001la. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hello. the Carson City School District Board of Trustees meeting, Tuesday, April 14th. At this time, we will go ahead and call the meeting to order. Roll call. Um, hearing. We have Cororum. All right. Moving on to agenda item number one, adoption of the agenda. Do I have a uh this is an action item. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? >> Uh, so moved. >> Uh, moved by Trustee Barner, second by Trusty Ramirez. Any public comment, discussion? Uh just a question for clarification with eight and nine. Um are they good as is? Could we switch them to be able to talk about um you know the riff and how that might affect the budget or should it does it make sense doing the budget before >> answered? >> Sure.
002Please. >> Uh you guys have a flexible budget or flexible agenda. >> I wish >> your budget's not very flexible. They're like, "Hey, what do you know?" >> You can take them in anywhere you want. >> All right. So, at this time, then I'll ask um Superintendent Fueling. >> So, there's not a a specific reason to do the budget necessarily before the riff. I think the presentation on budget sort of segways into the riff instead of the other way around. So I think it makes sense the way it is in terms of how we've planned it out. That's all right. >> Are you okay with that? >> And then Okay, >> Mr. President, as you guys go forward, I think it's worth noting that the budget is not an action item tonight. It is just
003a discussion. >> Okay. And then I believe that if you have questions regarding that particular agenda item number nine, I believe that it would be um relevant to address them in agenda item number eight at that point. Okay. All right. Thank you. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed? Passes unanimously. Agenda item number two is flag salute. And this is going to be presented by our newly appointed school board member uh Tina Satuki. And before we move on to agenda item number three, I would like to welcome our newly appointed school board member. Welcome. >> Moving on to agenda item number three. This is student superintendent report for information only. Superintendent Fueling. >> Thank you, President Walt. Um, you stole my thunder a little bit, but Trustee Satuki, welcome to welcome to
004the board. Um, hope everyone enjoyed spring break. I am uh grateful to uh the crew of Artemis 2 and NASA for making all that really interesting stuff happen over spring break. Um, it was great to have some time to actually uh watch some of the the amazing things going on on the uh dark side of the moon. Um, so I have a couple several things here that are very date specific. Most of this I believe is all um in your packets, but just a couple things I wanted to point out. So, um, first, next Wednesday, we have our last Community Connections, formerly community PLC event of the year on, uh, it's Wednesday, April 22nd at 6 PM in the Carson High Library. Um, the meeting will really be kind of a um, I would say
005just a a soft conversation regarding what is upcoming for this document. So you have the the district's strategic plan. Um the goal for next year, one of the big things that's going to be happening is a reboot refresh of this document. Um this was approved by the school board in September of 2023, so about three years ago. Um, and it and is really kind of the the guiding light in terms of what I I take it as th this en encompasses all of the bo the board's priorities. All of those things that I need to be thinking about, we need to be thinking about in the district when we're having difficult conversations or, you know, questions are being asked out in the community or in the schools. This is a document I rely on a
006lot. Um, it is extremely comprehensive. There is a little bit of everything in here and I think that's it's just an important example of we want so much for our schools, right? We want so much for our kids. But um so we're looking at a little bit of a soft conversation around this and um talking about what is uh what is to come next year because that will be for the four um I would say minimum of four community connections events next year. we'll schedule for, but just depending on how we're pacing on um putting together a new document that we'll um hopefully be bringing to you by June of 2027 so that we have a new plan going forward. Um, on Tuesday, April 21st, we have our employee of the year uh recognition event
007that will be at the Bold Theater just down the the way here at 6:00 p.m. Um, looking forward to another fun night. It was excellent last year and and uh special recognition from last year to a very rockous crowd from Fremont Elementary School. And uh hopefully the it's it's a bit of it should be a bit of a challenge. We'll see we'll see how uh how the schools are represented. Um May 13th is biker walk to school day um with our friends at Safe Routes to Schools. They are sponsoring this in the the Quad County area. So that will um that's kind of a fun fun thing if it it makes me walk if I participate. and my wife would say that's a good thing. Um, Thursday, April 16th, um, the middle schools are going
008to be hosting their culinary battle. Um, I'm not sure if there's a better name than that, but the culinary programs between Eagle Valley and Carson Middle are going to be um, not throwing utensils at each other, but it's food. They're making food and trying to uh, make the best meal. So, if you're interested in in that, let me know. We'll make sure to get you get you in. Um, congratulations to Carson High School's FFA students. They recently participated in the Nevada State Convention, um, winning several categories and, uh, special recognition to Mr. Josh Billings who is recognized as the star administrator um, for the event. So, that was really nice. And that is all I have tonight. Great. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item number four, board reports, board member comments. This is for
009information only. Do we have a representative here from Carson High School? >> Baseball game. >> Yeah. Um, so he's excused. Uh, do we have a representative here from Carson uh High Silver campus? >> I will be providing the report. >> All right. Thank you. Trusty Ramirez from Dr. Molden. Uh she um reminds us that the JAG team is currently in Las Vegas at the JAG career association event. Um their JAG specialist, Mrs. Kelly uh Stokes is supporting the following students as they represent the Silver Campus and compete against JAG teams across the state of Nevada. Uh, senior Margarita Anthony Lagouns, uh, senior Elijah Santa Cruz, senior Addie Painter, and Junior Serenity Moore. And then on Tuesday, April 21st or MP8, um, the owner of the Happy Outlet will be on campus to share what it
010takes to be an electrician and what possibilities students have to obtain work experience with them. And then on Wednesday, April 22nd, the Silver Campus will be hosting 36 eighth grade students and their parents from both middle schools to tour the campus while it is in session as well as to join them for brunch. Uh since that day is an early release day, they will be on campus from 9 to 11:00 a.m. and they're super excited to have them join them. And that concludes the report from Silver Campus. >> All right, great. Would you like to continue with your or Well, I'm sorry. We're going to come back to you. We're going to go ahead and do the NASBY update first. Uh Trusty Varner, do we have an update? >> Uh no, we don't. Uh the
011only thing is um the upcoming training in April 25th down in Las Vegas, which I don't believe anybody from the board is going to be able to attend. And that's the only update they had. >> Okay, great. Thank you. Then we'll go ahead and continue then with school reports. And we'll start with um Trusty Ramirez. Okay. From Mark Twain, Miss from Mrs. Krook Shanks. Uh she would like to celebrate the attendance at parent conferences. It was very nice to be able to visit with all of the families and gave them update progress on student learning. They also introduced Pamola, an app for family engagement through reading for K through two. They would also like to celebrate the students. Over half the school uh purchased the directed painting activity for the end of the quarter award.
012Students earned this by being safe, kind, respectful, and responsible and saving their hot feathers. They are focused on providing engaging experiences for the students in the hawk store rather than trinkets. The students seem to be responding well and thoroughly enjoy the event. Many thanks to all the teachers on staff who taught the drawing and manage all of the classes to make this possible. All right. All right. Thank you. Um Trusty Roberts. Yes. From Fremont. Uh tonight is their steam night and I'm really sad to miss that. Sounds like they're going to have a planetarium and everything. So perfect with what all the events were recently. And then tomorrow morning at 7:30 there's a PTA meeting and parents you have a Zoom option in your parent square to join that. And then just thank you so
013much. They really appreciate all the participation um that they had in their parent teacher conferences. >> All right. Great. Thanks Trusty Peterson. >> All right. Um I did not get a report back from the high school, but I do have just a couple random bits that I can um put out for them. They have their academic letter ceremony coming up. Um it's next Monday. Um it's 6:30 to 7:30. I assume it'll be kind of openhouse style like it's been um the last few times. Um so kids who have earned that academic letter um for having strong performance in that way will be there. Um let's see. They also um Kyle Allen, he's um on the leadership for the high school. I know we all received this invite today, but I wanted to mention um because
014it's a cool opportunity. Um he is one of the state conference chairs for the Nevada Association of Student Councils and Carson High for the first time. It's been 20 years since they have hosted, but they are hosting the state conference for high school student councils. Um, opening ceremonies are this Thursday. So, it'll be a I know they have been working so hard to get ready for this. If you see Monsters, Inc. stuff all over the high school, that's why. Um, but they're really excited to host um all the schools in the state, all the school boards um student council boards from the state. Um so, uh the opening ceremonies for that is is this Thursday um to get that kicked off. And then for Celicker Um, Principal Prior says, "We start ESPback testing on the
01516th with fifth grade, uh, fifth grade science. Next week, we're going to continue with the ELA and math for grades 3 through 5. Super excited to show all that we've learned and have worked so hard on all year. Our Sea Licker Pirates are ready and excited about the incentives that they can earn. Fifth graders are extremely excited because they've never had a pajama day during their time at Sea Licker. They are trying really hard to earn one after the ESPback testing. Um, just wait till high school. Every day can be pajama day. Good. It's good. Um, the PTO also had their first bingo night on Thursday. It was a great night. So, I was again I was disappointed to not attend. Thursdays are a rough one for me, but um, sounds like it was successful.
016So, that's great. Um, the community and businesses supported it well. >> Great. Thank you, Jessie Varner. Yes, I have uh one for Bordrick Bray. Uh Principal Rqueta wanted everyone to know they are starting their ESBAC training or testing, I'm sorry, on Thursday. It will run through May 1st. And then on Friday, they have Bordwick Bray night at the Aces Ball Field where their second through fifth grade choir will be performing at the national anthem. Uh, principal Ricetta wanted everybody to know that if you wanted to attend the game, consider buying the tickets from them through them which will help support the school and they also have a link to purchase the tickets and it can be found on parent square or people can call the school for more information. So that's my report for Borook,
017but I have one for Fritz. Also, Principal Brown would like to thank their busy parents who took the time out of their busy day to come by and shake the shake their hands with the child's teacher, their child's teachers, and to see the progress their child made throughout the year. Uh, he really appreciates it and all the teachers and everybody appreciated this parents coming in. This coming Thursday, Fritz will begin their aspect testing. Also this year they are saying step back s back we got this. So I kind of like that. And then um they're asking the parents to please help prepare their students by making sure they get a good night's sleep. Share some words of encouragement with them before they go to school and give them a big hug as they're out the
018door on the way to school. And then this Saturday, the Fritz cheer choir, the choir will be performing the national anthem also at the ASUS ball game. And the first pitch is at 4:05 p.m. So that's my report. >> That's awesome. And then we also read that they did very well with archery. So congratulations. I >> think they placed third in the state. And then they also had one uh one student who qualified for state. >> Awesome. That's great. >> In Utah. I think they're going to Utah. >> Great. Thank you. Um yes. And so then I have um a report from Miss Virgil from Empire Elementary School. Empire is amping up their ESPback up for their ESBAC testing this week with a fun raffle where students can earn tickets to win the opportunity to
019throw pies at Miss Virgil and Mr. Bingham if they work hard on their testing. So, good luck with that. Uh yeah. So, and then on May 8th, they will um will be their final STEM tank expedition, which I believe we've all um got invitations for that as well. So, hopefully we can attend with the community members giving feedback on student projects in STEM fiesta that evening for families. So, I wish you all very uh luck with that. And then I just wanted to mention um so uh Trustee Suzuki we all have schools that were assigned at the beginning of January and then we check in with the principles to get a report so we can highlight their celebrations, things that they're doing. So um after this meeting, we'll work at um getting you a school
020or two as well. So then you can get those reports. It's a great way to keep in touch with the schools. Thank you. All right, if that's all the announcements, we'll close agenda item number four and move on to agenda item number five. Do we have any association reports? And this is for discussion only. >> Good evening, President Walt, Superintendent Fueling, trustees. Uh, I am Brian Wallace, president of OCA. I would like to first welcome our newest board member. OCA and its members appreciate your willingness to serve as a trustee in the best school district in Nevada. So, welcome aboard. I want to speak today about the proposal to reduce or eliminate social worker positions in our district per the tentative budget being presented this evening. This decision comes at a time when our ending
021fund balance has actually increased. That matters. It tells us we are not in an immediate financial crisis that requires cutting critical student support services. We have the financial stability and with that comes the responsibility to make thoughtful student centered decisions. The stability is there due to the partnership of all three labor unions and the district continuing working to ensure that we remain student centered when it comes to our finances. Right now our district is unique. We are the only district that has successfully filled all social worker positions. This is a social worker for our students at every site. This is not something to take lightly. Many districts have struggled to recruit and retain these professionals. We've built something that is working well for our students and our community, and our budget should reflect that. If
022this tentative budget were to move forward, the impact will not disappear. It simply shifts. More responsibility will fall on our community partners who are already stretched thin. They cannot replace the daily onampus support that school social workers provide to our students. This means slower response times, less access for students, and more gaps in mental health care for our students. We also need to take into consideration the impact on our MTSS system. Social workers are essential at tier 2 and tier three levels. They help address the behaviors, the mental health, the attendance, and the family engagements that teachers need support with and our administrators. Removing them weakens the entire system and puts more pressure on every single district employee who are already managing significant demands. Once these professionals leave, it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild
023this team as we have seen statewide with the other school districts. Finally, timing matters. The Nevada legislature meets in less than a year. Funding structures and priorities could change. making, pardon me, that making permanent cuts now, months before a legislative session, is most likely premature, especially in light of an increased ending fund balance that not that was not necessarily planned for. So the question becomes, why act now? We do not need to act now. When I came to this table in 2007208 during the start of the recession, this is a similar speech and message I passed on to the board members. Then we moved forward with a reduction in force at that time. We lost approximately five to six really great educators and then turned around and tried to rehire them after they had already
024left us. We were able to rehire one. We let good employees go because we moved prematurely. We have the financial ability to pause and wait. We have the ability to lobby at the next legislative session together and see what our efforts will bring. Most importantly, we have the funds to protect services that directly support our most vulnerable students. OCA urges you to hold off on these reductions proposed within the tenative budget. maintain the positions we have and preser preserve the system that is proving to work. We can then revisit this conversation when we have a clear financial and legislative guidance after the 2027 session. Our students need the support today and next year, not uncertainty. Thank you. >> Thank you. That closes agenda item number five. We'll move on to agenda item number six. This
025is for public comment. This is for public comment that are on um for items that are not action items on the agenda. Um I do have I believe the four that I have here are all for the um budget which would then be um appropriate to have now because it is not an action item. The budget is only a discussion item, so I will call you up as as we receive those. Okay. Um, first though, Renee, did we have public comment by email? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you, President Walt. Um, I had uh email that was received electronically from the following people, Jessica Wright, uh, Luca Litka, and Matthew Johnson. Uh, copies of their emails were provided to the trustees and will be included in the permanent record. Thank you. >> Great. Thank you.
026So, we'll go ahead and uh start with Sherry um Scapodi Scapiti. All right. Are you ready? >> President Walt and trustees, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. For the record, my name is Sher Scapiti. I am an intervention par profofessional at Fremont Elementary School. Nevada consistently ranks in the bottom half of all school districts in the country. Depending on the survey, it may be even lower. As an interventionist, I work with students at all grade levels K through five who are not up to grade level. This year, the combined number of students I work with is approximately 30. Some of these students are lacking, excuse me, in basic math, while others are lacking in ELA. I work with first grade students that do not know letter sounds. The second grade students
027I work with cannot read CVC words such as let, bus, Matt, etc. The third and fourth grade students I work with cannot add two two-digit numbers correctly. By eliminating the pair of professionals, these students will not get the one-on-one individual attention, support, and instructions they need to be successful in their academic endeavors. Cutting the number of par professionals or eliminating them altogether would be very detrimental to our students in the Carson City School District. As these young people will be the leaders of our state and country, they deserve the best education we can give them. I firmly believe our power of professionals play an integral part of their education. I implore you for the sake of our school age children to find an alternative means to meet the budget requirements so you do not have
028to reduce the number of intervention par profofessionals we have who are helping our students. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Uh, Kaylee Young. Nope. Any mic. Just uh press the button. Make sure that it turns green. State your name for the record. Hi, I'm Kaylee Young. Um, sorry. Good evening board members. My name is Kaylee Young and I'm the parent of a non-verbal child on the spectrum in this district. I'm here tonight to pro because of the proposed cuts to pair professionals and social workers are not just budget decisions, but they determine whether students like my son can access public education at all. My son relies on a pair professional every single day. Without that one-on-one support, he cannot communicate his needs. He's at risk for safety concerns and he can not successfully
029participate in school. Removing that support does not reduce services. It completely removes his access to education completely. Pair professionals help stabilize entire learning environments so teachers can actually teach and every student can learn successfully. Many of us choose to raise our children here in Carson City because of the good sense of community we have here. Because we believed schools would support all children, not just some. I urge this board to shift its focus from reducing critical staff to pursuing and prioritizing funding sources that directly support all students. Our children are not numbers or a line item on a spreadsheet. They are human beings growing, learning, and deserving of every opportunity to succeed. This is not about budgets. This is about access, equality, and whether children like mine are included in our schools or left without
030a place in them. I hope you remember families like mine are paying attention because this decision will follow our children long after this meeting ends. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next we have Steven Rivera. Good evening. Uh my son is a 5-year-old non-verbal child on the autism spectrum. Paraprofessionals aren't optional supports for him. They are what make learning, communication, and safety possible every single day. Cutting these positions doesn't just reduce services. It takes away his access to an education. Uh please don't balance the budget on the backs of students like my my son. Thank you. >> Thank you. And then uh April Chico. Hi, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my voice tonight. My name is April Pekco. I'm a licensed social worker here in the community. Since starting my career a
031few years ago, I've had the opportunity to work alongside these school social workers as a contractor. My role contains meeting with students who have been identified at the tier three level requiring crisis intervention. As someone coming in as a complete stranger to these students and having to talk to them about such a sensitive subject, possibly one of the worst times of their lives, it's difficult to say the least. I can only imagine the fear that a student feels when they hear, "Thank you for being honest with me. I'm going to have someone from the hospital come and talk with you." After disclosing their thoughts of suicide, however, when I arrive, the student is deescalated and engages in in answering the hard questions. I have noticed the work that the school social workers put in to
032prepare the students to meet with me. They knew that they know the students favorite calming toy, their favorite spot in the classroom, and what self self soothing activity works best for them. I want to ask who is going to know how to meet these students where they are at and provide them with this level of support and attentiveness if our school social workers are no longer present. As someone who intervenes when a student is in crisis, there is the potential for the student to require a higher level of care, meaning hospitalization. When this occurs, the school social workers have been nothing but supportive and helpful in this process as I explain what hospitalization looks like to both the student and the parent. Who will be able or have the time to do this for these
033students and parents who ask the hard questions about hospitalization and how the student will transition back into school? This school year, the school social workers have taken on the task of screening students for suicide risk, creating safety plans, and referring them to a higher level of care if it's needed. With this new change, I haven't responded to a single call this year. If they were to be removed from the school district, I can only imagine how this would impact teachers, nurses, and the contractors you will have in place when a student is in crisis. As someone from the outside, I obviously do not know the plan for the contractors that will be put in place. But but to put these suicide assessments into perspective, I wanted to give you a glimpse into how much time
034these assessments take alone. Almost every day last year, I was responding to at least one or two calls. Each of these calls can take between 1 to three hours depending on student engagement, parental involvement, and involving other parties if a student requires hospitalization or a legal hold. With that being said, I want to ask, will your contractors have the time to respond in these situations? In conclusion, removing school social workers does nothing but put students at risk. at risk for engaging in risky behaviors, at risk for developing unhealthy relationships, at risk for normalizing negative thinking patterns and behaviors, and at risk for not speaking up when they need help. Thank you. >> Thank you. Do we have any additional public comment? >> Mr. President, yes. >> Before you move on to further public comment, I
035would like to take the opportunity to remind all participants in the meeting that public comment is a time for the public to voice their opinions. Uh but everybody must remain respectful both of the speakers um the board and everybody else. There's uh there's decorum that's required here. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. >> I have to say that I possibly out of >> um please excuse me. Hold on one moment please. Could you please? >> And my my name is Tom Given. >> Thank you. >> And I I appreciate you folks listening to because it's probably a little different than what you're going to hear from everybody else. First of all, I'm not as prepared as a lot of these folks are, but I am a taxpayer. I've been in this in lovely city since
0361972. I have had a wonderful practice. I have uh I'm very disappointed I have to say with our total educational system that starts not only with Nevada and you don't need to focus on um Carson City but we're ranked when I graduated we're ranked from ninth eighth in the world now down to 25th and unfortunately the state of Nevada is now around 45th out of 50 states. So I I am very disappointed with the uh the entire educational system and as a taxpayer I realize not so much and the reason I'm here today is not only because I love our community and I practiced here for in my profession for 50 years. There are one or two on this board I have a lot of respect for. And I don't mean I disrespect the others,
037but I can tell you that I am looking at this as my tax as a taxpayer and seeing that basically twothirds of what I pay in taxes and close in my case is about $8,000 a year to pay for basically debt that our communities have picked up because we cannot not pay our bills. Now, I realize that's a consideration, but when I drive down King Street and I do see the fact that we're looking for uh substitute teachers and I look at the Nevada appeal and the issue which shows and I know I heard a presentation regarding social workers and I take a look at the the picture, I'm seeing someone that I have if this was a social worker and first of old. When I went to high school and college, I didn't have
038a social worker because we didn't need them. It's a different time. I realize that. I know we're getting down to the very end on this, but I can tell you as a taxpayer, I spend the money we do on taking care of debt without being responsible for it is very frustrating. And I realize I appreciate because what you do because you're volunteering your time and as I said I have a lot of respect for that but I do have a lot of frustration with the educational system. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Is there any additional public comment? >> All right. Hearing none, we'll uh close public comment agenda item number six. Moving on to agenda item number sorry to agenda item number seven. This is an annual report for Carson Middle School,
039Eagle Valley Middle School, and Carson High School on program supports for students in celebrations. This is discussion only and it is presented by principal Amy Robinson, principal Gina Hoppy, and principal Dan Karstens. Welcome. Okay. Thank you for uh having us here tonight. I'm Amy Robinson, principal at Carson Middle School. >> And I'm Gina Hoppy, principal at Eagle Valley. Thank you. >> Dan Carson's principal at Carson High. >> Um so we're going to start with the middle schools and and then move to our high school. Um we're starting with so we did this uh based on our school performance plan or our school improvement plan. Um and there are three. Will you do the next? Thank you. Hit it. >> It's not. Um, so there are three parts to the school performance plan. Uh, that and
040we set goals every year. >> Yes. Thank you, Rene. >> Thanks, Rene. >> I'm gonna get this all figured out. I promise. >> I put I saw her there on purpose. Um, >> I'm trying to get organized. >> Um, so there are three parts that we set goals. We look at data and set goals for our our school uh based on student success, adult learning culture and connectedness. Uh so we thought that would be the best way to present kind of where we are in our school each of our schools um based on each of those areas. So for student success, uh our goal and and we share very similar goals at both sites, um but our goal for student success is is to increase our student achievement um to our proficiency across the board
041for both in math and reading. We utilize ESPback data and MAP data um as our to to measure that along with benchmark data and kind of daily assessments, but those are our big assessments that we utilize to measure those. Um and then in order to meet our student success goals, everything that we do is based in our multi-tered system of support. So we do a lot of work at the tier one level that affects all children. Um, so some of the things that we utilize on both campuses, we really work on those high engagement instructional strategies with all of our teachers. We use a lot of our early release days to work on those strategies. Um, we built a common instructional framework that we use in every single classroom to make sure that all kids
042are getting a consistent message, a consistent um, education. We use um, we focus on our high quality English language development. and for our English language learners and fully implementing our proficiency scales and our common assessments at both sites that we work together to create those and and work together to implement those. We use AVID instructional strategies across the board. Um and we use other programs like Exact Path and I Ready to fill in some of the gaps for our kids and our then we move to tier 2 for some of our kiddos who need extra support. Um, we have intervention classes at each of our sites. I know at Carson Middle School and I believe Eagle Valley is very similar, but we have um an intervention class for both ELA and math at each grade
043level. So, we we look at kids uh based on their MAP scores, based on their grades, and other supports they may need, teacher recommendation, and they receive extra support in both math and reading starting in sixth grade. And we do a lot of communication with fifth grade um to get to identify those kids who need help so we can continue that help as they move up. And then we communicate again with high school as they move on to high school. Uh and we do this through our our MTSS process. So we're always looking at kids and what they need. We have credit recovery classes for kids who are credit deficient as they're moving into high school because our middle schoolers are earning credits to go to high school. We have an interventionist who works with
044small groups and kind of runs our intervention program. So, she also pulls small groups and she also uh at my site anyway, she's working with um even our tier three level, which would be the real intense kids who need more of the one-on-one interventions. Uh we do extended day interventions. So, we have an afterchool club, homework club that we have a math teacher and an English teacher and our interventionist who work with kids who need extra help. Uh we have deep which is um an alternative education program for kids who struggle behaviorally or with um situation like if they're coming back maybe from opportunity school and they need kind of an easier integration into the the full school day. Um, our deep program is an after-school program that kids do a lot of online work,
045but we kind of it's a half and half insight on-site and then moving into after school and they have a teacher who helps them with those classes. Uh, and then we have summer school for credit recovery as kids are moving into high school and our tier three intense. So for kids who some of our kiddos who need really intense we have some some pretty low readers um and they we have two teachers trained in Orton Gillingham literacy the literacy program. So they work very specifically with those kids to to try to build those those reading skills and they work with do some math interventions too on more of an individual basis with the really struggling kids. And as we move into um next year, we're we're excited about the new calendar um because we're we're
046kind of really primed to move into um utilizing that time for our PLC's for our professional learning communities. Uh we've done a lot of building on those instructional strategies for staff and working together and building all of the common assessments. uh and now to be able to have a a really good structured time that's gives them enough time to work weekly together and even cross-sight um I think will be it's going to it'll be really good for our professional learning communities and so that our teachers can start to you not just start but really dig into utilizing um data on the fly you know as it's coming in and and be able to structure their instru their instruction based on that data that real in real time. Uh this is a summary of our Oh,
047we have you first. You go ahead. >> We thought we switched that slide. Um okay, so for Eagle Valley, um we are looking at our reading and our language achievement. And as you can see at the top there, um we combined the reading and language together. And then you can see the um approximate percentage of showing proficiency in math at the bottom there. We also did a comparison to last year where we were at um and all of the percentages are pretty close in achievement and showing proficiency. >> Uh so this is Carson Middle School's MAP data. Um, so this school, so if you look at um the they're broken apart into the the graphs, our reading, language, and then math. And our goal is to have all green and blue. So we're not there,
048but that the on the map if the theory is if the kids are about the 61st percentile, maybe a little bit above that, they're on track to show proficiency on the ESPback. Um it's not a exact correlation but it does give us an idea of of where our kids are. Um so currently about 40% are showing proficiency in reading and language. Um last year that was at 39% at the same time this of the year and 24% are approaching proficiency. So if we can get those kids kind of over the hump that would you know help with our proficiency level. and math 39% are showing proficiency and 20% are approaching the the proficiency. Okay. The next part of our school improvement plan is the adult learning which is our professional learning for staff and for
049both Eagle Valley and Carson Middle. We did a lot of tier one instructional strategies this year, making sure that um there was a strong foundation and framework for our campuses. And then I think all of that work moving into next year will be very beneficial for our staff. Um having that PLC process, the consistency of it. So we very much app appreciate the work that was done for the calendar. um because then we will have time to look at data and curriculum and instruction on a consistent weekly basis. And um like Amy was Amy was saying that that will really help our teachers and hopefully we see some strong improvements in our MAP data that we just shared with you. Connectedness is the third part of our school improvement plan. And this has a lot
050to do with um how we are connecting with our community um our families, our staff um and our students. So how we are supporting them and it this work cannot be done by alone. Uh it takes a lot of people to make this happen and um MTSS is a big part of that. Um we've done a lot of work over the years to support academics and behaviors and attendance um and support the students with incentive programs and rewards and supports and all the things that we put in place for them so that those they can feel successful. Um the the parent outreach opportunities um both for Carson Middle and Eagle Valley, we have opportunities for families to come into the building. um we share information with them, we share data with them, we get them
051involved, um help them with their student success, all of those things. Um and then of course we have community partnerships that are also very helpful for both of our sites. Another piece to um our school improvement plan, of course, is behavior data. So I'll let Amy, you share your screen. Um so this we uh pulled from the last three so including this year the same time about the same time in the year the number of events that have occurred. Um so disregard for school rules actually encompasses a lot of different things. There are lots of things in that category. Uh anything from um just inappropriate behavior or language to a technology violation to uh dress code violation. So that kind of encompasses a lot. Um disrespect and insubordination. You can kind of see the patterns
052there. Um we have administrative investigations. Uh fights, physical aggression. Um we've hovered kind of at the same spot. Um and then instigating and promotion of fighting looks, it's down a little bit. Um bullying cases have increased a little bit. Um, a lot of this depends too on who's logging in, who I mean there's a lot of subjectivity in how you deal with a a situation and how you name it. So, um, a lot so some differences are hard, you know, they are accounted for just by different people handling the situation and and considering it different types of infractions. Um, tobacco violations like n would be like a nicotine vape um has stayed about the same. Uh, possession of THC, disturbance of school, we've had four incidents this year. Um, interference with instruction 34. There are
053a lot of other categories as well, but these are kind of the the main ones. And I won't read the entire list to you, but I would just say that a lot of work goes into MTSS to support all of this. Um, and the small groups that we run, either the counselors work on or our social worker runs. Um, so we do try to identify themes within our behavior data so that we can support that with small group work. Um, and I would just say that, um, having a new administration team at my site, uh, we're also just working on that consistency with the data and how we are logging this information and, um, keeping track of, uh, the behaviors that are happening at our site. >> Before we move on, I do have a
054question. >> Sure. >> Um, if you can go back to that last slide. disregard for school rules. Um it's gone up about a hundred incidents this year. >> Can you explain why is it being better enforced or the kids just not >> are acting acting up? >> I you know I don't I don't see the kids acting up more. I I do think um my team so I've been lucky and this year I had the same team that started that for two years in a row and I think they're just more streamlined in how we're we're handling kids and so it it means that that many more were logged in the system. Um, I don't necessarily think I I I have a sense of more calm uh on on our campus. Like I don't it's
055not quite as we always used to say it was like pretty active campus. I I feel like it's not quite as active. Um but it it seems calmer and even like our fights and physical aggression, they're not as violent as they have been in the past. like I feel like there's just a a stronger sense of calm on the campus and I I feel like that maybe the and it is data is data, right? You look at it and think, well, why why because it doesn't feel like we've had so many more um but it really could just be we're just better at at getting it documented. Um or more just more we're out there more and and able to to handle more of the situations too that are happening. >> Thank you. >> Trustee
056Trusty Statuk. Oh, sorry. >> No, I just had one more. I'm sorry. Sure. >> What is disturbance of school? I know you didn't have >> Yeah, disturbance of school is a biggie. So, um and it and again it's kind of a logging thing. So, that's kids who disturb school can be cited by the sheriff's department. So it it it's it's it can it's generally pretty extreme like a student who um is causing a very large disturbance like maybe in the office just not we it can't get them quite under control and they're just continually causing a a disturbance. So that is a citable offense. Um so we take those pretty seriously. So yeah that so we have had a couple of those. Sometimes it's a kid who just is struggling with controlling themselves, but um
057and other times it might be just a kid who decided to hop down the hall and and poke into classrooms and and disturb the learning of of other kids. So sometimes it's a fight, too. Sometimes a fight might cause a disturbance and so that child might be cited with a disturbance of school that caused a large disturbance. >> Thank you. Um, I just have a question and I'm fairly new to this role, uh, obviously, but is there a like does a district have like a discipline guide book that every school should be consistently logging these incidents that are very very well described and scripted. So there is not an inconsistency with the data. >> Yes, there is. And and so it's just that there are so many options that it's of sometimes it's just kind
058of relies on the um like bullying sometimes is you do we call this bullying or is this a mutual conflict or you know and it and it just kind of depends on and and then like Gina has some newer people who are learning to to log the incidents but yes the school district has a there's there are definitions for them. And this is not the entire list. These are just like the >> major list of behaviors. So yes, we have even under the bullying category, I want to say that there are six different ones um that we choose from. So it it is a consistency practice that we continuously work on and our deans and our VPs um do have regular monthly meetings and so they also talk about that during those meetings. Yes. >>
059I thought that was a shoot in the background. I was like oh no. Okay. Okay. Um so for um our other um enrollment and uh some other data pieces for you. So chronic absenteeism is a big one and so you can see our percentages there for the last three years. And then we also logged our tardies which um having the e securely or the pass system that we have the securely pass system has really helped with that. And um I I just want to give it up to Jeremy Lewis and um even my VP Lois Lahan that they've done a lot of work to tackle the tardies. Um and so they've used that system, the e-haul pass system that we have for our school um to reduce the number of tardies and and track that
060data. Um, so that's worked out really well to help um, see that data piece lowering. >> And it looks huge when you look at the tardy day data like the there 9,000. Um, but when you think about that's for every class every day and we've got 800 kids. So I mean even if if every kid were tardy once, that's going to be 800 tardies. So um, it it looks like a a big number, but it we've really decreased it. Uh, and that system has helped us a lot. um in decreasing that number and that counts like kids there's kind of a difference between kids who come late to school versus kids who are just tardy getting to the next class. Um so we've seen a huge decrease in in just kids not being tardy to
061the next class get there and be ready to learn. >> What is the time for a tardy? >> We have a 4-minute passing. So >> and then what marks them tardy? >> Uh if they walk in after the bell. So we and we do now um we've started to distinguish between we have kind of tart well tardy and then really tardy. Um um so that we can see you know do we have kids who are just scooting in after the bell or they I think it's called too tardy or something I don't know. Um and then or kids who are like you know 15 minutes like what what's going So we can start to to break that data down to see do we have kids who are lingering and kind of hanging out or are
062they just scooting in too late. We have a lot of it it's their social time so they they love to walk their friend to class and then they just don't quite make it. We do u music in the halls during our passing. So it's a four-minute passing. So the f the first three minutes we play music and then the music goes off and they have one minute to get to class. So that's been very helpful too um because it signals to them, oh got to get to class and they do they start scooting wherever they are in the building. They they don't always judge their time well but but they try. So yeah. >> Any questions about this data? >> I do have a question. So this data is for the fall semester or up
063to date? >> Up to date. >> Yeah. >> Um and that's yeartoear. So, starting with um two years ago and then last year and then this year, >> uh I have a followup on that. What do you um would you be able to explain or even insight on why you think the chronic absenteeism rate is declining, which is a good thing, great work. But why what do you have any insight? >> Well, we do a lot of work in that area and and our go we have a lot of different things that we do to help with attendance. Um, one is that connectedness piece that that Gina was talking about, just trying to get parents in the building and um, educating them about even just educating them about the state law that they're supposed to
064be there 90% of the year. Um, so we do a lot of that. I send a lot of email, you know, parent squares about that. I send a letter home with their report cards about that. Um, because that's also a gra a promotion requirement. um even and we even try to that engaging classroom that you know not so much online. We've tried to move a little bit away from using the Chromebook so much to where they kind of have to be you got to be there in class to get your instruction. Um and that Chromebook is a good tool but it's not your whole education. So, because we had a lot after COVID of my kids just going to stay online, they're just going to do this week online and and thinking that that was
065okay and that that's kind of the the new status quo. So, we had to kind of re-educate people that that doesn't work. You need to be here in school and in class. >> Um they also have a program called Check and Connect. Um, it's through the MTSS process where a lot of our staff members have been trained and it's like a a mentoring program to help with students that are chronically absent. So, they have then kind of like a buddy system where their mentor checks in with them and looks for them on a reg, you know, a daily basis and they they're tracking their attendance, but more of like a one-on-one. So, that also helps. And so then the social workers um how much do they work with this component with the parent engagement component?
066Are they part of the team that works with the parents? >> Yes. Yes. >> To what extent? >> So to from what I was just saying with the check and connect, they have been trained with that mentoring program. They are also part of my social worker is part of the MTSS team. um works with students one-on-one but then also works with families. Yes, it like in a bigger picture, are they connecting with families? Yes, they absolutely are. >> Um and they work a lot with kids who maybe have anxiety about coming to school so that they would do more specific things with those kind with those kids. We have student support teams as well and so we have counselors, social workers, admin on those teams, teachers and then we invite the parents in to come
067and meet with us and then we talk about concerns that way as well. Hopefully that answers your question. >> That attendance data is something we look at as part of that MTSS team. We look at behavior, we look at attendance and we look at academics al together. So that is a piece and the district has a SARB also where like our extreme cases we can um get some outside support as well >> serve on that SAR meeting so I know what you're talking about. >> Another piece of information that was asked to provide so um here's some information for both of our sites as to where we are currently standing for next year. Um, so current with my current staff right now thinking about possible hiring or what's going to happen next year. We're not
068sure, but um I have currently I have two science teachers who are critical need. So those positions technically would um be of open um because those are on a year-to-year basis. Um I have a PE teacher who's retiring, an ESL teacher who's retiring, and I currently have one English uh position vacant. Um, it's filled by a long-term sub currently. Any questions about that? Okay. All right. So, here's a long list of things that we are doing to support the connectedness and I won't read the entire thing to save time. Um, but I will just say that both of our schools are using an SEAL program, a social emotional learning curriculum. It's called Second Step. Uh so both of our sites are using that um program. Um and a lot of positive things that are happening
069at both of our sites. Just looking at this list. Um even uh we we've both do announcements for our buildings. And today I was recording the announcements with one of our teachers uh because our students will be going to UNR on the 27th and the 28th for a tour. And so we're trying to get the students excited about that and it's just a lot of fun things happening at both of our sites. Um I know CMS does a hero lunch. We have sto we stole that idea and we now do a VIP very important people lunch. Um and that has been a huge success to get uh parents and families in the building. And um just a lot of different things on this list that I think are positives and celebrations for both of our
070sites. Um, real quick on that last one, there's an acronym PBIS points. What is that? >> Uh, positive behavior intervention supports points, which is funny that we we call them PBIS because even the kids call them that, which is silly. Um, because we should have a a catchy name, but that's what but that's what they call them. They probably don't even know what they're saying. Uh, but those are the points that they earn for good behavior. And then they can buy things um from a store and they the things that they can buy range from funny little trinkety things to lunch with a teacher or um picking the songs for the day. >> Ice cream sandwiches. Yeah. >> Ice cream sandwiches. >> Picking picking the songs, you know, that the kids listen to when they
071go to class and all kinds of different We try to find fun, engaging, free things. Um and our our schools, the Carson City Schools Foundation supports that program for us really nicely. So that's nice. >> Is this me? >> I think so. >> Um so at the for tiers two and three level. So for the kids who need extra support um some of the things that we do under for connectedness is just more intense assistance and intervention for those kids. We do those student study teams where we we bring the parent in, meet with them, come up with a and what we're doing there is looking at the whole student and trying to figure out a a good way to support them to be successful. Um we do those for academics, we do them for
072behavior, attendance, we can for any reason, but it it involves the parents in the process. Um and gives everybody kind of a job to do to help to support the student. Um, we have the school attendance review board for kids who are extreme cases of of attendance um are chronically absent. We have small focus groups that our our counselors and social workers run. Um, we're currently at at Carson Middle, we have our inschool suspension room. So, for kids who maybe had a behavior, usually it's for behavior that they're in in school suspension. Um, and traditionally it's been, you know, you're in there and you're going to do work and and it's just kind of a quiet place, but we're we're revamping it to be more um learning about the right kind of behavior and pro-social
073behaviors. So, really integrating that uh into that program. So, we we're lucky we have a really great teacher in there. So, she's excited to do it and and she makes great connections with kids. So, I think it's going to work well. And we we partner with juvenile probation in that process. So they come in and do small groups with those kids. Um and our school resource officers having them on site is is very helpful and very helpful to us. Um and we do our counseling on site for some kids at at the tier three level like therapy for those kids. Um, our district intervention and assistance team, the DIAT team, has been really helpful in when we have a kiddo that we we we're kind of like, we've exhausted, we we're out of tools in
074our toolbox. What else can we do? Um, we refer them to the DAT team and we all sit around and there's community partners and um we come up with better ways to support them and and just different kinds of supports. So, it's been really helpful to have that team. and these are celebrations. So, um some great things that have been happening the continu continuation of our intervention classes. Um they we're really seeing a decrease in the number of students who are credit deficient. Um and I really believe that's due to our our interventions classes and starting those early. So, starting those in sixth grade so that they have that opportunity um for those kiddos who are struggling. We started a cheer team this year at Carson Middle School. So that's been a really positive um
075just really positive for just getting families in the building. It just it increased our our attendance at games and the and the kids are having a lot of fun with that. So Sheila Story did that and it's been really great. Um our walkthrough observation data. So we do a lot of just obser observing classrooms. We uh have an instructional framework that we want all teachers following and so we follow up with that with walkthroughs and we're able to to look at that. So, we've seen an increase in student centered activities, which is our goal, and hide that high engagement in the classroom. Um, revamping our inschool uh suspension room to be more restorative and social emotionalbased. We have a new greenhouse on our site, so that's exciting. Um, it's not quite up and running yet,
076but we're we're almost there. So hopefully by next year we'll be able to to start out with it and utilizing the the DAT and MTSS tiers, all tiers um and tier two and three especially for our struggling kids has been a celebration and just really diving into that and getting that going and and running strong has been good. And then for my celebrations, I would just say I'm happy to still be smiling in April in my first year at Eagle Valley. So I would say the first bullet point there is a huge celebration just creating a foundation together with my staff and um you know just the work that we've done this year has been um it's been great. So very happy to be there. And then down there at the the last two bullet
077points, I just want to recognize those two things. Um, yeah, our sustainability team, uh, our hoop house is still going. We have an ad class. Um, and so all of that work is still being done. In fact, they replace the roof on the hoop house this year. And, um, just a lot of, um, staff members are in there doing the work. And uh Amy Riddle does a lot of the work out there and she keeps that hoop house running and gets those kids out there. She has her green biz kids out there doing a lot of the gardening and and so she I just want to honor her for that work. And and then the last one we had our college and career day on April 1st and we had 40 different I have to
078look at my information here. 40 different community businesses and organizations that came into the building and it was incredible. So, uh, Caitlyn Olan, one of our CTE teachers, she organized that. She was the mastermind behind it, but she had a handful of teachers who also helped support her with that. And then in addition to that, I mean the entire staff got the students prepared for that um event and uh all of the students it was wellreceived. They were all incredibly engaged. Uh 80% of the students found uh the a career that they had not considered before. Um, so that we we had done a survey afterwards and that was the data that we received and that they really wanted to learn more about the careers. Um, but also just walking around and seeing them so
079engaged and then speaking with the, you know, the businesses and the the people that came, the community partners that were there, the organizations, even Carson High had some students that were there. um and they were just so pleased with how engaged our students were and how mature they acted and so anyway we already have plans for next year that we're working on that and uh so that was that was a huge event. It was really exciting. So um thank you to the board members who did come. Thank you very much. And then uh my last celebration which is not on there since this was my first year. My celebration is I got to work with Amy this year and Amy is leaving us, but that's one of my celebrations that's not up there. So, I
080just wanted to say thank you to her and her mentoring uh for this year. So, that's it. >> And I apologize because I did not get your email until like now. So, um >> that's okay. >> I think I said what I wanted. >> You did. Okay. So, this was good. So, okay. So, she had shared knowing that Mr. Clappam uh Trusty Clappam would be here. She shared her EVMS report and I did not get it in time. So, I was going to share it, but you're >> It's okay. >> All right. You've heard enough for me tonight. It's okay. >> Okay. Well, great. Thank you for that. Um I I think it would pre be appropriate to maybe start with questions for the middle school if there's any questions, highlights. Um so then we're
081not, you know, going and then we'll go on to the high schools. uh annual report. So, are there any questions? We'll go ahead and start with Trusty Varner for the principles at Middle. >> I I really don't have a question, but uh just thank you for your guys's hard work. >> Uh I was able to be one of the trustees who attended your career day >> and uh along with Michelle and I was very impressed. It was very well organized. The kids were very well behaved, very interested, very engaged and I thought it was a terrific event and so I would like to thank you for uh all everybody's hard work uh putting that thing together. It was a >> my opinion a great event. >> Thank you. >> Yes, Peterson. >> Uh I was
082actually going to mention something about that too. you had said that you were um impressed with the kids and um that they were engaged, but I want to point out um I was talking to Miss Lennahan about the preparation for that and um that she said obviously the kids all were walking around with bingo cards that they could get checked off of if they visited the right booths. Bingo cards the right word, but >> Passports. That's it. Um, but they also had cards that they had prepared um for with questions and that they had bounced those questions off of peers ahead of time so that their peers could say that question isn't very detailed. You can maybe add asking about this and so they had that um opportunity to practice the engagement so that when
083they were in the gym with strangers that >> were I don't know unfamiliar adults they already had had those conversations with peers. So it was a lot easier to engage in that way. And so, um, the preparation that puts on that kind of event is huge, but I think also the preparation that prepares the kids for that event was such an important part. And so, kudos to making sure that that um was on the list leading into that as well. >> But, um, the presentation as a whole, thank you very much. Um, middle school, um, as a kid, I I when people, what do you want to be when you grow up? I always wanted to be a middle school science teacher. And people would say, you are crazy. Middle school will eat you alive.
084that is the scariest age of kids and um you guys are there and you are thriving and you are ensuring that these kids have an environment to to grow in and shine in as well and to feel like their um their space is protected and that that they have ownership over it and and that they want to grow roots and and be a part of the community of their middle school. So, thank you for all the ways that you ensure that happens and um I don't have any questions, just thanks for what you do. >> Thank you. We can go back to our vacancy slide if you'd like us to. And I will say, yes, it did take a lot of work from the entire staff. There were videos on like how to do a
085proper handshake and how to ask questions. And then I was talking with Caitlyn today and she said the stacks of like shoutouts are like this thick for each person who came, like all the community members that came. So the students were, you know, just so excited to have them there. It was it was a fun day. Yes. Thank you. Trusty Roberts, >> no questions. Just thank you guys for all that you do and it's really fun to hear the good things because a lot of time we get bombarded with the negative side and so it's really fun to see all the things that you're doing to, you know, engage the kids and help them want to be there and want to learn and everything. So, thank you. >> Thank you, >> Mr. RmIrez. >> Yes,
086I echo my colleagues. Thank you so much. I can honestly tell you that the college and career day was just phenomenal. Um over the weekend I met with the family and I was telling the parents about it and then one of the kids was very very quiet and when she heard me say that she's like, "Oh yeah." She goes, "That was super fun." She goes, "I I really enjoyed it." So it was a huge impact that you did to all the students in there, including the quiet ones. And then um I also heard good things about the cheerleading team, Amy. So fabulous work there. I think it's wonderful to introduce the kids to, you know, um get involved in in sports and um making those connections, you know, that will get them excited about being
087in school and hopefully they will follow that in going into high school. I think it's a a good thing. So, both of you, thank you so much for your work. >> Thank you. >> Satus, >> you'll get it. You'll get it. My maiden name was Suzuki. So, my married name is Tatuki. So, it kind of suzuki statuki if it helps you remember. >> When I That's >> when I was an English teacher, my students are like, "You should have hyphenated it. It would would have been so cool." Um, well, I'm going to I'm going to start off by saying I'm a little partial to Eagle Valley because it's right down the street from my house. And I love when the marching band kids come out and they march down the street and I'll go stand
088outside because I work from home and clap and they're like they're probably like, "Who is this crazy lady clapping at us as they walk down the street?" Um, and I'm kind of sad that I wasn't completely in the role on April 1st. Um, my my day job, one of them is the um the executive director for the Nevada Association of Career and Technical Education. And so we represent teachers and counselors and administrators across Nevada supporting CTE and I will look forward to supporting you in putting on another program next year in whatever way I could help you do that. So >> wonderful. Thank you. And you're welcome there anytime, neighbor. Come on over. You can march with them if you'd like. I'm sure Mr. Bril will allow it. >> Now they might know who the
089crazy man is out there clapping. So >> Okay. All right. Moving on. >> Great. Thank you. Um, yeah, thank you for the uh presentation and thank you for the many years you've given to >> Carson City School District. >> Thank you. >> Um, yeah, so I know been friends for a while, so you will be missed and congratulations on your retirement. I hope you enjoy >> the next chapter. So, uh, but thank you. Thank you guys for the presentation and thank you for adding >> the request that I added. I know we get the packet late and so by adding the information I greatly appreciate the time that it might have taken outside of already having one done. So I appreciate you doing that and congratulations for you know moving the pendulum on many items.
090You know you guys are doing great work. Um you know a lot of times we are we hear so much about the negative but you know you guys showed right here in your statistics that you're doing some wonderful things and you are moving that pendulum. So, I really hope that the public sees that. I hope they're watching. I hope it's maybe reiterated in a news article, maybe. Who's to say, but just putting it out there. Um, but no, and I, you know, appreciate the hard work that everybody is putting in into this because I think education is getting harder to be an educator. um because we're looked at. We received an email today. I think that was very insightful that um you know shows that you know ed educators especially you know coming moving forward
091and in schools are being asked to do a whole lot more >> than just educate. So for sure >> uh so what you're doing is greatly appreciated. You may not feel that every day but please know that everybody on this board here appreciates what you do. >> Thank you very much. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> All right. So we'll and thank you Mr. Carson's for your patience. We'll start with Carson. Hi. >> Yeah, it's always nice to hear what's uh going on at the middle school. Thank you guys very much. >> All right, it works. Thank you. I thought I was going to be like um I feel like we've been here quite a bit this year. We've uh presented on AP. We've presented on CTE or CT is coming up. Um, we've talked a
092lot about their PLC processes and so I didn't hit on that stuff as much as I probably usually would. Um, I was trying to cut it down from the number of slides last year um as well. So, uh, and then Molly throws us for a loop and, uh, asks 37 questions. I think 37 something like I counted 37. So, anyway, um, our annual report. So, I did want to just this is our AP. These are our AP teachers. Um, and what I what I want to point out is we keep getting better and better results with AP. More students taking AP exams, uh, more students taking classes, more students passing, and it's really as a result of this group of educators here. Um, I I do believe that we invest in our people, in our
093human resources, and uh when you invest in your in your people, then you're you're going to get those results. And so when we have those trainings and we make sure that they go to those trainings to specifically deliver that curriculum, the AP curriculum, that is probably the most rigorous curriculum that there is. Um, probably rivaled by by IB. Um but uh the AP curriculum is hands down one of the toughest things and these kids these teachers prepare these kids for college and beyond. Um and so I just wanted to make sure I took my hat hat off even though I don't have one on. Um but to to this group of educators they are um in in all ways phenomenal. So um so yeah uh next thing jump start by the numbers. Again um it
094is another uh program that we have that we offer at Carson High that some students go the AP route, some students go the jump start route. Uh we have another good strong group of kids. Um and uh if you look at that 80 I look at the 80% jump start classes that received an A or B. um program GPA is 3.2. Um so that's it's it just continues to get better and better. Um students that received at least some college credit via Jumpstart, any sort of college credit that you can get um is uh is going to be positive for these kids. And and I do appreciate our district uh continuing to support our students um in in taking those jump start classes. Uh I did want to do a little demographic of it as
095well. Um jump start demographics up there between male female um versus the the high school demographics is very similar. um the jump start demographics from 24, 25, 25, 26, 26, 27. And I know that we are continuing to try to have um trying to mirror it as much as we can to uh our demographics of the school. Uh for a newly accepted uh cohort for next year, our Hispanic population did go down. However, when I looked at the data behind that, there was only one I think there was a total of five or six total students that were qualified for jump start that were denied admission because we we have to keep it at a certain number. Um and and so within that, I do believe there was one Hispanic student and four Caucasian um
096and one uh mixed race. So, um, we are continuing to try to even out those numbers. Um, it doesn't always happen every single year. Um, but they do have to meet the requirements of, uh, of that program. And with at least a 2.5 GPA, that's not what we look for. That's the minimum. Um, and if there are students that have that higher GPA, then we uh we usually go with them as well. So, but that's kind of the uh the background of those uh career and technical education we continue like the uh the data that we got from last year CTE uh 98.1% grad rate for CTE. Um you look at the industry recognized credentials 617 increase of over 50 credentials from the previous year. Um there and there is an explanation down there the
097uh the losing those 30 students for the participated in career readiness career training I can't remember where it is up there but it's somewhere um but again if you look at the earned certificate of skill attainment for goes from 148 to 342 so our CTE programs are very robust they're doing very well Um we usually have a lot of points on our um star rating from our CTE program and uh they just do a uh fantastic job uh in there. Uh we always have our deans do a little update. Um so if you if you look at our discipline data and ever since we started focusing in so two years ago to last year to this year if you look at that data and if you look at the focus that we we had it
098we had an extremely strong focus on cell phones this year and it was it is so rare that you see one in a classroom. It's so rare that you see one in a hallway. Do you still see them every now and again? But for the most part, you're not seeing them. And if you look at fighting reduced it 66% compared to two years ago and 51% compared to last year. I mean, I think we're down into the maybe maybe into the teens this year for fighting for whole for the whole year. H >> what do you credit that to that reduction? Well, a lot of a lot of times uh what students want to see is a show and if they have their phones, then they can show the show. If they don't have their
099phones, there's no bravado. So, that's I I do attribute it a lot to the cell phones. Sometimes we'll have a fight and usually people will crowd around. I'm not saying that never happens, but typically you see people crowd around with phones. You don't get the big crowds as much as you used to. And so, Do you think that's a big thing change? >> What's that? >> Say, do you think the restroom change has impacted that? >> The restroom change has probably impacted it as well. Um I I would I would venture to say but but even from two years ago, but even if you look from last year, last year we had the restroom change also and we still reduced it by 51%. Which is pretty substantial. Even our ISS and OSS numbers, last year
100we reduced them quite a bit, but this year ISS reduced by 32% and OSS by 42%. That's our out of school and in school suspension rates. Um, and so so yeah, it the the disciplined data has shown to be paying off when we are consistent in focusing in on certain aspects that we can control. And that that's what we're trying to do is focus on the things that we can control and that will have the biggest effect on learning and and the climate and culture of the building. Uh next year we know that we have a tardy problem. We know that um there's that, you know, they my middle school colleagues talked about tardy and then extreme tardy is what we're calling it is uh that's that's our word that we're using and and we're
101going to be working with uh um Dr. Medina to make sure that we have that code in that way because if you just look at tardies, it's just too much. There's only so many of us that can that can address that. But if we go to the extreme tardiness, then we can really filter it down to the students that are that that we can really make a difference with. So that's that's going to be the focus uh for next year. MTSS and one of the things that I know that uh our our our good president was talking about was what are some of the the MTSS systems or the interventions that are really working. Um first off I I I do want to look at the tier one and and Kaplan um that prepared students
102for the ACT stu there were students that took it seriously and students that did not and and you have that no matter no matter where you go. Um but if you look at that little graph up there, um the lowest usage compared to the highest usage of Kaplan, you can see the uh the average the average scores. Um and so for English it's a two-point difference. Science 2.2. Reading is almost a two-point difference. Math was not as much but still over a half a point difference. And so the students that took advantage of that, that took it seriously, that had the highest usage rates, and that's what we looked at was was the usage rates for um like first quartile to fourth quartile, right? You broke them into four groups and we compared the highest
103usage to the lowest usage and that's where we got our numbers from. So it did make a difference. Um is it going to make as as as much of a difference as we want? we probably still want uh still still want something bigger and so we're looking at some some different options for for next year. >> Um >> what quick question so how do you identify students who should be using Kaplan or is it just all >> every single junior should be using should that that's what we set out to do is every single junior should be engaged in using this ACT prep program. So that was that was the goal. Um, some did, some didn't. Yeah. Um, so, and one of the one of the things that I do want to point out is
104again, uh, when when talking about a an intervention that works, and this is something that we piloted this year, I had one of my um, TOSAs pilot a, uh, behavior academy during our intervention time. And what she did is she took 10 of the most at risk students or undersupported if you may um and like with attendance, academics, behaviors. And so one of the first um so basically they came to her during the intervention time and there's only 10 10 of those students. The goal is to build connections with those kids to make it so that they have a caring adult that u that that is going to be in their corner, their advocate. And you do behavioral type lessons. What are the social and academic behaviors that we expect? And that comes from our
105um our lead. I didn't put it in the in the slideshow, but uh our lead acronym, our behavior matrix and everything. So, a lot of our um behaviormmies come from come from that. It's lead is listen with intent, engage with purpose, act with integrity, and develop with character. So, that's what the LEAD acronym stands for, and that's where we get our behaviormies from. And so, they'll go through some lessons um and it's Mrs. Ramirez, uh, Brenda Ramirez, my attendance interventionist, and she engaged with these students. And one of the, um, success criterias was the attendance component just in that B8. And B8 is is our intervention time. It's been the one that that we've struggled with the most with attendance, and we've identified it, and we're we're making adjustments and corrections to it. Um, but
106she measured attendance between February 9th and March 25th. Typically, these students might show up once a week. You never know. U, but between that time frame of about a month and a half, the success criteria was less than or equal to two absences. Six out of the 10 kids had less than or equal to two absences during that whole time, that month and a half. Another three kids had three. And so nine out of the 10 had nine had three or fewer absences in that month and a half. So we did something right. Um we are going to expand that program next year within our intervention time um because it did show to work with those at risk or underrepresented students or undersupported students that uh that we that we see. So, we're going through
107the process of identifying 50 to 70 incoming freshmen that we'll we'll be working with our middle schools on. Um 30 to 50 um incoming sophomores and we'll have uh we'll identify teachers, some of our TOSAs, counselors, special education teachers to kind of team and do that. The max class size will be 10 during our intervention time for that and they will be in it for a for a semester uh at least and if they meet the success criteria they can come out and go to a regular intervention class. But the philosophy is is before you can deal with the skill, you have to deal with the will. Um and a lot of these kids um sometimes they they just don't know how to do school um for lack of a better word. And uh that's
108what we're trying to help them learn first before we can teach them reading, writing, arithmetic. So those are those are the goals and it's really yeah it it it should it should make a dent in uh in some of our attendance issues and our tardiness. Um and our uh deans have also been um working out of the hallways. We got roller desks for everybody and that's kind of how we do our cell phone rounds. Everybody has a section of the school in the morning. We go through and we check in with teachers and kids. And so every single admin is in classrooms every single morning of uh of the school year. And uh so now with uh with just expanding things, our deans have taken upon themselves to work out of the hallways now. um
109they have at least one in that upstairs hallway going into those classrooms that um and it's really making a difference for students getting to class. So, um we are doing some different things, trying some different things because yes, we we do know that we have um an attendance issue and so we're we're taking those steps both in the intervention time and physically being with students even during during class time in the hallways um quite a bit more attendance trends. These are not things that I'm overly proud of, but again, we needed to, uh, make sure that they're up there. Uh, enrollment numbers last year, um, 2260. This year, 2173 is what our numbers look like. Uh, it's down about 3.8%. Some of those students, and I think this is just main campus. It doesn't include
110silver campus. um absences, we actually have an in an improvement in our number of absences. And so that's every class period every day. So again, when you and also when you look at it, it's eight periods. It's not seven periods like a lot of classes are. Um and so you actually look at that, it's a 9.3% improvement. You know, it's not that great to have 24.8 to eight absences per student. But that's why we are working through these different interventions um that uh that we've piloted and that we've identified to fully implement in the 2627 school year. Um tardies. So last year tardies were uh that many and this year they're a little bit more. But again, what we have to understand with that is last year it was based on a seven period day.
111This year it's based on an 8 period day. Um the intervention period is our most difficult period to manage. Um and so again that's why we are putting in these pilot programs. Um, and some of our teachers have also been implementing a tracker system where students are tracking their um, grades, their attendance, setting goals, action steps, and determining where they need to go during our intervention period. So, as we came out of the testing season from um, ACT, we kind of shifted into some different things to to figure out, okay, what is really going to work for next year? Um and a lot of these students um have been uh engaging with the uh goal setting, tracking their attendance, tracking their grades, knowing what they need to do, and having an action plan and a
112teacher there to help them through that action plan. So, um again, chronic absenteeism, perfect attendance, we have 118 students more than last year with perfect attendance. And so it's almost like the at risk kids are getting more at risk and the ones that are perfect attendants are getting more there too. And so it it's an interesting conundrum for us. And so but again that's why we're trying to focus in on these. It's it's basically going to be a hundred students that we focus in on for uh these behaviormies. And anytime you take those 100 students out of a space, out of the hallway or out of a classroom and and really focus in on what they need, um then you could focus in on what other students need as well. So it's it should be
113when you when you think about giving kids what they need, this this is right up right right where we need to be. So, of course, >> just a quick question. Back when I was a principal, precoid, they used to um prevent students from getting their high school or their driver's license, right, based on attendance, did they get rid of that? >> No, we still do that. Okay. >> And some kids just don't get their care. >> And they and they don't park on campus. They park down Robinson. >> So, there's there's loopholes everywhere. and a lot I mean there's only so many sheriff's deputies out there and so but yeah they that's still a thing and when kids actually do want to get their driver's license then they come in and they improve their intendance
114and so yeah it's it's helped some of our kids >> celebrations uh student leadership our Nevada Association student council is hosting the leadership conference this weekend that is some pretty exciting exciting stuff. Yeah. Um, sorry I didn't get you something this week. I'm Yeah. Anyway, it happens. But it's going to be a great event. I would highly encourage people to at least check it out. Uh, Kyle Allen is our student body president, and I'm sure you guys have all met Kyle at one time or another. He's a pretty phenomenal student. So, uh, students continue to be recognized through CTSOs, prestigious college admissions, um, excellence in activities and athletics. Um, our PLC work, um, our teams are continuing to work through that PLC cycle where part of that cycle is to look at their CFA data,
115um, identify student learning and then, um, engage in adult learning as well. So again, the PLC process for us is two twofold. Students learning, adults learning. And when you look at student data and tie that into the instructional strategies that they used, that's when everybody wins. Um again, AP jumpstart and CTE data, as I've said before, um it's still still doing great. Um and again the MTSS work that we're engaging in, we are piloting things right now that um we are going to be fully implementing for the 2627 school year. And I know I didn't put the staffing up there. Um our culinary teachers, she is retiring. Um graphic design teacher is leaving after this year. We had two math teachers retire. a science teacher retire. Um, English teacher is is leaving. So, there's there's
116six or seven and but you know, we don't know if we're going to get people. We don't and and we've identified um where our where our reductions are coming from as well. So, um, but those are those the ones that I kind of mentioned were ones that, uh, um, that we'll need to, um, start start getting soon as we can. >> Well, then and the reason I asked that question, um, to be included was, you know, the next agenda item >> after that as well. And so um you know I I mean I think um us in board you know us as board members it's important for us to know vacancies how it would affect the school if not the schools if not filled um because I think it's you know very important to all
117of us that you know the education and we get the people in where we need the people to be. So thank you. Well, we'll go ahead and start with questions if you wanted to start questions, comments. >> It's okay if you don't. >> Yeah. >> Well, I've had the opportunity to work with Mr. Kirsten's before um doing some data on their AP and dual credit and and seen a lot of their impressive results and it's just been moving in the positive direction of the last few years. So, big supporter of that. >> Thank you. >> Hey, thank you, Trusty RmIrez. I also commend you for all the programs that you are you have going on for for all our students and I really appreciate that you are looking into helping those students that are in
118need of learning how to be a student. I mean I think that is a huge um component to getting the students to get on on the right track. So thank you for for doing that. >> Yeah and and it is something that we are trying to implement during our summer school time as well. some behaviormmies for our incoming freshmen. So, they'll they'll get a start in summer school this year. >> That was pretty much my same comments just echoing uh Lupe and not letting those kids just kind of fall by the wayside, just really pulling them in and figuring out how to help them kind of in life. And these four years go fast and then it's it's life. And so that's great that you're helping them learn how to learn and and be a
119student because that'll go a long way once they really do get up. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Very easy question. Um, on the celebrations under students, you said you had CTSOs. What is a CTSo? >> Career Career and Technical Student Organizations. So, they're the clubs that go with our CTE programs. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah, like FFA. Um, AJ mentioned FFA. that goes along with our A. >> Okay. >> A science and amech. >> Thanks. >> On your jump start program, um, how many seniors are due to graduate this year with their degree? >> I don't know. >> I was wonder >> with their with their associates. >> Yes. >> Yeah. It's it's usually Yeah, it's usually right around the 30 the 30 mark because some of them we do year one
120um we do year year first year seniors also and I don't think they can quite get to the associates but the the cohort of 30 that's a two-year program they usually get get through and and it's usually right around 30 students. Okay. >> Thank you. Yeah. >> All right. So, um, with the jump start as well, um, is as you well know and the community may or may not, but the school district pays for 100% of the student and >> at this time. Yes. >> Yes. At this time, and not a lot of school districts do that. And I don't um expect you to answer if you don't feel like. But the question would be, do you feel as though the participation or the enrollment of Jumpstart would move the pendulum drastically? Not so much
121if we decided to do a 50/50 or a 7030, you know, and not have the school district pay 100% of the costs. >> Yeah. No. And and we just we just had that uh conversation this morning. We met with our WNC um people um discussed a lot about money and everything and um no no I mean we didn't make any decisions moving forward or anything and I don't know how how it would work out. I know that we look at uh free and reduced lunch numbers versus full payment also and you know that there's ideas in there. Um and I know it's it's a big chunk of money. It's a huge chunk of money. Um, and so it's and and we're not getting any more. And what we saw today is that yeah, they're their
122costs are going up. So, you know, there's certain things that that could happen, may happen, may not. I I don't know, right? I'm I'm not in charge of that budget. And so, we just uh and I'm glad that Mr. Bringhurst back there is is in charge of that budget. And, you know, I'm in charge of my school budget. and it's it's still good. >> It just brings up um and we'll discuss it in the next agenda item, but we're up here working on, you know, making sure that we're doing the best that we can financially that's not going to affect student facing >> and this is one that isn't student facing and so I just didn't know what the um consequences would be if we chose not to do 100%. >> No. And and I
123know that and I and I know when Tasha was in the in the chief academic officer role, her the basically what she would talk about was if we had those kids in school, the amount of money that those kids generate, you may have to have another teacher or two. So instead of paying that money to WNC, we would probably have to hire a couple more teachers to be able to um work with those students in the school. And so and so that that was that was kind of the trade-off. Is it is it an ex an exact trade-off? I I don't know if it's an exact trade-off, but that that was the philosophy behind it. >> And I can and I appreciate that. But then that brings in the enrollment decline as well. So our
124enrollment continues to decline. So you know, then are we would those students just fill that? But however, that might be for another another day. Um, the other question that I had though is I know when I um and I was trying to think, rack my brain because it's been a it's been a while since I've been in the classroom. But with the tardies, it would be like a certain amount of time where it would be like the first 10 minutes, right, is tardy. After that, then you're sent to the office because then it's no longer tardy. you're to the office because you are I don't know what we ever thought they were, but it's like go to the office because you've missed class. So, I guess any of you could address this. What happened to
125that? Because is it my understanding that this extreme tardy is what up until five minutes before class ends, 10 minutes before class ends? >> If you show up to class >> Yeah. And we get >> we also do a a truent on campus. So if they were gone like most of the class and that just helps us track like how long they were tardy. We want kids in classrooms so we don't just say go to the office but we the teacher then will write a referral that hey this kid was super tardy. So >> super tardy it's like 10. We could ask Jeremy Lewis how many we're see how many minutes for super tardy >> between after five and before. And how long is the period? >> 51. Okay. >> And after that, we count
126them as truent. But truent on campus. >> Um trying to distinguish between a kid that's sitting at home truent versus a student who's at on our site somewhere. Okay. >> Truent. Um just helping us divide that data up to see. Yeah. because there's a difference between the student who's hiding in the bathroom versus the or wandering the halls versus the one who just was, you know, a minute late. >> But how because then I would look at this and say, and this is just coming from mine, you know, so when even when a student was 10 minutes tardy, one, it's disruptive. >> Two, it creates more work for the teacher. Yeah. To try to catch that student up. So then if the student is 40 minutes tardy or whatever the case may be, um I
127just Yeah, I can't imagine what that does then to a classroom. >> Yeah. >> If if you Yeah. And I mean you're looking like Yeah, you're right. >> It does. Yeah. >> I was just going to say I've I've done research on this for other projects and many many districts across the country actually, not even just in the state. It's a percentage of minutes you miss per class period. So if you miss more than 50% of the class period. If you have a 50 51 minute class, if you miss 26 minutes, it's considered an absence, which then becomes a whole other issue, other problem because you're already battling chronic absenteeism. But if you look at at the data nationwide, most of them do it based on a percentage of class period time missed. The biggest
128the biggest thing with it though is we know some of them but usually when it gets entered in it's still gets entered in as tardy, right? And so when you can filter it and we have a lot of kids and it's a small percentage that are extreme tardy, right? >> Yeah. It it is the same ones. And so when we can filter it better and that's that is our plan for for the future with with our behaviormmies and the things that we're getting into place. But when we can filter it better then we're going to be able to address it better. >> Um well I applaud you for the behavioral academy. I I think that was very creative and innovative. Um and so I really appreciate you adding that in because I think it's something
129to celebrate. um especially at the success you know that it is as well. So and thank you again. Oh yes, I have another question. So in regards to the enrollment uh for jumpstart um do you know or are you able to share with us this? Um, I know that initially the program was supposed to be targeted to help um students in low in in the lowinccome uh category. To your knowledge, is that still the case or are we even taking that under consideration? >> I I do think we we take it under consideration. Um and like I was saying before, we had so for next year's um cohort, we have a total of four students that were denied. Do I don't know their demog their their uh financial situation. Um but having only four that
130were denied the cohort because we had 63 accepted. Um but that was that was basically the number that we were that we were oh 52 sorry um 52 students were accepted. Um eight of them were disqualified through GPA grade in math or attendance and so they have to have a those are those those three things. Um but then when they do the selection process they look at the whole child. Yeah. Ver, >> it sound like you met with WNC this morning. >> Yes. >> Do you know what rate increase they're talking about for tuition? >> Yeah. >> Something we have to take in consideration, too. >> Yeah. And we I can't remember the exact number from this. They they have it posted to their to their site what the um what the rates are both
131for dual enrollment and the jump start. Is it a small increase? A significant increase? >> I don't know if if I you got it up, >> it's because I sent it to him today. >> Yes. Brandon Bringhurst, chief academic officer for the record. Yes, we met this morning together with representatives from the high school, myself and representatives from uh WNC and talked about a lot of these things, how our students are doing, most importantly the success that our students are or aren't having and and any changes we need to make in order to better address those um to make sure our students have the most success possible. So there are rate increases and the rate increases are driven by uh the Nevada system of higher education. WNC is not setting those rate increases, right? They're
132subject to those increases that are um given to them. And there's a couple of different types of fees that we pay um depending on who teaches the class, where the class is taught at, are we paying by course or are we paying by credit hour. Um so I won't go into all of those details, but I could tell you like the the per course cost if those are being taught by our staff. Um that in 2425 we were paying $75 per course. Um, this year we're paying $100 per course. That continues to go up. The what they have projected out is through the 2829 school year and it'll go up to $118.50 per course. Um so that um that cost is increasing has increased and will continue to increase. And so we are certainly looking
133at um how we how we fund that and what might need to change uh in the future with that. Um so the per credit cost is also going up. It was 85. It's currently 87.50. Um, and in 2829 it will be up to $99 uh per credit. Again, it kind of uh varies depending on the type of course that's being taken. >> Thank you. You're welcome. >> All right. Anything further? All right. Well, thank you very much for your time and your presentations and um congratulations. Yes. And at this time, we will close agenda item number seven. We're going to take a 10-minute recess before we get into the fun part. All right. Fall Oh, hey. Oh, woo. Hey, heat. Hey. Heat. Heat. Hallelujah. Amen. Oh, hold on. Wow. Oh. Woo! Hey! Heat. Heat. Hello.
134Heat. Heat. for you. Oh, hey. Oh, la. Hey. Hey. Hey. How you are? We're going to move on to agenda item number eight, presentation, discussion on the tenative budget for the Carson City School District for fiscal year 2026 2027. This is for discussion only and this is brought to us by Spencer Win uh Winward and uh AJ Fueling. >> Thank you, Madam President. Spencer Lynward uh presenting tonight on the budget. Um hopefully with a lot of input that u we've received from the board over the year and as we've been kind of putting this together, this gives you a chance to to look like what to get a good first look at what the final budget would look like um in late May when when we approve that. Um just as a couple of reminders
135just to here's kind of some important dates. Those first three of the check marks are information that we get that touches on some of our funding of some of the estimates that we get from Department of Taxation. We all have those those have been incorporated in this budget. And then uh our deadline to provide this to the Department of Taxation is tomorrow. So I'm glad we're getting this done today. It's usually a little bit earlier in the month just how the days fall, but it works still. So, we'll provide a copy of this to them. U and and of course take this opportunity to receive more input from you on how you'd like us to shape this. And then as a reminder, um during the month of May, we have the the public budget hearing
136where we put a notice in the paper. Um it has to be no more than 14 days, no less than 7 days prior than the date of the hearing. Our date for that this year is going to be May 28th. coincides with our board meeting and and falls within uh statute for what we need to do. And then after that, we provide a copy of the final budget uh by taxation and to the county clerk by June 8th. And then just fast forward into the the end of this year, December is when we can amend that final budget. Once we know a lot, we've have solid data where the final budget is is based more off of projections. we know a lot where our enrollment is, where our staffing is, and we can amend that
137budget as needed uh on the last day of the calendar year. So, those are kind of some important important dates and and where we're at with this cycle. It was just seems like it was just yesterday that we were amending the final budget of December for this fiscal year. Um and now here we are again. So, a little bit of information of how we put our budget together. Um, one of my favorite definitions of budgeting is describing described as fulfilling infinite needs with finite resources. That's definitely where we're at and filling that a little more this year than we have in the past. Um, and our budget has been we do the best with all the information we have available to us. So, you know, our uh tenative budget has more projection um in it
138than uh depending on it is. And that varies between an off year and a legislative year. This is an off year so we have a little bit more data and a little less projection. However, it's uh built out a lot of assumptions. Um we have always been conservative in building this budget and uh the reason of that that that's treated us very well as a district. Um our ending ending fund balance is very healthy and I feel that's a u in part because we do use a lot of conservatism in our in building our budget. Um how that works with revenue. We in in the case of revenue, we're going to use the uh lower amount. In the case of expenditures, we're going to use the greater amount um to have that that buffer of
139conservatism built in there. Reasons for that is that reduce our risk of deficit spending deficit spending. It also greatly reduce our risk of budget violations and uh one one factor of that is our budgets often show a deficit budget. Even though when it's all said and done, we don't always end up with a deficit spending when the budget year is over. So, any questions up to this point? >> All righty. Mr. Fueling has a little bit of breakdown of some of our our staffing costs. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Winward. Um, so one of the things I I wanted to do and I guess maybe we're we're jumping ahead. So the the budget that is presented as tentative tonight and again it's it's really important to understand that you are not approving the budget.
140We are not asking you to approve the budget tonight. Um it has a budgeted deficit. We have been able to drop that to just over $3 million. Um it's like 3.02 02 567 something in that range it's it's just over two $3 million. Um and in that process uh which gets us closer to um what I believe is is the board's goal um the the significant changes in that um have been in in the previous presentations um there hasn't been um much definition around what was happening with the nutrition fund. The nutrition fund is important because um next year there is going to have to be a transfer from the general fund to the nutrition fund to to cover costs. Um we had initially expected that to be over $900,000 based on which is much
141higher than historical um based on some some work and and nutrition is a very um confusing fund especially in the postcoid world um with some of the changes that have happened and how federal reimbursements come in but our our estimates on that have come down to close to right now around 600,000 So that's a pretty significant reduction. The other um significant reduction that has been is proposed in this tenative budget is not buying two new school buses for next year. So that's about half a million dollars. Um the the reason for that is we have recently been awarded a grant that is going to be bringing in four new electric buses at no at no cost. Sorry. Um and so I know this board heard a presentation back in the fall about how we we
142need to do more with replacing our bus fleet because our bus fleet is aging. The average age I think is like 20 years. It's like I think she said it was a 2005 bus. Um however this year we have replaced two of our um special education buses. We have purchased three new full like transportation big you know 84 seater buses. Um, and did we have two more or was that it? Thought there was two more. Okay, so so five all together. Thought there were more for some reason. Um, but point being that there have been some um I guess significant gains and this board um really helped with with some adjustments to how we spend our capital funding dollars. um allowed us to purchase those those three buses. So then going into next year, we
143would have four new electric buses coming in. So so really nine new buses in in less than well say 12 to 18 months depending on when delivery can happen. Um, so I think there's been some significant gains and so I I don't I don't believe it is absolutely necessary to um keep uh that half a million dollars in the budget for um bus new buses at this time. So with with some of those significant adjustments, um this tenative budget is it it includes generally all all of the reductions we talked about in contracting costs, especially in special education that is included. All of the um proposed reductions in staffing that we have looked at are included except for um in in the initial budget conversation we were talking about reducing um 12 um social worker
144positions. Six of those position positions have now been added back into the budget. So even with adding those costs in those people back in um the current budget again the deficit is down to about three just shade over $3 million. So what you have here then is a breakdown of where our staffing costs lie and and and this has been a big question. And I know many of the board members have reached out the the term student facing has come up several times in conversations about where our costs are. Um and I want to point out or just make note with this one of one of the things dur during the state of the district um presentation which was I think the second meeting in January. Um, one of the things I pointed out, and
145I point it out every year, but I I I think made some more effort to point it out this time is that when you're looking at the costs of administration, when you're looking at the cost of of leadership as it is represented on the Nevada report card website, and again, that is a not our website. They're not our numbers, but when you look at that, we have um spending on leadership in the district at something like 5.7%. And that is well below any other district that is is represented in the state. So in terms of again, just to think about we're talking about studentf facing positions. Some oftentimes leadership may not be especially if they're at the district level, but our leadership costs are well below any district in the state. Okay. So, when you
146look at where we are in the current fiscal year, and this is going to look at that kind of statistic, but it in a little bit of a different way, but I think it's still important. So, on the left you have the current fiscal year. This is the the school year we're in we're we're in right now. And then based on the tenative budget that you have in front of you tonight, what what is the adjustment happening to where our staffing costs lie? And I I guess bigger picture staffing costs are really really really important to this entire discussion and to any budget discussion for a school district because something like 85% of all of our costs are staff. We are a peopleintensive industry. So when you look at where our costs are currently in
147the and this is just the general fund and on the next slide I'm going to expand on that a little bit but in the general fund 87.5% of our staffing costs are in our schools. So and and when I um that that is I I think literally inclusive of everybody in a school. Okay. So that is including um uh our custodial staff that that is including all of our paraprofessional staff that is including all of our teaching staff that is including our our um uh admin school administrators. So principles, vice principles, deans, everybody who is actually in a school studentf facing. And so that is 87.5% of our staffing budget in the general fund. 12.5% is what's left. Um, and and the way I've approached this for these next couple slides, I've included transportation in
148other. Um, I don't know if that's right or wrong, but they're not in the school. Are they student facing? Absolutely. But they're not in the school. So, I think that's just something to keep in mind. I I I don't know that there's a right or wrong way to present this, but I I just want to make make that clear. two. So, of that 12.5%, 2 point 2 2.3 is transportation, 2.6 is operations. So, that's everyone in our operations um department, grounds department, um maintenance department, and in our warehouse, we have a small central warehouse. If if you if you weren't aware, it's uh next to Carson Middle on the other side of Carson Middle School. So, that is 2.6% 6% of our staffing costs. And then you go down to the district cost. So this
149is fiscal services, everything related to accounting, payroll, budgeting, all that sort of thing. HR, all of the things that HR is responsible for with a district of close to a thousand employees. It manages about 11,000 devices in the district for us. education services. So everything Mr. under Mr. Bringhurst's um responsibility um safety services so risk risk management um and and tech support under there our PIO and my office. So if you think about this is effectively the district office and this is uh PDC the professional development center. It's on, if you haven't, it's 604 East Muser. It's on um on Muser Street. So that is 7.7% of the costs in the current year of all of our general fund staffing costs. You move that to fiscal year 27. So that again is the tenative budget
150that you have presented in front of you. With the changes that are happening, the percentage of our staffing costs that are in the schools goes up to 88.5%. What is in other goes down to 11.5%. Transportation ticks up and that's there's really there's no change in the expected staffing there. It's just because of a function of how the numbers work. Um operations there are um is a reduction there that goes down and then there's more reductions at the district level mostly because of well in in both of the previous presentations and listed here in the executive summary and will will be in this presentation in a couple slides is all of the district positions that are being reduced. The point being that that while there are not as many in uh to total positions being
151reduced at the district level, the entire size of the district level is not that great. And so by even reducing 11 positions that is an enormous chunk out of the the district level. Next slide please. So then this slide looks at I'm I'm calling this PCFP funded. Um it's not really the correct term to use but most of these funds are considered PCFP funds. PCFP is pupil centered funding plan. That's the state model. it it it in is inclusive now of more funds. Um the one fund that really isn't a part of it is nutrition but I have included that here. So this is looking at the general fund, our English learner fund, our gate fund, our at risk fund, our special education fund and our nutrition fund. And so in the current year 88.8%
152of our staffing costs are in the schools. 11.2 two are not. When you look at the tentative budget which is again in front of you tonight, it is now 89.5% in the schools and 10.5% that is not in the schools. Um the there's something else I was going to say about that. Um so one of the important things to note with this is that in each of these additional funds they are they are overwhelmingly studentf facing. So that's why when you're looking at um when you add these in and then you're looking at what's happening for for NE or even this year, the percentage for the the amount of staffing costs that are in our schools actually goes up when you're looking at it this way for the current year and then it goes up
153even more for next year. And again, that reflects that the the cuts at the district level um as a as a percentage of the total number of people at the district level are actually significant more significant than what we're seeing in the schools. So that that's a lot right there. Are there any questions about any of that? And and so actually one one other thing I want to point out is so I I don't know like I I've gone through lots of training around this kind of thing over 15 years of of doing this kind of work. I don't actually know what um like how this compares necessarily. I would welcome a comparison to other districts around us because I got to believe that the those numbers on the school side and the other side
154on the school side is higher and on the other side is lower than any other district in Nevada. Um and because I I don't like this is not these are not numbers that are reported. This is not on the Nevada report card. Um, so I I did some research with a friend called ChatGpt because I I don't know where else to find anything. Yes. And like don't look down upon me. I just I don't really know where to look for this, but I I asked, you know, if if you're looking at um the the costs within a school district and how you how they could be broken down um as like being in the school versus not being in the school. what is a range of percentages that you would expect to see? And the
155what it came back with is 12 to 20%. And it was a very thoughtful response. um at 20% it would say that you you are a very um districtdriven district I guess in terms of um having the level of staffing and resources to really offer a pretty significant amount of support to your to your schools. Um, ba balanced was considered 15, lean was considered 12. And at the lean stage, I asked because I had already come up with these numbers. And I said, well, what if it's closer to 10? And it said, well, you're you're getting leaner. It doesn't mean you can't do it, but it you need to pay attention to your schools and listen to your basically listen to your principles because it's potent there's potentially going to be some pain points because
156there is not as much support coming down to them. So, I I say that in when I'm looking at 10.5%. I mean, I I'm confident in all the the people that I'm working with, but I I feel like that's stretching a bit in terms of like I mean to the point that this is sort of like a pilot. We're we're seeing what what this is going to look like next year if if this is around where the budget we we end up with. And sorry, I kind of cut off. I asked if there were questions before, so maybe we'll stop here and ask questions. It's not necessarily a question, but coming from a district that was all of the the principles, our eleas were given our budget and the district was by law because they
157decided they were going to break up our district. So, you probably know which district I'm talking about. Um, they were going to spend 12% on the district staff and 88% was supposed to come to our school. From that 88% budget, I had to pay for my own buses. So transportation was part of my 88% I had to pay for utilities. Out of my 88% I had to pay for um grounds. So my landscaper came out of my 88%. So when they did 12% at the district level, half of the stuff that you have included at being the district level is actually part of the school budget, right? So you're actually if you if you took those costs out, you're running this district district level at closer to 7%, not 10%. Because by law, that's how
158they broke up the large school district by telling them exactly what those percentages have to be. And when I had to pay my like we made them break down our utility bills and I was telling my custodians turn the lights off, switch the the light bulbs out like as a building principal that was my job was to try and save every single dollar. Um because it was coming out of my budget and how many teachers I could pay for or how many counselors I could pay for to pay for my social worker. The only thing that didn't come out of my budget was my special education teacher because that was federally funded. every other position on my campus had to come from my my supposed 88%. >> Thank you. And and I I think what's
159it's a you make a really good point. I like trying to compare this apples to apples is really difficult because there's such nuance in every district about what the expectations are. Um, and I do know that in your district you did had to had to pay your utility costs and I tell that to my principles and they've never liked that idea. So, >> um, hey, but if we can do questions like at the end because I think we can this might go around and around. Okay. So, uh, we have a lot left. >> Can you go to the next slide, please? >> Okay. So again, list listen listing the uh positions that have been um previously shown proposed for proposed for reduction with some modification. And so to be clear, these positions may be currently
160vacant. They may be vacant at year end due to retirement or resignation. They may be vacant at year end because they're filled by staff on a one-year contract as critical labor shortage because that's a year-by-year thing. or they are positions that may require reduction. And again, just to emphasize, our goal is to minimize reductions, but then also in in every case try if we can to find a place for people to go if a position is going to be reduced. If you can go to the next slide. So the way the way this is set up is again just listening to positions and the these are not new. You've basically seen these numbers two other times. the the one thing that was um requested just to add a little more clarity um and that is
161in the number in parentheses to the right is how many of the of those positions are currently vacant just to kind of give you a sense of I I guess impact I I think is is fair to say. So again, there under the the district level, none of those are different than what you've seen. Um, under other programs, um, there are two nutrition service positions included in here. Um, those are actually both expected to be retirements, so but they're not vacant right now. Um, noting again six social worker positions, not 12. Um, can you go to the next slide? And then at the schools again, these are these are the same numbers that we've we've shared previously. Um so I I don't I don't think there should be any surprises here. Um and again based
162on some of the adjustments we've made on on some of the costs for next year, um six of those social worker positions have been added back in. And I think next slide is then yours. >> All right. So hopefully that gives you a little bit more um idea of of where we sit percentage- wise based off our staffing, how that's affected in the general fund and those PCF funds. Um again, back to kind of the budget, the way this has been built. This includes those proposed uh position reductions that we just discussed and have been at at previous uh board meetings. We have removed that half million dollars of a transportation bus purchase. We feel we're able to do that because of the great strides we've made in in updating the fleet and and having
163grant funds available to purchase four new electric buses, which um on a side note, um technology has come a long way in the two years since we've purchased the last ones. Um and then this general fund does include that nutrition fund transfer of about 600,000. Um, and the way that the PCFP funding works for that, they average four years rolling on what that transfer is. So, we're going to kind of be double penalized for the next little bit because for the last couple years, we haven't had transfers to the nutrition fund. So, that's going to factor into this. So, we'll see the the funding that's made available to us for nutrition to dip for a couple of years before it equalizes again. So that's where that $600,000 U transfer is a little bit larger than
164I'd like to see it. But the reality is that's probably going to be where things need to be to operate according to all the guidelines that we need to. However, we're working to see if there's any which way we can reduce that as we continue into the final budget. And then our site budgets are flat in this budget. Um there's been discussion about reducing those. Those have been flat for the last four or five years with no reduction or no increases at all where we've seen very high numbers of inflation. So they've already kind of naturally been reduced where we've kept them the same number and not made any adjustments for inflation and our sites have done very well to work with their uh finite resources and their infinite needs. So things that may that
165may affect this um as we learn more about uh staff resignations, retirements, we'll continue to factor those into staffing costs and any potential non-staffing costs that uh that we may change need to change in the budget over the next year or excuse me next month between now and the final. Um, so as you recall from our previous board meetings, uh, you're hoping for us to get the the deficit down to two or three million. Um, as presented here tonight, that deficit is 3.02 million. So like $21,000 over 3 million. Um, and as as an illustration, um, our total general fund expenditures for the FY26 December budget, the amended budget is 85.3 million. Uh, in this budget, they're 83.1. So there's a reduction there of 2.2 million. Um this includes in the in the special education
166fund a reduction of of contractor costs um based off of and again with with special education um we have to be very careful that we don't reduce the level of services beyond where we're supposed to. We want to make sure that we're still taking care of all the needs and taking care of our kiddos. uh but we do have less students and we've been able to to whittle down some of the contractor costs and the services that have been provided by them in in this tenative budget and that's approximately 500,000 uh which again that would flow through the the the transfer projected to the special education fund is lower based off of that. So things that may change between now and the next budget, uh I would expect minute changes in the general fund. Um
167unless we get extreme guidance from the board. Uh same with special education fund. Those have been we've got a lot of projection and and and information put into those. So feel that those are pretty good. Same with our PCF funds. Um, we may see if there's any difference in funding that we expect to see, we may see some positions slide back and forth between the general fund and those. Again, keep in mind the general fund is the most uh or is the least restrictive fund. So, we can pay for a position out of the general fund that we could also pay out of e fund or gate fund or at risk, but we couldn't just take any position out of the general fund and pay for it out of those. uh we don't expect much
168change for state and federal grants for budgeting purposes and again those are self- augmenting as if the changes and amount awards that we get then we would f would change those throughout the year. If there is a large sum of grant money that comes available that we could use to pay for positions um that that would not require us to add additional positions then we would take that into account and and could affect the general fund. We're not expecting any change for our local grants, gifts and donations or student activities. Those are pretty static from the tenative to the final budget. And our bond and capital projects um we're just got starting to get a lot of bids for our summer projects coming in and we'll have a lot more data by the final budget
169and those will be updated to reflect that. U nutrition services not expecting much change but we are continuing to analyze any which way we can save funding uh to reduce the transfer from the general fund to cover those services there and we don't expect any changes in our proprietary funds which is our workers comp and u health insurance fund. Um anything else on my changes any input that we received from the board and guidance on in how you wish us to proceed. So any questions? Uh before we get into questions, I do want to um disclose um very carefully here. Um so I'd like to disclose that I have a family member that is a a district employee and affected by the um by the board. It's no different than any other employee. So I
170have been advised that it's not a conflict, but I wanted to disclose for transparency. Are there any other disclosures? Yeah, I also have one. Um, my wife had three small contracts with the district this last year or this current year. No signed contracts for next year, but there may be one or two small contracts that she'd be involved with. I'd also like to disclose that on the um contracts for next year, I'm listed as having a contract for consulting services, but I am not in a contract with the Carson City School District for the next year. That was a completion of January 2026. So, that can be removed. Thank you. All right. So, with that, um thank you very much. We'll go ahead and start with questions. Um, first and foremost though, I I want
171to um thank the board for um putting so much effort into this budget. I know you've all spent a great amount of time um listening to the constituents working with our superintendent. Um you know, addressing your questions with me and I want everybody to know that the board has spent a great amount of time. I think this is one of the first years where I've been involved that so much time from every board member has been put forward with this budget. So, I greatly appreciate your time on that as well. So, we'll go ahead and start um with Did you want to start, Trusty Varner? >> Okay, we're going to go ahead and start at the other end. Would you like to start? Do you have any questions? Uh Trusty Status >> Suzuki Statuki Tina,
172>> you can just call me Tina. Yes, >> I just had a a question. Um because again, especially when we're looking at not just this budget, but future budgets with the reducement in enrollment um not just um applicable to Carson City, but to school districts across the country, right? with a red reduction in enrollment. Um, you know, like my ding kids won't have kids, right? I don't have any grandkids, so don't have any kids going to school. Um, I'm just curious as to um I'd like to I'd like to be able to see a breakdown by building facility as in cost per pupil per per uh building um to see um what schools are are uh receiving more money per per student for funding. I know we have one re really small uh school um
173that I'd like to see how much money is spent to educate each one of those students as opposed to maybe an elementary school student or a middle school student. Um especially as we're making decisions um potentially in the future of even having to close down facilities, right? We know that um districts across Nevada are are closing down schools and that might be something that has to that Carson City has to think about in the future um especially as we have few and fewer um kids enrolling. So I'd like to see a per pupil cost breakdown per school so we can kind of take a look at um how those funds are being used. >> Thank you Trusty Satuki. Um yeah, we we can certainly provide that for you. I think um the the reality is
174that as um you know, we have not made significant staffing adjustments over the past number of years. Um I I I would argue that um the enormous increase in funding we got from the state three years ago to where we are now after 30 years of really bad funding. really um there I keep telling people I think there's some kind of psychological impact to anyone who's in the especially in the world of budgeting because after such a long period of time to have such an enormous increase I I think um you know we knew we could do some really good things and we could add some good people and and give some great you know wage increases but it kind of lulls you into thinking like gosh if it was that big I I don't
175think they're going to do something that big again. But boy, it looks like they're serious about trying to do better. That didn't happen. And and and so that's a really hard thing. So I I think, you know, we weren't necessarily reducing staffing levels even if our student population was dropping. And so you I I think what you'll see in that is um that the you know cost per student within that school with within schools generally has increased a little bit simply because class sizes overall have been dropping slightly because of the drop in population but we can get that information. >> Well and just to clarify like I want to say the differences between the schools themselves right so not an overall cost per pupil being spent. I think we have that. I'd like to
176see what this school is compared to this school compared to this school and whether or not there's inequality as to where we're placing our funds that have the most impact to the most students. >> Understood. >> Really quick before we do questions as well because I don't know if this would um help you all as well, but can you turn to page two of the tenative budget? Um so within your presentation you had mentioned that it was you brought the deficit the deficit spending down to three million but on page two it states four but are you adding then the million of the contingency? >> Yes. I apologize I should have used the term the structural deficit which is what we typically present in our budgets. um you reduce that million of of the contingency
177fund which again we don't spend that unless we come before the board and say hey it's a break glass in case of emergency we need to open that you know we need to break that and use that so that is not included in the deficit um it's been at least a decade I believe since any of contingency funds have been spent >> okay but then I've also had a question about the general fund ending balance I thought that was going to be higher than the nine million. >> So in the in the tenative you kind of have so la it it would include everything that we budgeted for this year and in the event that we don't spend all of that that would that's not included in here. So everything that's budgeted for this year
178and in the ten of the budget lowers that. So, in the last couple years where we've had a deficit uh budget but actually had a surplus, that amount's not factored in until we have our our financials audited and and then we adjust that. So, that does appear lower than you would think where, you know, as we were discussing audit a couple months ago, our ending fund balance was $18 million, but then with the FY25 budget or excuse me, FY26 budget brings that down. Um, and then this budget brings that down even further. So you have two budget years of of deficit in there. Budgeted amounts, not actual amounts. >> What What would we be saying if it's not 18 million? What would it roundabout be approximate? C >> Sorry, can you can you ask that
179again? >> So at the last couple meetings, we were told that with the audit we would have then a balance of 18 million, >> right? >> Okay. If it's not that, >> what is it going to be? So, so that's a good question. So, if if you think if we're just looking at the current year, so in the current year, we're saying the opening fund balance is $18 million. The the bud the budgeted deficit in the December budget that was approved, I I think was around $4 million. But then it's also adding in a million dollars for contingency again with they always they make you include that contingency number. So it actually drives it up over like to five million. So that's where you see the 18 million going down to this very top number
18013 million. So it's just it's it's take it's assuming we're we're spending the entire amount um that was budgeted this last year plus that contingency amount. So it would drop it. So that drops it 5 million and then here from 13 million it's now reducing it by that $4 million number that you you pointed out, President Wall. And so that's what brings it down to 9 million. Um and so so the question is kind of that where where do things land this year? Um I I would right now it it's hard to we're going to be when do we cut off purchasing? Is it like in two weeks or something like that? >> Yeah. So, so district purchasing will be cut off here in the next two weeks and we'll be able to get a
181sense of where we really land. I I wouldn't be surprised um and based on kind of where things are looking right now if it ends up being around a reduction of about $2 million, not not the $4 million plus that was approved for the budget for this year. So then that would be say um then like uh 17 it'd be make that $13 million number to start 17 million or sorry$16 million. Right. So so we're we're coming in under budget basically. But that's um does that make sense? Am I saying that right? Yeah. Okay. I just want to make sure. >> So you kind of have the culmination of two years in there at once. So, and again, keep in mind this this current year we kind of had that plan spend down of about
182two million. So, even though our budgets have typically had a deficit budget and we've come out positive, this year we we're not expecting that. So, that starting at 18 million and then as budgeted, if you look on page eight of the or 13 of the budget, there's the estimated current year ending column and that shows you where we where we're budgeted to end. And again, as we get as we get close to the end of this number, feeling pretty confident that we're not we're going to be much higher than 13 million. It's going to be somewhere between the 15 to 15 to 16 million. And then but that doesn't show in the start of this budget because we can only go off of hey, we think we're going to end at 13 million. That becomes
183our starting point for the tenative budget. And then that that typically gets adjusted during the December budget when we say, hey, we actually did have some uh you know, all of our vacancy savings. uh we didn't use all of everything that we budgeted. So our our beginning fund balance is much higher than we thought. >> Okay. But the reason I bring this up is because during um the association um announcements it was brought that you know we are looking healthy >> and in all honesty though if you're looking at this going we're going from 13 million down to nine. How long is that going to last? because then in the next year we're going to go down further and the next year we're going to go down even further because enrollment is not going up.
184We're not seeing any more new revenue. We're seeing less revenue and so um it's it's concerning because I just I don't think that this is healthy. But I'm not going to we're going to move on. >> Okay. >> We're going to move on from Molly. All right. >> So, if I may, it's healthy because we have this option. It's not like, hey, we have zero ending fund balance and we have to make drastic reductions right now. Um, we've been very uh like as you look at those positions, those parentheses that had positions vacant, instead of filling those years this year, we've opted to keep those vacant. That's resulted in a little bit of savings and and in a kind of a trial run. Hey, we've done we've done this for five months. Can we do
185this for another year? So, there's some savings there. we have those options and and I I think that's where the associated president is coming from is we don't have the option we must cut. So that's where his position is coming from and and let's be thoughtful from this instead of think that everything's coming to the end of the end of this fiscal year because we do have some time and then there's options to see what comes forth in the legislature to see if now we're in that position to be a little more drastic or if there's been some funding that's come to take some of these positions that we've enjoyed for years that we hope to continue to enjoy. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. Uh, Trusty Ramirez, >> thank you. So, um, I want
186to start out by saying when we have gone to trainings, the first thing that they remind us is that whenever we are in need of making a decision, we need to keep keep them the student in mind of how we are going to serve their needs. So, um I am going to be very honest and I hope I don't offend anyone. Um because I think that in a perfect world, we recognize how valuable every position in in our district is to help our students. But since we are on a budget deficit, we recognize that we have to make some very difficult decisions. And so um I am struggling with the idea of not having social workers and pair professionals and teachers in the classrooms. Um I feel that that is really going to hurt us
187and most importantly hurt the students. Um, in addition to that, the feedback that we've gotten and input that we have received from public comment, from the from the district community, from the community as a whole, families, organizations, they remind us how important these positions are to our our student growth. Um so I think it is um important that we listen to their concerns and I think that they have um very valuable concerns and it is only fair that we we take that under consideration. Um that being said I want us to go back to the reduction report on the PowerPoint. So, >> or the the teaching positions or >> that one right there. >> Okay. >> So, I do um I do see that some administrative or some positions in the district office are listed
188here. However, I don't see any um administrator positions. And so that's one thing that I have been hearing from um people in the community that we really need to look at those positions and analyze which positions the district cannot function without. And so that's that's my my recommendation that we analyze the positions in the district office and and see which positions we cannot do without we cannot function without to meet the needs of our students. >> Thank you Trusty Ramirez and and no offense taken so don't worry about that. >> Thank you. Um I what what I what I would say is um I I I would heavily and I maybe I should have included this data. um not not to say that any any position is you know without um you know consideration but
189I would go back to when you we're talking about district leadership positions again we we as a percentage of our budget we are well under any other district in the state and and is in terms of again it like it that that is maybe a little more apples to apples than some of the percentages we showed earlier because they're they're just looking at what what percentage of your people are either certified or non-certified administrators and that that's an easy thing to pull. So they they can look at those numbers. Um and and if that is any gauge for um I I think what has been actively um trying to keep funds in our schools rather than putting them into more district office staff. like I I I would love to have a a deputy superintendent
190that I could just send on errands and and and and do things and and that's just not how we have operated. Even with the huge influx of funds, we didn't add a position like that. Um so I I I I very much understand the concern. Um, in the thought um I from from my side I I would I would struggle with the idea of trying to reduce more of those just given we are already lower than any district around. But I but I I understand and I understand the concern. I I think all of us if if possible would not want any of this, right? I I hate all of this. Um so it just it's it's difficult. Um and and the other maybe the other thing to add to so we're looking at again
191some of these positions are vacant in total I think there's something like 46 positions we were looking at in the at the district level there there are 41 positions total and and so just the idea of the the the magnitude of how much we're actually looking at trying to adjust I don't even have enough people at the district level to you know if if I in an ideal world we wouldn't make any cuts at the school side at all but it's there's there's not a way around having I I feel like some impact some impact there >> right thank you um yes thank you and we all recognize how uncomfortable it is to sit up here right now um so I appreciate your your questions uh Trusty Roberts All right, I have a few. Um,
192but yes, first of all, I hate this, too. Um, and I didn't take any of it lightly, and so everything I have to say is just, um, you know, I care about all the positions, and I just want to share everything that has come to my mind or things that I've seen from other districts who are in the same position and and what they're looking at and ways to save money. Um, but first before I get into that, I do want to ask about this new Paloma app that the district has and where funding for that has come. >> Sure. Paloma. And and just to be clear, we are talking about an application that is downloaded onto a phone, nothing else, because that name is used for some other drinks. I I just I just
193want to make sure that's not what we're sorry. Maybe it's not commonly known. Maybe I shouldn't know that. Okay. Um so so Paloma um thank you for the question, Trusty Roberts. um Paloma, the the cost for that app, and it it's a it's an app really for um kindergarten through 2 grade um parents um to be able to kind of engage with some of the same um uh ELA literacy um type topics that they're they're having in their classes and to come home and be able to support them a little bit at home. Um that that is entirely being paid for out of out of grant dollars um for this year. We we don't um we we don't actually have a contract wi with them. This came on a little bit late. Um and so
194we we want to see how it goes. Like there's great data they share. We want to see how it does for us. Um, and then if if there is um interest to continue it next year, um uh I mean it it's going to be out of grant dollars is what it comes down to because it we wouldn't want it to impact any of this. >> Okay, that's wonderful to know that it would be grant funded um because it was just concerning to think that maybe we were going into contract when we are looking at such a large deficit. Um, so thank you for that. And, um, I guess my other question with that is, are we collecting our own data for that and how it's going? I mean, I know it's got good data for
195other districts that have used it, but >> yeah. Um, so it it's the rollout hasn't um, it it's not that old, so we we haven't actually collected any specific data yet. I know from a a usage standpoint, um we have at two of our schools almost 20% of our families have signed up um or I should say they've downloaded the app I guess and they're um actively using it. Um most all of our schools are above 10% but there's two that are doing a little bit better. Shout out to Cigar and Fremont if you're here. Um, as far as sort of like um outcome uh from it or like what the impact is, that's that's something that it's going to take a little time to see. But we we will want to analyze our own
196data. And I know I might say this wrong, but Mr. Bringhers can shake his head, but I I believe they um they help like analyze our our data as well. Like so taking our actual data um and trying to help us understand like where there's impact because it's it's hard to show like specific causal you know if if all of a sudden our our ELA scores went through the roof it we just introduced a new ELA curriculum this year our teachers our elementary teachers have put in an immense amount of work trying to make that happen you know so like what exactly is causing it I think that that might be a little harder to tease out But but to to the question's point, we certainly are going to be looking at our own data
197to see the use. >> Okay. Because my other concern is it that it's just K through2 and so could that grant funding go to something that would um you know better serve a larger of our student population. But um moving on from that, I did have a question um with the 12 intervention pair of professionals, is that all of them at the elementary site, that eliminates all of those pair of professionals? >> That that's correct. So So those positions um I I believe came on three three years ago. um uh with some of the influx in funding that we had, it was something and and I I think really um we were seeing such a uh u call it like learning loss that was kind of the term being thrown around but the impact coming
198out of co and so that was kind of the bit like a part of the push is like where can we offer some more support at that time but yeah that's >> are there other pair professionals in the schools these are just specific speific to intervention profa professionals. >> That is correct. and and I I that that's a really important clarification because I um the one of the public comments that happened earlier I um clearly very concerned about their their their child and and understand that that I I think the pair professionals that are helping um with their child or special education pair professionals there's there's no reductions to to those intervention pair professionals are very specific um to each elementary school having having two but not related to special education services. >> Okay, thank
199you. Me just I kind of have notes all over, so let me just make sure. Um okay. And then um my understanding with the budget workshops that we had been doing the past year um was to try and see where we could cut you know not student facing first and I just feel like that's been presented a lot with student facing and um that maybe we were hoping to see where we could reduce costs um with contracts or different programs that we offer. I know it's been talked a lot about um having families help pay for like jumpstart summer school um at least half the cost um rather than the district um covering the whole cost. And I just would like to see how that would impact I mean both the enrollment side as well
200as you know the budget. >> I I I think that um I Mr. bring and I already t have already talked about that a bit in terms of I I think there's um there are there are clearly other places that we can continue to look um and and this is you know this is kind of one iteration of of some of that as we get into next year especially now that we know we have increasing tuition costs I I think it's just fair to look at that program I I think it's fair to continue looking at um I know you know Trusty Wall had um had concern with the within special education a lot of the contract costs right that that we've had in there and so that was kind of the deep dive um
201this year and pulling back half a million $600,000 in um expected contract costs for next year. I I think I think to your point I um I mean my my feel like the workshops were um supposed to bring some understanding and and to be completely honest we we really have never done anything like that before. There's so many funds and there's so many different ways you can use them and we've never really spent any time with the board going through that kind of information before. And I know it's still a fire hose even though we kind of split up split up fund by fund. It's just a lot. There's it it gets complicated. So, I I feel like um if anything, maybe to spur ideas of things to focus on and give us feedback. And
202I feel like when we went through special ed, that contract piece was kind of part of the feedback. So, I I don't know that it was um was it impactful in in in terms of how we were looking at this? I would say yes. Did it did it um and like based on the questions we would get about things, did it influence every single possible decision within all this? Clearly not. And that that wasn't um wasn't entirely part of it. >> Okay. Yeah. I just really wanted to look at more more of those opportunities rather than, you know, staffing opportunities. And um you have on here like the gate fund. I know not all schools offer gate. I know it's a great program, but is that something that costs, you know, a significant amount or
203what's our enrollment like in that? You know, just look at those kinds of things. >> Sure. >> And then my last thing, um, just echoing, um, Trustee Statuki with, um, sorry, Molly. um just with the decreasing enrollment and some of the schools saying, you know, their class sizes are pretty small and just um what what would that look like to um possibly close a site and could we rent it out and make revenue off of that? Um >> so and and it it is a good point. I I mean there there's just, you know, it's kind of the the same reality we're talking about. there's a reduction in the number of students in our schools and and there is a reality to just if you have fewer students, you don't necessarily need as many teachers
204in the schools, right? Take that another level higher. If you don't have as many students in the schools, you may not need as many schools, right? And so I I think that ultimately like I I don't I don't know that um I I don't expect that we're making a change for next year, but I think we have to be looking at that in the near future with how quickly this enrollment does fall off. Um again, we we are we are basically at an enrollment level that we were in 1993, right? And and so a lot has changed since then and expectations have changed and all that, but there is just a plain reality to the number of bodies in a building and how many buildings do you need to fill those with those bodies. >>
205All right. Well, thank you. That's everything I had. Mr. Peterson. >> All right. Well, um being this far down the line, a lot of the notes that I had have already been um touched on. I also wanted to um like Taris Satsuki said with the one campus that is such a small portion of our students being funded um to see like how much that is practical for how long or what we can do to justify spending that much on such a small percentage. Um so that got touched on a little bit. I wanted to dig into PARS a little um and clarify also the difference of a one-on-one intervention as uh a class assistant like the variety of paras and this is only talking about the interventions so and taking them all away um got
206touched on um the district office also already got touched on um but um I wanted to within that Um is does every um position and also I wanted to clarify you said there are currently 41 in the district office. >> Sorry between um district office and PDC. >> Okay. So 41 current and you are proposing to lose 18 of them. >> Um I think it's 11. >> Did I math it wrong? >> One point of clarification to >> Yeah. So the tosses are put in the district but are they not in the schools? >> They well they they are in the schools but they are they're they are housed at PDC. They they are not in the schools all the time. So that's so there's six or >> sorry I guess my math included just
207counted the vacancies. >> Can you go back to sorry go back oh no go forward. Sorry one more. So back. >> Yeah. >> So the in under the district heading, it's the the two admin assistant positions, the IT, the HR, the operations, and the sixtosis. >> Okay. That's the >> So just that top portion is the 41, not including the bottom. >> Right? Because like the the social worker positions, those are student facing. Special education are student facing. Nutrition service is student facing. Like they're they're in the schools with kids all the time. So >> Okay. Um >> um do all of those positions that operate through the district office um work through the summer as well? >> Um not no not all of them. Um, some of them are like, so for example, the
208the the TOSA positions, those are act they're teaching positions, but they're on extended a little bit extended contracts because our teacher contract is 183 days. Um, for the the admin assistant positions, I think those are year round. Um all the the director positions are year round like administrative staff um fiscal and HR and IT are all year round because even it they're going around the schools during the summer to get everything ready for the next year. So I I say mo most of them are but there are there are exceptions to it >> and those that are are are justified in being a full 12 month >> I think. So I mean we we have we have talked about um some of those positions and potentially reducing the number of days like for next year.
209Um the impact isn't necessarily that significant so I haven't really included that in here but there are a few positions we have we have discussed. Yeah. >> Okay. And then the last is um realistically um this is I don't know maybe this is for next agenda item but like one of the the double-edged swords a blessing and a curse of of our community is we are such a small community and everybody knows everybody and and only having the schools we have it makes it so easy to be visible in all of them and and connected to everybody which is great for building relationships but then it's terrible for times like this where it's not like a giant district like Wo or um Clark where it's face looks these are these are faces that um people
210we know that will lose their position and that is hard and um I know you've talked about not necessarily even though let's say we're cutting um an elementary school teacher position um that it doesn't mean they have no job it means that they could move into a vacancy somewhere somewhere else and that that they won't necessarily be cut immediately. They will be offered a shift um in their work based on the holes we know about and the holes that we expect. Realistically, do we have an idea of how many people will truly not have a job at the end of these cuts? So I I believe within our teaching like purely teaching staffs, not just certified like teaching staff, I think there is a pretty decent shot that everyone finds a place. Um I I
211spent some time I kind of expected that question at some point and we we've been I mean we've talked about that in conversations but actually trying to pencil out where there's um there is potential um I think there is a good shot um for most of the other positions. Can you go to the next slide to the right? >> Yeah. For um basically what what remains um the for the intervention pair professional positions um potentially but it wouldn't there's not a a a natural um shift necessarily. there are other paraprofessional positions but not that title um so that there is potential there um for the admin assistant positions currently I I don't um think there is one potential vacancy um and for the um social worker positions there isn't a natural alternative hopefully that's the
212level of detail you are looking for even though it's not the answer you're hoping for. >> Thank you, Justin. >> Uh this is very hard, you know, to have to make these kind of decisions. It's decisions that really none of us want to really make. And I want to thank you. I know that you and Spencer have put a lot of work in and your administrative staff in uh being as thoughtful as you could about the cuts we have to make or the riffs. Unfortunately, I don't see an alternative. In the perfect world to steal Lupe's word, we wouldn't have to make any cuts, but we know that we're going to have to. And I want to also thank you. I had a lot of questions about the uh tenative budget and I want to
213thank you for taking the time. Uh I think I spent about four hours between two different meetings talking about the budget and different issues about surrounding it with you. So thank you for that. Um I do have a couple things as I look through the contracts. There's a couple that I don't see on there is Edge of Staff wasn't listed and then Kaplan wasn't listed. So, is there a reason they weren't listed as one of the contractors for having a contract? >> Again, for the tenative budget, this is def is uh is pulled off of an old report that we used to do that hasn't always been all-incclusive. It's always been sufficed for taxation for the the ten of budget. So, we're working to get that to be a little bit more accurate to show
214a couple of those other contracts that are newer that might not have listed on there or that are are funded out of a slightly different account code um that didn't get caught in where this report grabs data to generate from. >> Um I'm also curious about um what the edges staff cost. What does it cost in the district? I don't actually >> I I don't have a exact numbers but I I believe year to date we're less in costs than we have been in the past and like so last year we were kind of a hybrid. We still had some substitutes. We had edge of staff the year before where we did not have edge of staff at all at this point to the year. We're less in overall costs than we are in salary
215costs. That's not taking any account the benefit costs that that come along with that. So, and again, there's still I would like to do some projections out on on what it would cost through the end of this year. Um, but it's it's uh it's definitely either going to be a break even or a savings over previous funding. >> And trust, we can get those numbers to you. >> Okay. Thank you. Um also as I go through the contracts um we have contracts for physical therapy, behavioral therapy, occupation therapy, intervention uh services. Um it comes out to over 1.3 some million dollars. What are those for? I mean and how many students are being served by those uh >> I guess those uh contracts. most of those without being able to research it based on the
216the types of services you're saying most of those are for special education services. Um, and that's where so in the in last sorry in the in the current year's budget I think we have two 2.3 million >> 2.3 million budgeted in total for all of our special education contracts and um working with Dr. Lennox to go through really the all of the needs that we have in the district and what is actually specifically needed to meet the requirements of IEPs and that sort of thing that we can reduce. I think I think in the end it was close to $600,000 ultimately in those contract costs. Um recognizing also and this is really important that so meeting special education needs is not not a choice, right? We we have to do that. And so if we
217get new kids in next year that may require some more services that we may have thought we could reduce, we have to meet those services and we have we just have to figure out how to make it work. Um in the same respect, we know um that our um ASP numbers, so Dr. Lennox kind of talked about this. They they are even though our total special education numbers are decreasing, our our more significant needs are increasing. Um so that that may cause us to have to look at our our staffing. We may need to add a teacher potentially if you had a bunch of kids come in. We just we don't have a choice. Um but point being um some of those contracts that are listed those I I'm certain almost all of those are
218are special education contracts but many of those are being reduced for next year. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh also um one of the big topics uh over the last several board meetings and a lot of public comment has been about social workers and u I'm glad that you were able to find some funds to keep some of them. I had the opportunity to spend a couple hours with one of the social workers over at Fritz and I observed what she was doing and the work she was doing and uh I thought, you know, it was well worth it. Uh unfortunately, uh we're going to have to let some of them go. I think I don't see where there's money to keep all 12, but uh I'm glad there was at least some that we could
219keep. But I do worry uh over the next session se several budgets um the information I'm getting through NASBY and our lobbyists there it doesn't look like there's going to be a lot more funding coming towards the schools in the next session at least. So um we're have to make further cuts I would suppose or reductions maybe. So I worry about uh if we're going to be able to keep those positions for the long term. the the the one thing I would say and and I I think you're you're right. I mean, I don't think any of us want to feel like we're kicking the can down the road. That's not a not a good place to be. Um, one of the primary revenue sources that go into the educate the state education fund. Um,
220the the biggest source is sales tax. And um I I think a lot of the projections going into next year were were not good. One of the interesting things is um with inflation creeping back up that actually increases sales taxes revenues coming in just because prices are higher. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with projections for revenues for next year simply because of some of that. and that I'm not I'm not a fan of, you know, higher gas prices or anything like that, but it's just a reality that sales taxes are a big part of it. >> Yeah. Well, I I appreciate the work you guys are doing and um like I said, it's it's very hard for us up here and uh I can see you've struggled struggled with it and as
221I do appreciate the work you've done on it and I think like I said once again that I think you've been very thoughtful about it and um I do appreciate the time you've taken with me to go through the budget. I had a lot more questions that you were able to um answer for. So, thank you. All right. Um, okay. So, one, uh, just a I had asked whether or not and just and keep in mind any of these questions if you're unable to answer just, you know, this is discussion only. If we can, if I could be provided the answers before the actual budget, the final budget comes to us, I would appreciate that as well. Okay. So, one is um I did ask for because when we were doing the um presentations, you
222know, the budget workshops, um I asked whether or not when it came to the special education account, which contracts um if we could list out the contracts because at that workshop, we said, "Please go back, cut some. Do we know how many were cut for this budget?" I mean, like not I want to know dollar amount. >> Uh straight from from the December to budget of this one, I've got a $500,000 reduction. >> That's a very broad overall. Um I haven't had a good chance to sit down with Dr. Lennox and go specifically line by line, okay, which contracts were reduced. Um that's that's her expertise and I I would hate to get in the way of her good work there. Um, however, we will spend some time going over that before the final budget
223>> because before you what concerns me is when when we did the budget workshop, all of the budget workshops that we were provided, we, you know, we received this and we saw how much of the funding came out of the general fund. Special education, we didn't. And it wasn't until the last meeting that we learned that n $9.2 2 million of the special education fund um comes out of that's transferred from the general fund. That concerns me. So my first is then could we please look at what the district is obligated to do. So I know that you state that you know there's with IEPs and whatever else and like um Trusty Varnner said how many million in contract? One point >> 1.3 something. >> Yeah. 1.3 million in contracts. If we're not obligated, I
224really think we need to put that under scrutiny and get rid of the contracts and get those positions back into the classroom in all honesty. So, that would be my first um is that I really think that we need to look at that uh quite closely. Did you have something to say before I went on? Oh, I I was just going to point out if if in the the budget document, I know this is an absolute mess of numbers, but on page 35, that is the the special education fund, >> right? >> Um, and if if you go down in the in the right hand column, as you go down, eventually you get to a number that's a flat 1.8 million. Um it's about 10 12 cells down >> the purchase services. >> Yep. And
225just to the left of that it's 2.3 million that that represents the reduction in um what we expect contract costs need to be for next year. So I just I just wanted you to note like as far as what we have talked about at least that that's where that's represented. >> Okay. I still um would encourage us to do better when it's a $9.2 2 million transfer that goes in from the general fund. I would ask that um we look into that and maybe do better. All right. The next one is when you identify the reductions um how many of these reductions are one-time adjust adjustments and which represent ongoing like structural change like we reduce like those contracts, right? You say we reduced it by 500,000, right? >> Is that a a one time
226or we're going to continue, >> you know, like in all of these other reductions. >> Sure. >> If I un if I understand, I I wouldn't at this point expect that we would reduce contracts by another 500,000 next year. But I think in the in the same respect of what Dr. Lennox has gone through this year. The expectation is to go through that same exercise next year to identify if there are opportunities. I and and again the reality may be for some reason they have to that I don't know but that they have to go up but I I think the exercise at least of going through and looking at each individual student and what those needs are and making sure we're meeting the needs of the IEP but not necessarily going well above that.
227I I think that just has to like a lot of these things, it just has to be a part of the conversation every year going forward, at least over the next, you know, as long as we have this enrollment issue and if we're not getting more state funding for sure. >> Okay. >> Um if if I may, I think the anything salary based, those contracts are savings this year. So like what that 1.8 million for special ed contracts, we would expect that to be the FY28 number. The one thing that is not is that $500,000 bus purchase. That's kind of a stop gap. We don't need that this year, but if that's the kind of thing that would come back in future years, unless we want to get our our bus fleet back into a
228dire straight situation, that that's the only one out of there. Everything else is is largely based off of we're fewer students than we had in the past over the past four or five years. any benefit of the doubt for a student facing position, we've kept it. And so now it's time to reduce those um a little bit more drastically than maybe if we gotten rid of a few over the couple of years as as we've gone as we've reduced our student population over the last four or five years. >> Okay. All right. And then um within those workshops as well, we learned about different funds that were transfers, you know, that um the general fund had to supplement. And so I would look at um like the at risk, the gifted and talented, the summer
229school um and the nutrition fund. Are we still going to be supplementing these funds from the general fund? I I would expect some I I think our EL and our GATE and our at risk fund I'd almost rather that you think of them almost part of the general fund those are all largely salaries and all providing mostly teaching services. Um, so to see a transfer there, I mean, if we didn't want to see that transfer, we could move a position back to the general fund and fund it out of there. But they're all largely positions that are necessary um to to fulfill the educational needs of our students. >> One thing, one thing I would say is that um I I think there is room to rethink how we use some of those funds there.
230We we kind of established even be before this funding coming came in um especially in terms of the at risk like the our English learner needs are are kind of there's certain needs we just we have to meet in terms of staffing but with that risk we kind of made we made a decision as to how we were going to use those funds and there is a a substantial transfer there I I think there is room to at least reconsider how it could be reimagined how we are providing services to those students needing that which could in turn reduce what that transfer is significantly potentially. >> Yeah. >> All right. Um Yeah. So I would like to look into that as well. Um and then um because I would imagine then there it's going to
231be reoccurring. I mean it's continually reoccurring and not a one time >> at this point. >> Okay. All right. And then um lastly, I just wanted to know um how were the staffing reductions return uh determined? >> Like how how what was your process? So for for the the teaching positions specifically that that is really entirely based on ratios and and um at the elementary level we don't the ratios are actually set by the state. So you're looking at projected projected enrollments for next year and what is the number of staff you would need to to be within those ratios or at least within the ballpark of those ratios. Middle school and high school level there are no requirements. Theoretically you could have a bunch of classes of 50 and of course we'd have mutiny
232and that's not where we would want to be. Um but based on based on how um like the ratios of staffing um it's if if you look at districts around us, our ratios tend to be rather low. And so if you are if you increase those ratios a little bit, you can still have reasonably similar class sizes. there still is going to be some kind of impact but not an enormous impact necessarily. Um the the um then it came to like after that is you you were looking at some of the the bigger ticket items I guess in terms of programming and then you're also looking at where where are there already maybe vacancies that we can try to assign some things to somebody else. I mean that and that's not real scientific, right? Um
233but after going through all that then it's still there are still some really big numbers that we're we're trying to to look at. Um and so then as going through you know more recent additions in terms of um um some of the intervention paraprofessional positions and how far we have come in establishing intervention systems in our schools. Um that became an area that that we started looking at. Um we had conversations with um several conversations with um our schools trying to get a sense of what you know what what potentially because because the numbers were so big what potentially could we we look at? Um so >> um so intervention the 12 intervention pair of professionals is intervention for behavioral >> in in this case this kind of intervention is academic. >> It is academic.
234>> Yeah. >> Okay. Okay. Um because with that if you put a dollar amount to it at whatever case I am just adamant that I do believe that more funding could be generated from um less the special education contracts to fill some of these positions. So we're not cutting. However, that that bless you. Um, yes, go ahead. >> I just I might have missed it in a previous meeting, but I know we've talked about the jump start as well, right? Passing off some of those costs to students um or to their families. Does uh Carson City also pay for AP tests because >> the foundation does >> the found they pay for all the exams for everybody? Not all of it, but it it at least dis for some kids, but otherwise discounted for many
235others. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So, they still pay so students may pay part of the cost of AP test unless they are like free and reduced lunch or >> Right. >> Okay. >> Um Okay. So, those are the questions I had been before we do a recap. Are there any additional questions that you all generated? Trusty Roberts. >> Um yeah, a couple with the contracts. um can you explain to me the difference between all these different um speech therapy services and like the speech pathologists that are in the schools like why why do we have so many contracts for that when speech is offered? >> So I I'll I'll give you my best explanation and then I'll talk to Christie Dr. Linux too and just to make sure but there is there is a
236reality of we we cannot we don't have enough speech pass to necessarily provide all the services or even like the intensity maybe of services in some cases. Um and so that that's where you will have some of those extra contracts that that do come in and even you'll have situations where we have a vacancy right and so then there there happen to be speech paths who are in the community that we can contract with to help help cover during those times. >> Okay. Thank you. And then question I forgot to ask earlier. Um how much is our incentive for the early notice of retirement or resignation? >> Uh was $1,000 for up to 40 I think we said people and Mr. Sadler I think we had 29 this year. Yeah. So 29 actually took advantage
237of it. >> Okay. So, not too much, but I just wondered what looking at cutting that down would look like, but a thousand's not really too much. >> Really quick on the speech therapy, though. With all the different therapies that we offer, >> can some of that be that the student goes and uses their health insurance? I mean, I know for physical therapy, if my child needed physical therapy, my health insurance would cover it. >> Yeah. um speech therapy um because I did have three kids with club flip and glove pallet they covered it insurance covered it so I just don't understand >> why the school is taking on such burden is could be >> didn't they add like being able to bill for Medicare yeah >> for some of the services that I mean
238that's fairly recent the last couple years that we could start they could start billing Medicare for some of those services so >> whether or not some of these other services could be added to that. Yeah, >> sure. Um, so I I I'm not an expert in the world of special ed, so I don't exactly know the answer to the question. I I think ultimately we're not providing services if they are not in an IEP for a so for some reason if they're in the IEP. We're we're offering those services. I I don't know exactly the circumstances of what our obligation is within that, but we can get you that information. >> Yeah, that would be great. Uh, President Peterson, did you or Trusty Peterson, did you have more? >> Um, I did, but what was
239it? Um, oh, for the the reduction in in staffing, um, the teaching positions, uh, specifically because that's what's up here for reduction at the sites. Um, what do you have a process in mind for what that will look like and how that is decided? Is that something where you will like at the district level decide which schools need to take a hit and then leave it up to like the principal or is that all going to be dictated from the district office? >> So, at the at the elementary level, um the because of the number of students being projected, we know kind of what the the number of staff should be or would be for for next year potentially. Um so principles are are being made aware of if if they have um if they've
240been identified for a reduction um at the at the middle school level it actually um well I don't I don't think there's actually like there are um I don't think there's actually going to be end up being a reduction at the middle school level because the there there's shifting that can likely occur. Um and I I think the high school level is about the same with that. That one's a little more complicated, but um in in that case um like we would get feedback from the from the principles um as far as what they you know how they might want to adjust that um in terms of where people end up. Um that's a part of the the next item is allowing for directed transfer. So so we're trying to place people into positions um
241so that they that they do at least have a place and if they decide to apply for something else after the fact they can certainly do that but just trying to um get them to a home. So there there's a couple things um and I don't know Mr. Sadler if you want to come up but you know you're looking at Have you been waiting? He did he shake his head? >> Wow. Wow. Um but as as far as like like how the decision is made um specifically Dan Sadler for the record. Uh so as far as like who gets impacted is that the understanding the question? So there is pretty extensive statute and also language in the collective bargaining agreements that spells that out. Um so the the quick assumption is that it just quickly
242jumps to the least senior and that is not the case. Um it's actually pretty complex as far as looking at first year probationary employees first and foremost like for certified staff and then you work through the evaluations and what those ratings have looked like and then you get to seniority. Um, so it's not a I can't sit here right now and say, "Well, it's going to impact this way and this way." without going through those scenarios and looking at our staff. >> Now, that's a helpful answer that it it's not an arbitrary, it's not a decision, it's more of a formula kind of. All right. And then my only other thought is I wanted to just add my voice to what um President Walt is addressing with the special education. Um there is so much
243that we cannot say no to as you know so much that we must fund and that we must provide for. Um, and so I would agree that there are so many things that are are nice to have and helpful, but at this point if they're not necessary to have, I think we do need to look at at referring things out um because there are resources in the community. um it takes more work on the behalf of the families, but um the same therapy that might be nice to have contracted and available during the school day can be scheduled and visited outside of the schools. Um and obviously that's not going to be the case for all things. There are some that we have to um provide and we we should provide. But um when the
244trade-off is is offering nice to have services, convenient services that are available elsewhere versus maintaining our teachers. That's a hard one to to shift that priority. Trusty RmIrez, >> could we also look at the SRO's positions to see if we are able to reduce um the amount of officers that we have at the different schools? That may be another area where we can look into saving. >> Okay. So, if there's no more, I'm just going to do a recap. I took notes. Um so the fin so before the final budget is presented to the school board um these are the concerns that we would um that we have addressed and and hopefully I've captured them all. Um definitely keep um social workers as many as we can. Two, we need to look at the school
245operating equity and if it is not equitable, we need to look at closing a site. three, not paying 100% of jump start or summer school for um students. Um we looked at cutting the contracts and so we're looking at necessary um uh contracts only. What is the district obligated to provide and whether some of those services that we are paying for now can actually be build to health insurance or if the families are able to go get those services on their own using their health health insurance and then possibly looking at Medicaid um as a reimbursement as well. provide you've been asked also to provide the board with a comprehensive list of the vendors and the amounts um before the next meeting so we can take a look at that as well and then look
246at funds um look at funds receiving support from the general fund and see whether or not any of those funds um could be reduced and not be supported by the general fund as much. And then the lastly is look at the necessity of all of the SRO's positions that we have. Did I capture it all? >> And the positions that the district can function without? >> Yes. And then the positions that the district office might be able to function without or have a shared positions. Is that it? All right. Thank you very much. Right. If there's no further um discussion, we will close agenda item number eight and move on to agenda item number nine. This is for possible action to authorize a superintendent to issue a notice of layoff due to a reduction in
247forest rift for certain classified and certified staff positions if necessary including without limitation social work positions teachers teachers on assign special assignment TOSA administrative assistants and intervention pair professionals due to financial constraints. If approved, the board may also authorize staff to pursue voluntary or directed transfers of staff to fill vacancies as available. This is for possible action presented by Superintendent Fielding. >> Thank you, President Walt. Um, and not to um ex extend this I think longer than it needs to be um after I think a good discussion around this. So, this item specifically grants the authority us the authority to begin issuing reduction and force notifications to staff. Um, it's not, you know, again, I I don't like any of this and it is unfortunate, but um, in terms of timing, it's really important because
248with May 1st is a deadline coming up to issue letters of intent specifically for especially for certified staff. Um and and there is a process that you know HR needs to be meeting with people even before we get to that point and start having discussions about where people could potentially um land here um and talk about the process and the possibilities and and future impacts um to them. And so this is um trying to meet that statutory um deadline or before we get to that statutory deadline of May 1st. Um this would allow us to begin having conversations uh with staff in this that are um subject to this. Happy to take any questions. Um, so then what we have, um, okay, so I do have a question before we get started. Is the possibility
249then with all of the recommendations that we provided to you to possibly look at before presenting us with the final budget, if we approve this um, agenda item as is, you could possibly then come back to us and say, "Hey, guess what? We found by doing you know what whatever it might be with the recommendations we were able to find $150,000 more which would not bring us into a deficit any larger deficit spending but we were able to find the 150. So we weren't we did not have to do as much as we said we wanted to do. >> Right. We could effectively re recall um people if if those issues or these notices had been issued. Yeah. or do the first and then not even have to issue them at all. Right. So, go
250and and find, you know, some um a couple hundred thousand of contracts that we are not obligated to do and before you actually, but if we give you this authority, you could come back and say, "I did not need to do all of those cuts." >> Yeah, it is. It is possible. Well, I I just the the timeline is is getting tight, so that's just Yeah, >> but I understand that. Okay. So, at this time then, um we'll go ahead and open it for questions. Um Trusty Varner, >> I don't have any questions. I think uh during the budget uh hearing, we pretty well discussed everything. So, I don't have a question. >> Trusty Peterson. Uh same. I feel like we hashed things out pretty heavily in the budget conversation. Thank you. >> Thanks, Trusty
251Roberts. >> Uh, same. I think we got it all. Did um we talk about billing Medicaid for this and that's the plan and what does that look like? >> Yeah. So, thank you for for reminding me of that. So, so Medicaid, yes, the plan is to we already bill Medicaid for a lot of special education services as as trustes brought up. So, that that that process has already started. Um, we we are fully on board with trying to expand that as much as possible um actually across multiple categories of employees. Um the the reality is that the the reimbursements and we've gone back and verified this again just to be sure. The reimbursements are nowhere near what we thought they were going to be say four or five years ago, what we had initially been
252told. Um but there are there is um there is some reimbursement expected and that is something that we we are expecting and and including in this conversation. >> Okay, great. And then I just echoing um President Walt with um trying to look at the budget reductions um hopefully before you send out any notices. I think that I agree with you there. Thank you, Trusty RmIrez. So, following up on on Trusty Roberts, you will be able to bring us a list of any additional reductions before you send the budget. >> Well, so I wouldn't I wouldn't be because we we don't have another board meeting. >> That's what I thought, >> right? So, I I wouldn't be I wouldn't be bringing it to you. It's I mean I think again in the bigger scheme of things
253I I don't want any of these and and so if if there is some stone in in the world of contract or somewhere that we could potentially find another $150,000 in savings, we'll certainly take advantage of that and and make an appropriate move not to not to have to do any of this or something in this. So if I'm not comfortable uh with this um with moving forward with this, I can refrain from from my vote. Correct. From voting. >> You would need to vote, but you would be a no vote. >> Correct. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Sorry. >> Yeah. All right. Thank you. Um Trustee Status. >> Close. That was close. >> I have no questions. Thank you. Um yeah, so mine I already said was please try to find the money before. Um
254but I you know I understand the importance and of doing this as well. So um at this time then um do I have a motion? >> I'll make the motion. I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees authorize the superintendent to issue notices of layoff due to res reduction in force riff for certain classified and certified staff positions if necessary, including without limitation social worker positions, teachers, teachers on special assignment, TOSA, administrative assistance and intervention. pair of professionals. Approval by the board also authorizes staff to pursue voluntary or direct transfers or transfers of staff to fill vacancies as available. >> Do I have a second? >> I'll second mo motion by Trusty Varner, seconded by uh Trustee Roberts. Do we have public comment? Good evening again, trustees. Brian Wallace, president of OCA
255for the record. Um, as Superintendent Fueling just pointed out, you are in a deadline crunch, unfortunately, due to the May one deadline for letters of intent. So, you're going to potentially lay off workers without being able to revisit any of this. I know you have done your due diligence, but the association wants to caution you once again. You cannot potentially undo this. You're going to lose excellent staff. You've spent all this time and effort to build it. I understand your financial concerns because I will be shouldertoshoulder with you at the next legislative session most likely if I get my way with NCAA. to reiterate all of this and to reiterate to $2 Joe down the street from us that you can't campaign on students mental health and you can't tout a hospital that we are
256potentially going to overfill by cutting staff that's addressing the needs of our students. You heard from a contracted social worker where we stand today with our students and the success rates that we have. Going back to the previous school board meeting, we continue to serve a message to the legislature. We can keep limping along. Let's just cut again. Let's keep repeating the history instead of marching on the capital. And anyone in the public right now that has these same concerns, it is going to take a march on this Capitol finally to drive this message home about being student centered in the state of Nevada. How we think or can tolerate or want to undo our hard work needs to finally be a line in that sand. And I'll be the first to lead down there.
257Thank you. Carrie Prior, principal of Celiger Elementary School. I I just want to thank you all. Um truly truly the last board meeting was emotionally exhausting and I'm sure it was for you as well to listen to the public comment. But what I appreciate so much about our board over all the years that I've been in Carson is that you do seek out the answers. You go to the buildings. You talk to the people who are in the trenches and I thank you for doing that. Mr. Varner, I heard that you had went over to Fr and I really appreciate that. I know you all read um a message that you received from my social worker, Miss Na'viad, from Stephanie. Um, you've read my messages, you've listened, and and we're just so grateful. I want
258to thank AJ and and the financial team and the and the all the people at the district office who at least are acknowledging that we can bring back six social workers. I think that's very important. Um, so once again, I just want to thank you for listening and doing what's best for the schools. >> Thank you. Any additional When you start, please state your name for the record. >> Um, my name is Patricia Hernandez Huarez for the record. Um, I'm a school social worker over at Empire. Um, I didn't even think I was going to come up here and talk to you guys again, uh, cuz last time was really emotional. Um, but I appreciate you guys like really um thinking about us and keeping six of us, but you know, just uh I just
259couldn't sit there and not say anything, but please give us another chance. Invest in us. Give us one more year to prove to you that we can do this and we're working really hard so we can make sure that we're going to build Medicaid next year. We can bill we can make revenue for you guys. We just are asking for a chance to invest in us because we have been grant funded. We're just asking for one more year to give us a chance. And you just heard Brian say he's we're he's going to go there next year. So are I'm going to be there. I'm not going to speak for the other social workers, but I'm going to be there doing my part so we can advocate to keep us in the schools. I It's
260been really hard to digest all of this. Um, and I I'm just asking to please give us a chance. Please just give us one year to get everything together to work with our team. You saw Stephanie's presentation that she emailed you guys. She had a layout how we're going to take advantage of those PLC's to really get us going and to start really getting on the same page to bill Medicaid. I'm asking you to please give us a shot. Please. Thank you. >> Thank you. Hello board. Um Stephanie and Avida on record. I did send you guys a presentation. It was 10 minutes long. So if you didn't view it all, I feel like this is a great opportunity to please look at it. I did do a layout. We talked about Medicaid. I gave
261you guys reimbursement. the money is good. We're going to continue to fight. We're going to continue to make sure that we are getting the students in those two tier two levels, tier three levels by fixing our systems. The layout for next year's PLC that's going to be really important like that push to make sure that we're helping and being part of that solution um is what we are trying to show like we're not we're asking just to help in that partnership. But I also want to highlight like the importance of every student. Um, I know that we are advocating hard and it's not just for us to keep our job. It's for the students. I think of all the students I serve. I think about next year when anniversaries come up, when things come up,
262like who is going to be there for them. So, I'm really pushing hard and giving you guys different ideas and I have more ideas if you guys want to hear them. Um, but we really are asking just for one more year and I know right now we're at six and I'm super grateful for that. I don't know how you guys are going to decide that or where they're going to go because I think that's super important to also consider. Um, but I'm really hoping that you guys will look at the look at keeping all you know at secondary and at high school. And I just want to say thank you for the opportunity. And if you didn't look at that presentation, please take a look at it because I did highlight a lot of things
263that can help us into finding solutions as opposed to just asking for you guys to give us a shot with nothing that we're going to offer. We're going to give it our all and we try to do that this year. And so we really hope that we can find that way to keep all 12. Thank you. >> Thank you. Any additional? All right. Seeing none, put it up for a vote. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed. >> All right. Uh motion passes. Uh please refect with an opposition from uh Trusty Ramirez. All right. Um closing agenda item number nine. Moving on to agenda item number 10. Discussion on proposed changes of Carson City School District policy 505 assignment within a district. First reading for discussion only. And this is presented by
264Brandon Bringhurst. Molly real quick. Um I did not uh get my voice out before for the A before moving on to the nay on that last item. So um I'm just being responsible and on record now and being a yay on that vote. But I hadn't I had not voted when before you moved on to the base. So >> just putting that on record. >> Good evening, President Walt and members of the board. Uh this is uh policy 505 for first reading very brief presentation to give a little bit of background for this. This uh is a change to what is called open enrollment and it is required by assembly bill 533. This is the summary uh statement of that assembly bill. There are a couple of things to point out here that it requires
265that districts adopt a policy that authorizes students to attend school outside of their zoned school and that it also requires the department of ed to establish a program toward grants of money for the purpose of providing transportation for those pupils. Um, and we'll talk about some of those details as we go through this. It's important to note that Carson City School District has had a variance procedure that has been in place for many years. And so this will be replacing that variance procedure that uh or policy that was last updated in 2012. So that's been in place for a long time and has been well utilized by our community. One of the pieces that I wanted to show you is how our current variances play out. So to read this chart, if you look on
266the left hand side, I think it's your left too. Uh attendance zone that lists the the schools and this the zone that the student the school that the student students are zoned for and across the top there you have the school that they are actually enrolled in. So for instance, Borderwick Bray, the first school there, 400 students that are zoned for Borderwick are actually going to Borderwick, but there are five students who are zoned for Borderwick and going to Empire, 18 to Fremont, so on and so forth. So you can see that virtually every one of our schools has students attending them that are zoned for every other school. The only exception that you'll see on this chart is uh Celiger Elementary where there are no students from Fremont that are zoned for Fremont that
267are attending Celiger. But you see a great deal of um of movement of our students and also um I think that's all I'll say about that. We also do outofd district variances. This policy does not change our outofd district variance process. So we receive students who are zoned for other districts and we also have students in Carson City who choose to attend other districts. And a brief breakdown of what that looks like for us over the last three years. You can see that the number of students that come to Carson City School District from other districts exceeds the number of students that leave Carson City to go to our neighboring districts, which is great uh because as when they are enrolled here, we get the funding for them um in Carson even though they may
268be coming from one of our neighboring districts. So that is a uh net gain for us. So that's a little presentation to give a little bit of background on the this policy. You'll see the changes in the policy um highlighted there in red. One of the keys to point out this policy does two things. It does the it it talks about how we establish attendance areas and we have made a couple of changes in there. These are not changes that are required by AB533, but as we reviewed this policy, some changes that we felt were warranted. For instance, and it's part of something that has been discussed here tonight. Previously, there was no language in here for reszoning schools based on declining enrollment or the potential closure of a school. So I'm when this policy
269was written originally uh we were in a time of increasing enrollment and we are now in a period of declining enrollment. So we felt it was warranted to add that um that circumstance in there as well that declining enrollment and potential closure of schools would also necessitate resoning. Most of the changes come in the section under the open enrollment procedures. So um the first step in our open enrollment procedures is to uh establish an open enrollment window which will typically begin in January of each year. Parents will submit a variance request to the district during that open enrollment window. Some of the changes that are required the placement for students on those requesting those variances are really driven by space at the schools. >> Before you move on, yes, I do have a question. >>
270Yeah. >> On the first paragraph, u when you open the open enrollment window, >> Mhm. >> how long is it open? >> Uh this the policy doesn't specifically specify how long it's open. Um currently we uh accept variances as long as we have space available. Um the those variances are accepted. Um so I think potentially adding some language in there about that we it opens in January and then it is open until the spaces are filled. >> Something like that maybe. >> Okay. >> How disruptive though is that in a school? Well, um when we do that before the school year starts, it is not disruptive uh before the school year starts. Once the school year opens, it can be more disruptive. And we'll see there's some language in here um about the movement of
271students during the school year where we limit that to one move um during the year. I should also say in this that this policy um is based on the best information that we currently have from NDE with the guidance about how this should be crafted into policy. Um it will need to be submitted to NDE to be graded on their rubric. We don't yet have their rubric and so some of what we have here, we may be coming back to you to change some of it. Depending on how you read the guidance from NDE, it it may indicate that students can move around as much as they want during the school year. Um what we have in here is to limit that to some extent because of how disruptive it can be not just for
272the school but for a student's learning. Okay. Um okay in uh section three it talks about the placement will be based really on two uh criteria. First one is space available at the school and grade level that's requested. We have a little bit of a caveat there for our kindergarten because our kindergarten enrollment is obviously very difficult to predict and so we don't really know how many kindergarters we have until school starts and we always have to leave enough space in those kindergarten classes for students who are zoned and live in that school zone. So um kindergarten looks a little bit different because of that. The only other criteria that we use in uh determining if a variance should be granted is whether or not the student has been suspended for 10 or more days,
273expelled from school or deemed a habit habitual discipline concern in the previous in that school year or the school year immediately preceding. Those are the only two criteria that we can use to grant or deny variances is space and then those uh behavior criteria that are mentioned there. Now the behavioral criteria was that by um uh the AB by legislation or was something okay >> that is by legislation. >> So we can't add chronic absenteeism. >> We used to have uh things like chronic absenteeism in there and that is no longer uh an allowed criteria under the legislation. Um if section number four talks about if if there are more requests to a particular school than what we have space for in that school the process that we go through to decide who uh gets
274those variances. The first we have some required priority students. These would be students who are zoned for a school that this that NDE has rated as either a one or a twostar school and they are wanting to go to a school that has a higher rating. So they would get first preference um if there are more requests than we can accommodate at a particular school. After that then our next criteria would be some discretionary priorities. children of employees, siblings that are currently enrolled in the school. And then after that, it would be a random lottery uh for any to fill any remaining spots. Uh paragraph 5, we base it on the space available and behavior. We cannot specifically cannot consider things like athletic ability, participation in extracurricular activities, disability status, English learner status, or the
275students home address. Once granted, that variance is in place for the duration of that um until the student would graduate from that particular school level. So for instance, if you get a variance in third grade, you don't need to renew that every year, that is good until the end of fifth grade, which is the end of that uh that school. Uh unless the student has is suspended for 10 or more days, expelled from school, or deemed a habitual discipline concern. And then there is that piece. Students can only transfer to a school outside of their attendant zone once during a school year. So if I choose to do a variance from Celiger to Fremont, I can't do it from Fremont to Fridge and then Fridge to Borderwick all in the same school year. >> You
276couldn't go back to the school you came from here. Is that >> you can you can go back to the school that you came from. You are always entitled to go to the school that you are that you live in that attendance zone. Seven. uh we cannot assess any tuition or fees. The students would still be responsible to pay the same fees that every student at that school pays, but there's no additional fees like in order to get the variance, you have to pay um a fee that does that is not um allowed. The next section talks about how we determine capacity. Um AJ has been helping uh with this as well. Mr. fueling has been helping with this because there's the criteria is based on what NDE considers an instructional space and the square
277footage within those instructional teaching spaces. Things that are not considered instructional teaching spaces are listed there. Uh gymnasium, theater, administrative offices, cafeteria, storage space. Capacity calculations look at the number of teaching stations we have, the number of seat seats in each station. That can include some criteria based on what is being taught and the grade level and the instructional model used at that station. And then we use an occupancy calculation of one person per 40 square ft of instructional space. And that is directly from the legislation. um kindergarten capacity. We'll consider that instructional space capacity and also the enrollment projections. That again is a little bit of a a carve out there for kindergarten because of how different that looks in particular. Any questions about the capacity? Next, um, transportation assistance is something that is
278part of this legislation. And to be eligible for state funded transportation assistant, students need to meet two criteria. First, they need to live in a school. They need to be zoned for a school that received one of the two lowest performance ratings as deemed by NDE. So, that would be schools that are deemed a one or a twostar school. only those students would be eligible for this transportation assistance. And then the second criteria is those parents need to provide assigned attestation that the student has no other viable form of transportation um in order to arrive at school and depart from school at the conclusion of the day. If the um funding from the state is insufficient to serve all of the applicants that meet those criteria, then assistance would first be awarded to students who
279are eligible based on those two criteria and who also qualify for free and reduced lunch or reduce u or are identified as English learners, migrant students, McKenna Vento students or students who are in foster care. If the funding from the state is insufficient and this is a grant that the state has set up for the for one year um and we are working through the process of applying for that grant funding. If that funding is insufficient then no transportation assistance would be provided and the parents would be responsible for that transportation. So it is contingent on uh the funding coming from the state. Really quick, do we know how much that is >> for the whole state? I believe that the budget that has been set aside is 7 million. >> You don't know how
280much we'll get? >> We don't know how much. We have still >> Yeah, we're still in the process of that application process to see what we uh would get from that. We will notify parents of the decision, written notification to the parent or legal guardian regarding the outcome of their application for a variance. If it is denied, the notice will include the specific reason for that denial and it could can be appealed in writing to the superintendent or designate, the decision of the superintendent or designate is final. Um if uh likewise if a request for transportation is found ineligible then um or funding is unavailable the district will provide information to the parents about other uh community options available to assist with transportation. Really quick then is the notification of decision is that just based
281on transportation denial an appeal or overall policy denial of or appeal of of variant? >> Great question. It it is the overall variance um request whether that is uh granted or denied um they would receive um written notification of that and an opportunity to appeal. >> All right. Thank you so much. Do we have any questions? Uh, go ahead, Trusty Roberts. >> Okay. Um, thanks for bringing up the absenteeism, President Walt. I had that question as well. Um, with the kindergarten applications, will they when will they be notified? like should parents put a um you know register their kids at their zoned school as well so that they have that space or do and they're ready and prepared for them just in case that denial happens at the school they're hoping to go to. Yeah,
282that's a great question and this year we are certainly running kind of behind in the process as parents are already registering for kindergarten and we are just bringing this policy to you now and we've been waiting on some things with some clarification with NDE so that we could get to this point. Um so for this year what we have uh asked the principles to do with the variance requests that they've received for kindergarten to hold on to those variance requests until we can get um our projections and our space available solidified and then we'll be able to notify those parents and get them those requests for variance either granted or denied. So at this point they should fill out those requests for the school that they want to attend and then we will go from
283there. Okay, great. And you can request the variance to go to um a lower school. Correct. You just don't qualify for transportation if you're that three or four star. >> Correct. You can request to go to any school. Um it the the transportation assistance only applies if you are at a one or two star school. wanting to go to a a three or four three, four or five star school, >> right? Okay. Does that include the reimbursement for them driving their students? >> Correct. >> all transportation assistance is only available if you're coming from um those one or two star schools. And I should note, I didn't mention this when I was going through the summary, there are two forms of transportation assistance. It can be either uh district transportation that's provided or reimbursement to
284the parents um at the state's determined rate. Um but the decision as to whether or not it is which form is a district decision. The district will decide this is what we can do reimbursement or we can do bus. It's not a parent choice. We will determine which one of those works best for that based on bus routing and and all all those other factors. >> Okay. And is that reimbursement option um state funded as well or is that okay? >> Um and do you know yet how this will impact the bus routes, the times? Um do we have enough buses to cover that? Is the state giving us more buses for that? >> That's a great question. Um, we don't, um, we don't know for sure yet because we don't know how many students
285have requested, but in talking with transportation, we're really talking about students from two schools or we only have two schools this year that would be in that one or two star school status. So, it's a limited number of schools. We already also provide a fair amount of transportation to students who qualify for that through McKenna Vento services. So, transportation believes that with two bus routes, we would be able to service our McKenna Vento students as well as service any students that need this type of transportation. But again, that at this point is based on our best estimates and we will know more once we see exactly um how many students are requesting this. >> Okay. And my last question, um, on the notification of decision number one, um, it just says that, you know, the
286district will notify the parents or legal guardians. Do you have, um, like a timeline of when you try to do that? Hopefully plenty of time for them to >> Yeah. Uh, and and that's Yes. Plenty of time for them to make their uh, decisions and arrangements. We don't have a specific time listed there. we could look at putting something in there. But part of it is that, you know, some of those if you turn in your variance in January and we get some of those processed, but then we still have space and people are turning in their variance requests in May and in June. So, there won't be a specific date where all of them are notified because all of them don't come in at the same time. Um, but I'll look a little bit
287more at that and see if we could put some sort of a time frame around that. >> Okay. Okay. I guess um because you said there's not really necessarily a deadline for when they need to get it turned in by. >> Correct. Because part of um yeah, part of what the state is looking at is having us continually update our space available in our schools on a quarterly basis, even throughout the school year, which obviously as we're updating that on a quarterly basis throughout the school year, then that um allows for movement. >> Sure. all the time. >> I guess my concern then is if you're um you know getting those first priority student variances, variance requests later than some of these others. If you've already accepted this, but then those first priorities come in.
288Do you have to adjust? Do you >> Good question. We'll look at that and see if we need to change and adjust some of our wording here. >> Okay. Thanks. On that note, I would encourage you to possibly um publish, you know, the school capacities. Is there a way to put it on the website to publish like the uh capacity numbers at at every school and possibly by grade level? >> Yeah. And that is that's part of the legislation and so we will be doing we will be doing that. >> Any other questions? Uh Trusty Peterson. Uh just some clarification in that transportation section um where the parents need to sign an attistation that they need to be bust. Um you would that just be the one time like when they apply for the the
289variance to begin with? >> Correct. That would be when they apply for the variance. Um now and I think part of what should be noted there as well. So let's say for instance this this year um our we have like I said we have two schools who qualify which would be Mark Twain and Empire and so students may request that variance may qualify for that transportation but then if the following year Empire becomes a three three star school then they would no longer be eligible for that transportation assistance even though they may continue with their variance to Celiger for 3 years. Um, if their zone school becomes a three-star school, then it no longer qualifies for transportation assistance. >> Okay. >> Um, thank you. And then, um, just a curiosity question here too. Um, still
290going with the transportation part, um, where it's talking about, um, if there's not sufficient, the first will be awarded. And then the specific groups listed um free and reduced English language learners, migrants, McKini Vento, foster care. Are those specific groups dictated to us or did we choose that? >> Those are dictated to us. >> Okay. Um and then the final would be um is there a process for cancelling or do you just enroll in your home school? >> You enroll in your home school. >> Okay. Um, was this based on did we balance these off of um neighboring policies or did we just wing it? >> Oh, well um a little bit of both. Um, we did uh get some guidance from NDE and NDE shared with us um some a neighboring district um policy
291that they thought was pretty good and so we utilized that and modeled some of our work after that as well. Um, Wo and Clark have been doing uh some version of this for some time. It's not entirely clear if their version will need to change too in order to meet the um legislative requirements that that have come down. >> Trusty Gardner. >> Now, I guess my question is who's lucky person that gets to handle this from the district? >> We're not hiring anyone. That would be >> legacy. This could turn out to be kind of complicated. >> It definitely could turn out to be very complicated. Um and um you know it's the staff that we have. It's uh you know myself and u Miss Gina Hines uh and Paige Kamara. Um we all we
292work through a lot of the variances. the campuses also um take a fair amount of that burden because that's where the parents show up to fill out the forms and and whatnot. Um so it is a um a challenge and I think that's something worth noting as we've talked about budget there's a lot of um you know managing a system like this takes people and so it's a requirement that we have something like this but it does take people to manage it and it's people who already have full jobs. >> I understand that. Uh just one other question. We don't know how the mileage reimbursement is going to be handled. Um is it going to be per mile because then I can see if they bring the kid to school three days a week but
293they're absent two days a week. I mean that's one of the really big challenges with the reimbursement. Um it is per mile. It's by the government. What's it called? GSA. Thank you. Um so that rate is set and we have um you know mileage from school A to school B. Um but then yes we need to keep track of you didn't show up all five days so you shouldn't get paid for all five days which is why in many cases providing a bus may be a much better way to go because that other part of that managing who's getting reimbursed and how much. Now the schools are having to keep track of all that attendance in a different sort of way. And now Mr. Winward's department um needs to do a lot of work to
294make sure that people are getting reimbursed, the right people are getting reimbursed for the right amount. So that potentially becomes very cumbersome as well. >> Yeah. >> All right. Thank you very much. Um, seeing no further questions, we're going to go uh close agenda item number 10 and move on to agenda item number 11. This is discussion and possible action to approve the superintendent's goals for the 2026 calendar year. This is an action item presented by Superintendent Fueling. >> Thank you, President Walt. Uh, in front of you, item 11, you have my goals. In the interest of time, do you have any questions? And I believe we do, but thank you very much for not reading them to us. Um, so who start at this end, start at the middle? How would you like to
295All right, we'll go ahead and start with Trusty Roberts. >> I think I have questions on this one. >> So, thank you. >> All right, very good. Trusty RmIrez, just one suggestion. I'm wondering if we are able to add some measurable outcomes to um goal number one. Um I know that you're focusing on on fine-tuning the uh MTSS, but it is my understanding we already have that in place on all the schools. Correct. >> Yeah, it to uh two different levels. Some some schools are absolutely dialed in. Some are still there's still some holes that that need to be um fine-tuned. And and that's why Renee actually asked me why did you leave the word expansion in there and then strike it out and because that that word was there and we're not looking to
296expand it. It really is just um continuing to to really to a great extent fine-tune. So, um I mean we we could certainly um >> I'm just wondering if we are able to align it with the strategic plan perhaps. I know that you provide us with um uh measurable outcomes um when you bring us the the strategic plan on a quarterly basis. Um I don't know if we a if we are able to t uh tie that into that either an on a or b because I notice on be also focuses on improve uh imp improve achievement. So it says begin the district by returning a PLC is to the PLC a work model for all schools supporting the professional teamwork of our staff to improve achievement for all students. So, I'm wondering if we
297can perhaps maybe tie that to the measurable outcomes that we have on the strategic plan. >> Um, I I think we can I'm sorry, my brain is just not >> I know it's it's so late for every one of us. I I'm I don't know. That was just a suggestion. I mean, if everyone else feels the same, you know, it feels that it's all good, I'm I'm okay with that. But I just wanted to bring that up in case um everyone feels that we could add masterable outcomes. If everyone is okay with that, we can go ahead and leave it as is. No, that was actually one of mine is um yeah, so one of my concerns was what are the measurable indicators for the MTSS implementation? >> And so I think that we need
298to and I believe it was trusty one of trusty varner's as well. So I I guess it it depends on the um exactly what you're looking for because so there's something called a uh TFI tiered fidelity inventory which gauges where our schools are and we like for each school how far they have come in kind of becoming this ideal MTSS system in their schools. Um, most of our elementary schools are in a great place. Our middle and high schools continue to improve. So, I don't know if is that kind of what you're looking for or if if there if it's a specific like um like student data point outcome, I would need to go back and talk with um I I would talk with Christy and Brandon a bit. I mean just in general like
299we believe this is going to improve um you know proficiency scores and achievement but I I don't know if that's exactly the right data point to to look at. So I'm not sure exactly what >> and I myself didn't have any idea. That's why I was just asking you was on that measurable what were you thinking you know how would we be able to measure your um that >> I tr like in in my mind so with a lot of the PLC work that is going to be happening MTSS and and the PLC piece actually integrate very well um we are steps ahead because we are so welldeveloped on the MTSS side I think it's to me it's just getting it so that on that tiered fidelity inventory piece that we know that all of
300our systems are in place. >> Is your mic on? >> Yes. Sorry. >> Could you just get a little bit closer? Rene standing up behind me and I think that's what it's for. >> Um Um and and so I I just say that in terms of if we're going to make this work, like you can do systems and they come and they go cuz nobody really does it to what it's supposed to be and they don't stick with it. And that's that's what I don't want with the MTSS that we are fully across the board. We have this dialed in across all of our schools. That to me is really important in terms of supporting a lot of that uh the larger PLC now roll out that happens because that in turn should lead to
301increased student achievement. It's just it's not going to happen next necessarily happen next year. So that's why I I don't know. I I would feel more comfortable um saying like are we getting our systems absolutely dialed in and in place like there there's a lot of work in building the systems around the PLC piece as well. Um I'm I was I was just going to add to that because of the um comprehensive district needs assessment. There's a section in there that's specific to MTSS and it it talks about the tier fidelity. And then you guys in Carson also do a we we in Carson also do a district um survey where there's actually scoring on there where you can um see growth and improvement over um when you go and assess the schools and talk
302to the people who are actually implementing it and then how you guys score yourselves or how we score ourselves as a district. You could use that as a measure to measure growth across time. So if you take a look at that, you've got data on it. >> Okay. Well, so I can come back to you with that. Okay. Just an example of >> this is would that be just for MTSS? >> Okay. All right. Go ahead, Trusty Barner. Sorry. >> No, I I would like you to come back with something like that also. But um the one thing I noticed on these goals is that I didn't see anything relating to really improving student achievement. >> Mhm. >> And if that's what we're all about, right? >> Sure. >> So I'm wondering if there's some
303goal. I don't think I'm ready to approve these goals. So, I'm wondering if there's some way to bring something back that would address student achievement that's measurable, that's achievable in in some kind of time frame. >> Sure. I I think so. So, one of the things I I I don't want to say I struggle with, but um like within again I I I lean heavily on the strategic plan. like to me that that is always there and student achievement is is in there. Um, and to me, these are kind of the and I should say and improving student achievement is always there. And these are effectively things in some ways I think that are supposed to um, you know, support that in in some way. And so I I don't know if it I could
304certainly put something in here, but I it may be duplicative to to have it then also in the strategic plan. I'm I'm happy to put something in. I just I can let me think about it. >> Yeah. You know, >> um and I appreciate the effort you put in, but uh right now I'd like to see a little bit more work done on these and maybe some more input from the board. >> Yeah. Because um the other thing I had then too was um with the strategic plan, it just said facilitate school community um meetings to develop. If there's a possibility then for you to put m like mile milestones like um you know for the new new plan between now and you know kind of some uh timeline of some sort of of what
305you hope to accomplish so we have something to um evaluate on that end on progress actually because your evaluation says what progress has been made. And then on the legislative one, um, how will we as a board evaluate your progress through the legislative advocacy? So it is, you know, like fair and evidence-based. >> I mean, you could say the successes and how much money the >> I was just gonna say that. I was going to say that, but >> I mean it's one of those things like there are some things that um you know you're judging the level of quality on a specific data point or outcome. um this is not necessarily something that lends itself to a metric in terms of like you know how many hours did you spend working on this right
306so I I think there's to me there just has to be some recognition that this is really important to all of us and I I feel like the whole declining enrollment thing is a is a real problem like all the super superintendents are talking about it that is going to be a major part of our platform um going into the session so I I I don't know other than to say it's really important to me. Um if it if it's not the kind of goal you're looking for, it's just I know it's going to take a lot of time. I'll I'll be the the president for the superintendent association next year because I'll be the third longest serving superintendent of the state, which makes no sense to me. Um but and so I'm excited about
307that, but it it's going to increase the workload in terms of time at the legislative um session and putting that time in. So I >> No, I think we all agree that it's extremely important and we've all discussed this at our retreat as well, how important it is as us as members to be to be there as well. I mean to to be walking the the hallways as well, but we just want to make sure that when you go to do your progress and we go to rate you that it's fair, >> you know, and to do so, you know, there's got to be some evidence to on that. And so I think if um you know, and uh respect to time as well, we'll you have our input. >> Yeah. >> Kind of looking
308at and then you'll bring it back to us. >> Sounds good. >> Is that fair? All right. I think you could ask your friend chat GPT probably that giving >> helping you make them measurable. >> Yeah. >> All right. Thank you so much. So, we'll go ahead and bring that back. Uh we'll >> you still need to call for public comment though. >> Oh, do I have any public comment because it is an action item. All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close agenda item number 11 and move on to 12. This is the discussion and possible action to approve the superintendent evaluation form for the calendar year 2026. This is an action item and it is uh presented um by me. So I want to thank um uh Trustee Ramirez and Trustee Roberts.
309Um so we met and we um I think we came up with a a nice superintendent evaluation and it is an update. So again, I thank you too for your time. Um it was a pleasure working with you on this as well. And um so what you have in front of you is what we are um a lot of it is format changing and then um the rating scale a little bit. So, we have a rating scale and please keep in mind before I go on, this has been presented to our superintendent um and he has um made comments and included some of his edits and so at this time he um agrees with and is fine with the evaluation. Correct. The one thing I thought of and changes nothing right now this year is
310with the revamp of the strategic plan because strategic plan is only it's mentioned one time in here and it wasn't in the old one too. Um, but I I I struggle with how I'm being evaluated and in my in my mind like everything is about the strategic plan. And so I I think for next year once that's done just some uh some thought about maybe adjusting something to reflect some more weight towards >> okay >> that but nothing changes for right now. >> Okay. So what we did primarily is we combined you know if we saw that um two you know two um standards might have been able to be um consolidated we did that we eliminated um some that were that he rated a four and a five consistently for the past three years.
311So we went back three years of those evaluations and if he rated a four and a five consistently we we deleted those um to to condense it. What else we did then is we took out a comment after each one and so we were asked to comment after each one which um what it does now is um 1.2 two I I'm going to say drastically changed that that is a new one and this has been um vetted through our superintendent as well and so I think this one is um is a good one. So then that's it really. I mean we put some together, we deleted some and we then made the comments one instead of after each standard itself after each one we did one at the very end which is the comments and
312which is overall rationale areas of celebration and areas of growth. Um and then part two are the superintendent's goals. These this is not the format by the way. These all you're approving tonight is the content and the rating scale and then we will put it back to a format that is um that discuss how to do it. Um the goal in attainment would be his three um the superintendent's three goals. He would then fill in the goal progress and then we would rate it. Okay. And then part three was added today and that was um professional activities and contributions. These are notable activities, contributions and and accomplishments from the school year that we would consider uh we would wish to consider to evaluate the superintendent on. Okay. Are there any questions? Trusty Roberts. Yeah, just
313something I missed in all of our edits before. Um on 4.1 um on that second line, builds trust and respect families. Should that read builds trust and respect with families. Yeah, it just read funny when I Okay. And then uh part two, it's that same rating scale, right? One to five. One being ineffective, five being exceptional. >> Yes. >> And I didn't see three yet. So hold on. Come back. >> Anybody else? >> I would just like to reflect that we did talk about the um addition of um the Weda testing for section 1.2 into uh section B and per um superintendent feelings input um we are going to hold off on that for now um superintendent did I understand you correctly >> I I was speaking with Dr. from Medina and he said there
314there's some new um sorry new um like metric or or something that they're coming up with and I I forget exactly something to do with >> um kind of normal growth. Yeah, sorry. But um they'll be working on it here over this next year and then they're going to introduce it. So I I think that's going to become a part of um the standard reporting that we have. And so his suggestion he said it would be a good one to use. And so if you're okay with waiting knowing that our English >> some require require uh reporting that will be implemented. I think that's why you uh what what I recall you mentioned and so we'll hold off on that for that purpose but then next year we'll revisit it and we'll make sure that
315we include that in there. >> Okay. Any other questions, comments? Go ahead. Trusty Varner. We're approving the content, >> correct? >> But not the format, >> right? >> So, if the format >> is finalized, is it going to come back before the board so we can Yes. >> review that and approve the new formatting or what? >> Yes. >> Yeah. But we wanted to get this going so then he knows what he's being evaluated on. So, in a timely fashion, it will be there. >> I think ultimately, >> but we're going to do a cover sheet. >> Yeah. But we'll put it into like a Google form, you know, so it's online again. So, yeah. Yeah. So, there will changing the format. >> Yeah. Well, I just noticed, you know, like there's no date, uh,
316no name, no date, no page numbers, etc., you know. >> Yeah, >> that would need to be included. >> Yeah, because it will be in Google forms when we go. >> Anyone else? >> And this I don't know if this is considered format, but grammatically like there's sometimes there's comma usage and it should be semicolons as a former English teacher. Sorry. Thank you. Um, yes, you can bring you can give your um grammar uh corrections to Renee. >> Thank you very much. >> Yeah, >> we have Miss Laurel. >> Oh, we do. >> Yeah. All right. >> All right. This is an action item and so um uh do do I have a motion to approve? I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve the form as presented and discussed for
317completing the superintendent's annual evaluation for the 2026 calendar year. Do I need to say with the couple edits we suggested? Okay, >> second. >> All right. So, motion by Trustee Roberts, second by Trusty Ramirez. Public comment. >> Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. >> Opposed? hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. All right, we'll move on to agenda item number 13. This is discussion and possible action to cancel the July 14th, 2026 school board meeting. This is an action item presented by me. And this is we normally um historically have always canled um the first meeting in July because it would run so close to the 4th of July. It doesn't now. However, um we are I am presenting that we cancel the meeting. Um this is a great time for staff and others to
318take vacation. So, um do I have any questions on the agenda item comments? All right. Uh so, let's uh do I have an act uh do I have a motion? Uh >> a motion that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees cancel the July 14th, 2026 school board meeting. Great. Do I have a second? Second. All right. Motion by uh Trusty Peterson, seconded by Trusty Roberts. All in favor, please say I. >> Opposed. >> Oh, I'm so sorry. Public comment. Seeing none. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed. Hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item number 14. This is approval of a consent agenda. This is for possible action. Do I have any comments, questions on the action item? Seeing none, do I have a motion
319to approve? >> So moved. >> A second. >> Second. >> All right, we have a motion by um Trustee Varner, second by Trustee Peterson. Public comment. Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. >> Opposed. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item number 15. Did you all have uh time in to go over theformational item? Can I clarify on theformational item? So, next Tuesday, the 21st, we have the uh employee of the year celebration and we have cancelled the following Tuesday's board meeting. Is that correct? >> That is correct. We switched them around. So, yes, the next school board meeting will be April 22nd and it will be here in the theater. The following Tuesday we do not have a or 21st sorry and then the following we do not have a
320schoolboard meeting that is a substitute. Any other questions com comments? All right seeing none closing agenda item number 15. Moving on to number 16. Do we have a request for future agenda topics from the board? Uh, you brought up EDGES staff earlier and I've been meaning to um request that since it's been about a year since we signed with them, I believe. So, at some point it would be nice to see how that went this year. Okay, that sounds good. Trusty Varner, >> I don't know if it needs to be a board meeting, but the uh information on EDG staff and numbers. >> Okay. Um, and then also, um, you were absent, but I had asked that we get an update from the city regarding the growth and development and how the schools fit into
321the city's master plan. If we could have somebody from the city present that, that would be great. Um, also for the board, and I will keep this short, um, but yes, I believe it's time that we start looking at um, some of our own policies. And so we will be um working on like the bylaws, the finance, the community. If you go on to the um school district's website, you will see policies and there are some that um affect the school board. So we will start with section number 0000 which are the bylaws. We'll move on to 010 0 and then um moving on to 090. So we will be bringing working together to change those policies at future meetings. Anything else? All right. Great. We are adjourned. Thank you. Amen. Oh. Oh, hey. Heat.
322Heat. a Hallelujah. Oh, hold on. Wow. Oh. Oh, hey.