderick Bay Elementary School. Um Perry introduced this program to me and I rolled it out and I've been utilizing it with my EL population in in in the classroom. Um and we have been getting incredible results with my students. Um, it gives them feedback immediately, you know, sentence by sentence. It'll it'll have them add more detail. It corrects um it corrects and helps them think through their thoughts. You know, when when I'm working with another student one-on-one, this feedback is immediate. It's, you know, it's instant gratification. And it's taken their learning and their their writing process just to wonderful heights. It's it's absolutely expanded their minds with this program and so I'm here to support Perry and it's been I've been implementing it and next year

015it's absolutely I'm going to continue with it and yeah it's been it's been great. I've been able to see some fantastic results. >> Oh, thank you. So now I'm going to show you how it works. I was going to have you try it all yourselves and I will send you a link so you can all write work on your paragraphs when you get home. Uh, but for now I'm just going to do it uh because it's we're on a hotspot. It's uh I just want to have one connection at a time. So, can you all see the monitor over there? Okay, cool. >> Great. So, I've created an assignment for you all. Um something I'm sure no opinions about. Should cell phones be allowed in schools? Um uh so I'm going to So imagine I'm

016a student. This is my class. I go in. I start the assignment. I go full screen. Why? Because kids get distracted. We make sure that they understand the prompt first. So I want to walk you through because each design decision is like very much designed to help kids succeed. So we make sure that they understand the prompt first. Step one, write your topic sentence. So this is a one paragraph assignment. To be clear, you can make it five paragraphs, one par, however long you want. You can write about whatever prompt you want. You can integrate it with your curriculum. You could do it supplementary, whatever you want to do. But this is the one for today. So state, we also give instructions. State your opinion clearly on whether self should or should not be allowed.

017What is the main position you want the reader to understand? Does anybody want to give a an answer? We'll type it in so you can see it. Yeah. I will give. So I'm a student. I write no they shouldn't. So starby thinks hopefully the AI is not blocked. Hey little ding. You got one star. We we always like to get at least one star. You get zero star. It's not very motivating. You notice that three will get you move you to the next step. And we always start with positive feedback. Kids don't get enough of it. We're really specific and we highlight the thing that's being given feedback on. So, nice start, Perry. You made it clear which side you're on. A strong topic sentence tells the reader exactly what the topic is and where

018you stand. Can you expand this into a full sentence that mentions cell phones in schools so the reader knows right away what you're arguing, right? Which is, I think, what a good a teacher would suggest to a kid. No. Try it again. Great improvement. Your topic sentence now clearly states your opinion and the topic. Once the topic sentence is solid, you move on to the next step, giving your first reason and on and on. You go through, you write full paragraph, then you're asked to revise it to make sure structurally it makes sense or the sentences in the right order. And then finally, at the end, we do proof reading. And we do that that way because it's overwhelming for kids to do everything all at once. So let's focus first on the ideas, then

019how we structure the ideas. Then finally, let's make sure, you know, the spelling is correct, your capitalization is right, there's no run- on sentences, comma splices, all that sort of stuff. So by the end, we've walked the student through, they've been earning stars, they'll earn 24 stars going through eight steps, and they'll have a well composed paragraph. Make sense? Cool. So any questions >> and maybe you touch on this but um so it's the structure based but does it proofread like spelling errors, grammalical errors? Are you getting to that? And okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So just to be clear. So this is something that it's interesting is when I show it, you can actually get your three stars writing your topic sentence without the spelling errors. That's act with spelling errors. That's actually

020by design. So the idea is you're a exactly you're a fourth grader. So with writing there's this concept of cognitive load. You are learning how to write a sentence correctly. You're learning word choice. You're learning how to structure a paragraph. You're also usually if you're in class you're writing about the context of what you're writing about. So there's background knowledge that you may or may not be solid about. You're you're right, you know, you're writing about government but you may not know what democracy means. Things like this. So, a student has a million things that they're thinking about. So, we want to make sure that we're doing as much as possible, one thing at a time. So, when you're writing your topic sentence, let's just focus on stating a clear opinion. Um, and then at

021the very end, the last step is well, there sometimes a couple steps. We're going to fix your spelling. We're going to fix we're going to make sure kids, I don't know, you're probably aware of this, like they don't realize they need to capitalize the first letter of a sentence anymore. Texting is just ruin them. So we we go through make sure everything is cleaned up but we we do that that's their very last step so that you know uh because you already by then have all the ideas down in the right structure. >> Does it autocorrect is what you're saying or does it point out where they have to physically change it. they have to change it. And that's sort of a core principle of ours is that like we never and this is like

022a very strong differentiation point from I think most chatbots like we never give kids the answer >> and you have to you get feedback and we make you change it even if it's a little painful. We want you to make those corrections. That's where it's >> we know how auto correct works. You a lot of time we get a different word or >> Yeah. One of the things that I would add in here too that I've seen as students are using this when students really struggle with spelling and they submit something to the teacher, oftentimes it's hard for the teacher to even decipher what they said. And so the student gets beat up about their spelling and doesn't really get any feedback on their ideas. And the AI does a fantastic job of actually deciphering

023what the kid is saying when I, as a human, have a tough time reading what they wrote because the spelling is so bad. It's pretty impressive that it can do that and then give them that positive feedback and work on their ideas and then they can get their spelling and their grammatical things later, right? Especially some of our students who are eel or just learning the language, their spelling may be very rough. Some of our students who are dyslexic, their spelling may be very rough. And instead of continually being beat up about that, they're getting some good feedback and some good um growth in how they're structuring their writing first. So now they give you context about how I got here and what this thing is and what it does, just to give you a

024sense of our work together so far. um in the summer uh and fall I built and test it fortunately for you not in the Carson school district I was in a couple of schools just living in a few classrooms building it and then by about I'd say November the project was really really good and ready to be used and so we started actually working together in January um that's when we did our pilot and next year we're going to be rolling this out fully um the impact so far at Carson um as Brandon said this hasn't been a thing that we've pushed down on teachers this has been something that we've made available and sort of the word has spread. So far, 94 teachers have signed up. Over 2,000 students have used the product, have

025used Write On. And there have been 5,600 over 5,600 writing sessions, like paragraphs or essays that have been done on the product. But I think the thing I'm I'm really proud of is that over 224,000 pieces of individual feedback, specific actionable feedback have been given that students have been able to take and then have been forced to revise. And I think that's something that, you know, teachers are really thankful for because they couldn't possibly do that themselves. those 94 teachers. I think our first meeting we had four teachers that started and so that kind of shows right it started with a really small number and then they just saw and word spread and more people wanted to uh to join in which is great. >> Those are the raw numbers. Um we did a at

026Mark Twain with the ESL teacher there a 10-we sort of before and at like case study. We did it right before the WEDA exam which is you know for proficiency. Um was there was 10 kids. Um and we we measured we wanted to measure two things qualitatively. Do kids get like feel more confident about writing? Do they enjoy it more? And then do they get better? Right? Um on confidence we saw a 30% growth in just 10 weeks. How confident are you that you know how to start your writing? Um how much do you enjoy writing went up by 35%. So, and I think with a lot of kids, that's half the battle is getting them to engage and getting them to feel confident writing and to start writing. And that that really helps. But

027importantly, and I don't want to suggest that this is the only thing that they did. But, um, on the writing exams, their writing scores on on the Wita went from an average of 3.5 for these kids to 5.1. Seven of the kids exited. Um, and while they improved across the boards, uh, writing was their by far their biggest area of improvement. Um, so Amy, who's the teacher, said, you know, holy cow, another fifth grade teacher said, "These kids are in the writing club. Their writing has just soared." Um, so we're seeing, I want to be clear, Amy's a great teacher. There's 10 kids. There's a lot of factors, but it was very, very clear that in these 10 weeks writing every day using WriteN, that their writing just massively improved. And you could see anecdotally

028a lot of kids went from one long run on sentence that's a paragraph to like actually articulating a paragraph writing their topic sentence giving evidence supporting evidence and concluding. So for next year um focus more targeted programs um to get big improvements in short amount of time. I think there's some good leverage points to get a lot of learning in a short amount of time. Getting more teachers on board integrating it into instruction and more measurement of impact on writing quality and student engagement. We want to prove it over longer horizons. this moving sack scores that it's like you know really uh not just giving great feedback and that teachers see it but that it's moving the needle on the things that matter. Um, I think the last thing that is just more of like

029a I don't know some way I'm thinking about stuff. I think you you'll you'll hear a lot of stuff about AI in the in the classroom or otherwise. And when I see like these chat bots and stuff, you know, people think remember when like you were you like around when the internet was AOL. Um, I feel that's sort of how I feel about like AI is just sort of chat bots. And we're we're really in the early days. And I think there's a lot of potential for frankly hopefully maybe there'll be some slimy products, but hopefully there's a lot of potential I think for better better products to emerge for things for us to move like beyond AOL when it comes to AI tools. And that's kind of what motivates me is like I think

030we can build things more thoughtfully and I'm really really grateful to have had the opportunity to to do that in this district. Perfect. So, one of the things that we wanted to do today as we talk about AI is there's a lot of different uses for AI, but we wanted to highlight one of the areas where we have it with students using it as a learning tool. And Rhydon is definitely um one of those areas where we're seeing some great um growth and improvement in in students using it as a learning tool. So, we wanted to set this up and set it up as a workshop session for any questions that you guys have um about how Perry's set this up or about anything uh that we're doing with it in the district. Later in

031the board meeting, there's a a regular agenda item where we'll talk more about uh kind of the teacher um use of AI on the teacher side of things. >> Yeah. when I use it and I'll say like >> oh >> sorry. >> So when I when I use uh chat GPT I'll I'll say like fix my story or my paragraph or whatever and it pops out this like amazing perfect thing. So I have to I kind of have to dumb it down like sound like me. >> Yeah. Every time. Yeah. Me too. H >> how so when does when they're doing this when does it when they keep getting like feedback? When is it good enough? Is it going to keep making them like frustrated to have to keep going or is it like when

032does it become good enough? Are they just going to be like gosh this never ends or like how do like what's what's the ending point for them? What a great question. This is like I put on my like product geek hat because I' I've believe it or not spent like months test doing this problem. The long story short like how this works is like we ask you know using like an API we ask it to give us the star rating to to have it to move forward. We there is sort of a clarity around like a mini rubric whenever we pass it that three is they've satisfied the instructions of so for a topic sentence you'll see like in uh it says state an opinion whatever you should have done that and we we're not

033going to move you and give you three stars if you haven't if you completely haven't um and this is also a big benefit of being a classroom tool you can raise a teacher there's also a teacher interface you don't see they can see when kids are stuck and move over and help them which is very very important But we also do reward effort. So we we actually have in the script like if the kid has tried a bunch of times and has made improvement, move them forward. We also have a skip button that I think it's after eight attempt five I think it's done actually five attempts if you've tried a bunch of times you can skip and move on. And that's sort of like an escape patch in case a kid is just really

034frustrated lets them move on. So the short the long story short is like high level it's good enough. It doesn't have to be perfectly written. It has to just satisfy the instructions which for an idea like for a topic sentence state it clearly for spelling. We are not going to like you need to spell things right. Um because it won't no matter what have satisfied it. But if after a bunch of times we're like are you sure this word's spelled right? Are you sure? You could you know raise your hand get the teacher over and get it. >> But it's a great question. It's super nuanced. >> Trusty clapping too. I I just wanted to point out one of the things that really um when we first met with Perry and he was explaining this

035product, one of the things that I think is the most important with what it is doing and providing is that it is not creating a student's voice to be like so that every kid is basically answering and talking in the same way. it it is really the students voice and just continuing to encourage them to grow on that and and to me that was just really important because I don't I don't want 25 kids in a classroom who all end up writing in the exact same style and the exact same tone. I just I think that's such an important part of this product too and I think in some way kind of related to the question of like what is that endpoint? Well, it isn't the same for every single kit, right? they're continuing to

036kind of push in their own way and their own style, but at some point you have to have some kind of like what what is the end? Have you satisfied certain criteria? So, that was just a really important thing for me when we first decided to move forward with this. >> Well, um clarifying question. So, what I'm understanding though is like um how Trusty Clappen said that you can put into chat GPT here's my sentence, fix this or rewrite this. You can't really do that here though, right? It's it's going to move them on the way, but it's not actually rewriting it. >> That and that's the exactly and that sort of our thesis is like as a as grown-ups, I think that's acceptable to be like, can you rewrite this for me? But if

037a kid, it's acceptable because we know what good writing looks like because we were taught how to write. So my big worry is kids are not taught how to write. So, a big core thing about how this is built is you have to do we never tell you what to write. The most we'll do is there's an I'm stuck button. We'll maybe give you a sentence stem like how to start the sentence, but we'll never tell you what to write. And this forces you you have to write it yourself and it's going to give you a really specific thing to fix. Um, you revise it and then you fix it. So, >> okay. And then the one thing I'd like to see though is the if it was a spelling error. Okay. What does that

038look like then? So, it's a spelling error. Does it strike it through the word and then give them the correct spelling or how does that >> um I'd have to go all the way to the end, but it basically looks just like um uh I'm going to give a first reason. I don't know. This is a pretty bad piece of evidence, but I I just want to show you what it looks like for something else. Okay. So, you'll see how it highlights the thing to fix. >> So, it'll just do exactly that for spelling. And typically, if there's five spelling errors, it'll highlight all five spelling errors and be like, "Do these words look right to you?" Um, and then you you go and fix them and then you submit again. >> But if they

039don't know how to spell it, how would they go and fix them? uh the second time we will get more specific. So that's another thing. So how this is sort of designed is like we'll give you a high level like or not high level like specific thing but like how might you make this better if the kid if the student doesn't satisfy that like doesn't solve it we're going to get a little bit more specific. >> Okay. Um also and again on SPE on on certain things you know student can also just raise their hand and ask the teacher but um we do we'll we'll progressively sort of guide them and get them closer to the >> spelling error or the spell the yeah >> getting the spelling right >> oh just to >> well

040I love this as a former English teacher one of the reasons I left the classroom is because I just got so exhausted giving feedback on my students writing and to me that's the most important thing when your in your English class is can you write and express your ideas? So, I remember the like old school AI. I could my kids would use this program and I'm sure it was based on AI and it would correct like their spelling and tell them but it never it wasn't smart enough to check for content, >> right? So, they could get an A on a paper and not talk about anything on topic because the the program wasn't able to do that. So, I love this. I think this is going to be um very helpful for our students.

041Um, of course, my my question is always like how much are we c is it costing us, right? Which I'm sure we're going to we're talking about later, but to me, writing is probably the most important thing that we teach our students. Um whether it be, you know, on their phones or whether it be sending a a memo or whether it be evaluating an employee, right? We have to be good communicators. So, I appreciate it. >> Thank you. That means a lot. Thank you, Trusty RmIrez. Trusty Roberts, >> no questions. Just echoing Statuki with I feel like you've thought of everything. This is a great balance of helping guide them but not doing it for them, which is so important. Um, so just amazing thought and work on this. Thank you so much, >> Trusty

042Clappen. Then >> is this in the high school as well? Yeah, as we go into next school year, it'll be open to all uh of the schools. I think this year we had some high school usage >> a little bit. I think it was most it was we'll make it available to everyone. It was I would say disproportionately used by late elementary, middle, and ESL or Yell more than more than high school, but there was some use. And then is it um just select teachers that are like I want to put this in my classroom or is this like hey show the kids how to use this or is it what's how >> Yeah, this year it has been like I said a slow roll out kind of an organic grassroots roll out if you

043will. Um and so it's kind of been word of mouth. Um I we put out uh some information early on and looked for some volunteers who were interested in coming. was a very small group that came and then it's spread from there. As we go into next year and the product has been further refined and our our practices around it have been further refined. Now we're ready to be able to say okay all of teachers here is a tool that you can use and I think it's important when we talk about this tool and we'll talk about other AI tools later tonight. it. We really trust our teachers, our practitioners that are the experts in in their craft. And here's a tool. We're not going to uh mandate that you use it or mand mandate

044that you use it a certain way. We're going to provide this tool for you. And if the tool is actually good, you'll use it, right? Because you see the value and the benefit of it. So that's um how we look at rolling things forward. A couple of the nice things that this does is teachers can really put in the rubric that they want. It can be an AP level rubric that it'll give the students feedback on. As I'm sure Trusty Statuki trying to teach AP students, that's a lot of essays to write or to read and provide feedback on. And the AP exam, like students have very specific things they've got to do. This can give feedback on an AP exam level stuff. they can also give feedback to a third grader on, you know,

045that's just trying to write a good sentence. Um, and we've also at the elementary, I know we've talked with with you all um extensively about the elementary curriculum, the CKLA curriculum. So, we have uploaded a lot of the CKLA writing prompts into Writeon, so teachers can just select those prompts and rubrics that are there. So, we're really aligning the writing practice with the instructional materials that they're using as well. >> Great. Thank you. >> But, uh, Trusty Peterson, >> um, Brandon, did you get to say what you I know before we started comment our questions. Oh, I I I was going to share some we had talked a little bit about the prompts it gives and what the teachers do. And sometimes I think teachers with tools like this, some people might think, oh well,

046okay, so what's the teacher going to do? Just give the kids an assignment on Rhyon, sit behind their desk, sip their coffee while they while Rhyon does the work, right? Um the teachers who have used it have said, "Actually, I'm up and busier than I I am in other ways." Um, and I because I get lots of questions, but the questions that I get from the students are more specific because they're getting very specific feedback. And so instead of the students just saying, I don't get it or I need help, the students are saying, I'm stuck on providing better evidence. I've tried this. I've tried. Right? So, they're getting a lot better um they're able to better understand their own writing process and ask better questions. Another thing that I had not thought of until

047a teacher brought it to my attention is often if you are giving a short writing prompt in class and you say tell the students okay write write these three sentences on whatever and then as you get that done come and see me and I'll give you feedback. The teacher is trying to give feedback right there in class instead of a long essay feedback. That's great. But the thing is the the students who get the most feedback are your best writers because they finish those three sentences first and go up to the teacher and get more feedback. Your most struggling students get the least amount of feedback. Obviously not an effective way to do it. In this way, every student is getting feedback, not just the students that always want to raise their hand or the

048students that run up to the teacher because they've got something finished. So that this gives feedback to everybody and enables the teachers or the students to ask better questions to me is just evidence that it's really improving the thinking that our students are doing. >> Thank you. Um my question is um what you've walked us through so far, we're on step two. Um and it's it's guiding them. First we're doing this, then we're doing this, now we're doing this. Is this something that if students tried on their own to come up with all of it and then ran it through here, is there um an option for that rather than having to build it through here every step of the way? Can they take what they've written and ask for feedback? >> Yes. >> In

049this program? >> Yeah, great question. Um when you set up an assignment, you can you you add the prompt and then you can set it up as scaffolded or unscaffolded is what we call it. If you do it unscaffolded, it's basically it's not going to walk you through write your topic sentence, do this, do this. It's going to say write your draft and then it's going to but it's going to still so it'll do you know if the steps are drafting and then revising then proof reading it'll still deal with the revising and the proof reading. So you're still going to be like it's still going to look through the whole essay think through the ideas and the structure and then do the proof reading. So yes um it works either way. Trusty partner, >>

050it's it sounds like a great product, but I do have a question on your EL students who are just coming in country say and don't speak any English. How's that going to assist them? I know Kaylee, you you teach e so maybe you've had the experience with that. >> Um I I actually do thank you for addressing that. Um I did have a student who was um very new to the country and what we were doing is him and I were working together. We were utilizing his um eel dictionary and we were going through the process. So he would utilize um he would utilize Google Translate to help me express what it is that he was doing. He was actually writing as well um in Spanish. He would take what he was trying to translate

051and put it into the system. So he was getting it. He was discussing it in word through Spanish. He would translate it and then put it into the system. So he was getting the cross comparison with both of the languages. And then we were utilizing the Spanish dictionary to help him translate everything all the way through. Um and then I also wanted to address that I didn't get to and I'm so sorry the data aspect of all of this. So on the teacher side when you get through all of these steps and the student it gives you all of the stars and says you are done. and you've completed this. Um, from the teacher side, I can print out all of these. It gives me every single one of the the feedbacks that all of

052the students had received. Um, and then I get their final drafts. And what I was able to do was utilize those final drafts for their writing portfolios. And so my students were actually they were able to see how their writing progressed through each one of these write-on stories that they were creating. And my students had the buyin with that, too. they were all they were able to see their growth through their portfolios which was pretty cool for them as well. So thank you. >> No, thank you. I I do have just probably one more. Um are there any other schools that are using this program right now? >> Mhm. Yeah. >> How many? >> There's We're We're new to be clear. Um so I incubated this we incubated this here. I went to a conference

053in Southern California and we got a few dozen schools that are using it down there. But this is a really like we're less than a year old and this last year has really been focused on making sure the product works. So >> So is it evidence-based then based upon what other companies are doing? >> Um it's it's a good question. I would say it's based on principles of writing. So based in terms of evidence-based Yeah. like the ev every pretty much every design decision is based on whether it's I've talked to some of the preminent professors who teach writing at one is at ASU one is at Stanford I've integrated their feedback on everything from overall design to like what makes a good piece of feedback turns out is it's a very interesting uh question

054and so that's been iterated on we've incorporated best practices from um books like the writing revolution that are really prescriptive about how to write the rubrics so like how the steps are broken down. We typically align that for example to like what the criteria for ESPback um trying to incorporate similar wording and we might even do that with some other writing rubrics. So there's um whether that that or research on cognitive load research like all that is baked baked into the product. Um other companies I don't think do this well. So I I wanted to and also just anecdotally just working with just a lot of really great teachers and incorporating their feedback in the field and seeing how kids respond and what works. So it's it's it's integrating both. >> Um my question is

055I know this is an online web-based program but how compatible is it with like a cell phone? Because I know a lot of students actually do their homework on a cell phone. >> It's not really. You got to have a big screen. It can work on a on a um >> tablet. >> It works on a tablet. Okay. Um >> but yeah, it does not work work on a phone. It's something we're thinking about building, but given >> I think it's pretty common for students to do their work on or at least they all have access to one. So we we do it there. Al cell phones also when it comes to spelling like fixing a spelling. I don't know. So we may we may build that this year, but right now it's lap basically

056laptop and tablet only. Uh, I guess I asked you about how many schools are using it, but any schools in Nevada right now using this program? There are a couple schools in WoW that are using it. Um, but that's it. >> Well, thank you. Uh, we appreciate your time. It's a It looks like it's a great product. um very glad to hear from somebody um that's using it here in Carson City School District. So, thank you for your time as well for coming. >> Thanks for having me. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Right. At this time, we will go ahead and take a fivem minute recess and we'll see you at six o'clock. Oh, for Heat. Heat. Oh, heat. Oh, la. Hey, hey, hey. Hallelujah. Heat. Heat. Oh, At this time, we're going to go

057ahead and call um I need a motion to adopt to adopt the agenda. Do I have a motion to adopt the agenda? That was moved by who? Oh, uh Trusty Ramirez. Do I have a second? I'll >> second it. >> Second by Trusty Varner. Board discussion, public comment. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed. Motion passes unanimously. Item uh agenda item number two, flag salute. This will be uh by Trusty Peterson of America and to the one nation with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. Moving on to agenda item number three, superintendence report. This is for information only. Superintendent Fueling. >> Uh thank you, President Wall. Uh just uh enjoying a rather busy few weeks after school. Normally this time of year things start to slow down. Um Mr. Bringhurst

058had other ideas and he has been piling in all sorts of amazing opportunities uh to uh get our staff excited and learn a little bit more about uh a lot of the things that'll be rolling out next year. So, it's actually been uh uh some great trainings and getting some great feedback from staff. So, very excited about that. Otherwise, uh looking forward to a 250th anniversary which is not too far away. So, thank you. That's all I have. >> No. Oh no, >> sorry. >> We have guests. I'm sorry everyone. >> Yeah, it has been a couple weeks. Um, so this evening we have uh >> Sorry, Mr. Renee. We we have some uh some folks new to the district that we are very excited to introduce to you all. Um, and we will start

059first. We have our new transportation manager, Mr. Brian Lynford. Brian, you want to come up here and just introduce yourself to the board and little background on yourself? >> Can you keep it under 20 minutes? >> Okay. >> Well, um, president, members of the board, I'm excited to be here. Uh, my name is Brian Lford. I was, uh, retired from the army in 2015 and thought I was going to be able to stay retired. Eventually, I became the director of transportation for Douglas County School District. Did that for five and a half years, tried to retire again and then um I had the opportunity to teach at Douglas High School as auto teacher. So I did that for a few years and then last year I tried to retire for a third time and this

060opportunity um I saw this opportunity I thought well you know I think I I think I can make a difference. I think I could um assist the transportation department and the and the school district and the students and the parents. So anyway, that's a little about me. You have any questions for me? >> Uh no, I don't have any questions, but welcome and we're happy to have you here in Carson City. >> Thank you. >> And I hope you do better than you have in retirement. >> Yeah. Thank you. Um, next actually I should just have our our new principles come up. If I have Mr. Mark Robinson who can come up and Jennifer Conme. Mr. Robinson is going to be our new principal at Carson Middle School. uh coming here from far away far

061far away lands and Jennifer Conme will be our new principal at Fremont Elementary School coming from we'll just say far away lands not far far away just over the hill. So um Jennifer if you want to start just introduce yourself a little bit for the board. >> Okay. Well good evening. Um I'm excited to be here. Um so I'm Jennifer Conme. I am moving here from Southern California. Um it's my 27th year um in education. I was an elementary school teacher for 16 years and then um an assistant principal at a middle school for three years and then I've been an elementary principal for the last eight years. I absolutely love it. Um education is my passion. Um it's sort of who I am and where I find my happiness. So I'm really excited to

062join the Fremont team. I've been really lucky because I've had the opportunity to visit the school um during my spring break. So, I got to meet staff, a few students, a couple parents. Um so, I'm looking forward to meeting everybody um on a deeper level. Um relationships are important to me. So, that will be one of the first things that I will be doing um is being available um to the whole school community. Um, I also got to go to the AVID conference recently. Um, and so I had an opportunity to really bond with some of the staff members. Um, right off the bat I can just see what amazing educators they are. Um, they're really dedicated to their school and their students, which makes me really excited because I can see their passion um,

063and their dedication and that aligns with who I am um, and what I want to create at a school as well. So, I look forward to meeting the whole SCU school community um this upcoming summer fall since we start in August. Um but yeah, I'm just really excited to be here and um to help the great work that is already happening at Fremont and just to continue those things um and really truly just to um be a part of Fremont school community and make sure kids have fun and love school. That's that's my passion. So, it's nice to meet you all. Uh my name is Mark Robinson and I'm coming to you from Austin, Texas. Um I was fortunate enough to be able to retire after a 30-year career in public education in Texas. The

064last nine were as uh the high school principal at Buouie High School, the largest high school in Austin, Texas. Um before that, I was a middle school principal for six years at the uh at a one high school district just on the west side of Austin, Texas. I was at Hudson Middle School. Really loved that school community. Only left it for the opportunity that I had to be a high school principal. Um 15 years as a campus principal. Uh I can say half of my career. Um before that I was a uh assistant principal in Lake Travis ISD. I was a district administrator in Arlington, Texas. I was kind of a classroom management specialist as a like an instructional coach but more on like the behavior management side. Um I spent uh a couple years

065teaching high school social studies and um was a eighth grade social studies teacher at an alternative school. That was my first opportunity to be in public education. Um and so there I taught eighth grade social studies and social skills just given the nature of the school. Um, I am thrilled to be able to be here in Carson City to continue to do the work that I love with the kids here, um, the families, the teachers, um, and just really contribute to the school community here in Carson. I would like to also, uh, introduce my wife, Leah. um she just accepted a first grade teaching position at Mark Twain Elementary and so we are really excited to be a part of this great district. Thank you. >> Uh well, thank you for coming this evening and

066introducing yourselves. We greatly appreciate your time during this summer. Um and we welcome you. Uh yes, I think you will find Carson City to be wonderful and most importantly, you will find this school district to be the best. So, um, thank you for for joining us. Anybody else? >> No. Just, uh, welcome. Uh, we're looking forward to working with each and every one of you. And, uh, I know we'll see you before the board on on occasion, probably more than you'd like. But, uh, thank you for, uh, all your past work. you both have uh really good resumes and I think that we probably did very well by being able to pick you guys up and hire you for the positions you're in. So, uh just thank you for uh accepting the job. I guess

067>> uh you guys are all filling deep shoes of of people who have have been with us. All three of you people have been with us for a very long time. And so change is exciting. Um, excited to see you guys thrive here in Excel and welcome to the CCSD. Well, thank you and enjoy uh the your summer. I don't know how much summer principles get, but hey, go over. Yeah, >> it's almost over. So, hope you enjoyed it. Yes. But thank you again and and we look forward to seeing you. And that truly does conclude my report. >> Are you sure? We'll ask Renee. >> That's all we have. >> That's all I have. >> All right. Well, thank you. Um, all right. So, we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item number

068four. This is board reports. Uh, board member comments for information only. Do we have an asby report? >> Uh, no, not really. Everyone should have received their newsletter and so just go through that and uh there again we're just uh getting ready to gear up for the training in September and then the main conference in December. That's all I have. >> Anybody else with any reports? Go ahead. >> Or we'll say um I have one from Miss Prior at Alceliger. Um she said she wanted to make sure that our board knew um that the district leadership utilized the Nevada Department of Education district improvement grant to bring three professional learning opportunities to Carson City. The first was a two-day leadership training provided by the CVY Institute for all administrators and aspiring administrators across the district.

069The second and third trainings focused on strengthening our understanding and implementation of collaborative teams. Key areas of learning included maintaining a focus on learning and results, aligning our work around our district vision and mission, and developing systems and processes that will support meaningful collaboration moving forward. All focused on results, student, and adult learning. These trainings were extremely beneficial as they prepare for the next year and their continued focus on improving student outcomes through dedicated collaboration time on Tuesdays. They're excited to put their learning into action and build stronger systems that support both staff and student success. So, this is probably a shout out to Mr. Bringhurst more than anybody else, right? You already got a shout out earlier, but they really appreciated the training that they um received. >> I don't have a report from

070the schools. I did tell the principles that I would not bother them until sometime in August. But I do want to um say thank you to Mr. Chambers for inviting us to attend the adult gradu um education graduation at NNCC. It was a very nice ceremony. Um I I think we all, you know, are very proud of those students that took advantage of of that uh program. Um, and then I also want to uh say thank you to Planet Fitness uh for giving our students the opportunity to go workout for free at uh during the summer. I think it's extremely uh important to keep those um students busy and and and it was very generous of them to welcome our students from age 14 through 18 to work out for free. So kudos to to

071them for for um for doing that and and and I thank them for their partnership. That's all. Great. >> Thank you. I just have one brief um I I'm agree I'm not bothering the schools for a little while, but I did have a mother um offer up to me. She said, "If you would like to have something kind of fun to report, um this is a graduate who graduated last year, class of 25, um Eleanor Romeo. She um with a congressional endorsement was accepted into the United States Merchant Marine Academy in New York um where she's training to be a military officer. She also is one of our runners. She was on our um a distance runner in track and a cross-country runner. And um each year all athletes in their debut season in the

072entire college have an opportunity to be um selected as the rookie of the year. Um it's called the Julie Burke Rookie of the Year award. And Eleanor Romeo out of all athletes, all female athletes in the entire freshman class was chosen as their rookie of the year um for cross country and track specifically, but out of all athletes um she was selected. So um as a recent Carson High grad, her mom thought that we might like to know that our little birdies who have flown the nest are out there thriving and and still living up to what we know they can achieve. >> Awesome. Thank you for sharing. >> Yeah, I I don't have a report, but that just goes to show that uh we have a lot of great kids that come through our

073school district, and we're proud of each and every one of them. And uh also uh you mentioned the graduation for the adult heads in the prison. That was a nice ceremony. And it's good to see um the individuals who are not only younger but really older. I would say I can say that because I am older. But anyway, uh to to go ahead and finish their uh high school education and uh you know it's really a nice ceremony to see everybody that uh took the time and effort to do that. So I'm glad that we had that program. Great. Thank you. Um the only report I had is that we did have a um a joint meeting with open space advisory committee and the parks and wreck commission as I sit um as a schoolboard

074liaison as a commissioner on that. Um we had presentations from um for the Silver Saddle Ranch. We also had a presentation for the Nevada Starry Skies program and um also about the Carson River master plan. So, they're starting Carson River master plan which I think will be great as well. All of that is posted on um the Carson City website, but it also brought up there there's plenty um of opportunities that they're looking for still more student involvement. Um, I know we uh got involved with the park ranger program, but there's also um they would like to see more student involvement. So, I asked if we could, you know, possibly if they would reach out to you as well to get that. And then um the opportunities of them to possibly um set up some

075tables or something at back to school nights um because there's so much going on with parks and wreck and open space that I think it would be, you know, great that we um if we can get the kids there, then we're going to be able to get the parents there. So, I think if I've asked Greg um Bergen to reach out to you as well as Jennifer Budge, we also um had a presentation um on the budget and um you all probably read that they did get the grant for Mills Park master plan. So, that looks like it's going to be moving forward and we're extremely um fortunate that uh Congressman Ammedday uh backed that as well. The one thing on my end, what I had asked for is they're they have a lot of

076projects going on and they're going to be um adding lights to the tennis courts out at Centennial. And I just mentioned that there is one youth sport that doesn't seem to have lighting and that would be soccer. And so, um, you know, if there's a possibility that they would look at possibly getting some lights out at, um, at Pete Livermore because those kids are playing soccer and then they see the softball lights going on and they're playing do soccer in the dust. So, that was something that I had asked that if they could possibly um, you know, maybe move that up on their financial agenda a little bit to get I think would be beneficial to our youth. So, that was all I had for parks and All right. Um All right. Seeing no more,

077uh we'll move on to agenda item number five, association reports. Do we have anybody from the association for discussion only? Seeing none, um we'll move on to agenda item number six. This is public comment. I did not get any written uh names down. Renee, did we have any public comment? >> No. President Walt, there were no email public comments received. >> All right. public comment in the room. All right, seeing none, we'll move on to agenda item number seven. And this is a presentation of possible action to approve the renewal of our property casualty and insurance package with Nevada Public Agency insurance pool for a total program cost including all pool services not to exceed 1,30,257. self- insurance bond in an amount not to exceed 6,000 in excess of workers compensation policy with the Star

078Insurance Company and an amount not to exceed $35,745.32 for the July 1st 2026 through the June 30th 2027 as budget budgeted. This is for PO possible action and it's being presented by Anne Seir, Spencer Winward, Ryan Garventa and Wayne Carlson. Thank you for joining us. >> Good evening, President Walt, members of the board, members of the school community. I am Seir for the record and um you all have the uh coverage summary that was included in your board packets. Um I'll go over some of the key highlights and then if you have any questions for us, uh we can address those at that time. So included in your coverage summary, um you'll note that the blanket property coverage limit was increased from 300 million to 500 million. That covers all of the public entities that

079are covered under the pool's uh coverage form. Uh the earthquake coverage was increased to 150 million. Uh and there was another change cyber security risk coverage uh is now at um 1 million per occurrence uh up to 15 million aggregate for all pool members. Uh we also have included environmental liability coverage and student accident coverage. Uh the student accident coverage is something that is used um periodically through our uh families uh who have students participating in athletic events or are injured uh in PE class or just have a slip and fall at school and they are either uh underinsured or uninsured and this coverage will drop in and provide uh some protection for those types of incidents. Um as mentioned the um total cost of the program is at 1 million30,25707. Uh last year the

080program cost was at $959,633. So it's up about just a little over 7%. uh this can be attributed primarily to an increase in the uh ratable exposures. So the total member contribution is determined by uh applying a rate to the exposures. The exposures are payroll, property values, uh number of autos, so you know how big we are, right? And the payroll did go up uh by about uh little almost three million. went from uh 58 to 61. Uh and then the total insured property values went from $355,920186 up to $428,96393. So property values total insured property values increased by over $73 million. So that is really the most significant piece that led to that um increase. Um but overall it's it's a very good uh outcome. Towards the end of your packet you'll see a

081uh review of the riskmanagement benefits and services. So I think most of you are familiar with with the pool and the the benefit of the pools. uh how this program is structured. I'll just briefly touch on it in case you haven't heard about it at your NASBY programs, but uh this is not a traditional, you know, insurance program. Uh this is a municipal risk sharing program. So all of the most of the uh municipalities in the state of Nevada participate in this program and that is done through signing an interlocal cooperation agreement. Uh this school district entered this program in 2010. So they have been a participating member of what is essentially like a a co-op. All of these public entities pull their resources together and then they purchase insurance. It's marketed as a group.

082They have a lot of buying power by doing that and that is how they are able to achieve the limits of coverage and the depth of coverage that you have under this program. Um, schools uh nationwide are really struggling with coverages such as the sexual and molestation coverage or what we call SAM. Uh, a lot of school districts uh no longer have that coverage or they have very uh high deductibles. Uh the pool has been able to maintain that coverage over the years. Uh and that's a really important component of your liability coverage. uh the cyber liability coverage is also becoming very difficult for uh public entities uh and the pool has uh been able to maintain that coverage under this form at a reasonable cost. So aside from the um the coverages uh they

083also uh pull those resources and those funds to arrange for risk management services and programs that they provide to all of the members. uh and all of those uh items that are listed here on the uh benefits and services page uh all of these uh with the exception of the law enforcement and fire protection uh and swimming pool programs are things that our school district participates in. So, uh, we are, uh, a member of the enterprise riskmanagement committee, and you may, if you've been here at prior board meetings where we've been presented with riskmanagement excellence, uh, recognition um, awards. Um, those have uh, been received several times uh, through that committee. I sit on that committee. Um, we participate in the excellence program. Just recently, uh, we received a riskmanagement grant from the pool to

084fund the replacement of our camera system on all of our buses. Uh, that grant was in the amount of $124,144. Uh, so uh those cameras were just recently installed over the past month. uh and that is a terrific benefit to us because the existing uh surveillance system on the buses was really at end of life and failing quite frequently. Uh so we're very uh grateful to have the opportunity to take advantage of that grant program. Uh the online safety training uh we use that uh every year. Uh we have uh different uh cohorts that uh new hire cohorts and ongoing safety training that is delivered to all of our employees every year. Uh and then the cyber security training and policies. I know uh Mr. Maderos uh takes advantage of that uh as well as

085the site safety inspections and trainings. So, uh, we're very fortunate to, uh, be a member of this organization and, um, I think that pretty much sums up everything I had to say about it. Is there anything that you would like to add, Spencer, or Yep. >> Not at this time. >> Okay. >> But we do welcome any any questions the board may have. >> Yeah. And we do have Wayne Carlson here. He is the executive director of the pool. And I think he also had um some some little uh tokens that he would like to present. >> Yes. Thank you. >> Yep. >> For the record, Wayne, the executive director of the pool. Um want to brag on the district for a moment on one item and that's the e-learning completion rate. >> I'm sorry.

086Can you get closer to the microphone? the e-learning completion rate for the courses. Uh your folks took 3,872 courses and a completion rate of 92%. So that's pretty pretty high percentage and it's been consistent that way for a few years. So congratulations on that. Um we are uh as a pool and I was involved in the beginning of the pool and we're at our 39th year. We're also celebrating a sister program we have for work comp which is 30 years. So, we made these uh medallions to recognize both programs and around the edge of the coin is the values that we've embraced as a as a membership. And so, I will hand these out the appropriate way to all of you folks. And uh it's it's a it's been very interesting because in 1985 I

087had to get the legislation passed to even enable risk sharing pools because prior to that you would had to buy it from commercial insurance and at the time commercial insurance abandoned public entities dramatically or if they were able to keep an account the price went up almost 10fold in some cases. So when we got the legislation passed and then some of our brave counties signed on and we grew from there and we were successful with the cities and counties that were there from the beginning and then some school districts started hearing about all the great things that cities and counties were getting and said, "How about us?" So we had to go to the markets to convince them that school districts were an acceptable risk as well. And in 1997 we added quite a number

088of the school districts uh as members and you guys came on as an said in 2010. So it's been a successful program. We have all the 15 rural school districts are participating in the program and they are uh collectively getting the hazard vulnerability assessments assistance with updating their emergency op plans and and uh the NO4 which is a anti-ishing uh campaign. It's not with a fishing rod, but with those hackers, and that's successful. You guys have had fishing campaigns. Um, and if you haven't, you probably didn't make a mistake. If you made a mistake and clicked on one of those, you would have been sent to training, not to a hacker. So, that's the importance of that. We did have some challenges this year in in the renewal uh because our cyber market uh decided

089to exit the cyber risk world and so we had to go shopping to replace that. We are successful in getting two proposals to replace that program. And so the membership collectively bears substantial amount of the risk out of our own self-insured funds, but we were able to get reinsurance on top of that. Um, so that that was a successful uh endeavor. uh when we go to market and I've just put some perspective in there for property uh you have almost 429 million of property values which include your fleet as well as all the buildings and contents. We go to market collectively with almost 9 billion in values. So we have a clout in the market and we've been in the Lloyd's market for 22 years. So they have had good experience with our members collectively

090and um and because of that we get very good terms even in when they're having difficult financial conditions and have to pass rate increases along. So we were able to get a a rate decrease. So it kind of offset some of that property value increase that you had because we got the rate decrease. So that helped mitigate the costs for everyone. And and so that's an important part of it is establishing those long-term relationships. And our board has been really good about understanding this whole risk sharing thing takes time. And sometimes you have a bad year and sometimes you have good years and hopefully there's more good than bad so that we can keep the price stable. So that's part of our objective in in uh doing that. So Ann is right. We do offer

091a ton of services and you guys take advantage of them and and in fact the fact that she sits on the enterprise risk management committee means that some of those services bubble up through that committee. We have a human resource oversight committee and they are about to finish up their model policies for all of our members and they do them by type of entity. So, the school district policies are always a challenge because there's unique laws related to school districts and they're about to finish those up, hopefully release them next week, if not sooner. Uh, but they do that every year to keep them current. So, look forward to that bothering your HR department so that they have some guidance on updating any HR policies that are necessary. So with that, I'll be quiet. >>

092Well, thank you very much and thank you for joining us this evening. We'll go ahead and start with questions here with Trusty Varner. >> Thank you very much. I was just wondering uh you mentioned one of the maybe the rate increase was based upon the increase in salaries. Is that correct? Uh so ratable exposures >> salaries is is one of the tools that they use. That the biggest driver of that though is our property value. >> Payroll uh reported to the pool last year was 58,250,259. This year it was at 61,235669. >> Yeah. I just wondering if it's based solely on salaries or the amount of people that we have employed. >> Yeah. So they they have a way of uh calculating total payroll based on FTEES. So they take total hours and kind of

093work that into a a number >> because I was just thinking, you know, our salaries increased mainly because everybody got a pretty substantial pay raise and we didn't bring a lot more people on >> and um so and then also uh thank you for that. uh who does the property evaluations or evaluations? It went up substantially over this last year. >> And does somebody physically come out or is it just >> Yeah, every 3 years we have uh the pool sends a property a professional property appraisal firm out to boots on the ground and actually photograph and measure off and look at the buildings. And we have had um quite a bit of renovations and additions done in our buildings. So that also contributed. But we also have to you know consider the inflation the

094in the just the environment the building costs have increased considerably uh during this cycle. So you know they'll be appraised again in another three years. And if inflation on building costs and materials continues on this trend, you know, we could anticipate a similar type of adjustment. If inflation remains steady and building costs do not increase in the way they have over the past two years, um we would still see uh an inflationary adjustment just for like a 2% per year adjustment. But this year that adjustment was um you know pretty it was um 20% a little over 20%. It was pretty >> Yeah, that's what I was wondering how how that came about. >> Yeah. >> And then uh I don't want to take up all the time but I have one more question for

095Spencer. Uh was this budgeted? I mean do we have it in the budget already? >> Yes, this was budgeted and we anticipated an increase. Uh this amount does fall under the amount we have budgeted for it. >> Okay. Thank you. On that note though, did I miss how much of an increase was it? >> It was about a 7% increase. So, as Mr. Carlson was explaining, they did some good um the good work that they do, they were able to reduce the cost even though our property values went up. So, property values went up 20%, our overall cost from last year, this year was about 7%. And the year previous to that, it was I'm not going to give you the percent, but was $7,000 total. So, it was it was near near equal last

096year. And this year with that um the the appraisal that that takes place sometimes we'll see a larger jump on those years where data and additions we've had get to be a little bit more accurately represented in our property values. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? >> Yes. Go ahead. >> Um I was just going to ask because it is um most of the increase was based on our property values. If we had a building that was not being used efficiently and sold the building, would the insurance go down? >> I would have to say in 30 yes because we would be reducing the amount of properties that we are insuring. >> Trust me, did you have a question? Go ahead. >> I wasn't sure that you were done. Okay. So, on um the

097page or let's see, how do I reference it? Uh, Nevada on the Nevada Public Agency Insurance full coverage summary page. Um, number four, it says exclusion that is specific to PFAS has been added. What does PFA stand for? >> That's the plastics plastics and plastics and the waters and the soils. >> Got it. >> Probably more of a concern to a water provider or municipality. PAS Thank you. >> Is that all? Okay. So then I have a question too. Do we look at um have we the facilities ever been evaluated for risk migration opportunities you know to reduce the future increase as we continue to see increase? Do we look at that? that that kind of falls in the umbrella of the other services that they offer that and again they focus a lot more

098on the risk that we can control a lot of it which is training our personnel. That's where we have a lot more control and and um our facilities are part of that and looking at things and saying hey here's a change that we need to make. >> Generally those are recommendations that we make but they typically don't have a real material effect on hey if you make this change we're going to reduce your premiums by this amount. any of those changes would have already come into place. There's nothing that's going to be uh a huge change that would make a material adjustment to our property values. Most of what they can do is going to be based off of employee behavior and our policy and those type of things that help drive us to be

099a more efficient um organization as we fulfill our main goal of educating students. >> Okay. Right. Thank you. And then you mentioned the grant. Um very excited. Congratulations on that. That's really um I think that is such a need. So very exciting on that. Was there um did we have to provide any match funding for that grant or was it 100% >> 25% match? So our portion was around 42,000. >> Okay, not too bad. All right, thank you. Um that's all the questions I had. >> Oh, Trusty Varner, >> sorry. What was our loss ratio last year? I mean our amount of losses that uh pool pack had to cover. >> Do you have that weight? >> Uh I don't have the loss information here. I'd have to go pull the records and take a

100look. I believe it's been favorable certainly has been favorable on the property because that's that's one of the key drivers of the rates for the members as a whole is what happens with the property losses. Yeah, that's why I was curious because I hadn't heard of any major damage to our buildings or >> we haven't had any significant property losses >> employees really, you know, accidents and stuff like that. I haven't heard much about loss there, but >> Okay, maybe we can get that just >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Anyone else? Well, again, thank you for your time. Uh we appreciate the work that you do for the school district. Thanks. Oops. Oh my goodness. Come on. Can't we just move on? I'm so sorry. I know. Here's Richard like ready if you Sorry.

101This is for possible action. I'm sure you all didn't want to leave without this being uh voted on. So, do I have a motion to approve or do I have a motion? Please state the motion. >> I can go ahead and make a motion yet. I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve as submitted the proposed renewal of property/casualty insurance package with Nevada Public Agency insurance pool for a total program cost including all pool services not to exceed 1 million $30,257. self insurance bond in an amount not to exceed $6,000. An excess workers compensation policy with Star Insurance Company in amount not to exceed $35,750, excuse me, 35,745.32 for July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, as budgeted. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. All right. All right. So, motion

102made by Trustee Barner, seconded by Trustee Peterson. Um, do I have any board discussion? Public comment. Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Now, we can move on to item number eight. >> Thank you. I forgot to I forgot to mention also that uh Ryan Geravventa was unable to join us this evening as he is chaperoning a group of uh high school graduates from another school district, but he wanted to tell you all hello and sorry that he had to miss this year. >> All right. Well, thanks so much. Appreciate it. >> This came out after the vote. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. Very nice. Thank you. All right. So, we'll move on to agenda item number eight. This is a discussion of possible action to

103approve proposed changes to CCSD policy 260 recess policy. This is for second reading. This is a possible action and presented to us by Christy Perkins. Good evening. Good evening, President Walt, members of the board. For the record, Christy Perkins, director of MTSS engagement and student wellness. We're here tonight for the second reading of policy 260 based on the feedback from the board in our school community. There's a few slight changes to the policy that was reviewed um two weeks ago just to ensure alignment with the policy and the newly instated regulation. You'll see in the bottom paragraph the word all was added in front of elementary students so that wording is accurate across both documents. Um in addition after the opportunity for daily recess we did add morning, lunch and afternoon in the policy which

104is again in alignment with the regulation. Um those were the only two changes um from the last time I was here at the at the board meeting. >> So can you um I don't have what our suggestions were for the changes but were they all implemented the changes that we had asked for? Yes, the changes that were discussed um for the regulation, those were added to the regulation and I think I was able to incorporate all of those suggestions within the regulation. >> All right. Sorry about that. Thank you. >> That's okay. We'll go ahead and start with Trusty Roberts. >> All right. Thank you so much. It's looking wonderful. I just have a question. I don't know how this works. So, it uh excuse me um it notes the wellness policy 245, but since

105we also have a regulation, do we need to add that as well that it follows um the goals outlined in the district's wellness policy, policy 245 as well as the regulation 260? Does that make sense? since we wrote up that new >> I >> regulation. I >> I don't think so. I because it's the the same policy and regulation. I think there's the expectation that they're >> that they go together. This just details it out, >> right? It's just it's kind of unique. It's not extremely common to have policies or regulations referring to other policies and regulations, but in this case, it I think that's where we're pointing it out and making it more explicit. Okay, great. And thank you for emailing that over to me with the changes. Everything looked good. I did have

106one um we had crossed out intervention before and that's still in there. So that's my only thing with that. Everything else looked good to me. And then um I just wanted to clarify for the public because I know this came up a lot since the 45 minutes isn't spelled out in the policy. So there was a lot of concern that we were taking that away. Um so I just want to be clear that that's written out in the regulation. They're still um being given that full time that they were previously before we rewarded everything. >> Yes, that is correct. >> Okay. Thank you. And that was everything I had. I just wanted to um share my appreciation for you and all of the outlooks that you had on this with it being situational and seeing

107all of the kids and the different perspectives. And um it's hard for kids to regulate their emotions. And I'm glad to hear that we're seeing them in those moments um and helping them through that rather than taking it as a punishment um because they shouldn't be, you know, losing that for some things they can't control and not always having the supports from home as well. Um and I just feel like this was very thoughtfully written out as well as listening to the public comments to our board comments um to including the admins and so I just really appreciate all of your work on this and all of the perspectives that you heard out. So, thank you so much. Thank you. >> Great. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? All right. This is an action item.

108Um, so do I have somebody who would like to make a motion? I can make it. All right. I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve June 23rd, 2026 as the revised date on policy 260, recess policy. >> Thank you. Do I have a second? All right. So, I have a motion from Trustee Roberts, second from Trustee Tatuski, and then I will call for a all in favor or no discussion. Goodness gracious. P uh board discussion. Seeing none, public comment seeing none. All in favor, please say I. I. >> Opposed? Hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Right. Moving on to agenda item number nine. This is discussion and possible action to approve renewal of agreement between Chartwell's food service management consultant in the Carson City School District for from July

1091, 2026 to June 30th, 2027 at a cost to the district of an administrative fee not to exceed 6,747 per month for 10 months and a management fee not to exceed. Is that right? 10.9 cents. Okay. Per meal with funding to come from the national fund. This is for possible action. Presented by SP Oh, wow. Oh, nutrition fund. This is for pass possible action. This is presented by Spencer Winward. >> Thank you, Madam President, members of the board. Um, I have just a brief presentation here that's got some nice vibrant vegetables on there I felt were fitting for this. Um, so again, so kind of how this process works is every 5 years we go out to RFP, we select a company. Um, based off that selection, we can continue to work with them for

110the for the next five years before we have to repeat that RFP process. We did that the beginning of last year. Um, so this is would be starting year two of that five-year period. Um I believe in the executive summary I call it a contract. I just want to clarify it's not technically a contract for five years. Um it's that opportunity and then we we have the the base contract and then we have this renewal amendment that comes up each year. The first year is the contract and then the following four years would be amendments one through four. Um with each of these amendments it kind of goes through a little bit of a process. We have a committee at the district that u kind of um that that uh Chartwells our food service management

111presents to has a chance for us to ask questions and see how we're performing. Um who renews that and that happens a couple months prior to this meeting. Uh also this amendment has to be approved by Nevada Department of Agriculture prior to your approval. They have already given it their stamp of approval. And then, oh, so sorry. I had a moment myself today. I had a different bullet item, but apparently I didn't press say before I sent it to Miss Renee. That was just that that our committee looks at it. So, NDA has to approve it. Our committee looks at it. Our committee did recommend to continue with Chartwells. And then, u my my verbiage in here changed this. Um, man, I don't know if I I am losing my mind today, too. I'm sorry

112about that. So, yes, this would be year two of our 5-year agreement of of the renewal. So, continue on to the meat and potatoes. Pun intended. Um, the price of this uh I've got here what next year's proposed would be on the top line versus what this year's was, what last year's was what was FY25, which was year five of our previous contract. If you can look at the increases there, they've been pretty minimal and uh have gone right in line with what um inflation has been for uh food type products. Um so Chartwells has used the West region CPI inflation amount this year. That was 3.8%. And that's why you're seeing that increase from 10 12 cents to 10.9 cents per mill. And the admin fee going from $6,500 to 67.47 per month. And

113I just want to clarify that's for 10 months of the year. The summer months they do not charge us that admin fee. Um so the increases are are right in line with kind of what we're seeing with what's going on in the world. There's nothing major out there. Nothing like, hey, we've got you locked in and we're going to try and uh jump the price on you. It's very reasonable for the services they provide and for the the real world market conditions that we're facing. Any questions about their fees? All righty. And I just want to talk, this is definitely not an all-inclusive list. Just a couple of items that I felt were kind of important to mention that come with our um arrangement that we have with Chartwells. Uh the first thing is they

114offer a price guarantee. And so for fiscal year 27, if we don't have $28,000 of profit, then they will refund their uh admin and uh management fees. So that that's kind of nice and and they have some, you know, some skin in the game as they want to do well because if we do well, then they're doing well and it's very beneficial for both parties in there. Uh, one of the other great things that comes from them is they're a very large organization and they are able to buy in bulk and really flex their buying power in a way that we wouldn't be able to on our own. And uh, we get a a fair amount of product rebates uh, or savings each month based off of the consumables consumables that we buy. And that

115that would be essentially everything that you're going to see on that lunch train in front of kids. All those food items, paper products, those kind of things. They have a very large team that's always out looking to get items for the best cost available. Just for an example, um from the May invoice I was looking at, uh our the product gross product costs were $110,000. Uh after the rebates that Chartwells is able to secure, uh that was a reduction of $27,000. So our total cost there was $83,000. You multiply that kind of by the nine months out of the year and it's a very significant savings. Um certainly if we were out on our own maybe we could achieve some of that but not quite to the the power and the margins that Chartwell is

116able to do uh being the size of organization that they are. And then also for for those fees we have access to two full-time employees uh who help us out with nutrition management. Uh we've got a a certified chef and also a dietitian who are always making sure that we are getting all of the necessities and requirements and following all of the guidelines for the Department of Agriculture and the USDA so that we're running our program um within the regulations and guidelines that we must follow which are extensive and then also making sure that all of the different dietary needs of all of our students who may have specific needs are being met. So any questions? >> Um I but I shall wait. I will turn it over first. >> We'll start here with >>

117No, I don't have any uh questions but uh I do want to say that uh I think Chartwell's been a good partner for us and u I think we should continue. That'd be my >> Thank you. Um just for clarification um on the packet we received on page three it talks about what all we are subscribed to um lunch program breakfast program after school care snack and summer food service. Can you clarify um I mean obviously lunch and breakfast are easy but what do the other two entail? Uh the afterchool snack is they do provide some some of those to like the boys and girls club and those come through they they provide that and then we're compensated from them on that based off of their rates. Uh they do a snack doesn't entail an

118entire meal based off of. So like each snack they serve doesn't count for the 10 and uh 10.9 cents rebate. Those are are kind of the the total amount on that and our um uh alle cart sales are all lumped together and then divided by an average meal price to get a a average meal meal equivalent for those. So those and the summer food service program is is very limited. That's just again providing um some limited meals to our summer school participants. Um so on that the after school snack um that you're saying boys and girls club do the students pay for those snacks or we just get their consumption? >> I'm not sure that comes from the students or if it's from a different organization. >> Okay. >> I think it's through and and

119I again I don't know if it's the students pay boys and girls club they pay us. I'm not sure exactly how that works but there is we are compensated for that service provided. >> Thank you. That's it. >> Trusty CLA come on down. Trust her. Um, so with with bringing up the summer school, did I not see though that we are doing a campaign to help fund summer? So if they're covering it, why would we be doing a campaign to raise funds? >> Oh, sorry. Would you come up to the Thank you. Christy Perkins for the record. Um, we did this summer charge families for summer school services. However, there are certain populations of students that we are unable to charge such as our McKinventto students, our students in special education and our EL students

120are funded in a different capacity. So, if they qualified for summer school, they were not charged. And then other families who are not in one of those categories um that did they did have a fee for per credit that was recouped. So that won't cover the whole cost of staffing of course that we have to provide to supervise the students and do the curriculum. Um and then they are just provided a snack, not a full meal. Um it's just kind of a a snack. We work with our nutrition program to provide that throughout summer school, but it doesn't cover the whole cost of the program. Okay. And what would be the whole cost of the program? Would you say I think this would be a great opportunity to plug it out there? >> The cost

121of the summer school program? >> No, for I think we're kind of straight with the >> nutrition uh for >> the entire nutrition program or summer school. >> For the summer food service program, >> I didn't look at that breakdown exactly. It's I want to say slightly over $20,000, but that is a >> I was going to say right. right around 20 I my guess >> and so that's the campaign that we're seeing in the paper and all that D has posted correct >> and some of that is we get federal reimbursement for >> okay >> so it's not it's we unfortunately we can't afford just to do that out of the goodness of our hearts right >> so that is structured in a way that we're able to get some federal reimbursement for that

122>> okay so that that was that was that okay well thank you for clarifying yeah thank you for bringing that up um and so this is looking at um do have we seen an increase or a decrease in participation in comparative years when it comes to the um lunch program. >> We have seen a decrease year-over-year since we had universal free meals. >> Okay. >> And we have budgeted and are anticipating a decrease for next year as well. >> Okay. Um All right. And then um I think it was last year, you know, we had gotten some comments about um the nutrition value that is offered at the breakfast and the lunch. Um we had public comment when this came forward. Do you know if that nutrition value has increased? Have we done better? >>

123I I know they're constantly looking at that. I I would struggle to say that we were deficient in our nutrition value before. Generally, what we have to do in following all the guidelines of USDA is it's really easy to make a nutritious meal. It's very difficult to make a nutritious meal that someone wants to eat. >> Our our nutrition team is always balancing that, making sure they're staying within the guidelines, um, and, you know, doing the best they can to make something that that everyone wants to participate in. And you know, you've got a lot of unique tastes. You can make something that a lot of people are going to like and then a certain segment's not and you can change it to that certain segment and you'll always be rotating to to get that.

124So they do a lot of data collection. They do a lot of sampling to to get meals and sauces out in front of the kids to have them try it and the kids can vote and say yay or nay to see if they should work that into the regular menu rotation. >> Okay, great. So they do survey the students here and there. Yeah, they do some on-site programs at specific schools and uh collect a lot of user data. Um they can analyze a lot of times what goes in the garbage can and assess a lot from that as well. >> All right. Well, thank you. >> Any do have a question for you. Are you considering doing anything uh to um encourage parents to fill out that application because I I hear that we are

125low on on applications. Correct. We we are we do have some we're kind of game planning to see if there's a way that we can u help people fill that out. Uh aside from I mean we want to be careful that we don't overload them with information so that they just stop listening to it altogether but we get a pretty good information campaign out through parent square at the beginning of the school year. Um there's opportunities every time that if a student has a delinquent balance, there's reminders of hey there's this survey, you can fill out this form and you may be able to be comp or receive some u assistance with your student lunches. So you know we do kind of those blanket things districtwide. Some of the schools send some things out on

126their own and then if there's a case where a student um if if they go get a negative balance then they're getting opportunities to fill out that paperwork as well. Um, and we just sometimes some people choose not to. >> So, when you're saying fill out that form, is that to qualify for free and reduced lunch? >> Yes. >> Do we make sure that we do a concerted effort to let our families know that uh qualifying for free and reduced lunch isn't just for um reduced lunches, right? Like part of that is them being eligible for reduced costs for jump start and AP exams and all these other costs that are associated with qualifying for free and reduced lunch. We we don't, you know, just let them know it's just to get lunch. >> I

127I know we have kind of gotten that information out in the past. We could maybe u re revisit our efforts to let them know this is more about free and reduced lunch. >> Oh yes, go ahead. Uh, you said you were anticipating another decrease this year. Is that due to the universal free meals continuing? I was under the impression they were ending or is that from something else that you're thinking the decrease will >> universal free ended a couple years ago. Um, we we had a couple schools that were under a CPI designation so everyone ate for free and given their rotation and and the the economic levels of the schools we can no longer continue that. So we have um I believe three elementaryaries that are coming off of the CPI CPE designation. So

128uh just given our data from Carson Middle School this year that came off that designation, we saw a decrease in participation there and so we're anticipating that at those other schools as well. It'll be interesting to see if it's a similar ratio at the elementary level of secondary or not. >> Okay. Do you know which elementary schools are coming off? I believe it's Fremont and Fritz and Bordick. I'm pretty sure and and uh Elizabeth Martinez in nutrition department. I know she was communicating with those schools. Um I I don't know if if she sent out information regarding the change that was going to be coming or the principles did, but I know she was coordinating with them to get that information out and to encourage families to fill out the free and reduced applications then.

129Yeah. >> Okay. Great. So then do we just have the is there just one school left on >> um Mark Twain and Empire? >> And Empire. Okay. >> Yeah. And they they there's something they're like combined in their application. And I don't exactly understand that, but um I believe they still have two more years before uh they would be reassessed and okay. Take into consideration, >> but it's still important for them as well to fill out these forms. >> Yeah. And that's the difficult thing is if the kids are getting the lunch for free, there's not a driver for them to do that. Um, so we'll we'll see we should see a few more people sign up for it at these schools that no longer are underneath this the C designation getting free lunch. But

130again, and it's just going to take some time. A lot of times it'll be a week or two into the school year kid the parents will get a notice like, wait, lunches aren't free. And we see an uptick at that point. We do our best to to reach out at back to school nights and let people know. There's been information that have gone out to parents of these schools as well to let them know or at least to the principles and the principles have controlled that going to the parents that next year will be different. >> Is it part of um is there anything mentioned when they have to do the enrollment you know the online enrollment and you have to update your information is anything on there? >> I don't believe it is. We

131were looking into the the possibility of including that. >> I think that would be because every parent has to not that I remember and I've done mine. I did not see. >> I think that'd be a great opportunity since every parent has to be there as well as maybe back to school night. I know you're filling out some other stuff. I don't know if that can be a part of that or if that's just not what back >> I don't believe it's a part of the online registration process. I could I could be wrong, but that certainly would make sense if we could attach it to that just as long as you're going through that and and just continuing to take advantage of these opportunities. I know when there's um the beginning of the year

132and families are coming in to register like this is something that is regularly being offered to them um and made aware of and I'm not exactly sure I'd say open house events, but I but I do know that a lot of times nutrition will set up tables at some of these events to make sure they get applications out. So I I think we we do a good job of getting out. I think there's always room for improvement and trying to get that word out. >> I just wanted to follow up because coming from my high school background, we did a massive push every single year for our high school students and most of them never ate lunch on campus, but they did not. We wanted to make sure that they were well educated to know

133that it again, not just like lower cost on AP tests and and things like that, but even college admission, right? A lot of the colleges that they were applying for as a senior, if they were designated as free and reduced lunch, they didn't have to pay the $80 application fee to apply for a college. So really targeting our our high school population because a lot of times they are the ones that we assume they're not eating lunch. So that so we don't push that they're that they need to fill it out, but really, you know, educating them to make sure that they know it's really important that they do uh if they qualify and letting our parents know that it is self-reported um income, right? They're not asking you to submit your W TWS or,

134you know, um income taxes from the previous year. So, just making sure we're giving our our our families all the information they need about all the different uh benefits that come from if they uh qualify for for being uh FRL. >> There's a certain high school principal in the room that is taking note. >> Thank you. Right. Any additional question? All right. This is for possible action. Do I have a motion? Anyone? >> I'll make the motion. I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve renewal of agreement between Compass Group Incorporated, USA Chartwells, Food Service Management Consultant, and the Carson City School District from July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027 at a cost of the district of an administrative fee not to exceed 6,7 $747 per month for 10 months

135and a management fee not to exceed cents per meal with funding to come from the nutrition fund. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> It was like who's going to press that button first? All right. So we have a motion by trustee Varner, a second by trustee Satuki and um do we have board disc or yeah board discussion? Seeing none public comment seeing none all in favor please say I >> opposed hearing none motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much Spencer. >> Thank you. >> And so we'll move on to agenda item number 10. This is forformational update on AI use in the Carson City School District. This is for discussion only. This is brought to us by Brandon Bringhurst and Superintendent Fueling. Good evening, board of trustees. Brandon Bringers, chief academic officer

136for the record. I also brought a couple of um star guests to help with presentation today. We have Dr. Tanya Scott and uh principal Cheryl Macy that will be sharing some of the information as well. So um a little bit of an update and we talked about some of the AI use in our board workshop but wanted to update on some additional things that we are doing and this is really being guided by board policy 280 which was adopted um a couple of years ago and uh drives the work that we're doing and as you all know AI is changing very quickly and our policy has adopted did gives us some great flexibility to be able to um respond to the changes of AI in a way that aligns with the policy and direction of

137the school district. within that policy. A key component of that is empowering our instructors, those that are working directly with students and uh seeing what they need and what works for our instructors and our students to improve learning for students. Couple of key components in that policy also speak to student integrity or the academic integrity that's so important. um the data security component as well as the ability for our staff and students to innovate in ways that align with the technology and the vision of the school district. It's important I I think a key paradigm that we have here in Carson City School District is that our curriculum comes first. AI is a tool that comes second. Um, we our foundation is grounded in the curriculum that we have worked very hard to develop and

138adopt resources that align with what our students need to know and be able to do. We have been leveraging AI to not only help with student learning in ways like we discussed with Rhydon but also to focus on how we can gain real efficiency in our the work that our teachers are doing. teachers. The more time we can save teachers on some of the administrative paperwork tasks, the more time and energy they have for the work that where they do the real magic in working with our students directly. Before we talk uh we're going to talk about a few tools for that teacher use, there is one tool that we wanted to mention that our students are using to help improve student learning and that is a program called Paloma AI which is a tool

139for our kinder through 2 grade students. Some of you may be uh using that as parents and see that our it's a tool to help our families read with their students in a way that is aligned with the curriculum and instruction that they are receiving in the classroom. That's something that we started after the spring parent teacher conferences and we've seen some uh good success with that so far. >> Yeah. Um, so as Brandon said, I think Paloma is a really good example of curriculum first. Um, and and that is you can get any program that maybe has fun stories and kids will read at night and they get points and whatever, but the fact that it is actually tied to what they are learning every single day in school is is an enormous benefit

140to them learning all of those um skills and and and that that we are expecting of them. um for paloma I think in the first uh I think we or we looked at the data here at the end of the year and I think it was something like 70 so we really really had only rolled it out for I think seven weeks altogether but 71% of our K through 2 kinder through 2 grade families had signed up for it and of that I think 51% were using it at least at least three times a week. That kind of engagement on anything we are rolling out to families and asking them is well above anything that we have ever seen. Um and we've received a lot of really good feedback um from from our principles who

141are getting it from their families um with with very very few exceptions. So um that's an exciting exciting thing and look forward to that next year. >> Perfect. Okay. So then as we look at the tools that we have available and are supporting and training our teachers on using these tools to help improve their work in preparation um improve how they're able to give feedback, improve um just the behind-the-scenes work that they do. It's important that we steer them towards tools that we think are both effective and are safe uh for them to use where we've got some uh digital security around that. So, we lean heavily on our Google suite uh because the tools that we use there in Google have the same privacy protections that that all of the other Google tools that

142we have. So, when we use that, unlike if you just use chat GPT, what you do there kind of goes up into the great AI brain in the sky, right? Um when we do things under our school Google account, that does not happen. and so that data still stays secure. One of those tools is a tool called Google Gemini which is in many ways similar to a tool like chatgpt which is a great tool for helping uh to create uh documents and actually this slide presentation I created using Google Gemini. So, it's something that can help create things and and do that in less time than you would be doing on your own. We've spent a lot of time as a district developing a lot of curriculum documents. I know you guys have heard a

143lot about our proficiency scales, common assessments, etc. A tool like Google Gemini can refer to those and help build the additional tools that teachers need in in a really quick manner. Uh connected tool to that are what are called Google gyms which you can basically train uh a gym to do a a task that you need repeatedly. If there's a task that you frequently do, you can set up this gem and give it instructions about what it needs to do. And then every time you need to do that task, you access it and it will do that task for you. And over time, it learns kind of exactly what you want and how you want things to look. And so it really can reduce the time that our teachers are spending to do this. in

144the PLC training that was mentioned in the report by principal prior. Part of that PLC training that we got, the the trainer uh gave our teachers some tools and to use Google Gemini and GEMS to be able to create some of the things that you need in the PLC process. some common formative assessments, ways that it can create some real quick checks for understanding, ways that it can help to analyze the work that your students are doing. So, a lot of this work that in a PLC process sometimes takes that team days, weeks, months to work on together, AI can uh greatly reduce that time while doing it in a way that's aligned with what we want to accomplish with uh the PLC process. The third Google tool that we use is what's called notebook

145LM. And it is um different in that you essentially load into the notebook the brain that you want it to use. So instead of it going out and finding things on the great worldwide web, it only queries what you tell it to query. So, for instance, we have a notebook created that has board policies in it. And so, I got a question from principal Macy um about some things with policy and some things she wanted to do. And I was able to query my notebook and have a discussion with notebook LM. It showed me exact citations of board policy and how it related to the question that she asked similar to what we're talking about with how we use AI. I didn't just copy and paste that and send that to principal Macy, but that

146needs to go through me as well. And that human input is an important part of it. So then I take that and I use add to that my expertise and the vision that we have for Carson City School District. then I'm able to get an answer that is thorough um and aligned with what we need and get that to a principal in in much quicker fashion. Similarly, Notebook LM if a teacher uploads here's the stuff for this unit, it'll create flashcards for kids. It'll create an artificial podcast with two people. It sounds like two people that are talking back and forth to each other and it's totally AI, but they're talking back and forth to each other about the unit that you loaded into it. Um, so it has some really cool tools and it

147limits what it creates to what you give to it. So you have a lot more control over that and kind of eliminate some of the hallucinations that some can be a problem with AI. I just want to add I I think this is just an incredibly powerful tool as we've gotten to use it more with past year and a half. So in Brandon's example, you're you're loading that knowledge base. Now, if you ask it a question, um if if I would ask Google Gemini, which is using the entire internet for its information, so why is the sky blue? It will tell me why the sky is blue. I I can't tell you, but it would tell me. There's science behind it. Um, if I would ask this notebook that Brandon has created, why is the

148sky blue? It would come back and say, I don't know. Because the only thing it knows is the knowledge you give it. So, it's it's there are varying uses that I I think are really interesting between those. The next tool uh is outside of Google and this is a tool called Magic School AI and it is specifically designed an AI tool designed for education. Google is designed for lots of things not just education. This is a tool that we provide for our educators designed for education and Dr. Scott with our EL teachers has done a lot of work using this tool. President Walt, members of the board, I I had the privilege this year of um going alongside the EL teachers as they participated in professional learning on Magic School and then working with them

149as they used it to refine their practice and kind of streamline their workflow. When we look at usage, you'll see that it's primarily being used for teach for lesson planning. And what that has come to look like for our teachers is that they're able to use the tool to differentiate for across the different levels of language development. So for example, magic school inter we can interface it with our digital our online resources and then we can see how it would be appropriate for students at a level two a level three and it does that for us as well as builds in um links to resources that we might access for students at that particular level. So that's been really a gamecher for our English learner teachers. And another thing we've able to do in the

150role of the EL teacher is to use it as a tool for um teacher coaching and as teacher leadership. And um we were noticing that this in tier one instruction a lot of the student or the teachers were missing opportunities to embed opportunities for discourse. And we were able to working with Magic School create a tool that would audit a lesson an existing lesson and find places where you could recommend opportunities for students to engage in discourse. So just kind of some capacity things that we're able to to use this year. You can see on this slide some of the usage of magic school AI or what um it is being used for and as was mentioned uh instructional materials um is a big part of that in the planning. So this isn't necessarily um

151used a lot for studentf facing work but a lot of teacherfacing work. Um this slide showing just the overall usage of it. You could see there in September when we did training there was a lot of usage and then as teachers started using it on on their own you can see that dropped down from that intense training time but steadily climbed towards the end of the year. We obviously see a decline towards the end of the year um because activities shift towards the end of the year um and we spend a lot of time on testing and other other things of that sort. So if you've heard or listened at all to or had discussions around the water cooler around AI certainly part of those discussions have involved well kids are just using this to

152cheat and that is uh something that we are aware of that our policy even um contemplates and talks about the academic integrity and uh principal Macy has some details for us on how this is being attacked. or addressed at the high school. >> President Walt, members of the board, for the record, my name is Cheryl Macy. As of July 1st, I'll be principal of Carson High School. Um, as you can imagine, it's really challenging to tackle academic integrity with AI because the technology moves so much faster than we do. um by the time we have something in place, there is a new technology for students to use. But that's okay because at the root of all things academic integrity is prevention. That should be our focus. And um can you go to the next slide?

153Um an area where we've really worked on this is in summer school. summer school where kids get credits that they have um lost over the school year are they're doing those classes almost entirely online. So we're seeing challenges with academic integrity in that setting. So we have tried a few things this year. One is we removed the Gemini extension and this is because if can you go back to the previous slide? One of the things that we focus on with um you know academic integrity is ensuring that teachers are using tools that they have available to them like go guardian that's on that third bullet there which is where teachers can see what kids are doing on their screens but if you can go to the next slide. Thank you. Um with the Gemini extension

154it happened so quickly teachers weren't able to see it. So we removed the extension. Students still have access to Gemini just not through the Google extension. So, it's a little bit longer of a process and allows us to identify it. We also are piloting inseat classes for summer school this year, which is allowing us to see if that reduces the amount of academic integrity issues. And it works out really well because it aligns with our PLC work where we have identified essential learning targets and we're focusing on that. It's not with all classes. It's with um a few English, math, and one social studies class. And then at the end of summer school, we we'll review and reflect and see if that's maybe a better process going forward rather than relying on the online classes.

155Next slide, please. Um, moving forward, our staff has told us in a recent professional learning survey that they want training on how to prevent academic integrity issues. And um, it's going to be a fairly deep training, but it's going to focus on things. How do you structure your assignment to avoid um cheating? Um there is a ton of research that as long as you are clearly and frequently communicating your value of um authentic work in incidences of cheating go down in the classroom and clearly articulating for students when is it appropriate and when is it not. For example, one teacher may um not have a problem with this student using AI to generate ideas, but then maybe they want them to write the paper once they have the ideas. Another teacher may want them to

156have the ideas, but maybe you can use AI to help you organize your thoughts. So having that clarity on when it is and is not appropriate is important. And of course, we need to teach our students not only how to use AI so that they're competitive when they leave our school system, but how do they use it effectively and how do they use it ethically? And then we really need to ensure that staff, students, and families are aware of policy 280. Um, yeah, that's it. as uh we have worked with staff on AI um we have done some training we had an AI um workg group in previous years that looked at some of this and some feedback that we got from them has been very important one of the pieces of feedback was as

157was stated yes we want some training but we don't want that training to take away our collaborative time um that we have as as a department because that collaborative time is very important. So that's uh a critical critical component not only as we move forward with AI training but all of the training that we do that we do that without disrupting the collaborative time that is so important for our teachers and that part of the feedback was also uh a couple of different pathways for that training. We really look at AI and we can kind of clump it into two major areas. One is just on the teacher side. How do I as a teacher use this to do my work better and more efficiently? And the other side is how do I use AI

158with students and and use it as a tool to help improve their learning. And so as we move forward with training, training in both of those areas based on what the teachers see they need. And then having real guard rails to make sure that we are both modeling and teaching our staff on uh how to use it appropriately to be in alignment with privacy regulations that we need to make sure that we are following. Any questions from the board? >> I do. um policy 280 you mentioned um um making sure that parents see it. How are we getting the policy to in the hands of the parents? Sorry. >> I think that's a great question and that's an area that we uh as was with the previous discussion around uh free and reduced lunch that

159parent communication is a challenge. We sometimes load parents with a lot of communication and it just becomes white noise and u but we need to be careful that we're not missing and not sharing the information that we need to share. I think this is an area that continues to evolve and change and we need to make sure that we're doing a better job of strategically communicating around this policy and how we are strategically using AI. questions. Go ahead. >> Thank you guys. Um I always enjoy your presentations. Thank you. They're very thorough. The only question I really have is on the first slide it says um we empower instructors to make informed decisions about the use of approved uh AI tools. Uh who approves the AI tools and how's that process work? So we work

160that process closely with our IT department and Raymond helps to um audit those tools and make sure that they are in alignment with the privacy laws and regulations that we need to follow. So for instance, as we started to look at onboarding Rhydon, that was a key part of that process was Perry working with Raymond to make sure that everything in that system aligned with um the policies and uh regulations that we have governing that. Yeah. Um I anyone else? The only other question I have too is um as we continue and AI has more opportunities out there, you know, I mean every day there seems to be another one. So we've talked about today Paloma, we talked about um I mean all of these as well. So my question is where in the budget

161are these? So because I know like um we implemented um PLMA in the middle of the year um the uh the one that we um heard earlier this evening um was implemented as well. So where in the line item is this all in the budget just so we know that we're not exceeding. >> Sure. Um, so Magic School uh like came on as a grant uh item a couple years back. That was kind of soon after AI started happening. Um, Paloma uh is being paid for uh through grants. Um, write-on, I think, is that through your >> Yeah, Rhyon is through the ed services uh budget and um the magic school, as was mentioned, started there with a grant, but has since moved into the education services um budget. And and I think it's important

162too because I I I very much see your point of, you know, is it we don't want to be chasing the next shiny thing, right? because there's costs that start to add up with that. But I I feel like um between when when Magic School came on board, we we really that was the only system we knew that was entirely protected in terms of privacy like all these privacy laws that we have to abide by. Um and there are many tools just built in there for teachers. So that that is one that um seemingly has made sense to sustain because and how how much they will help support and build our own customized tools which is what happened with um Dr. Scott and the EL um department. Um it but it then later we learned

163about uh Google with Gemini and notebook LM because that's in the in the Google Enterprise world which we are a part of those now also have um as of I think really just I think it was like seven or eight months ago. Those are now um have the same privacy protections. Paloma takes a bit of a different angle with it really being something about parents engaging with parents that we don't otherwise have um and and right on that very specific feedback focus um is something that I think has been um executed incredibly well. Although there are potentially opportunities within Magic School to do that sort of thing um even in Gemini, but uh I I think this setup and getting kids excited about reading or uh writing is is kind of a different angle than

164just purely giving feedback. Um he's kind of gified it and made it made it fun. So, I feel like we we have a couple really good um like big AI systems that can do a lot. We also have kind of strategically picked a few where I think we can really use some extra help and and hopefully see some bang for our buck. Um but I don't expect that we're going to be onboarding six new ones next year and six new ones after that. Um ultimately there's only so much funds and there's only so much capacity to to learn and use these things. I appreciate that. Thank you. And then my next would be, you know, because um they're not consistent with all of the schools. So, I mean, when we introduce one, why do we

165only do it for one or two schools? Like, um the write-on is not with all of the schools. I mean, why aren't we um implementing them like and sharing them with everyone and being consistent, I guess. Yeah, I it's just a a question of capacity on the roll out. When we roll something out that goes districtwide, it takes a lot more um resources from support from a district level to um roll things out districtwide. That's one of the things that we consider in do we want to start small or do we want to go across the board. The other piece is there's a capacity level from the teachers and and schools themselves. And we have some teachers and schools that are hey I am ready for this and I want to do this. Uh and

166others that if we say hey I need you to do this they're like I cannot do one more uh thing. And so we want to be very strategic and make sure that we are providing we're differentiating that support and resources uh for the teachers uh and the schools that are ready for that so that they can implement it appropriately and it can um roll out in a more I think natural progression and then we get a a more integrated implementation of it as opposed to it coming uh from the district to everyone. >> Did you have more? >> Yeah, thank you. This conversation has spurred a couple other questions for me. If a new shiny object comes along program, um, and we want to do that, are we on contract with the other tools we

167have in place? Or is there, for lack of a better term, I guess, an escape clause? If we wanted to get rid of one and use this new program, is there ability to to uh do that? >> Yeah, we work to remain really flexible in that things are changing quickly and so we we don't um lock into long-term contracts. Um and I'll say we get I get and I'm sure Superintendent Fueling gets uh emails about new shiny objects daily. Um there's lots of folks that are aggressively marketing their new things and we really try and be really uh strategic both to make sure that it's curriculum first, right? It's what it's what students need. Um it's not just because it's new and fancy, but is it meeting a need that we have and do we

168have the capacity to onboard it? Um both from a financial standpoint and just from a capacity of the organization standpoint. So, um, we also I work with Raymond in the IT department because he can show can give us a usage report of all of the different systems that we are paying for and what is and isn't being used. So then if we think, hey, we're paying for this for everybody, but it's only being used by a small number, we can adjust those contracts accordingly um so that we're we're paying for what we're actually using. Okay, that's good. That's what I want to know is there's some mechanism in there to do that. So, >> yeah, >> thank you. >> Did it spark any additional questions? Go ahead. >> Um, not a question so much. Um,

169but from my childhood, the shiny new thing was just the internet in general and it was we were unleashed on it without any real restraint or guidance or um cautions. And I did way more exploring than I should have. And then the like our kids or my kids generation like social media was the big the shiny new thing unleashed and with really no guidance and plenty of ways to get yourself into trouble and and I feel like this is like the next shiny new thing and AI is going to be a part of our kids' lives and the future generations. It's it's here and it's it's not going to go away. And so I really appreciate that this is something we can put in some guidance and teach kids how to use it properly and

170maybe have learned from um failures on the shiny stuff before it um of the importance of the guidance and the learning and the understanding of its power and its risk but also its benefit. Um as with any tool um used as it's intended can be extremely beneficial. And so I really appreciate um the amount of effort that's going into ensuring that our kids learn um how to properly benefit from the tool that is being provided and cautioned against the ways it can be damaging. So, um that is something that we can do to help keep the next generation safe and and moving forward and um because again this is where the world is going and so to get our kids in it and understanding it and to become fluent with its benefits I think is

171great. So I appreciate how much effort is going into um the different means and uses and um safeguards that we have for it. So just to thank you. >> Thanks. All right. I do have a question. So the students will only have access to these platforms at the school, correct? At while they're in school, not at home. >> So the plat it depends on the platform. Um Paloma is intended to be used at home. So it is used at home. Um Google Gemini, anybody can act, we don't anybody can access those if they've got uh access to Google. So that's not restricted to uh within the school environment. I'm trying to remember if right on I think they can access that at home too. Yeah. So I don't So and magic school well magic school

172is mostly teacher facing so it it it's available and that's something we can't really control. AI is available to kids. What we can control, as uh Trusty Peterson mentioned, is that we and I think Principal Macy mentioned as well that we do a good job in trying to educate on the ethical use of these tools because simply um eliminating access to them isn't really a reality. Mhm. I was just going to add that the internet was new for her. I think a calculus uh calculator with a graphing function was new to me. So, I just wanted to add that. Well, and and that's where I think it's important and this has come up in a a couple of presentations I've been a part of that to think about our our students, especially our our youngest,

173say our kindergarteners and and below, are never going to really remember a world that didn't have AI, didn't have social media, didn't have the internet. Like, that's just what the world is. And so while there will certainly be bumps in the road and as we try to engage with this and figure this out, um it's it it's something that I don't you know we can't put our heads in the ground that we we have to deal with and do the best with it that we can. So thanks that uh we have a lot of really smart people and and lots of great teachers trying to help us figure this out. I was just going to add that like I remember in high school when I took the SAT, we weren't allowed to use calculators and

174my sister who was two years younger than me, I'm going to say two years older, but she's younger, you guys know that. Um, she got to use a calculator when she took the SAT. So, it was and they all they all thought that we were cheating, right? Like I'm like, you're cheating on the SAT. That's why you should get a better math score. But it was a calculator. Everybody thought everybody was going to cheat. So, it's just every, you know, every couple years a new tool comes out and we have to adapt as educators on what we're going to do to help our students use things ethically, responsibly. >> Agreed. >> All right. Great. Thank you guys. Thank you for joining us this evening. >> All right. Um that was for discussion only which moves

175us to agenda item number 11. This is discussion and possible action to adopt a resolution in support of Invest. Is that invest? Should I say invest? Invest. Uh 2027. A document created by Nevada superintendent outlining the need to improve student achievement in Nevada. This is for possible action brought to us by Superintendent Fueling. >> Thank you, President Walt. Uh each, well, I guess every two years um as we start preparing for the legislative session, the Nevada Association of School Superintendent um works to create a platform um of priorities going into the legislative session. Uh this is this invest document I I believe has actually been around for almost 20 years now. Um and and we have learned over time to uh you know less is more. This used to be like a 20page document which

176for legislators who are reading endless things that that does not go over well. Um but so the the superintendent's work um and do some some brainstorming some um uh kind of roundtabling trying to get through what what are those things going into this next session that we feel are the most important to support what we are doing in our schools. And so, um, as a as a part of that, once that is developed, every, um, superintendent is going to their school board and asking for their support for this item. Um, that just helps kind of bring some more weight, uh, behind it. Um, NASBY has already offered their um, support for the document as well, which we we usually try to support each other as we go into the legislative session. Um, but here you

177have uh four general priorities and I I won't get into um the nitty-gritty details unless you have some questions, but I I think most of these at a high level will um will make sense. I'll explain some. So, number one, increase and align education funding to ensure that resources match student needs. Um you you may be aware I I forget if I think we've talked about this maybe a little bit maybe just in some of the email updates there is a lot of concern around one of the weighted funding funding categories at risk funding um it is currently um it is currently derived inside of infinite campus we're using 74 different factors that AI I is like using to calculate if a child is at risk of not graduating high school or not all the

178way down to kindergarten. It's making that decision and it's creating funding based off that potentially. And so um what that has created is enormous volatility in that funding stream which is causing hu huge issues for we haven't been as impacted but wo um and uh another I can't think of the other district have been severely impacted where they've tried to put together programs and they've come away. Um so so that is one of the the primary um concerns. The other one is around declining enrollment. Then that's related to funding as well. There were some changes in state law years back. Um that that was I think very reasonable um w with how it approached. If there was declining enrollment, you got to use the prior year's enrollment. Gave you some time to stabilize and make

179decisions and then you you'd move on. Now you kind of live the brunt of it immediately. Um, and almost every district has that issue right now. So, that's become a a bigger issue for us to deal with. Um, number two, refine SB460 to more effectively and positively impact school operations um and student success. SB 460 was the massive accountability bill that came out of the last session. Um, one that made uh some pretty brought in some pretty draconian measures in terms of how uh schools and districts are um considered to be succeeding or failing and what are some pretty substantial consequences coming out of that. Um, none of the the districts um or I should say all of the districts support modifying some of the language within that law. Um, and and it is it's

180an enormous bill. There's a lot in there. Um, but I I think just in general there are pieces within that bill that we all feel like can be improved and be a little less harsh in terms of um the punitive measures which really reflect for a lot of us. We view this as a a return of No Child Left Behind back in 2001, which was looking at shutting down schools, firing people, a bunch of nonsense that didn't work. And so that's where we're hoping to kind of um make some changes there. Uh number three, strengthen early literacy supports without harmful student retention requirements. Um I think every everyone has probably heard about uh the read by grade three laws. Um this is under current law if a student is not deemed um proficient but actually

181proficient in this case is not proficient as far as how our school ratings are done which is seems kind of silly. Um but there is a threshold that the state uh school board has set um to deem if a if a child has reached the level where they can promote from third grade to fourth grade. Otherwise they would they must be retained. There are some good what are called good cause exemptions to that but um there are fundamentally concerns about uh holding kids back. It it does not happen very often and for a lot of ways because of a lot of the research around uh the impact of holding kids back at grade level. Um, but I think what everyone does agree that if we could offer more intensive interventions K through three for all

182of those students and beyond that are struggling with reading, struggling with literacy. Um, that if there if there were funding to do more to give intense supports to them, that would be something we would be very very much in favor of. Um the other thing is trying to get um the ENTI system, the uh Nevada system of higher education to also bring the science of reading instruction that that we are now a lot of our folks have been trained our new curriculum CKLA very much reflects but none of that is being trained in our teacher training pipelines in the university system which is a a real problem. So trying to bring that um last thing stabilizing and aligning um stabilize align and expand prek funding structures. really this is about the the expansion of prek

183and one of the frustrating things about prek is that it ends up being a competitive grant. Um which doesn't it would make more sense to kind of have as a formula based on you know enrollment of your district you get allocated a certain amount of funds. Uh instead we're all fighting over funds um yeartoear. So, it's kind of a silly thing, but ultimately we'd love it if everyone just had the funding to run full uh full prek access for all four-year-olds in the district. So, that's kind of the I guess a little bit of detail, but uh high level of our uh concerns and and kind of goals going into the session. Hopefully, we can bring some improvement to. So, I'm happy to take any questions and um otherwise would ask you to um support

184uh this platform. >> Thank you. I do have um a couple questions for number four. When you said that um then it would um be like stabilized funding, would this then eliminate the um the lateness of opening up for prek? Would it? because I know that is so many parents have such an issue and it's all over asking when is prek gonna open. >> It would 100% >> okay >> stop that issue because if it's just a a formula of or ultimately if it was just universal you got paid uh you know you received a certain amount of funding for every student that enrolled up to whatever level of capacity you could hold you would you would know your level of funding that would absolutely take care of that problem. Yeah, because I don't think

185um you know parents understand that the reason the school district doesn't open up the enrollment for prek is because we're waiting for the state to dictate how much funding we get. And we normally don't even find out how much funding we get for prek until late May. Correct. >> It it it has varied over the years, but this last year it it became I I think it almost went into June. >> Yeah. Um and so we had to we actually ended up making a choice to start get signing people up even before we knew just because we knew so many families were waiting. >> Yeah. And so it isn't the school district, it's actually the the state. Um another question is refining number or SB 460. Does that have anything to do with our star

186rating then? The star rating of the schools? >> Yeah. Well, and yeah, there's actually a couple pieces to it, but yeah, it it does um sorry, the school accountability system, looking at the school accountability system, um the STAR NSPF system and and rebooting that is is a part of it. Also, as a part of it is creating what is called a district performance framework. So they're looking at creating not only will you have a star system for each individual school but then for districts overall there will be some kind of ranking. Um there are committee meetings going on right now over the past seven months about that. Um myself and uh Tate the superintendent from Eureka are going to be joining that group here starting in August I believe we've been asked to participate. Um

187but but yeah, all all of that sort of thing is is wrapped up in here. So they they actually added another layer um by adding these like district level ratings versus just the school level ratings which are problematic in themselves. >> Okay. And I mean, I've made it very known that I have an issue that attendance is um chronic absenteeism is attached to our star rating because we physically cannot go and get them and bring them to school. Is that being addressed in any of this? >> Um I I know it's at least being talked about. One of the adjustments that had been made just before this committee started was um recognizing uh not just the the total percentage of chronic absenteeism but also improvement because that that wasn't something that was taken into account.

188So you have some schools that have, you know, 40% chronic absenteeism. But if they go from 40 to 30, that's a huge improvement, but then under the under just a year ago, they would still have gotten dinged for having horrible chronic absenteeism. So, but they wanted to recognize me the right way. Um, I know this committee is is looking at all of the different current factors and and trying to decide what to keep and what not to and if there's anything else to include. >> Okay. Because I think my issue is, like I said, we can't physically go get them, but what are we don't have any um legal or the law enforcement doesn't either to make these parents um accountable for not getting their kids to school. And that's where I think um I

189would like to see it totally taken out, but that's a pipe dream. Okay, any other questions? Yes. Um, as far as attendance goes, I know some of the talk has been um because chronic absenteeism is defined in a certain way. Um, but the whole um calculation of seat time and whether or not seat time is actually a good measure of whether or not a student is making um adequate progress and being able to demonstrate competencies is a whole another question. you have students who may not need to attend school every day and can hit or make or or demonstrate proficiency in all those standards. So, seat time by itself to in my opinion is kind of an arbitrary thing that should be looked at, especially when you're dinging districts and schools for chronic absenteeism. Um,

190I appreciate all of these four items. I think they're great. Um my only problem is every time, especially every legislative session, so much focus is placed on um early literacy uh children. We we all want everyone to have equitable access, especially to prek, but there's not a lot of um attention placed on making sure that our high school students have equal access to dual credit opportunities, industry recognized credentials. So, when we're asking for funding, a lot of times we're focusing on preK and uh you know, a few years ago we we got kindergarten, right? We didn't even have universal kindergarten till a few years ago. Um so, I I appreciate these and I support these, but I just wish somebody would take a look at making sure that there's um equitable opportunities across the board

191for all students to be able to participate in dual credit and get an IRC. Um, can I I'm just clarifying in summary. So, these are the goals for the Nevada superintendent that you are intending to advocate these things when we go to legislature this year. Um, and so by us um taking action and approving it is that's just us showing our support that we agree that these are important goals. >> It's you showing support that you think they're important. >> Okay. And is this something that we would anticipate in two years you guys would uh >> I'll be back >> be asking for the next Okay. Is there by our approval? Um, is there an anticipated like what does our action and investment look like or is it just supporting you as you? >> Um,

192I I I think it's just showing uh solidarity with, you know, these things, you know, maybe they're not all the same level of priority for everyone here, right? Um, but that generally we we support um support this work. there's um there is opportunity for any of you and I would very much invite you I know I've talked with Lupe and Molly a bit about this but um coming up during the legislative session because there's going to be I think last session um there were 119 bills related to education layers and layers and layers of more things to do. Um but but it's it's a great opportunity to come up and and hear what is being said and having the opportunity to to speak on it. So I would I would certainly encourage you and I

193I know just from my conversations there's an expectation to keep you a breast of when these things are coming up. Um so there there will be a lot. Um Mary Pzinski who was superintendent here uh 07 to or 2007 I think um she is our lobbyist for NAS and so she keeps us on top of that and I I will be um sharing with you a lot of the feedback she gets and the summaries she does from the from the sessions just so you're you're aware of that. >> All right. Great. Thank you. All right. This is for possible action. Do I have a motion? >> Oh. Uh, I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees adopt as submitted the resolution in support of the Invest 2027. Uh, motion by Trustee Peterson,

194seconded by Trustee Ramirez. Uh, board discussion, public comment. Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. And I believe uh Trustee Peterson and I need to sign that. Did you? Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And moving on to agenda item number 12. This is discussion on proposed changes to the following objective policies of the Carson City School District Board of Trustees. This is for first reading. This is for discussion only. And like I said, this is us diving into um the different policies and updating them. So, I did send this out um and asked for any uh edits doesn't mean that because you didn't or that you didn't have a chance that you didn't have any edits and that we won't be

195discussing them. So, how I would like to do this, this is um for discussion only. We'll do the same thing like we do on most policies. we will suggest any changes, edits, additions. The ones in in red um have been changed by um Renee and then we'll go one by one. So um and of course I do have some edits and some additions. So we'll start with um policy 101, philosophy of education and um we'll just kind of go round table. If anybody had any, please just jump in. Um and then I'll discuss what I had. So did anybody have any comments edits to policy 101. All right. So then if you will look at policy 101 I would like to add at the um the end of paragraph one. Um so right now it

196says and instilling in them an appreciation of this is a philosophy of education. So we would get rid of and put the comma after society and put and preparing students to thrive in a rapidly changing technologically advanced and globally connected society. What I noticed with all of these policies is that we um these policies need to be updated to where we are today in the digital world and technology world that we are in today. Um, you know, as you can see, these were uh last revised in 2010. We don't address our um CTE and these policies. We don't address AI as we did today. So, a lot of that um is what I looked at is the college and career and and workforce readiness, the digital lit literacy. So, the updates in which I'm proposing

197in most of these will address that. Please keep in mind that I also um looked at the verse the policy with our current um strategic plan and so um those the suggestions that I have would they do align with the strategic plan that we have now although we'll be changing that uh soon but they do align with that as well. So again I would like to add at the very end of the first paragraph it would say and preparing students to thrive in a rapidly changing technologically advanced and globally connected society. At the end of paragraph two, I would like to add the district shall promote critical thinking, digital leadership, responsible use of technology, innovation, collaboration, and civic engagement. Those are the two sentences that I would like to add to policy 101. Not delete

198anything, just add this. And Renee, I do have these sketched out. >> Okay. >> Uhhuh. Um so again these are just discussion so if there's no discussion nobody is against that we'll okay can I ask you a quick question on that first paragraph that last sentence >> did you say remove some of the last sentence or just add on >> I would I would be um well the and would just be moved to the um boy this is going to be helpful um and would be so we would remove it after attitudes and put a comma and then um after society it would be comma and preparing. So I'm just adding another prepositional phrase. >> So well that would be a terrible run-on sentence but um >> it would be and that's why I'm maybe

199looking at you then because yes >> but I'm just looking at the language like equipping them with useful skills to me that is very vague. It's not specific. What are we talking about about useful skills? Are we talking about sewing on a button? Are we talking about, you know, changing oil? Like, it's it's very vague. I don't know if I would include that. And wholesome attitudes? Like, who's to say what I think is wholesome is the same as what you think is wholesome? Like, I think that's that kind of language, useful skills, and wholesome attitudes is a little >> Outdated. And yes, I mean I I would say like almost recognizing their needs and then cutting out the whole last part and and replacing your sentence with that last part. >> Okay. Equipping them, you

200know, get rid of equipping all the way to society >> and replacing it with what you brought up. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. That that I'm good with that. Yes. And is as you will >> it sounds like you were from the 50s, right? >> Well, it was actually 1979. some attitudes. >> But yes, m much of the much of all of this is outdated and um you can you look that yes, it was in there. Okay. So, we'll go ahead and do that. >> I I do have something before you move on. >> Uhhuh. >> On the very last paragraph, the board accepts the responsibility for coordinating the available resources of home. How do we do that? I don't know. Again, this is why we're addressing this. >> I don't know. Um the

201board, yeah, when I read that, I thought, hm, >> what about something like for coordinating the partnership between homeschool and the community? >> Something like >> we're responsible for trying to develop that partnership between the three of us. >> Well, I think that I think that is one of our um >> other ones, I think. Yeah, I think the partnership goes into our educational process goals actually. It's somewhere in there. >> Yeah. >> So, what I would suggest in um in fairness of time as well, we'll we'll go ahead and propose deleting this unless um we don't see it further in the other policies. If we see it in further, we'll delay delete it. But if we don't then we will change the language to for coordinating the partnership and um please write that down.

202What else you said? >> Okay. >> Sorry. Just the partnership between homeschool and the community, right? Like >> between >> home school and the community. >> Home. Oh, I see it there. Okay. Okay. All right. Home and in a mutual effort to guide. Okay. All right. So, we'll move on to the next one. Uh, policy 102. Before I um have my additions, did anyone else have any comments or additions to that? Okay. So, what I added in is this is where I think this gives us the opportunity um after everything listed. I didn't see any change any deletions um you know for physical emotional well-being basic communication. I left all of that in there. However, I did add two new um if you'll call them sections. One section would be dig digital literacy and artificial

203intelligence readiness and then another one would be college career and workforce readiness because we talk about that all around. So after individual values and attitudes, we would add the um digital literacy and artificial int intelligence readiness. And what that would read is students shall develop the skills necessary to responsibly utilize technology, evaluate information sources, understand emerging technologies, and engage ethically with artificial intelligence tools. That's what I got from tonight. I would suggest um maybe instead of specifically pointing out AI just you could say something about like um advanced techn advanced technology tools or I don't know if that's exactly right but I'm just thinking um like I know everyone's talking about quantum computing and that is like right around the corner and that is going to even like supercharge it like there's just always going

204to be something so I don't know if >> so in my description I say under uh emerging technologies so then it would be digital literacy and emergency in emerging technologies would that be fine emerging emerging okay I do have a a problem with the first paragraph okay hold on get the first paragraph of on the 102. >> Yep. >> Go ahead. >> It says each learner who has the potential and inner strength should strive to I'm like to me that's saying that some of our students don't have the potential, inner strength. So I would cut that part out and just say each learner should strive toward the ideal, implicit, and explicit in each goal. Cut the who has the potential and inner strength. We want it to apply to all of our students. >> Okay.

205Perfect. All right. Anybody else? Okay. So then under so we have the description um and I'll get that to Renee for the dig digital literacy and um emerging technologies. So under the career the college career and workforce readiness it would say students shall graduate prepared for post-secary education career pathways military service entrepreneurship or meaningful participation in the workforce. We're fine with that. >> It's not it's me making it up. >> You're putting it >> Oh, I'm going to put it at the end. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. So, I added two more sections. And so, I would add those. And I just wanted to make sure that does align with our um strategic plan. But maybe um if you'll have staff read that before we bring it back. Okay. All right. Moving on to 103. I

206did a lot. Um Okay. So this is the educational uh process goals. We have a lot of goals. Um if you've read them, I don't know if you felt that any of them um were outdated, but again I think we have to add in technology in digital learning tools. Um so I wrote um one just while they were um effective integration of technology and digital learning tools to enhance instruction would be added one would be added there anybody because none of these address that and so that's why I thought we need to to bring these in as goals since we're making it um a very important part of our daily learning. The other thing that wasn't addressed in this was um you know, President Mner, you're um we're always asking for that data, you know,

207on we have the goals and then we want the data, you know, like how do we know that MTSS is working? How do we So, I added another one that says data informed decision- making to improve student achievement and educational outcomes. Okay, that's all that I added. Anybody else? >> I have a problem with number four. >> Okay. What do you have? >> I would just um opportunities for teaching staff members and students to make recommendations. I would remove the word teaching. I think all staff members should be able to have input on improving the operations of our schools. Okay, I like that. Anyone else? >> Um on five, comprehensive guidance, facilities and services for each student. Um, what is that specifically referring to? >> I don't know. What is number five? >> Um, I'm

208wondering if that is kind of older terminology for a counselor counseling department guidance. >> It definitely is. Maybe removing the word facilities though because to me it almost sounds like you're having treatment centers for students rather than right. We want to make sure that they have guidance services available to them, but we don't send them off somewhere to get help. >> Well, I think it's like comprehensive facilities like schools that will accommodate their needs, but I don't know that it needs to be in there. >> Comprehensive guidance services. >> Guidance services. >> Okay, >> perfect. Anyone else? >> Um, Superintendent Failing, you had a question about the technology one. Yeah, if you could just read the technology line you had. >> So it says um so it would be number 10 and it would be

209um effective integration of technology and digital learning tools to enhance instruction. It's just our computers and stuff that we have. Yeah. All right. And then uh number 11 would be datainformed decision- making to improve student achievement and educational outcomes. Okay. >> And number nine. >> Yes. Go ahead. >> Sorry. No, you're good. >> Can we change parents to families? >> Oh, yes. That was another thing that um uh Trustee Ramirez mentioned um throughout as well that taking out parents and making it families. Yeah. So, sorry about that. I missed that. Okay. Okay. All right. Moving on to um 104. So, this one um I just had some things to add at the end, but I wanted to make sure that um with all of the changes that that um have been since and then 2015.

210Um, I was going to ask our legal counsel um if this 104 is legally compliant and you can maybe answer that otherwise, but >> I will definitely review it for you in let you know if there's any problem. >> Okay. It's just because it's been a long time. However, if you'll um join me on page two of policy 104, um I didn't like that last sentence in that in the um first paragraph says to ignore such concern is morally wrong um economically wasteful and um socially dangerous. So, I just eliminated that and um just kind of put the district is committed to ensuring equitable educational opportunities and re and a respectful learning environment for all students and employees. Okay. And then there was another sentence at the end of paragraph the second paragraph there um

211where it says students with minority groups must be helped to establish their identity within their own group as well as the total society. I took that out and said that the district shall promote an environment where every student is respected, valued and supported in achieving their full potential. felt that was outdated. >> Any others? >> Well, I would just say on this policy, it seems like it's awful long and wordy and I think it could be shortened up quite a bit. Uh so I think that we ought to look at uh maybe rewriting it and taking a lot of the verbiage out of here that is covered under the statute already. >> Okay. and just say, you know, be in uh compliance with all the not all, but name them, you know, that you're in

212compliance with those because this here it gets awful confusing to me and uh awful wordy. >> Okay. >> I was going to suggest just making sure like it's aligned with the state board of education's discrimination policy in any because I'm sure these have all been updated. I bet you the language would be appropriate. >> Is that you or me? All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Moving on. >> Yes. Go. Um, I'm glad we're going to do that, but I wanted to check in on in the middle of that very first paragraph, um, where it says activities as and provides equal access to the Boy Scouts. See, I'm telling you, it's very outdated. >> Yeah, >> we're on 104, paragraph one. >> Oh, okay. Well, our legal counsel will check into that.

213>> All right. And make sure that we are compliant. >> We can get a two or three. >> Yeah, I'll work on it. >> All right. Thank you. >> I don't know, >> scouts. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're going to go ahead and move on to um policy number 105, which is recognition of employee organization. Um, yeah. I don't I didn't really see anything. >> I I do have something on this. >> All right. >> On the last paragraph, in the event that recognition is not obtained by the specific date of January 15th, blah blah blah, the board of trustees will not consider giving recognition until the following year fiscal year for the uh associations. And I correct me if I'm wrong. There was at least one occasion where they didn't meet the threshold with

214the amount of membership they had to be recognized, but we elected to go ahead and recognize them as a bargaining unit. So, do we need to change that language? because this it pretty well says shall not or something will not consider giving recognition and if we're going to give them recognition if they don't have the requisite >> I amount of >> members saying I'll I'll talk with Mr. Russell about that paragraph. I'm not not quite sure. >> Um Molly on that one. Um everything else has been changed in red. Carson City School District Board of Trustees and then in parentheses and quotations board. >> That one's missing on that one. >> The board part. >> Oh, the board. Okay. Yep. Board. >> And then um next following. Is that redundant? It read weird to me.

215Should it just be next or just following or is it just me that thinks that's where are you? >> Just me. Okay. No. Where are you? No. >> Oh, it's in the second paragraph as well as the last paragraph. >> Employer. >> The last sentence. >> Oh, where it says a contract for the next following >> Fiscal year. Should it just say the following fiscal year? >> Yeah. Should it just say the next fiscal year or the following fiscal year instead of next following? >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, we'll say the following. >> So, it's in the second paragraph and the the last paragraph. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Awesome. >> Okay. Um any other All right. And then policy 106, uh parent involvement policy. I was hoping to change that title to family and parent

216engagement policy to kind of mirror um our strategic plan. >> I would just check this one because I think the state board of education I I'm looking at the language. I think most of it was pulled from the state board of education has a parent involvement policy and I don't know if that's where we got this language and whe whether we want to look at aligning ours to what their >> okay policy was. >> Yeah, I didn't look at that. I just aligned it with try to with our strategic plan. Okay. Um so on that I didn't have any that was the uh the change there. And then >> Molly, did you include the um recommendations that I sent you via email? >> Yeah, that's going on to page two. Okay. >> Section four. >>

217And if you want to go ahead and um you had section four and section five if you wanted to address yours. you wanted to change sought. Okay, that's right. In section four, um after the um first sentence, um where it says support and assist assistance are sought, you wanted to change sought to requested or solicited. Yeah. and we'll ask the English teacher at the end. >> I'm kind of we have the Nevada educator performance framework and there is an actual standard that educators are held accountable for for welcoming families into the school. I wonder if we need to look at aligning that language there, but it's it's like welcoming them to be part of the the process or something to that effect. >> Okay. But if we don't find any on there, which word would

218you recommend changing sought from uh to requested or solicited? >> Encouraged. Assistants are encouraged. Lupe, does that work? Trusty Ramirez, sorry. >> Requested or >> encouraged. >> Encourage. So could we add highly encouraged? because I feel like we need to make a stronger emphasis on the importance of engaging the parents. That's why I was >> I like highly encouraged. I think that's okay. We can go with highly encouraged >> and and again this >> request because requested almost makes it sound like it you have to do it and again you should have to do it but we don't want to be descriptive to our parents, right? like or not descriptive but >> yeah but again we'll look at um you'll send me that information that you want me to look at okay and then on

219five um I do think this read wrong where it says parents and and trustee Romero has caught this parents are full partners in the decisions that affect children and families and we're thinking families should have been or trusty RmIrez was thinking families should have been their education We're already talking about um parents, >> but again, if we're going to change parents to families, we'll um try to make that consistent. >> But families are full partners in the decisions that affect children. >> I don't know >> in education. >> Maybe leave that as parents, >> but I think in their education would be more appropriate. Do you see the meaning of that? The first sentence of five >> there. There is for the record the Nevada policy of parental involvement and family engagement pursuant to NRS

220385.620. >> Hey, wait. Slow down on that. NRS >> want to pull our language from there. >> But NRS what? >> NRS 385.620. >> All right. So I'll take a look at that and then um make sure that this aligns with that. Okay. >> And the problem I have with this is in order to enhance parental involvement, six essential elements should be promoted. What if there's only I mean it changes. You have seven or you have eight. >> I'm suggesting nine. I have three more. I'm not done yet. >> There you go. So maybe we don't put a number in there. >> Yeah. So we but I'll before we even do that, we'll make sure it aligns with the statute. >> Yeah, I think that'd be a good way to go. >> Yeah. So I

221didn't delete any, but I did again add digital communication is another one. And then um the six so it would be essential elements would be digital digital communication is one, mental health and wellness because it's not addressed anywhere. That would be another one that would be an essential element. Um, and then uh that would read something like the district shall collaborate with families to support student mental health, wellness, attendance, and school connectedness is what that one would be. Okay. digital communication would read something like um the district shall utilize multiple communication methods including electronic platforms to ensure families receive timely and accessible information. Okay. Um but again we'll kind of put that on hold. We'll bring it back. Um, I think this is going to be have to be brought back again as a um

222discussion item. Yeah. And I'll make sure that it aligns with NRS and send it out to y'all. >> Yeah. Because what we got to be careful about is we don't put something in here that we can't do. >> Right. >> Or somebody can come back and say you had a policy that said you were going to do this and you never did it. >> So I think we got to be careful what goes in. >> Yeah. And so that's where a lot of what I did was was primarily um trying to align it with our current strategic plan. Yeah. >> Sorry. What did you say nine was? You were >> Oh, nine um was student success teams, but I kind of thinking I'm not quite sure I want to add that in there, but it

223was nine would be student success teams. This would be families um shall be encouraged to participate in educational planning uh intervention strategies and um student support teams. I thought of MTSS is trying to get that in there, but again, I'm going to put all that on hold until we do NRS, but that was the the um student success team would be the MTSS because that's nowhere in here either. And so I'm just trying to get us up to date. Okay. But I shall do some more re research on that. Um policy 107. Um and again I think this would be legal counsel. >> I didn't touch it. I have nothing. Um because yeah, I did I I honestly think this um but again I think it needs to be updated because it is a section

224504 on the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and I'm not quite sure if all of that has been updated. >> Yeah. >> And there again, I think it could be shortened quite a bit. >> Yeah. Because the last time this was updated was 2015. Okay. So, we'll bring it back for Yes. >> Oh, so now you're going to ask me which ones we're aligned on. Okay. Yeah. >> Bring them all back. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Uhhuh. Now I Okay. All right. So that was discussion only. Um so we shall move on then to um agenda item number 13. And this is approval of consent agenda. This is for possible action. Did everybody have a chance to review the consent agenda? Do we have any questions, comments? All right. Hearing none, I'll take a motion. >>

225I move that Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve the consent agenda as submitted. >> Second. >> All right. So, we have a motion from uh Trustee Peterson, a second from uh Trustee Roberts. Board discussion, public comment. Um, seeing none, all in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed. Hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. Moving on to agenda item number 14 offormational items for discussion only. This uh no action will be taken. Um, we really didn't have much. Does anybody have any questions, comments? Okay, moving on to >> I do. I'm sorry. I was I was wondering um how much in the future before we get some of results back from the testing that this year and uh student achievement uh the star ratings etc. >> We should have it by 2030. >> I

226won't be here almost there. No. Uh Brandon and I were just talking about this. I think the expectation is maybe initial stuff the last week of June, otherwise the first week of July. Um I I don't know exactly how much that is. I I don't think we'll be likely wouldn't be able to present on it until at least like August, maybe September, but we'll at least have initial data we could share other like just internally. >> I'd make that request and in August that we share that information. >> Okay. All right. Moving on to agenda item number 15. This is a request for future agenda topics. >> Oh, that was that was his jumping over. I thought so. you looked at it too going >> I don't I'm sorry >> that's all right um do

227we have any other future agenda topics yes >> uh not necessarily a agenda item just if we have more of a request if we have um the policy changes and things that we're doing if there's like a regulation that goes along with it um if we could get those together as we're making changes so that we can be sure they align it's easier to look at when we have that comparison okay >> if that makes sense. No regulations for this. We just Okay. >> All right. Perfect. >> Thank you. >> But thank you. >> All right. No, nothing else. All right. We are adjourned. Thank you very much. Oh, hey.