001Oh, forever. La. Heat. Heat. Hallelujah. Welcome to the uh Carson City School Board Trustees meeting on Tuesday, March 10th at 6 PM. Um at this time, I will ask calling the meeting to order and we'll move on to agenda item number one, adoption of the agenda. This is a possible action. Do I have a motion? Second. >> Who moved? Oh, Trusty Ramirez. Uh motion made and seconded by Trusty Varner. Uh public comment. All right. Seeing none. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Opposed. Passes unanimously. Moving on to agenda item number two. Flag salute by led by trustee Peterson to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. Agenda item number three,
002superintendence report. This is for information only. Superintendent Fueling. >> Thank you, President Walt. Trustees, welcome to day oh, sorry, daylight savings time. Um, I hope you all enjoyed not getting a 24-hour day and the sleep that comes with it. Um, we have, uh, just a couple things. um up at Carson High School. Uh two Fridays ago, they opened their career closet to uh to a bit of a a show where they're going to be offering um nicer clothes, nicer attire available to kids um who potentially are going to be going out for interviews or or things like that. So, just a really nice project that um uh folks at Carson and I headed up. So, pretty excited to see how how that works out. Uh, last week was reading week. Uh, thanks to Fremont Empire
003and Bourwick for inviting me to stop by and um have some fun and see some laughter and tears and all that kind of stuff. Um, but we had had a good time. And then uh for tonight we have Carson High baseball playing against Douglas at Aces Stadium at 7 o'clock. So um as much as I want to see Carson win, I hope that both teams enjoy the experience. I think that's a pretty cool thing. The aces have grown into um and I don't know exactly how this one got organized, but the ACES have grown into a really great community partner for us and working with our school. So, just really really appreciate um the uh the leadership up there with ACES. And uh that is all I have. >> All right, great. Thank you. Uh
004moving on to agenda item number four. This is board reports, board member comments for information only. Do we have a representative from Carson High School? >> I have Cooper's tonight because he is at that game at uh Asus Stadium. Um Cooper, sorry, my phone went to sleep. Cooper says, "I apologize for not being here in person today, but I hope this report will suffice. Tonight, March 10th, at 7 p.m., Carson High varsity baseball will be playing their rivals, the Douglas Tigers, up at Greater Nevada Fields, the Reno Aces Stadium, which is where I'm at because I'm on the baseball team." Um he says this past weekend Carson High Speech and Debate had their state tournament which they did very well on as a team and some of their members will be moving on to further
005tournaments. Junior senior prom at CHS will be Saturday, March 28th. More information will be presented in the upcoming weeks. And this upcoming Friday, March 13th, CHS AVID class will be hosting their AVID block party in Senator Square from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. This is an event where you pay uh an upfront small fee and then you're able to get all sorts of kinds of food as well as commune with other attendees and anyone is welcome. Again, I apologize for not being there to attend tonight, but I hope this was enough and have a great night everyone. >> Great. Thank you. Uh do we have a representative from Carson High Silver Campus? >> I have the report for Silver Campus. >> Great. Thank you. >> Okay. So, Dr. Molden um shares with us that on March
0064th, a group of JAG and engineering students boarded the bus and headed to USA Parkway to a tour and learned all about the manufacturing program at Tesla. The students were welcome and given a grand tour. uh she also attended and she couldn't believe the amount of people or the opportunities that they offer right out of the gate. And they're super excited to announce that several community partners have signed up to present their programs to the staff and students at the Silver Campus during the B8 class on February 8. Um coast coastal air in mind Garnerville they presented. And then March 17, Conquer Auto Body in Reno is coming to speak about their new apprenticeship opportunities. On April 21st, the Happy Outlet will be sharing about opportunities with them. On May 7, Astro Tool will be
007sharing all about tools that they create. And on May 21st, Roer Hback will be coming to talk about opportunities with them. They're also inviting the parents and main campus students to join uh to join them because they could be an opportunity awaiting for them as well. And she said feel free to join us if you have time. We would love to have you all come. Um they're still in conversations with the local uh 350 plumbers and pop pipe fe pipe feeders union on the possibility of excuse me of them utilizing the silver campus to teach their apprenticeship classes four nights a week. So stay tuned. She also added that she's also very excited to announce that the Carson City Parks Department has agreed to conduct a full school field trip on the 27th of March
008at the River View Park. The rangers are going to work with the staff to present a day uh for career exploration. Um they will be talking about what is what it takes to become a ranger um in educ on the educational enrichment statistics and measurement flood planes and wetlands and Korean war memorial and flood of 1997 all wrapped up in physical and mental enjoyment. So that sounds super exciting. Um I am I'm excited for the students and I plan on attending some of these um events and as she mentioned everyone is welcome to to join. So that concludes my report. >> Great. Thank you. Um moving on to the Nevada Association of School Board NASBY update. Trusty Barner. Uh yes, excuse me. Thank you. Just have a brief update on the professional development training which
009will be held on March 21st. at the LOF Hotel in Reno. It'll begin at 7:30 a.m. and it'll begin with a breakfast with the legislators that'll be there and this will be an opportunity to meet and network with the legislators which is very important for NASBY and the school boards. The training that day will include exploring the Nevada portrait of a learner of a Nevada learner and also presentation on school safety. And if you are working on your certified public officer certification, there's some homework you have to do in advance. And this was outlined in an email from Director Harris, which was dated March 6th. So, if you're going for your CPO, please look at that email and do that advanced work because you'll get credit for your CPO. And that's the only report I
010have for NASBY. All right, which leads us then into then um board of trustee school reports. And we'll go ahead and um start with Trusty Ramirez. I do not have a report from Mark Twain this evening, but I did attend their PTO meeting this afternoon and I was very pleased to see a um good number of parents and um teachers attending that um meeting. um they all seem very engaged and very committed in helping out with um you know with all the activities that the school is um coordinating. So it was very nice to to see a good turnout and and I hope that um more parents plan on attending because they they're doing a lot of wonderful things. So and Mrs. Krookshings, thank you for inviting me. I know you're present here with us
011this evening. I I really enjoy the meeting. So that concludes my report. >> Great. Thank you, Trusty Roberts. >> Yeah, I just want to tell Dr. Ward, she looks really great for being pied in the face this afternoon. I see you were able to get all cleaned up, but the kids had a blast. Um, and that was in the spirit of their reading week theme, which was book and adventure. Um, so they had K through two with that assembly today. Um, and then Next week it will be third through fifth grade to have their fun with the staff. Um, and their reading week was very successful and they appreciate all of the support from the schoolboard, AJ, parents and the community. And then parent teacher conferences are coming up at the end of March and
012they're looking forward to reaching out to 100% of parents for participation in those conferences. We love the opportunity to speak with our families in person and review student progress over this year. That's it. >> Great. Thank you, Trusty Clappen. >> Thank you. I'm going to start uh with the update from Eagle Valley, uh Miss Hoppy, who is joining us tonight. Thank you for joining us. Um academics and testing. Students who had perfect attendance during access testing will be going bowling the morning of Tuesday, March 24th. Attendance is a key element and they want to acknowledge the students who were at school every day and ready to test. Regarding athletics, wrestling is off to a great start and track is running and about to begin. No pun intended. Um some upcoming events, please join us for
013our very first college and career day happening on April 1st. Um students, another one students will be highlighting their talents by displaying projects they have been working on and community partners will be joining us to highlight future career opportunities for the students. And the event will begin at 12:00 p.m. for students and will continue after school until approximately 4:30 and parents are encouraged to join um after school at 2:25. Um Miss Hoppy would like a huge thank you to a few. Um, first she wants to thank their librarian, Allison Gillis, who organized reading week last week for the students and staff. Allison continues to amaze Eagle Valley with her creative ideas. She invited a a published author to speak with students, organized dressup days, transformed the library into a campsite, and implemented fun reading challenges
014throughout the week. It was a fantastic experience for everyone involved, and truly helped celebrate the joy of reading. In addition, we want to acknowledge the school social worker, Tara Schwarz. Last week was also school social work week, and we want to give her a huge thank you for all the work she does for the entire staff and student community. Tara's level of care and kindness to everyone is a testament to her unwavering commitment to supporting others and making Eagle Valley a place where students and staff feel valued, heard, and supported every day. and Eagle Valley is truly grateful for the difference she makes in this school. And from Carson Middle School, I have from Miss Robinson. Apologize. Uh, Miss Robinson from Carson Middle School would like to say that they are so proud, she is
015so proud to announce that the seventh grade read team has been crowned Nevada State Reading Champions. This championship resulted from reading the most minutes per team average by team member over four weeks during Read Bowl 9, the World Championship of Reading, a global reading competition put on by Read with Malcolm. The competition was held from January 12th through Super Bowl Sunday. Seventh grade team read an average of 2,656 minutes over those four weeks. Winning a state championship is always prestigious. This year, there were more than 1 million students from all 50 states and 19 countries competing. In sports news, the color guard just took first place in a competition at Depali Middle School this last weekend. Their next compet competition is this Saturday at McQueen High School. The wrestling team is doing a great job
016as well. Their next wrestling match is this Saturday at Eagle Valley. And sixth grade track started this week. Um, National Junior Honor Society students are working hard on community service projects. They just raised enough money to sponsor a Carson girls softball team. They have other projects in the works as well. Carson High School counselors visited the eighth grade history classes to teach students about all the amazing things happening at CHS and to help them register for classes. And finally, they're gearing up for the ESPback testing which is happening later this month. And that's all I have. >> Great. Thank you, Trusty Peterson. >> All right. My reports are going to be short this week because the majority of our conversation was answering some questions that you had asked us to collect. So all I have
017right now is um from Celicker uh principal prior she says they had their talent show in reading week which I was not able to go to the talent show and I was really sad. There was one during the day and then one in the evening. Um but I've gotten to see a lot of videos from proud parents and it looks like it was a really great event. Um first one in a while. Yeah. So hopefully it's back to stay because it looks like kids and parents alike had a really good time with it. Um next up, third grade APT, family math night. It's happening Wednesday, March 18th at 5:30. So that's all I have on Celiger. Um Carson. Hi. Um a little bit different. Um I'm just going to pull some of the info um
018from some of the questions that I had asked him um that I thought were really great to share. He says, um, I want to point out a few data, uh, discipline data points that Matt Morgan, one of our deans, has put together. Uh, phone confiscations are down 51% through the third quarter as compared to last year. Non- cell phone related incidents are down by 31% through the third quarter. Physical fights are down 66% from the 2324 school year and is down 32% through the third quarter. Out of school suspension is down 42% through the third quarter. Uh, shout out to our deans, campus monitors, and certified teaching staff for being consistent. So, not a typical board report, but I thought those were really promising. Um, there's a lot of good happening and uh I think
019we it's easy we can report on sports a lot, but these are the things that matter as well. So, I'm glad that you included this in the email and that we can um mention that. And that is all I have um except to say that I disagree with um Superintendent Fueling. I hope Carson wins tonight. >> On the note of the high school, can I just throw We were at Rotary um this afternoon and learned that the Carson High swim team is unable to do their fundraisers because the aquatic center is being um reconstructed or renewed. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Um, so anyways, that really does t you know, I mean it cuts in because their fundraiser was a concession stands for all of these meets. So they don't have a a fundraiser to do
020or doing. So they're doing a different fundraiser. So anybody who knows a swimmer, knows of a swimmer, neighbor of a swimmer, please contact them because these kids are trying very hard to raise the funds that they always raise running concessions um that they're not able to do. So, we were fortunate enough to be able to participate in the fundraiser today at Rotary, but I just encourage anybody find a swimmer because they're scrambling for a fundraiser right now. Trusty Varner. >> Yes, I I have one for Boardwick. Uh, Principal Reta states that the House of Isi, hopefully I spelled said that right, is turning Bwick green on St. Patrick's Day and they are looking for donations and volunteers to help decorate. And if you're interested to see Parents Square if you would like to help and
021they are also having their Dads and Donuts event on Friday from 7 to 8:05 a.m. The event is sponsored by their wonderful PTO and they hope that all their dads can join them for a donut. And if not, they would love to see grandpas, uncles, brothers, or moms attend in their place. And that's my report for Borderick, but I do have one for Fritz. Also, Principal Brown wanted to share that on Thursday night, starting at 5:00 PM, they will have an art and lasagna night. Sounds interesting. Which is being sponsored by their PTO. In the evening, families can enjoy a lasagna, complete an art project, and shop the bookf fair. Also, their archery team participated in the state tournament on Saturday. Their team will know how they did once the school in Las Vegas completes
022their competition. So, we wish them the best of luck in that competition. And that's all I have. >> Great. Thank you. And so then I'll go ahead and uh do the announcement for Empire Elementary School. And this is brought to you by Miss Virgil. As part of their ongoing dedication to maintaining their status as national nationally certified STEM school, they are dedicating time and resources this week for intensive STEM planning. Their STEM leader, Miss Wiggins, and their literacy coach, Miss Ms. Rigs are Ricks, I'm sorry, are working directly with teachers who will be subbed out to create high quality instructional materials and work on grade level STEM tank projects. They also have they will also be hosting bingo for books this Friday in hopes of strengthening their relationships with families and promoting literacy by getting
023more books into the hands of the homes of their students. And then I would just like to uh thank all schools and all principles because every single one of us reported about the engagement that you're doing trying to get parents in the in the schools and that is extremely important. I would really hope that the families and the parents take advantage of all of the opportunities that are brought to them by the schools and get in the schools and be engaged in your in your students education. All right, if that concludes we will move on to agenda item number five. This is for assoc association reports discussion only. Do we have one? Seeing none, we'll move on to agenda item number six. This is public comment. I do have um two that have put in
024for public comment up here. You will be asked for your public comment during that agenda item. So, at this time, Renee, did we have any public comment online? >> Yes. Thank you, President Walt. I received uh email comment from the following Morgan for Amanda Lampy, Savannah Ingram, Jamie and Sean Stevenson, Robin Stevenson, Shelley Aldine, Alli Hernandez. Uh the copies were provided to the trustees and will be included in the permanent record. Thank you. >> Great. Thank you very much. Do we have any public comment here in the room? Yes. And when you come up, if you could please uh hit the button until you see that it turns green and then um state your name for the record and you will have three minutes. Hi, my name is Lindsay Bllye. I am a teacher at
025Celiger Elementary and I am here today um I don't like to ask for things. It's just it's not in my nature, but I am honestly truly deeply here to beg for you guys to find a way to keep our social workers at every single school site. They are truly a lifeline for the students, for their families, and for the teachers and our administration. Um they are the people who are making these kids feel comfortable to attend school. So we have better attendance to fill in a comfortable space and feel cared about and know that someone at school is aware of them is aware of their changes in behavior. The times that they seem down and different. they know that there is that person who's not yelling at them about doing their homework or you know
026having to assign detention for them. It's a neutral party that knows every single student, knows those signs to look for that we are trained on a base level, but they are trained to see those small changes in every single student to know every student's name, to know things that they all like. I could name a few fourth graders, a handful of third graders, and two kindergarteners, and that's where it stops. So, if I don't see it because a student doesn't feel comfortable expressing it to me or another staff member, our social workers are the ones who they who can help them. They're the ones who organize and work with, you know, our holidays with a hero, the people who watch out for our kids. And our our students mental health is declining. We see that
027drastically everywhere. upper elementary which I teach to the the young kids and these social workers have more skills to handle that. They have the knowhow to truly reach a kid without making them feel uncomfortable. To reach out to the families that goes beyond my scope and ability as a teacher and make those families understand that we're not going after them. That we're there to make them feel comfortable and safe and get them to school. make sure they're safe at home and well taken care of so they can be the best student that they can. Um they're there to help us out when we have a kid as as the youths would say crashing out and our the rest of the class deserves to still learn and they help out by giving that child who's having
028a hard time the chance to cool down while I can continue teaching. They are vital and if they are shared between schools, they don't get to truly know the students and the students don't get to feel comfortable with them. Um, I have here a packet for each of you. We love packets. These are letters written by my students. It was completely of their free will on their own time addressing their thoughts on this topic. If I'm allowed to hand it to someone. Okay, >> great. Thank you very much. for grammar. So, um, so, and I apologize, Madison Croser, you had put in for, uh, public comment. I overlooked that. If you could please come up. Hello. Can you guys hear me? Okay, perfect. Hello and good evening parents, students, and school board members. I am
029Madison Croer, a senior at Carson High School, and I would like to make a statement about the possibility of the social worker department within the school Carson City School District being terminated. On the behalf of many students who utilize the social workers, including myself, I can say that social workers within this school are one of the many important departments. For me personally, I have been working with one since I was in elementary school when my mom had been diagnosed with cancer. It was an amazing opportunity to talk to somebody at that young of an age struggling at home and at school with this life-changing event. Sorry, you're good. They also help me with my struggle. I've also worked with them from now into high school. I work with them now um because of my anxiety
030disorder that has been grown from years. Um because of the social workers, I've gone in contact with a therapist and I've been able to be at school more often. During my sophomore year, my mental health had declined a lot. And unfortunately, my attendance and my grades had suffered, but because of my social worker, she was able to help me through that and get me back into school and get my grades back up to passing so my future was not in in danger. Um, the programs and resources the social worker department has has helped my family when we were going through a divorce. when I was struggling mentally and when my future was in danger. Not only do myself and not only do myself use these res resources that they provide, but also does my little
031sister who's a fifth grader. These social workers are not a luxury. They are in need. They help students improve their mental health, but also with the social environment at school by helping students advocate for themselves when they are being bullied like how I was in my junior year and this past year. They'd help me feel comfortable and confident reporting a sexual assault that happened to me last se last semester on school grounds. They'd help students by getting them accommodations for school that help with their mental health and other behaviors. Because of the so because of the school social workers, my family and myself have been supported throughout the toughest times we've experienced. Social workers are in need for us if if need for us as a community if we are going to continue to fight
032teen suicide, especially within the past three years. So, please do not think about the money side and think about the students well-being. It is very important for these social workers to still be in our school district to help our students and our community. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Any other additional public comment? >> Okay, thank you. and if you would uh just speak into the microphone and state your name. >> Okay. >> Hi, I'm Logan Hod's and I strongly believe that we have a great need to keep these social workers. I know many at many different schools and they help all the students not just with what they're supposed to do in their jobs, but they go above and beyond to help the students needs. They help they help students and I
033know multiple students that have been going through hard times or even if it's just a daily thing that they're feeling sad in the morning and they help to bring up their day so they can have a good day and continue to learn with school. If we were to take that away, it would take away some of the learning opportunities of the children. So in order to continue for the students to have maximum learning possibilities, I believe that we should keep the social workers. That way if a kid is in need of something then they can go to those social workers and that way the kids around them can learn and they can continue to progress instead of staying behind and staying in that bad mood which would also bring down people around them. That's it.
034>> Well, thank you. That was very well spoken and not read. Very good. Very good. Um any additional All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close close public comment and move on to agenda item number seven. This is designation of Silva and what how do you say Shireane and Associates LLC as an independent audit firm for fiscal year 2026 in the amount not to exceed 75,400 is budgeted as required by NRS 354.62 624. This is uh for possible action and presented by Mr. Winward. >> Thank you, Madam President. Members of the board, uh we find ourselves here once again, just like we did last March to designate our auditor. I just want to uh before I really get started, I just want to clarify the amount that you listed off that is in the
035heading is the correct amount. I apologize for transposition of numbers in the executive summary. 75,400 is the correct amount and that is slightly more than the 2.75% just above a 3% increase because that is a $2,900 increase over last year. Uh still a fair amount still uh fairly much in line with inflation amounts for this year and it's still a very good exceptional value as it's less than the last audit performed by a different auditing firm in 11ish years ago. Mr. Felin correct me if I'm wrong there. 2011. I knew 11 that was there somewhere. Um we have a very good working relationship with the auditors. Um they've brought some new team members on. So we see different faces than we've always seen there. However, it's been overseen by Mr. Silvin. He continues to do
036really good work and is uh very understanding and well-versed in school districts as he handles the audits for uh other counties near us and several other education authorities um like Carson Monasury amongst others. So, he's uh carved out a really good niche for that and uh does very good work for us and we look forward to continuing that relationship and I'm welcome to any questions you may have. >> Great. Thank you. We'll go ahead and start at this end. Trusty Varnner, do you have any questions? >> No. >> Trusty Peterson, Trusty Clappam, Trusty Roberts, Trusty Ramirez, >> which brings it to me, so of course I do. Sorry. Um, but I only have two. So, and I know, you know, I mean, I'm not questioning this, but if you could um just kind of reiterate
037why is it that the district remains with the same auditor um rather than evaluating alternate >> that is something that's kind of different in the the public sector. Um, you know, you look in the corporate world sometimes requirements that they need to rotate through auditors. Uh, it's a little bit different environment for them than it is for us. um we get a lot of other compliance and we have a lot of other um organizations and entities that are also constantly looking over our shoulders and for that reason we get a lot of other compliance and guidance from those um different organizations and it's a little bit of a a niche um thing. it would be difficult to find an auditor that can do a good job that can take care of all the um general
038accepted auditing standards that are required um and apply those to a public like a school district. So we have kind of looked a couple years ago we kind of looked to see what was available. But we didn't officially do anything as it's not required by um administrative code to to go out and do an RFP, but we kind of looked to see what are other options we have. Pulled some of other districts in Nevada that are similar to us. They're all paying more than we do. And um that's one of our largest drivers. We have a good relationship. We have an auditor that does a really good job. And it's kind of a we like, well, why should we try and fix something that's not broken is my first reaction. But we did look to
039see what else is out there. There's not a lot of audit firms that would have that have done a lot of experience with school districts, especially one that's local to northern Nevada. Um, so options would be to look into something that's a more regional uh to the west of us or or you know somewhere else outside of the state of Nevada. And it just makes sense to keep it here with uh the the audit firm that's very familiar with the standards in the state and the the um legislative rules, regulations, requirements that we follow. >> Okay. I just wanted to hear that um you know with the budget cuts that that we are going to be facing that we are doing our due diligence on looking to see whether or not it is a competitive
040or because it is an increase. Um but to know that it is very fair compared to what others are charging as well. I just wanted to make sure that we were doing our due diligence on that. And then I wanted to ensure that it does state that it will not um to not exceed the 75,400 and if it does that it does come back to the board. Correct. >> Um that's common language. I've never experienced that. So I've u I've never had to go over that amount. >> Okay. I just want to make sure though because of our budget situation that it would. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Great. Thank you. Any drawn? Okay. All right. Then this is a an action item. So I will um is ask someone to make a motion. >> I'll
041make a motion. >> How do I say that name? Serene. Serene. >> Yeah. >> Shireen. >> Sereni. >> I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve the audit firm of Silva Shireeni and Associates LLC as the auditors for fiscal year 2026 for a contract amount not to exceed $75,400. >> Do I have a second? Second. >> All right. So, motion by Trusty Clappen, second by Trusty Peterson. Public comment. Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. >> Opposed? >> Hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. >> Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item number eight. This is discussion and possible action to designate critical la labor shortages for certified elementary teaching staff, certified secondary teaching staff, certified special education staff, speech language pathologists, deaf and heart of hearing interpreters, school psychologists,
042special education pair professionals, cook, baker, mechanic, school bus driver as allowed under NRS 286.523. This is for possible action and presented by Mr. Sadler. And I don't think we missed anybody in there. >> I don't think you did. Madam President, members of the board, Dan Sadler for the record. Uh before you this evening is consideration uh which is supported with uh statute 386.523 and NRS 286523 specific to um allowing critical labor shortage designations for positions that show under the requirements of statute a need. And we do have a handful of employees who are currently working in those positions as critical labor shortage that uh will be expiring on April 9th of 2026. And we have some positions that have long-term substitutes and we have some positions that are uh have remained vacant over the years.
043And so in the packet, the actual forms um represent those positions districtwide where we do have vacancies that meet the requirements for statute. Um several years ago, we designated every position we had in the district, including substitute teachers, with the exception of administrators, I believe, uh as critical labor shortage qualified. And as nice as that is to be able to do, uh we don't have the need for all positions. So just the positions that we currently have impact are here before you this evening. Uh it's a two-year approval. So uh if we approve, if you choose to approve this this evening, we would submit the information to Nevada PERS. And I believe it goes back to the date that it's approved and not the date that it's submitted to PERS. Um, and these positions would
044be approved for two calendar years. So, any questions that you have? >> Great. Thank you. Uh, Trusty Ramirez, we'll start with you. >> I do have a question. Uh, for the position of elementary teacher, um, you currently have, um, the position filled with a long-term substitute. According to >> we have three elementary teacher vacancies that are filled with long-term substitute. >> Okay. But those are covered with long-term substitute. Whereas the um the uh secondary teacher position, that one is covered with critical need employees. Are we talking about retire secondary teachers? It just says employees. I was I was curious. >> Yes. So, we have uh individuals who retired that were hired under the critical labor shortage designation to fill those positions for the school year. >> So, they're currently under contract for this school year.
045>> But previously, they were teachers, they were secondary teachers, >> correct? >> Okay. And then I noticed that on the um section where it says uh difficulty in filling the position um you have elementary teacher instead of secondary teacher. It might be just you. >> Yes. Thank you. Uh Trusty Walt pointed that out and I did correct that on the paperwork that we would submit already. Thank you. >> All right. Those were my only questions. Great. Thank you. Trusty Roberts, do you have any questions? Um, yeah, this is all new to me. So, I just, um, want to clarify, how does this work? Are these jobs posted and then by a certain date they're not filled, so then they fall into this critical need category or >> That's a great question. So, the statute lays
046out what we need to show in order to qualify for this to be approved. And, and that's really why I'm highlighting these positions, but not all positions. So these positions um so first and foremost we have some people who are hired this year who if not approved would basically be cut off from their contractual agreement April 9th because it would not be supported for them to continue to receive their retirement and qualify as a critical labor shortage educator. So that's one area that we need to address in this approval. um any of the positions that were vacant and were not filled with a certified teacher or some of these are classified positions as well. Um if those positions remained vacant, we did fill with long-term subs for the certified positions, but technically we don't have
047somebody who has the licensing and certification to fulfill that obligation contractually through NDE. So they they're a long-term sub. they have a a license to do the position as a long-term sub but not as a certified teacher. So those positions would reopen and we would hopefully hire somebody in those positions moving forward. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Trusty Clappa Peterson. Um just yeah gathering understanding um when looking through here it's you say how many of each position there are and it's either filled with critical need filled with a long-term sub or it's still vacant. Um for the ones that are still vacant or when they are vacant, what is the process for finding the person to fill it if not like a typical hire? How do we do that? Well, so we use multiple strategies
048as far as recruitment and trying to identify people for positions. So, uh, all of our positions are advertised locally on our website. Um, I should say on our website, but that's a not just local expansion. We that just anybody who can get on the internet can go to our website and find it there. But unless they were typically looking for a position in Carson City, they don't find it there. So we also post on Indeed, which is a national job board. Um we attend local and regional career fairs. Word of mouth continues to be our strongest recruitment tactic. So um other people letting people they know that we have positions that are open. Um that we've tracked that over the past three years and I I believe it was almost 70% of people who've come
049our way for positions is through word of mouth. So >> um sorry I'm trying to think through my understanding. So it when it's initially posted it's you have to meet requirement XYZ and if it goes a certain time like if we >> oh as far as like if we were to hire somebody critical needs >> then do we change it and say actually you can be a little bit less qualified because we really need you like how does that >> um No, not really. So we we always want to hire somebody who we think would be here for a longer period of time. We know if we hire somebody critical needs that we're getting a veteran educator and there's a lot of good things about that, but it's a it's a one-year agreement for them
050to be in that position. So, okay, we'd much rather look for somebody who would be here for multiple years. >> Um, we we certainly try to consider longevity in our hiring. >> We but things change for different reasons for people and sometimes they, you know, they think they're going to be here for five years and they're only here for one. Um, but we don't allow the hiring of somebody to be in that critical needs position until we've exhausted all resources. Um, typically as we get into summer months, it used to be that by if we didn't hire somebody by like May 1st, then we would put somebody in that position as critical labor shortage if they were willing to do it. We've continued to bump that back because we've done much better with our recruitment
051and with our retention as well. So, we haven't had as many vacancies to fill. Um, so I don't know if I feel like I'm not directly answering your question. I'm just talking around it. But, but the time frame that we would identify the position, obviously, we would post the position in April. Let's say we have a vacancy and hopefully we would be able to hire somebody for the position that's not critical labor shortage, even though the position could possibly be approved as such. If we weren't successful in hiring somebody and we get to August, we could then bring somebody into that position under the designation of critical labor shortage and be able to employ them for the year. >> Thank you. >> Did that answer it? >> It peppered it >> well. >> I'll take
052that. >> Thank you, Trusty Barner. And number one, I want to thank you for um the work you're doing in keeping the positions filled without having to get into the critical needs positions. But um you mentioned that we have several critical need positions now. Do you know how many we have and what positions they're filling? >> Uh I do off off the top of my head. I don't have it compiled. It's it's shared in the forms themselves. Um, we have four special education vacancies that are currently filled with critical needs employees. We have one special education paraprofessional position that is filled with critical need. We have three secondary teacher vacancies that are filled with critical needs and three school bus drivers that are filled with critical needs. >> And then um you say that they
053sign a one-year agreement. So each year they had to be re redesated as critical need if that position is not filled. >> The position app by approving this tonight if it goes to PERS and then that would be approved for two years. >> Two years. Okay. >> The individual if we were to fill it would be a year-by-year basis because again we always want to try to hire somebody who's not going to be critical needs. So we would open that up post the position try to get somebody in there. If we couldn't, then it gives us the option to bring somebody back in as critical needs. >> Okay. >> But that is not our first choice. How >> how long can a person stay as a critical need employee for the district? Is it just
054for the two years and then they can no longer be a critical need? >> As long as there have been approvals for the positions to be designated critical needs, an employee can continue to come back in that position. >> So for however long we need them. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah, if we weren't able to hire somebody, they could. That's been the case for some of our special education positions. >> And I'll go back, but I'm sorry because this goes right on to it. However, though, it says that in uh statute, a designated authority shall not designate a position pursuant to subsection 4 as a position for which there is a critical labor shortage for a period longer than two years. >> Correct. So, but I'm not seeing that because if you're saying if it's
055a special education teacher and then is it how do we know how up here as a designated an authority? How do we know that those positions aren't more than two years because we're just given special ed secondary elementary? >> Yes. So, so the positions themselves get filled year by year, right? So, if we have a vacancy, so we have three people critical needs right now, those positions will be reposted. We do not want to hire people critical needs into those positions. We want to hire people who we think are going to be here for the long haul. If we end up in a position where we don't have anybody to fill those positions, then we can allow somebody to come in because you've potentially approved the designation for two years. So within that two years,
056we have a window where we could hire somebody to come back in as critical needs, which is preferred as over bringing in a long-term sub. >> No, I I think that's about it. Um, I have heard that we have one employee that's been in critical need for eight years. Is that correct? Eight or nine years now? >> I I'm not aware of somebody who's been here for that long. Um, we do have some special education teachers who've come up several years in a row. I don't I don't know the number of years. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, and and I know you do this, but just for clarification, before you fill the critical need position, I think you've kind of covered this, is that you try all other avenues to fill it with a regular position
057before you uh hire somebody as a critical need. Is that correct? >> Correct. >> Yeah. I'm just pulling up a chart real quick. Um, we started designating POS positions districtwide. um well individual positions in our district I should say as critical needs dating back to 2015 and at that time special education teacher was the first one we approved uh that the board had approved and that's continued to be approved every two years since then. So there's a possibility that we could be hiring people year by year by year with that approval. Um, and that's historically been our hardest position to fill districtwide, special education certified. >> So, it is possible somebody's been here eight or nine years in a critical need position. >> Yeah. If there's a vacancy sitting there and they end up being
058willing to do it. Yes. >> Okay. >> Um, can you Whoops. Can you uh just kind of go over is it a fiscal savings to do critical needs rather than hiring, you know, first or fiveyear teacher? >> Uh fiscally, hiring a first year teacher would be better as far as the salary goes. Um as far as like their what they're getting from PERS, they're getting that as their retirement. So that doesn't the district's not double paying for those employees to be here. They're they're essentially receiving their PERS retirement and then they can come back and receive the salary for teaching >> and then that salary is the salary that they had when they left. >> We we do honor their years of experience. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> Okay. So would you say then it's
059kind of a wash of some sort because we don't do person Um, I would say that it generally is more expensive to I mean, if the idea, excuse me, just for a position, if you're hiring someone with very little experience and um kind of education beyond their bachelors coming in, they're generally not going to have as high of a wage as someone who has already retired and has more experience. So, I it's it's that balance of um having someone qualified in the classroom and trying to give kids the best service that we can versus having an empty classroom and not, you know, maybe not having someone as good. >> And then um and this may have been um asked and answered and I apologize if it has, but so we approve this now, but that
060doesn't stop you from trying to fill these positions at job fairs or Indeed or anything like that. Correct. >> No, not in any way. Actually, it it's >> an emergency break this glass type of scenario where okay, we need someone to come in, we can get somebody in, but we are actively trying to recruit people to fill these positions as soon as we have them posted. >> Okay. >> And and I will say that the data >> um that we've shared in the fall each of the last two years has continued to improve first and foremost with our retention numbers and then also with our recruitment. So, we have very few positions that end up vacant. When you consider we have over 500 certified positions districtwide and that we have nine in critical needs, like
061we'd like that number to be zero, but that that shows that we're doing pretty well. I think if you were to compare that statewide, like we're looking very positive as far as the the data trends go there. And I would expect that that would continue. >> Great. Thank you. >> All right. President, I do have another question. >> Yes. Go ahead. >> I'm curious. How many um mechanics do we have? >> Uh we have four mechanic positions. >> Four mechanic positions and one we we have one vacancy right now. Correct. This is the one that you're Okay. And um is that a full-time position? >> Yes, they're all full-time positions. >> Okay. And in the locations where you um promote these um positions, I noticed that um the local radio station and TV stations is
062not listed here or Parent Square and that may be just an an area where we can think outside the box of where else we could um recruit, you know, we could um promote these opportunities, these job opportunities. >> I thank you for pointing that out. and and we don't have like a a advertising budget, but we do um Dan Davis is a great partner in this and anytime we do local career recruiting events um Dan has been very good at putting together information and we've had very good local support um by our uh local publications as well as uh local broadcasts including the Spanish radio. So they've been very supportive, but we don't have it in there as a line item because we don't pay for that, >> right? But they do some free publicity,
063right? >> Yeah. Absolutely. >> Yeah. So that may be >> and Mr. Davis would be happy to share with you that earned media income results of that, I'm sure. >> I understand that. >> Yeah. >> On that note, too, I I would encourage the college on some of the positions as well. That would be good. All right. Any other follow-up questions? All right. Seeing none, this is an action item. Do I have someone who is willing to make that motion? >> I will. I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees pursuant to NRS 286523 in light of the efforts made by the district to fill the open positions in certified elementary teaching staff, certified secondary teaching staff, certified special education staff, speech language pathologists, deaf and heart of hearing interpreters, school psychologists,
064special education paraprofessionals, cook/baker, mechanic and school bus drivers as outlined by Mr. Dan Sadler today in the documents submitted we are making the findings requ uh required by statute and we adopt the written findings made by Mr. Sadler in the Nevada PERS forms presented to the board of trustees and based on those written findings we declare that the statutory provisions provided in NRS 2835 286523 have been met. There is a critical shortage of labor for certified elementary teaching staff, certified secondary teaching staff, certified special education staff, speech language pathologists, deaf and heart of hearing interpreters, school psychologists, special education pair professionals, cook/baker, mechanic and school bus drivers for a period not exceeding two years. Thank you very much. Do I have a second? >> I'll second it. >> All right. So motion made by Trusty
065Peterson. >> Yes. Seconded by Trusty Varner. Is there any public comment? Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed. Hearing none. Action passes unanimously. >> Thank you >> very much. Thank you, Mr. Sadler. Uh, moving on to agenda item number nine. This is discussion and possible action to approve the proposed Carson City School District academic calendar for the year 2026 27 school year. This is for possible action and it is brought to us presented by Mr. Bringhurst. Good evening, President Walt, members of the board of trustees. Thank you for uh taking the time to be here this evening to consider the school calendar for 2627. My name is Brandon Bringhurst, chief academic officer for the record. So this is a followup on the conversation that we had in January regarding the
066school calendar and our focus is on making sure that we leverage the time that we have available towards the priorities that we have as a school district. Before I get into some of the specifics about the calendar, one uh related issue that was brought up that I wanted to address is some discussion uh regarding the length of our elementary school day. As you as has been noted, we are significantly over the state required minutes and I wanted to explore that a little bit. So the state requires that elementary school students are have 54,000 minutes per year. In Carson City School District, this year we are at 65,000 minutes. So we exceed that by 11,000 minutes. So uh for some comparison here in Carson City School District, our school day for elementary is from 8:25 until
0673:15 for 6 hours and 50 minutes. And I looked at for comparison to one of our neighboring districts, Wo County School District, and their school day is typically from 9 to 3 or 9:30 to 3:30, which is just 6 hours as opposed to our 6 hours and 50 minutes. And then they have a 45minute early release each week. So there's some key differences as we look at what is um what is behind the differences that we see in overall minutes in Carson City School District. One of the things that we have in at the elementary school is teacher prep time is allotted at 45 minutes daily whereas in Wo County School District teacher prep time is allotted at 120 minutes weekly. So a significant difference in the amount of teacher prep time during the school
068day in WO uh some of that time would be allocated before or after school. Another key difference is the duration of the specials that students have. Here in Carson we do 45minut specials for libraries, computers, music as well as PE. in WO their uh specials are only 30 minutes in duration and they do library computers and music only. They do not staff a PE position at the elementary schools. Some of the elementary schools do have some PE uh which they do fundraising at their site in order to fund that. Uh and it is not offered uh daily or weekly as we do here in Carson. uh we in Carson City School District require three res recesses of 15 minutes each whereas in Washo they require two for a total of 30 minutes. So a big
069part of the difference that we see in those total the 50inut difference that we have uh specials and prep which for us go together and that recess time account for 30 minutes of the additional time that our students are in school and then we have 20 additional minutes that would be allocated towards core instructional purposes. So the question is always if we're going to shorten things, what what things are we going to to shorten? Uh for us, shortening the school day would require some pretty significant adjustments to our policy. For instance, if we decided one of the things we want to shorten is recess, that's in policy and would need to be addressed. Teacher contracts, which have the amount of prep time as well as our allocation of instructional time. Those are certainly things that
070can be looked at, but we we we would need to do a pretty detailed look to see in order to shorten the day, what specifically would it be that we would want to shorten. So, as far as a district recommendation moving into the 2627 school year, our recommendation would be that we don't change the duration of the day. It's for next year. It is certainly something that we could look into a little bit further um but would require um a real analysis of what exactly we would want to shorten during the day. Um I can pause there if there's questions about that before going into the specifics about the calendar. >> Good. Okay. >> No questions. >> All right. So, we'll look at the proposed calendar for the 2627 school year. And uh our expected
071outcome for today is that we would be able to vote on and and approve a calendar for 2627. We are certainly coming to the time where we need to have that in place for a variety of the aspects of our planning. based on our conversation back in January there. We've engaged in more work for um stakeholder input. So, as you all know, we had a presentation on January 27th and that included some public comment as well as questions and comments from the board. Following that, we've had parent meetings at each school conducted by that school's administration. Those have typically been PTA meetings, meetings of that those sorts at each site. Um number of parents there has varied somewhere between five parents to 25 parents kind of depending on the site. Conducted two staff meetings for
072staff members to be able to attend on the 23rd and 24th of February. Had a total of about 35 staff members that attended those meetings to provide some input as well. I also met with students met with our leadership students at the two middle schools as well as the high school. So approximately 75 students in those. I received some individual emails from staff as well as some community members with some of their input as well and have also had meetings with our OCA and uh our teacher our certified and our uh principles or administrator s um organizations to get further input. What you have is uh two options F and G. F is a scenario where we would end before Memorial Day and have three full days of professional learning. Option G has us ending
073on June 3rd and 5 days of professional learning. I would also note that uh really there are I've listed here five key decisions that we need to make. Those two options that you see of F and G are an attempt to give you a real clear representation of what some of those things would look like. So, we'll go through each of these questions. I I'll summarize for you some of the information and recommendations on those. Um, and and those are the key areas where we're looking for decisions. In each one of those decision points, I've kind of organized things where first talking about how that question aligns with our strategic plan, empower Carson City 2027. A little bit of a summary of the feedback that was received from from that process that I indicated and
074then the recommendation from the district as to which direction to go. We uh we would recommend on those particular questions. So the first question is where to end the first semester and whether to have a teacher workday at the end of that first semester. When we look at our strategic plan, this is we find great alignment here in our goals 1, three, and four. Our exceptional staff, we want to recruit and retain those great staff members and provide a great working environment for them. And this plays into that as well as it plays into engaging our parents and families and creating healthy generations of Carson students. As far as a summary of the feedback on this question, overwhelming consensus is that we should end before winter break and have a teacher workday. Um I I
075did have one student who advocated for ending after winter break and I certainly applauded a student that was willing to go against the grain. Um but by and large it was very supportive. I've included there a quote from uh one of the students uh as far as why they felt like it's important to end before winter break. Whoops. So the district recommendation on this question is that we end the semester uh before winter break and that we include a teacher workday there. That does make our first semester shorter than second semester, but we feel that the benefits outweigh the costs of of ending after winter break. The next question that we're looking at is parent teacher conferences. As you know, we have proposed changing the format of how we do that from having early release
076days and parent conferences after that to having full day parent conferences, two days in the fall and two days in the spring. When we look at our strategic plan, that aligns again with our goal to have exceptional staff that we support, recruit, and retain, and that we engage our parents and families in meaningful ways. As far as the feedback on this, I would characterize it as very strong consensus. Uh certainly not unanimous, but strong consensus that full days for conferences would be preferable. Some of there was some discussion and concern about which days is it a is it Tuesday, Wednesday, is it a Wednesday one week and a Wednesday the next week. Uh ultimately that discussion centered around this is something new and we need to try it and see where it lands and what
077works best with it. Um I again included included a couple of quotes this time from some of the parents and staff about why they would prefer to have the two full days of parent teacher conferences as opposed to the model that we currently use. And then for the district recommendation, it we would recommend that we move forward with the two full days of parent teacher conferences in the fall and again in the spring. The changes to weekly early release days. This is probably the question that generated uh the most conversation and so um we'll dive a little bit deeper into this one. When we look at our alignment with the strategic plan in this case, there's a specific strategy that actually calls this out pretty directly under our goal one for exceptional staff. Strategy 1.3.2
078says that uh our strategy is to establish structures within each site and department that encourage database decisionmaking and staff agency within professional learning communities. So this concept of a weekly early release day is in line with that strategy that is laid out in our strategic plan. As I mentioned, consensus on this is definitely more nuanced. And so we'll take a bit of a deeper look. First, when it comes to student perceptions of weekly erd, they prefer the predictability that comes with the weekly early release was a strong uh sentiment from them. As far as which day they prefer preference was generally speaking for Wednesdays or Fridays. Wednesday the preference the reasoning behind that was twofold. One it's because it's what has things have been and so they are used to that and that it provides
079a nice midweek break to the routine. Fridays because it's Friday and you can start your weekend a little bit earlier. Um there was some discussion particularly at the high school with the students, some of them advocating for either a Tuesday or a Thursday with travel involved in sports. If they have a game on Tuesdays, which we some of the sports have lots of games on Tuesdays and they need to travel for that game, they would miss less school if the early release were on the Tuesday. Um also some of their thinking behind it. The current erds are too short and reduce that the class productivity and we had talked about that with our proposal we are lengthening them. They felt that was a a good um decision at the high school in particular. They also
080pointed out because of the every other week and because at the high school they do an AB block, it disproportionately impacts classes on specific days. if the erd may fall on B days repeatedly and so you are losing class time in your bday classes um causing an impact where those B-day classes get behind the Aday classes which several students at the high school noted overall students would prefer the weekly erd structure um no matter which day it's on and then I also have a quote for you there from one of our students about their thoughts uh from as to why they prefer the weekly erd. I was going to read these quotes and try and read it in like a student voice, but I thought I'd just leave it there and you guys can read
081it for yourselves. Um, and so so you understand a little bit too is how we collected the information from these meetings. At the meetings, the meetings were recorded. I took the transcripts from those meetings and used AI to help analyze um the information and in this case pull out some of these quotes for us parents conversations regarding the weekly erds. So with that I used notebook LM as the the AI resource for this. So when I asked notebook LM tell me what is the general consensus from parents regarding the weekly erd that's uh what it said. And so instead of me trying to rephrase that, I thought, "Oh, that's that's pretty pretty darn good." So based on feedback he gathered from various parent meetings and written correspondents, parents general thoughts on moving to a weekly
082early release day are largely positive regarding the consistency, but they remain deeply divided on the specific day of the week. Um, so the weekly routine, a lot of the feedback is that the weekly routine is a lot easier to manage and reduces some of the confusion. Preferred the later dismissal time, felt like it wasn't as disruptive to uh child care. Uh and also multiple comments that they felt like it was safer for students students especially students at the secondary level that might just have that as unsupervised time where there's less of that unsupervised time they felt was a better uh situation for the their students as well. When it came to the day of the week, similar to the students, there was uh an emphasis either on Wednesdays or Fridays, largely for similar reasons to
083those reasons that were pointed out by the students. But again, I note that the consistency matters more than the specific day of the week. And some quotes from parents specifically about their thoughts on the early release days. In our staff discussions, there was a strong consensus that weekly collaboration is essential for PLC's to do the work that PLC's need to do. There were two uh significant concerns that were shared with us. The first one being potential reduction of prep time. There was a lot of question and discussion about this and working with the teachers as well as working with our associations. We've come to what we think is a good solution and that solution would be that there would be 90 minutes each week of PLC time that would allow the that 90 minutes we
084would have after the early release day. So the the times there would allow for 90 minutes of PLC time but there would also be some flexibility for that collaboration to happen during a prep period if needed. But if some of that if that happened during a prep period then prep time would be given back during uh the early release day. So it would be a total of 90 minutes each week of PLC time. It helps in with the longer early release days. It gives longer prep time on those early release days. As an example in our elementarymentaries currently teachers get a prep of about 30 minutes. in the new model, they would get a prep of about 42 minutes on those particular days. And then I did some uh calculating what what does it look
085like prep time in our current model versus prep time in the proposed model. Right now it would be in a two-eek window. One of those you would have the long early release like we have and in the other week they would meet once during their prep. So it would leave with about 395 minutes of prep time in that twoe window versus what we are proposing would actually be an increase of prep time for our teachers to about 444 minutes. Additionally, with the prep time, we've added the teacher work day on December 18th. Um, as I noted, we've from what I presented to you in January, we've made some slight adjustments in the release times that are noted on this uh these proposals, both F and G. And the reason for those adjustments in times is
086to allow for that 90 minutes of PLC time at all levels, elementary, middle, and high. The other concern that was raised by teachers regarding the weekly erd is the effectiveness of the time. It's one thing to have the time. It's another thing to use that time effectively and productively. And that has not always been the case. And so we want to move forward in a way where we are using that time effectively um at the highest leverage possible. So in order to get there, additional training will be provided to school administrators as well as teachers. We will also be restructuring some of the other meetings that happen in order other meetings and trainings so that we can really keep that PLC time consistent and focused on the work that needs to happen in PLC's which
087is that data analysis and an analysis of our instructional practices in order to improve them. with the teachers uh feedback on days of the week. Unlike our students and parents, the teachers see a need for it not being on Fridays. Um mixed feedback on other days of the week, not a general consensus specifically on one. And then here again I have some quote quotes for you. These being quotes from staff members regarding um the weekly erd. for as far as the district's recommendation on this question. Our recommendation is that we have a weekly early release day and with the dismissal times that are noted there on our drafts F and G um to allow that 90 minutes of PLC time. As for the day of the week, the district recommendation is for Tuesdays. Um the
088reason behind that, Fridays present some attendance challenges. Wednesdays um limits our access to RPDP resources. RPDP is a state sponsored organization that provides professional development. There are three regional organizations in Nevada and with other districts on Wednesdays. uh if we were to be on Tuesdays, that would allow us greater access to those resources. With our current budget shortfall and potential reduction in our ED services staff, it's important that we be able to access these free and high-quality resources. Not that we couldn't access them on Wednesdays, it would just increase our ability to access them on a day other than Wednesdays. The next question that we go to is the number of professional learning days. As you'll remember from the presentation in January, the state allows for five professional learning days each year. Those professional learning
089days are not school days for students. They are full days for teachers professional learning and they do count towards the instructional minutes for the year. Um there are some regulations around them. One being they're limited to five, another being that we cannot do them in the last 45 days of the school year. When we look at the alignment to our goals, again, having that exceptional staff and provi part of the strategies under that goal one is providing them with great professional learning opportunities. And then also goal two, making sure that we have curriculum that matters, which is part of our strategic plan. And these full day professional learning opportunities would align with with that feedback. Well, the students they think it's great, right? It's a day of no school for them. Um parents split uh
090feedback on this. I characterize the that is this as parents generally support them as long as they are clearly scheduled in advance and they are paired with weekends or breaks. So they're not just a Wednesday uh in the middle of the week where students don't have school. So they need time to prepare in advance for child care and it's easier if those things are paired with a weekend or a break. Staff feedback has been that they do find them useful. This year we had one on January 4th. That's the only one that we had. Um, I felt like, uh, one teacher who articulated it well in particular just felt like coming back from that break and having a day to reset, get some of the learning that you needed, and be ready to start that
091next push of the school year was um, something that she found very helpful. Uh another reason for this in order to preserve more of that prep time on the weekly basis we've reduced the professional learning time uh with the with the weekly erds and we really don't have the long form where we have two and a half hours or so and some of the training that we have needs to be in that longer format and so the professional learning days would allow for those. There is continuing to be an increase in the state requirements for professional development. Um, one of the things that we have mentioned in particular our science of reading requirements under uh state law that we have to provide that to our K through three teachers and that is a 15 hours
092of training. That would be three five-hour training sessions. So that alone would take three days of professional learning to provide that to our teachers. The district recommendation would be that we use all five of the days allowed by NDE for these professional learning days. The next question that we look at is the end of the school year on June 3rd or um before Memorial Day, May 28th, I believe. um alignment with our goals in a strategic plan. Those healthy generations where we start and stop and whether or not we have breaks or longer breaks in the middle of the semester certainly factor into this. Uh this one would be a question where I would say the consensus is certainly pretty is is unclear uh from the different groups. Some prefer an earlier start to summer,
093so ending before Memorial Day. Some articulated preferences for longer breaks within the semester. Some think it's easier to get family in town for graduation on a holiday weekend, Memorial Day. Others find it very complicated to get family in town and travel is more expensive on those holiday weekends. So that these are some of a very brief summary of those discussions where we heard um points on both sides of this. Some of the key trade-offs to note, if we look at F and G, in order to end before Memorial Day, uh there is a staff contract day on August 11th and the first day of school is August 17th as opposed to August 18th. And there is one less school day for students. I would note that we made a typo in um on draft G.
094It has the correct school start day on the calendar of August 18th, but on the column on the right hand side where it lists first day of school, it says um August 17th. That should read August 18th. So, it's correct in the calendar portion. It's not it's not correct on the side there. We spend a lot of time looking at these calendars and spreadsheets and so I'm kind of actually impressed if that's the only typo we made. Um, another one of the challenges or trade-offs with having the end of school before Memorial Day is it creates really tight timelines for our promotions and graduations. We would be doing Eagle Valley promotion on May 27th, Carson Middle School promotion on May 28th, and then Carson High graduation on the same day, also May 28th. I also
095received some information from our high school counselors today with we got our AP testing dates. Um, and those are uh don't end until late May, which also just makes a pretty tight turnaround to get things wrapped up and ready for the end of the year. The district recommendation for the end of the school year is that we end on June 3rd. There are some other changes. Some of these we've we've talked about, but changes from the draft that you saw on the 27th. There is we put no early release day on the first and last week of each semester. Couple of reasons for that. We regain some instructional time with that. The very first week of the school year, there's not data for us to review. So, we don't need to have that there. Um,
096it's a trade-off of, you know, the consistency piece when we say every Wednesday, but in this case, we're saying every Wednesday, but not the first and the last of the semester. The last week of the semester was very disruptive for high school in particular with their finals schedule. So, our high school teachers and our high school students advocated strongly for not having that early release the last week of the semester. Uh we changed some of the wording on the calendar to be a little bit more parent friendly based on some feedback that we received from parents. And I'll say that's something that we always work on because it's it's sometimes difficult to put ourselves in a parent mindset and not in an educator mindset. So things that make sense to us don't always make sense.
097And so we appreciate that feedback and are trying to adjust accordingly. As I mentioned, there's some minor adjustments to the release time on the early release days and then we put some clarity around the intent and limits of the PLC time and the prep time each week. Here's what it looks like when we look at total minutes. And uh I would note there in the previous board presentation, the number of minutes that I had on the 2526 calendar were inaccurate in looking at the various forms that we submitted. I made an error in the form that I pulled the information from. I apologize for that inaccuracy in the previous presentation. So you see our the state minimum minutes, what we have currently in 2526 and then what we would have as far as our minutes
098in option F and option G. So I know I've covered a lot of things, a lot of questions um and recommendations. So I wanted to summarize for you the question of the semester end before or after winter break and a teacher workday. District recommendation is before winter break and also have that teacher work day. Question of parent teacher conferences on full days or with early release days. Our recommendation is that yes we have two full days each semester. Weekly erd. Our recommendation is for a weekly erd occurring on Tuesdays. Uh the number of professional learning days. Our recommendation is for five full professional learning days. And the question of the last day of school, our recommendation is that that would be June 3rd. All of these recommendations are um presented to you in draft G
099and you can see exactly what that all of those would look like. Any questions? >> Yes, I'm sure we do. So, we're going to go ahead and uh get this started and I believe we'll go ahead and start at this end. Trusty Varner, did you want to go ahead and start? >> And then if if the rest of us if we can, you know, just kind of keep track of what's being asked and then we'll um make sure that we're not duplicating the question. Thank you. >> Uh first of all, I'd like to thank you for all the work you did on this. I know we've had a lot of discussions about the calendar more so than any time prior and I think it's been good to have this uh discussion. Uh one of the
100concerns that I have, I'm all for anything that'll improve student achievement, but my question is I guess is how are we going to determine that these early release days are being productive and it's really going to increase in student achievement? How are we going to determine that? Because if we pass this calendar, we're going to want to review that and see if we want to keep these early release days for next year. So, what's that process going to look like? >> I think that's a great question. Uh, and it's something that is tricky to do in education. Um, it is tricky to draw direct cause and effect um relationships because there's not just one thing that we're changing. uh we have a new ELA curriculum in elementary for instance and we're doing this. So which
101one if we see an improvement which one is causing the improvement? So I I add that little bit of an asterisk there of it can be difficult for us to draw the um cause and effect um relationship there. I think that the things that we are looking for is improvement in student achievement. So, we would be looking at our ESBACK results. We would be looking at our MAP test score results. There's so much that goes into those. I think it, like I said, it's difficult to draw that specifically to the weekly early release days. I I think a better measure is what are our teacher perceptions of the effectiveness of those times? And so are we seeing a sense of from our teachers who are our experts in in instruction on this time is useful
102and is helping me be a better teacher in the classroom. And so our ability to measure that and see some growth of that it I think would be a key indicator for us to look for. I would also note that this is something that we would we would not anticipate it being a dramatic change an a a a quick fix in year one. We would anticipate that it takes multiple years to get to the level of the fidelity of implementation that we need to be at, but we should be seeing progress each and every year. Um, but I don't think we want to jump on and jump off things uh too quickly. Does that answer your question, Trusty Verer? >> Yeah, thank you. Um, I guess the next question I have is who's going to
103be monitoring these meetings these on early release days to make sure that um they're being utilized properly. So the first um the first responsibility for that is really on our campus administrators to train teachers to have clear expectations and to monitor that those expectations are being met. The literature would also be clear that and a key part of our PLC's functioning the way they need to be is some collective accountability amongst peers. there's only one principle and there's going to be many PLC's happening at the same time. So, but but we need to as professionals hold each other accountable as well. And then there's also a level of accountability that comes from myself and other leaders in the district being present at those meetings to ensure that they're being used the way they need to
104be used, but also identifying if they're not being used the way they need to be used, what training do we need to put in place or what changes need to happen so that they can be there. our mode or our our um we operate from a position of we need to make sure that our teachers have the right training and our administrators have the right training and the right supports and with the right training and supports they will be able to meet those expectations and if they have the right training and right supports and they're still not meeting the expectations then there are other accountability measures that we need to have in place. Yeah, I think that goes a long ways because I understand it's been a while since there's been any training in this
105area. So, uh, also before I end, I'd like to thank, uh, principal Karsten's for allowing myself and Michelle to attend a PLC meeting for the CTE program and also I'm going to be attending uh, some tomorrow afternoon. So, uh, thank you for, uh, making that arrangement because I'm curious about what really happens in these meetings because, uh, it's kind of a foreign concept to me, I guess. I want to make sure of what really is going on, you know. So, u, thank you very much. >> Well, >> thank you for your work. >> You're very welcome. And I would like to say I appreciate that we have trustees that come to our schools and see and observe what's going on. So, I appreciate I thank you guys for being those types of trustees. >> And
106thank you, >> Trusty Peterson. >> Um, thank you. Uh, last time this was presented, um, we felt like on a triangle of representation, we've got admin, teachers, parents, and students. And we have a responsibility to make sure that they all feel heard and represented. And I feel when you presented um last time we had a very beautiful presentation, very thorough um very very well researched presentation of the benefits of of the calendar change. We had a a decent handful of teachers that came for public comment and we had expressed concern that there was a whole corner of that triangle that was completely unrepresented and and you did the work to go get that information. And so um whether you personally or the delegation that you did, I really appreciate that information was collected not just
107from the parents but from the students as well. Um so thank you for that. I noticed in the um with the the student feedback when they had said with every other at the high school with the AB days, there was a concern in the disproportion of of classes that they miss the same one every week and and as Trusty Varnner said when we were meeting with the CTE that concern was expressed by those teachers as well. So it's it's good to see the the students in tune on that too and that they're invested enough to be like I don't want to keep missing this class. So, um, and then also on the parent, um, input, this is a little bit aside, but my I have family in WO County School District and we had family
108dinner this week and we they always ask me about schoolboard stuff and we were talking about the calendar because I knew this would be a big discussion and and I was trying to explain to him, well, right now we have early Reese's that are every other day. And he's like, what what how do you how do you keep how do you know when it is? And like you you just know, you write it down. He knows like and it it was such a foreign concept to him the the randomness of even though every other isn't really that random but um the feedback here in the parents too about the consistency of having it every week. I've never thought it was that hard to juggle but maybe I'm a minority and so um to have it
109expressed in in a variety of ways that they will appreciate that weekly um was good to see. Um and then sorry these aren't really questions, these are just statements. Um, another small piece of feedback that's not huge, but um, as we were talking about graduation, um, specifically the high school graduation being Memorial Day weekend and and the ease that it could be for families coming in, um, I also sit on the safeguard um, board and having that on Memorial Weekend would make it very challenging for us to be able to completely book out any venues to to still offer that safegrad. And so, um, I'm glad to see there's another option with it ending into June, and that's where I would lean. Um, that impacts such a small small bit, but it's just another crumb
110of of input, I guess, on that. Um, and aside from that, I really don't have a whole lot of other feedback or questions. Just thank you for the thoroughess and for coming back with a good bit of homework and research. Thank you. >> You're welcome, >> Trusty Clapper. Trusty Roberts, >> I think everything's been answered. Thanks again for another wonderful thorough presentation. I really appreciate that. And um just apologize that I missed the parent meeting on this because I would have loved to attend, but somehow that that invite fell through for me. Um, but I thank you for for um including all the different people that were involved and thank you for all the families who put their input in and and took the time to share their thoughts. >> You see Ramirez. >> Yes.
111So, I echo what my um colleagues mentioned um and definitely want to express also want to express my appreciation for this additional work that you did. It was definitely um a lot of work that you that um and a lot of hours that you put into this. So, we appreciate that um and and for being receptive because you did take those recommendations that we made um from our previous meeting very serious. And so, thank you for that. Um I also appreciated that you um the key points that you addressed here are in in alignment with the strategic plan goals. So, that was very helpful. Um and yes, I also want to thank Mr. carsten for uh spending time with me and explaining to me um in great detail what the PLC's look like and um
112for me that was very helpful because I'm a visual person so that was that was very very helpful. Thank you so much. Yeah. So, excellent work. >> Thank you. >> All right. Um I'll ask and then bring it back. Okay, that sounds great. And then I just want to um mention to the board as well that you can take pieces from one to the other. Um so like if even though you know both FNG present to be Tuesday um it is up to the board if you would if you would re if you want to recommend Wednesday as per what the recommendation was from the those who were surveyed that is an option as well. Okay just so you know um it doesn't have to be one or the other. You can make an amendment
113to say I want G but with this. Okay. Yeah. Just so you know on that. Um so on my >> Are we going to get feedback from the audience before we make a decision? >> It is an action item. So I will make sure I call for public comment. Right. >> Okay. So the questions I have too is I know you address the effects on weekly early release when it comes to athletics. Um but did what did you hear um when it comes to like child care um student attendance or you know afterchool programming the tutoring programs that we that we offer as well you know having it be every work week versus um every other week those after programs. So the um with our community partners that I reached out to the early release
114days whenever we have the early release days they um are able to accommodate that and have uh the same child care that they provide now on those early release days. Uh there certainly are some of the feedback from some parents is that you know early release days are difficult and difficult to find the child care. Yes, it would be more predictable and it wouldn't be as long of a block, but it still is a challenge to find uh and make that child care um make those accommodations for the child care. um with our the things that are happening at our schools. Uh doing it on a weekly basis, there are some processes no matter the day, whatever day it's on, there are some processes that would need to be adjusted to make sure that we
115are accommodating for athletics, for clubs, for those other things that are happening after school. Uh and our administrators are aware of those but believe that the benefits again the benefits of having that early release day are really important and that they can make the necessary adjustments for their afterchool um practices in order to to facilitate what needs to happen. >> Okay? because I would see that this um every week, you know, would impact um families, you know, working families that don't have that consistent child care on that. And so, um that is once one thing I think we should be cognizant of of as well. Um the other thing I wanted to ask is um with this then with the PLC days um how do we deal then with district training and site trainings? I
116just want to ensure that prep time, teacher prep time is not going to be given up um or they're going to be asked to work during their prep time um for district training, say on um gosh, I don't know, like act training, right? Um that they're not going to say, "Oh, hey, and by the way, >> you know, you're going to need your prep time to do this type of training." Um so, how are we going to ensure that is not being asked of our teachers? Yeah, that's a great question and certainly a question that was asked from the teachers. And so there's a couple of pieces that we have in place there that we feel like is going to address that concern. First being that we have that 90 minutes for the on the
117early release days and principles have some flexibility with those 90 minutes. Perhaps the first part of those might be some ACT training and then the second part would be um the PLC time. But those 90 minutes would that happen every week provide that opportunity for the principles to do the training that they need or any updates that they need. Again, if that needs to be shifted to it needs to happen with a particular group of teachers during their prep time, then that group of teachers would get additional prep time back during the early release. So, we're not taking any more than 90 minutes during the week. Is that making sense? >> It does. Is anou going to be required with the um bargaining units? >> With the conversations that we've had um because we're still
118preserving that we're just using the 90 minutes and they will have the same amount of prep time each week. There wouldn't be anou that's required for that. The other piece that we have to provide some of the training that needs to be in place um is are the full professional learning days. Some of the training does take longer than what we can do in a shorter format of 90, 45 or even 90 minutes. And so those professional learning days happening uh on a regular basis give us that flexibility for that longer those longer trainings that need to happen. The testing training is one that you bring up and is certainly one that we have to do every single year whether it's ACT for the high school or it's ESPback uh for the elementary and middle
119schools. And so we feel like between the early release days and the professional learning days that gives us the opportunities that we need to provide the training and would not impact the teacher prep time. >> All right. Thank you for addressing that. And so trusty Varner, another question. >> Yeah. Uh thank you. Uh you wouldn't think a calendar to be so complicated, but I appreciate everybody being here. I'm sure that uh most people are here in support of uh the early release days on every every week. Uh myself uh based upon what the parents and students say, I would suggest that we look at Wednesday and uh I think that would help accommodate what they preferred. I wish we did have more comments or input from parents because I understand some of the parents uh
120there wasn't a lot of turnout at some of the meetings with the parents, but I'm glad we offered them that opportunity and uh I would support um calendar G with uh being changed to having the release date or the graduation on June 3rd. I'm not in support of it ending before Memorial Day. Um, so that would be my recommendation. >> Um, all right. Before we take it to the board, I just want to reiterate the things that was asked from the board to you for the future. Um so you were asked if you could um provide support to the best of your ability within a year um on you know how effective are the PLC's and the early release times and how they would be improving student outcome. you had mentioned ESPback results um teacher
121perception key indicator um board would like to see those results whether it be a survey from the teachers or whatnot but if you could bring that back to the board you know may maybe this time next year or prior to us voting on um the calendar for next year as well or the following year and then um you were also asked who would be monitoring the early release days and PLC's days you had mentioned campus administrators collect ive um accountability by the peers and the district staff um what trainings would need to be done in place and changes that need to be made. So I would ask that you bring that back to the board those results um as well when you bring the 2728 calendar um back to us. So I think that was
122the feed that that we we would ask for as well. But again, I'd like to thank you for your time because um you did spend a lot of time on doing this and and I think this is one of the um since I've been on the board, the first time that so much input was taken in your position to get um others to uh get their input on the calendar. So, I greatly appreciate that. So, at this time, if the board is ready for uh for someone to make a motion, um I would uh entertain a motion. Oh, no. I am so sorry. No, no, we do we do make a motion second then I call for public comment. Oh, you guys are mess messing me up up here. >> Okay. I thought I had
123it all straight. But yes, I do motion second then public comment. Okay, so at this time >> Molly, are we going to say which one we would rather have before you make a motion? >> Well, just like how Richard um you know made his suggestion. Um, so then I would presume he's going to make the motion with his suggestion and then um if you if you would like to second it, you can. And then we would ask for public comment. If you do not go for his suggestion, we will have discussion and then you would be able to say, "Nope, I don't like it. I would rather see it be this." And then this calls for the discussion. Okay. On that end. Okay. So, first though, we call for a motion. So, do I have
124a motion? >> Yeah. I'll try to uh I'll try to make one of um I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approved draft G with the following changes with the end of the school year being on June 3rd and then the uh early release days being on Wednesday and not Tuesday. >> So at this time I call for >> oh I'm sorry as of 20 26 20 27th academic calendar. >> So at this time I call for a second. And if we do not get a second, then his motion fails and somebody else then is entertained to make a motion. So, do I have a second? Wow. People. All right. So, seeing none, >> I feel like loser. >> So, seeing none, that motion fails. So, at this time then, I
125would entertain another motion. So, his motion fails. So, for whatever reason, you didn't all vote on it. I need a motion. >> Go ahead. >> I Okay. Um Okay. Yeah. I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve draft F as the 2026 2027 academic calendar. Do I have a second? Seeing none, that motion fails. >> Okay. All right. So, at this time then before opening it up for another motion, let's go ahead and go around then and see because I don't want you to all feel like you're losers. So, let's go around and see, you know, what is it that what is it that you're not liking about one or the other and see if we can't come to a consensus. So, Trusty RmIrez, let's hear from you first. >> I
126was ready to make a motion with um draft G as is. So I don't know that I can add to additional discussion. >> All right. Um and then we heard from Trusty Roberts. Trusty Clapam >> say my reasoning for F um with graduation before memorial. I've just heard a lot of that in my talking around with people. So that was the one I supported. As well as you all know, I have voiced my opinion on the length of time, especially for our elementary kids and as well as gathering that information from other families. It is really um tough on these kids. And so I appreciated the um less amount of minutes that option F gives while still um being well above the state minimums. >> Okay. Thank you. And I do want to add that
127I did hear comments about Memorial Day having it before Memorial. And when I mentioned it at the meeting, it wasn't to be taken literally. I just thought three days before, you know, maybe three days we get back in the summer, whatever. It wasn't to be taken literally. However, the input that I did hear was um in favor until I did speak to um primarily the high school and the middle school. Having the middle school graduation on the same day as the high school would be extremely difficult and it and difficult for the schools and the staff. The testing that takes place to try to rush having it end having graduation on Memorial Day to my understanding and Mr. Karsten's is here and feel free to jump in if you'd like, but would be extremely difficult
128on staff as well to get prepared for that. And then for teachers to be done at the end of the school year on that would be extremely difficult. And then um like uh Trusty Peterson said as well um I did hear with Safegrad as well because I don't believe the theater I mean that that they would have um this in order to do it. So it kind of puts a little um strain on a few different different um pieces of the puzzle. Okay. So but I was all for it too until I heard that. All right. Trusty Clapam. Uh, I was in agreement with um, Mr. Ramirez, draft G. Um, I like I just I think uh, Mr. Bringher has done his research and um, it seems to be exactly I think what I'm looking
129for myself. Um, and then um, the Tuesday, Thursday, I don't want to go to Wednesdays. uh want to have as much access possible to that um RFPGI D. Um and so Tuesday or Thursday works best, but we've got a Tuesday here and I'm fine with that. So, um I'm I'm I like draft G. >> Okay. Trusty Peterson. >> Um I am in agreeance with Trusty Ramirez and Trusty Clappam. I was going to support draft G as presented. Um, the only part of that one that really caught my eye was um February 11th as a um PL day um gives a five day weekend leading into an early release day. Um but yay going out of town potential. That's that's the only one that was like, "Oh gosh, that is a big chunk of time." Um
130but I can live with it. >> Yeah. No, I did the same. I'm not in favor of the no school days, but it's a battle I'm don't think I'll fight. Okay. So, hearing that then, um, hearing everybody's opinion, we'll go ahead and and move it towards Do I have a motion? I'll make a motion. I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve draft G as the 2026 2027 academic calendar. >> Do I have a second? All right. I have a motion from Trustee Clappam, a second from Trusty Ramirez, and now it is time for public comment. Again, please um hit the button for the microphone. Make sure it's green. State your name for the record. And you have three minutes. My name is Lindsay Bllye, teacher at Celiger Elementary. Um, and
131I I would just advise really look at draft G in the I I am in favor of F. I'll I'll be honest, G, there are several teacher training days where the students will end up having very short weeks. And unfortunately, families decide if their kids are only going to go to school for two days or two and a half days, they just might as well keep them home. I am very concerned that we are going to have a lot more absenteeism that second week of February cuz might as well take a trip to Disneyland since we got we'd only missed three days of school. And then especially ending in June with one full day coming back and then two minimum days, a majority of kids will not show up. Um, and then we have to
132figure out what to do with all the stuff they left in their desk and parents don't want to come to the school to get. Um, and I do appreciate the safeg grad night. I know, you know, as when I was in high school that was an issue. Um, and a couple my they they ended up moving it back eventually. I didn't go to school here because then families could celebrate graduations over Memorial Day weekend. They were their kids were not at a safe grad night. They could they didn't have to rush like I did to get to the safegrad bus and stuff like that. Um but mostly I'm concerned that with some of those very short weeks, we're going to have a lot more absenteeism because parents will see it as it's only two days,
133might as well skip it. Thank you. >> Next. Hi, I'm Jamie Stevenson. Uh, I have a daughter at Borderick. I feel like my comment is kind of moot now, but I'm going to do it anyway. um and add that, you know, on Parent Square I get notifications about what book we're reading, what hat we're wearing on Tuesday, what fundraisers going on, but there was crickets on this calendar. So, I didn't know about the meetings that Mr. Bringhurst had. I would have liked to have come to those um because I'm against having weekly early release days. I don't believe it will help the students or the teachers. the teachers are already juggling enough and these meetings would create even more work because to really make them effective. You have to plan, you have to organize and
134you have to be prepared. So I would be concerned that their prep time would go into making the agenda for their meetings and you know having all their data that they need um for the meeting. Um I think we should stop adding uh paperwork and administrative duties to the teachers. Um Mr. bring her said the teachers are the experts so let them teach they they know what they're doing. Um I don't feel that the students would benefit from less time in the class either. Um I haven't been a teacher myself but I've coached youth sports and I feel that the best tool for getting through to the kids is to spend enough time with them to figure out what really works for that child. Um not to spend time theorizing about what might work for
135them. Um, each person learns differently and I think the teachers find that out as they work with the students. Spending less time with them would make that process take even longer. I know currently at Boardwick students are rotating through multiple teachers a day for each subject. This framework already restricts the time that the teachers can spend with each student. This also makes it so that each teacher has even more students to teach. um how are they ensuring that they're reaching out to each student when they're responsible for ensuring that the entire fifth grade uh reaches their goals um on a given subject. I highly doubt more meetings will make that easier. If the teachers are in favor of this and they believe it'll help the students, I'm wondering if they're willing to have these meetings
136after a regular school day. I know they deal with a lot uh parents can be disengaged. Um, but if this is something that would really work and it's and if it's worth the time and effort, um, you know, the day is not over at 3:15. Um, the Orangeville County employee or education uh, association says that a contract day is 7 and 12 hours and a contract year is 183 days. Does that mean that teachers are only required to work 1,372 and a half hours a year? I'm only asking this because um maybe that's the reason we have to do early release. Um maybe there's a restriction. >> Thank you so much for your comment. And if you have additional comment that you weren't able to present, please feel free to um give it to Renee.
137>> Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. >> Is there additional public comment? Okay. Seeing none, we bring it back to the board. Um, and so we do at this time we could continue to discuss if anything that was presented to you um would So I'm going to give mine. I do um I am in favor of only the three PL days instead of the five. I I was from the beginning and continue to be as well. Um, and so, you know, on that note, um, that's where I would stand. And so, um, I will not be voting in favor of this motion. >> But, if I could, I'm also opposed to the five work days. I think, um, I could support it with with the three. And also, uh, just go back
138to the Wednesdays. I think if that's what the parents want, uh we ought to really consider their wishes, you know, because uh we ask them for their input and if they give it to us and we disregard it, I don't know what kind of message that'll send, but thank you. >> Okay. >> Yes. I just had one question for safegrad. I don't know if this is possible. I know for my school in high school it was just held at the school so there wasn't the issue of having to travel somewhere or you know being more expensive venue to rent out but I don't know if that's logistically how this district works. >> Yeah. And I like I this should not all hinge on safeguard by no means. That is such a small piece of this.
139Um but it is something that we've talked about. Um and um logistically the amount of use the gym gets on graduation day um it's would not be available for us to set up anything that um would be appealing um to get the kids there. And then now especially out with it being an evening graduation it's just not feasible. Um the community center is not available because elections dominates there now and doesn't allow the space to be shared. And so, um, the last couple years we've booked out, um, at at community businesses, um, which is what we're also doing again this year. We're going up to Fly High and so they'll be busting. But the thought of Fly High saying, "Yeah, you can book us for a private event on Memorial weekend when everybody's out of
140school," it doesn't I don't know, seems like a challenge, but not one that this all needs to hinge on by any means. Okay, >> any further discussion? All right. So, we have >> Madam President. >> Yes. >> Uh because there was some nuance in the discussion that was just brought up, I recommend you open it for public comment again and see if there's any additional public comment based on what was said. >> Well, thank you very much. Public comment. >> Hi, Carrie Prior, principal of Celiger Elementary. I'm glad that you brought that up and that we now have an opportunity to address that. Perfect. Set the timer. Um, one of them, one of the things that I appreciate most about Brandon's um, presentation this evening was that he brought us back to the strategic plan.
141And in the original strategic strategic plan, goal one was the goal that I worked under for professional learning was my position at that time. And that goal was specifically written for professional learning communities. And it was talked about professional agency. And there's a difference between teacher agency and what we have to do on those site professional learning days. The PLC's are an opportunity for teachers to talk about their craft, look at data to improve student learning, look at outcomes in the classroom. And so those will be sacred times where teachers really can use their teacher agency to impact change. On those professional learning days, a lot of times what site administrators have to plan are things that are required such as allowing opportunities for staff to do like our pool pack trainings that are required
142which is sexual harassment, um mandatory reporting training, anything that we have to do that's required by NRS. Other things that we have to do on those PL days and why I'm advocating for five, which would be calendar draft G, would be things like CKLA training. That's going to be a mandatory. We're anticipating five hours of at the elementary CKLA training for um ELA. And so that's we don't want to take away from that professional agency that was in our strategic plan from the start. And so we really do need five PL days to accomplish what we have to accomplish that's being brought to us maybe by NRS as well as some of the things that are just required in our profession. But then really making sure that we're sticking to what's in the strategic plan
143about allowing teachers professional agency. The number one indicator of students growth is the teacher in the classroom. and we allow them to perfect their craft and really do what they're professionals and and and can do, I know that we're going to see those outcomes really increase. So, I would advocate for G with the five professional learning days. >> Great. Thank you for your comment, >> Brian Wallace, Hornsby County Education Association President, staff member at Eagle Valley Middle School, uh board president, superintendent fueling, Mr. bring her board members. Um I would like to ditto what Miss Prior said. I won't repeat any of that except the piece of that. Um when Eco Valley went through its original SIG grant and then we moved on to the race to the top grant. Um I was originally part
144of all of that starting to implement PLC's at that time. We worked toward uh department chair empowerment. So when you ask the questions of who would lead these PLC's that is where we would like to see that guidance start to become part of those additional PL days will be continuing empowering department chairs so that it's teacher le it's teacher collaboration and it's not always administrative. While our administrators are absolutely amazing they are not in our classrooms every day with those kids. Eagle Valley is lucky enough to team so we share those kids. So we could look at this from a team perspective. We can look at this from a department perspective. Um at Eagle Valley, I can just speak for them. Um there is a core group of us and a few others that we
145PLC every morning, usually around 7 a.m. and then we wind up continuing it into our lunchtime many times. And it's just natural. It's not something we want to do. it just automatically happens because we are constantly looking at every single one of those children and seeing what can we shift next. As an elective teacher, I get one half of seventh grade first semester, I get one half second semester. So, this empowers many of our elective teachers that are in semesters to be able to go to those colleagues, work with them, get what's working for that child. What strategies have you seen? um even if they're already into the MTSS and what supports are already built into those tiers. So, it needs some work. We we know we have not done the best job over the
146last year or so with PLC's, but from our survey data, it does show that teachers are willing to do it if we have it structured. if we can come back to maybe where we were at one point when we had the race to the top grant and we're rolling this out and that we can make it valuable once again. If it doesn't, I can guarantee you you're going to hear from teachers. you you you will have a room full probably after next year at that point and you'll go back to a more traditional calendar. No early release days, no PL days maybe because they desire that structure. They desire that ability to lead themselves and work with their colleagues because as you've heard repeatedly from OCA, we are here for the children. Thank you. >>
147Thank you. Good e good good evening Jennifer Ward for the record principal at Fremont but I am also the president of our administrators association and I would like to echo um Miss Prior as well as Mr. Wallace's comments about our need for professional development. Um, our teachers contract is pretty strict and what we are able to do within the 183 days is truly work magic for kids. And in order to do that with some professional development time, those five days are essential. Um, having only one this school year has been um, where it really binds our hands because if you ever have a curriculum roll out, you are literally without time to give your teachers to do pool pack, you're without time to give collaboration. um that collective efficacy piece where teachers get to learn
148and talk about their craft with one another is compromised and that is pretty essential to the fact that we need time that it is all of the staff in the same place at the same time. And so those five days spread out throughout the year allow us to do that differentiated um professional development. um looking at the state of just having 15 hours of required training for your K3 teachers, that would be all three of those days. So that that would be my plea is to allow us to have those five days to do that essential work um that goes beyond our statemandated trainings and that allows for um both school autonomy as well as differentiated by the different grade levels. um whether it be in your secondary or in your elementary um those days
149are truly essential and they will be I can attest to Mr. Bringhurst um insistence um on his administrators they will be effective and they will be worthwhile and I believe that next year um as many as would come if it was not effective you will see many coming to let you know how effective and supportive of what they do in the classroom those teachers will be here to support a calendar moving forward in the 2728 8 year that allows that collaborative time because that is power and that is an amazing gift that we can give our teaching staff. So I um I hope that we are able to go back to the the item on the table which was G um with those five full professional development days spread throughout the year. Thank you for
150your time. Good evening. My name is Chalice Kirkchinks. I'm the principal at Mark Twain Elementary School and I just wanted to um present my support for draft G. Um the professional learning days are so critical to us. If the state is going to ask us to do 15 hours, I'm in support. The science of reading is very complicated. I'd love for any of you to come and watch some of these lessons. It is intense. Our students are doing very very well and I'm really really proud of our work and I'm excited to continue to learn in this. But if we only have three days and the state takes all three, that leaves me to try and teach my teachers in 30 minute increments. Because on an early release day, if 90 is for the full-time,
15130 would be a professional learning or a staff meeting, then I would have the 60 for the PLC work that the teachers are going to do. So any improvements or changes or instructional materials or strategies that I need to help my teachers understand, I have to do in 30 minute chunks. If I could have those days where we could dig in for several hours, get into those lessons, do some really critical work, collaborate together, maybe bring in some professional trainers. It's it's critical. I compare this to the business world or the private sector. If you're working in a job and your boss wants you to go get training, you say, "Okay, what when's the conference? When can I go?" We have kids in front of us every single day and we cannot leave them. And
152we work very hard to not have subs in our classrooms. There is no other time to do this learning. The last example I just want to present to the board, we've been working so hard and I'll just This is one example. It's only one subject, but we've been working so hard with our CKLA implementation. Doing the work, chugging along, working together, collaborating. How did you teach this? How did you teach that? I was, we were fortunate enough to get a couple of coaching days this year from the CKLA trainers. When I started to dig into that work with my teachers in depth, I saw a whole another level of shift and movement. instead of my little 30 minute increments along the way, it really changed where my teachers are at. And I feel like in
153the last probably six to eight weeks, we've made tremendous gains. I've actually had to sub out a couple of grade levels that were subbing or that were struggling with, you know, putting some of this together, which is totally normal. But when I gave them three hours of consecutive work, I saw a much much needed shift in their thinking and the way that we are able to execute that. So I use that as an example and I just ask for your support on schedule G with those five days because as a building leader, I just need more than 30 minutes a week to be able to do this. Thank you. Good evening, board of trustees. Uh, Mr. Fueling, Mr. Russell. First off, thank you for for listening to all of us. I'm Dan Karstens, principal of
154Carson High School. Also, the incoming president of CCAA because Jen doesn't want to do it anymore. So, um, but, uh, I I I gotta echo my colleagues. Um, to have the five days is it truly is a gamecher. I look at Mr. Bringinghurst's um, presentation uh, based on research, especially the last one where he really dug into the research. Um, I look at the experiences that we have from I don't know how many years of administrators who know what we're doing. Um I would ask you to trust us in order to make this stuff happen. Um and then you look at the data and the requirements that get put on us is it's immense. It's very difficult to do it during early release time just having an hour hour and a half a week and
155then trying to get our teachers to work together on our student data and then well we got to do this state training so we got to take time to do this too. And so Carrie, Miss Prior talked a lot about uh teacher agency. And if we do take that agency away from our teachers, it is uh that's telling them that we're not going to we're not going to trust them to do the work. And so what I would ask you to do is reflect on the reasons why that you want to go from five to three. Is it based on data? Is it based on experience? And is it based on research? Or is it based on uh we we don't we don't know if we trust our people. So, I would just ask that
156you would trust our people. I know that we trust our teachers to do the work in their classrooms. We trust our teachers to do the work during their early release time. And I would ask you to trust us to make sure that we structure the time appropriately to make sure that we put kids learning first. Thank you. >> Is there any additional public comment? >> All right. Seeing um seeing none. >> So you have the motion and the second on the on the table. Uh so the record's clear. The motion is to approve item G as presented and as shown on the on the >> motion. Can I open it? Can I open it back up to the board for discussion? >> Yeah. >> Yes. Go ahead. I I would just like to say that
157uh I was in favor of three, but I appreciate the comments from the five people who uh stood up and spoke. You've changed my mind and I will support the five days. Uh one of the reasons I was in favor of three is just I hate to see kids out of school anymore than they have to be. And that's was in the back of my mind is we're taking the structural time away from the kids. But you guys convinced me that this will be a good way to go. So I'm willing to u support it. >> Yes. So thank you for your comments. Um yes, we appreciate you speaking up. So thank you very much. So again, the motion is to support um draft G as presented. The motion was made by uh Trusty Clappen,
158second by Trusty Ramirez. All in favor, please say I. >> I. opposed hearing. None. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Moving on to agenda item number Oh yes, at this time we are going to go ahead and take a 5m minute break. Thank you very much. We'll see you back here at 8:21. Heat. Heat. Oh, you for Oh, hey. Don't la. Oh, hey. Hallelujah. Heat. Heat. Oh, heat. Thank you very much. We're going to go ahead and call the meeting back to order. At this point, we are on agenda item number 10, which isformational update and discussion on budget assumptions for the Carson City School District for fiscal year 2026 2027. Uh, this is for discussion only and presented by our superintendent, AJ Fueling. Mr. Fueling, >> thank you, President Walt. Um so
159tonight this is an update on um kind of the budget situation um that we are in. If you recall at the last meeting in January, we presented um some information about what the um I guess the the upside down nature of of the budget as we look into next year. um along with kind of some scenarios. And so over the past um weeks, we have um been able to try to tighten down numbers a little more and um look at some different situations uh within the district that um uh present themselves. And so tonight the the presentation just to try to keep it clean um and relatively consistent for you based on what you saw previously. I'm using mostly the same um presentation with um just a few updates along the way um for this
160path forward. But again just emphasizing this is not for action. um this is an update for you and an opportunity to ask questions. So again the challenges over overarching challenges that we are facing um per pupil funding uh and student enrollment are the primary two drivers for um school district revenue. Uh per pupil amounts in the last legislative session had negligible increases. Um I I would argue effectively flat for the most part. Um we know student enrollment is declining and I'll I'll share in a little bit to some projections that um are the current projections we have. State and federal grants are um have been diminishing if not going away. Um and that is uh extremely impactful for us after many years of having uh a better variety and magnitude of state and federal grants
161available. Uh funding volatility. Again, this is I I think one of the primary factors that wasn't really um thought of as an issue because our funding tended to be so poor for so long. Um but when we have the spikes that came kind of around these COVID years and now a return to reality that um has proven fairly difficult to to manage around. Uh and and the I guess again overarching idea is that without some adjustments um fiscal year 27 which is next school year um currently expenditures exceed revenues fairly significantly. Um, so I'm not going to go through these graphs again except to say that um we could use a little more help from the state. So again, those two primary factors, enrollment, um average daily enrollment and the the per pupil amount, those
162are uh still at the bottom left hand side of the screen. In a series of colors that actually make this rather hard to read. Um in the lower right hand corner, I have the projections for uh enrollment going forward over the next years beyond 26 27. So, um, the way these projections are done, it's called a, um, cohort survival method, uh, which I I don't really like that term, but, um, the idea is you're you're looking at over time, how kids move from kindergarten to first to second to third, and what trends do you see, and kind of the changes in that overtime. There is no perfect way to do this. Um, but it it gives a reasonable sense of the trends and and and inputs that into the calculations. And so for next year,
163we're looking we're currently budgeting around or forecasting about 6,763.1 students. Um, that has to do with the waiting calculations that happen. are um students who are in preK that have an IEP, they do qualify for6 of a student in terms of funding. And so that's where you get some of these um random uh numbers. And then there's some averaging also that happens. Um but when you look ahead, so from what we're projecting for next year to that following year, it's a loss um expected of over a hundred students. The next year not as large, a loss of about uh 40. The next year uh loss of about a little over 50. The next year a loss a loss going out. So again this is this is trend work. This is not unknown. Um but what
164we have seen over these last number of years is that these numbers are decreasing. I'm actually going to be giving a presentation to the legislature uh on Tuesday specifically about declining enrollment because it's becoming such an issue statewide and many districts have um upside down budgets as they're planning for next year and in large part due to these are they are due to the exact same factors the the lack of funding coming out of the legislative session and this declining enrollment piece. Um, one of the interesting graphs that um, I was able to generate using uh, AI, thank you chat GPT. Um, when you look at if you take the total population of Nevada and you make 1950 whatever that population was as a as an index number of 100 and then you allow that
165to you show the growth of that over time. So if it goes up to so it's at a base of 100. If it goes up to 101 that means the population grew by 1%. If it goes up to 200, that means the population doubled. So that Nevada population index absolutely explodes o since 1950. It just it it's like a I mean it's not a vertical line, but it is rather straight. And when you do the same thing with births since 1950 in Nevada, you have a pretty similar path until 2010 and it absolutely stops in its tracks and just flatlines. And so in you had about 35,000 births in Nevada. In 2020 you had about 35,000 births in Nevada. Yet the total population of the state was continuing to explode. And so you you see
166this and it's not unique to Nevada. Again, this is a ultimately an international phenomenon it seems. Um but there are just fewer um fewer uh births and we see fewer fewer students in our schools. Uh this is the slide I showed last time just the the difference between revenues that we have budgeted for this year and expenditures budgeted for this year versus um what we are expecting for revenues next year. revenues are dropping by about $650,000 again because of declining enrollment. And even though our per people amount actually did go up a bit, um the the decline in enrollment actually brings our revenue numbers down. And I'll I'll bring this slide up uh at the end of the presentation again to show an update. So uh as a reminder, this year we we budgeted for
167uh a deficit, some deficit spending. we have very strong reserves to help cover that. Um so that is not as much of an issue. Um but the the guidance the concern from the board was that yes we we will make this happen in in this current fiscal year 26 school year 2526 to offer stability to um the system but we need to make some adjustments going into next year. Um so there has been many conversations, many meetings. Um and I think just there are a lot of things we have to take into consideration um from the standpoint of state requirements um federal requirements, but then also looking at taking into consideration our own needs and wants and what we would like to have here in the district. Again, no decisions have been made at this
168point. Um, one of the things, you know, in doing this and bringing this up in January, bringing it up again, we want staff awareness. Um, we want schools and departments to be able to talk about what the impact will be and how they um may navigate around different scenarios. Just emphasizing, we really want to minimize the impact on staff and students to the greatest extent possible. I would argue making any adjustment will have an impact on staff and students. Um but in terms of the bigger picture trying to um make this so that guess there is as little pain inflicted in the process that is that is certainly a goal of all of this work. Um one thing so there on these slides you'll still see the tight and tighter scenarios. Um, and again just
169for consistency for you there there will be some adjustments to that and I'll I'll explain that when we get there. But what this is really getting to is kind of a suggested path and and one of the things I want to bring up is um so when we spoke many months ago uh back at the beginning of the school year about a goal um that was a reasonable place to land uh the goal that the the board kind of had consensus around was a a a2 to3 million deficit. Again we have reserves to cover that. We are in a good financial position. Um, one of the things I would ask for you to consider tonight in the discussion is that um, our last audit which was presented at the the last board meeting came back
170to the positive. So um, we have maintained if not slightly improved our financial position from two years ago to last year to where we are now. And um with that that desire to minimize the impact on staff if we could allow for a slightly larger deficit number going into next year, it would help quite a bit with the impact around um around the district. So I I'll you'll see that more as we um go through this. So first for um district positions again we presented the tight and tighter scenarios just to visually I guess reinforce with you what we are um very much leaning towards at this point. So we're not looking at the tight scenario. We're looking at the tighter scenario. Um any text that you see is purple is some additional information from
171some confusion that um clearly was caused and some questions were asked later. So the the difference um with the the the positions on the tighter scenario there is an additional administrative assistant position um that would be considered for uh reduction or not being replaced. um are we have some TOSA positions all of them are under the ed services department um and work with Brandon there's actually um so there was confusion here because it says 4.12 that is actually six positions but some of them have partial grant funding so the the general fund um reduction of it the the the FTE value is 4.12 position positions, but really there's grant funds making up 1.88 of those those positions as well. So, um in this case that would be a it's really would be reducing um six
172positions, but the impact of the general fund is the the compensation cost of 4.12. >> AJ, can you address how long those grants are to be funded? Um, all I all of the grants or weighted one of the positions is in a or no, they're all in grants. They're all um f they're all federal grants and and they're um grants grants that we don't expect to go away anytime. they they have been regular grants we've been receiving for years with rather stable funding amounts. So, we wouldn't expect those to to um necessarily go away, but there would be some funds potentially um freed up in that process, the grant funds. >> Can I ask real quick too um with the elimination of the TOSA um would it those six just return to be like classroom
173teachers or is that an elimination completely? the so the goal the absolute goal is to find everyone a home. Um and and so there there is some work that needs to be done for really kind of detailing where people potentially could safely land. Um but I I believe with all of this that to to a great extent we we have likely have places for for people to to land. So, they're um still employed with the district. >> I was just wondering if you're a TOSA, is there a bump in pay for that? >> No, no. You're you're just on the teachers um the regular certified schedule. Uh some of them do have um extra days on their contract um for some of their work, but they're they're their salaries truly are the wages are truly
174based off the salary schedule for for teachers. um on the elementary side leaning towards the the tight with a slight adjustment and and I said this back in January. They're not mutually exclusive. It wasn't either or necessarily. Um it could land somewhere in the middle and this is a a slight adjustment off of the tight. I think I think one of the realities is where we are seeing the the greatest decrease in enrollments is at the elementary level. And so that's why you see um see maybe that that adjustment there. One of the things I wanted to clarify to so so basically instead of five teaching positions, it would be six teaching positions. Um there were questions about the this K5 school class size number and where that's coming from. So when we're looking at
175the projections for um enrollments next year, we look at each individual school and we actually get down into the grade level like projection per grade level. But if you take the total enroll uh K5 enrollment projected at that school and divide it by the number of teachers that would be expected to be with those uh classroom um like grade level teachers that would uh we would project to be at that school. It's just taking the total number of kids by the total number of teachers. So it's not looking at each individual classroom necessarily. Um and and that gets funky because it's not always evenly um you know if you have say 60 kids in a grade level and three teachers that doesn't mean you're going to have exactly 20 kids per classroom. There there often
176are little adjustments that that will happen but overall um for Empire they're on the on the low end. So it would be a 19 19.4 kind of schoolwide class size if if you want to call it that. Um, Celiger would be on the high end at 21.5, but again, relatively low class sizes in in almost every case. I think below what the um class size ratio requirements are. Again, there might be some outliers within that, but generally that would be the range. Um, also we have our intervention paraprofessional positions. Those would also uh be considered here. the adjust the adjustment altogether is about uh $1.2 million um to the budget at the middle school level. We would also go with just the the tight scenario. Um there are three three positions considered there um which
177would generate about $360,000. At the high school level, there was a slight reduction down in the the number of teachers from six to five. Um again, C the size of classes is is really difficult to come up with at the high school level because of how much is being offered there and um how they use all their people. Um and did bring over the from the tighter scenario the one administrative assistant position. um right now and that generates about $632 of budget adjustment. Um we talked about some of these special programs. Um one in particular, the the social worker program. We have 12 current staff members that are social workers for the district and that in total is about a $1.3 million program. when that started um back in I think 2017 is when we
178received the first grant to fund social workers. Um at that time they had to be contractors. So it was kind of a strange setup but then in the next legislative session it was changed and and they became our employees. Um but but that funding eventually the state grant funding went away and then we were able to find a way to get them onto various federal grants over time and and it has moved over time trying to keep um that going. And as I said at the beginning of the presentation, the the reality is that much of the state and federal grants um have dried up, especially just here um in the last two years. And so the the creative work trying to continue that and I I think we all very we we did that
179work because of the value we saw in it and um unfortunately it's just come to a point where I I don't I don't know where there is really an easy option um to continue that. So those positions are identified to be reduced. um the 12 FTE of social workers in the district uh in special education. Um credit uh Christy Lennox, Dr. Lennox for really taking some time to dig into um the special education budget. Um it is incredibly complicated um when you're diving into case loads and and IEP requirements and how many hours are being offered with um certain contractors for certain you know taking care of certain needs. Um but she has gone through and identified I would say at least $750,000 in in reductions. It potentially could be more some of it. Um
180again just looking at the number of kids coming up next year um that we've identified and with their needs there there might be some fluctuation in that still um but it potentially could be a higher number um and and it's I would say too it's heavily with um on the contractor um side in terms of are are we what are the actual needs we have versus the number of hours that um are currently being used excuse me for nutrition. Uh there are still conversations going on um about what to do there. That one also is uh somewhat complicated um to to sort through, but we are actively looking at um where there potentially could be some savings within the nutrition fund. So I guess the last part I had um put up for reductions in
181operating budgets. Um the suggestion here is to not make a reduction in operating budgets for next year. Um one of the things that's really hard about making those reductions is they often don't come back. And I I feel like um if we can avoid it, it's something that really helps all of our schools and all of our departments to continue the level of support and activities that they are currently um currently doing. So here uh looking to the right, it has all of these adjustments built in. Again, the revenues stay the same at this point. We will continue to be doing enrollment projections. Um I but but at this point we're still using the the same number. Excuse me. Um so that revenue number hasn't changed. But with the the reductions that um that have
182been shown so far, that would reduce our expenditures and transfers and it would reduce that deficit. So the the original deficit presented with really no changes from the current year going into next year if we kept everything the same was about a $7.4 million um deficit. These reductions bring that down to about 3.6 65. Um and and again that is not um to be clear not in the this the range that the board had um given some direction on back I I think it was in October. Um but it's close and and I feel like um again given the situation with our our recent audit coming back to the positive um it it allows us to make these adjustments and and we believe really minimizing um a lot of the impact in terms of finding
183places for for people to to end up as Trusty Peterson brought up. Um and I I think it's really important too that and that's why I showed the the projections for the enrollment. There is there are no illusions that we are on a downward trend with enrollment and what the impact is. And so as we move forward into next year, um it it is going to be something that we have to be really cognizant of and just expecting that. I think every, you know, every principal and every um department in the in the district knows that if if someone is leaving, there is a there is at least going to be a strong look at if that position needs to be replaced. Um and I I think that's how we are going to be operating
184for a while. Um, just given this declining enrollment, I am not um, full disclosure, I am not confident in any way that the next legislative session is going to be a rebound in funding. Um, the economy of the state is um, strange and and kind of strong, but kind of not. I it it's hard to get a read on it, but um I I just I don't have a lot of confidence that things are necessarily going to get a lot better two years from now. But I I think we we do have time to continue making adjustments and and just being on top of this and on point with um those conversations as as we start seeing retirements and resignations next year. I think we very much will be coming to you again in in
185like I think it was October asking for you to um approve a an early retirement incentive and you're not you're not approving that right now. But I I think that idea of just trying to stay ahead of it and stay on top of it as much as possible to um keep us in in in a good uh an improving financial trend. And that's what I I would hope we would set from here. Um but uh you know again trying to make sure that we are minimizing the impact on on our people and students. So the the conversations will continue. Um I don't know um I don't know how much things are going to improve quickly. Um, but we will be beginning conversations with our employee associations um to make sure that we are all on
186the same page with what this looks like in terms of the actual people impacted um and and trying to um again try trying as much as possible to find um places for people to make sure to the greatest extent we can that um people are not without a position for next year. Um the the goal at this point and I I we still have some work to do would be at the um next meeting to bring something to you um that potentially would be considered for action in in finalizing some of these decisions. We have in April at the first meeting in April, we have the tenative budget that is not for action. That is only for discussion. But um and then at the end of May, we do have the final budget that is
187for action. But I would rather you rather get ahead of this sooner than later because I want our staff as much time to um be able to process all of this and and figure out then again be a part of the conversations with where um where potentially um they may land if uh the the some positions are not um coming back next year. So with that, I am happy to take any questions. >> Uh I have one like right off the bat before we go down and then I'll come back to me. Um what is in our what's the amount in our reserves right now? >> Uh 18 18.5. >> Okay. >> 18.5 million. >> Right. I have some math to do, but we'll go ahead and get started. >> Um so we'll go ahead
188and start with Trusty >> Ramirez. No, it's all good. Trusty Roberts, it's a lot to digest. Oops. >> Just all the acronyms. What What is FTE? >> I am so sorry. >> You're fine. >> I usually try to be really thoughtful about this. FTE is full-time equivalent. So, um, effectively it's a position. Some usually when we think of positions, it's just it's 1.0. It's one position. But on the kind of financial, you know, payroll HR side of things, if if people are split funded, so they might be funded partially from the general fund and partially from a grant, or they might be partially funded from two different grants, that will break that 1.0 up. So it might be, oh, you're 6 funded from this grant and you're point4 funded from this grant, but in in
189whole, you are one full-time equivalent employee. >> Okay. Thank you. Trusty Peterson. I just want to bring up social workers. Um I don't know how to make it happen. It's not like we're they already existed in our budget and we're cutting that. It's something that we have not paid for. It was a grant and we in order to keep them have to magically come up with $1.3 million for one year to get them. Um but uh in the last six weeks I've received about 30 emails um and over a dozen inerson um comments here in our meetings um from a variety from teachers, parents. We've had um SRO's U JPOS's, social workers, community partners, um admin. It's been it's been a very wide range of people who are just passionately please if there's any way
190to make this happen. Um and I I I'm just another voice in that category and I don't it's not something that I've ever made use of. Um, I don't personally have experience with the benefit. However, I also the overwhelming voices, even a child today came to speak in favor of that. Um, I I I don't know what the answer is and and I don't expect you to pull out a magic wand and figure it out, but that's just one that like I feel like I would be doing a disservice to the people we represent if I did not bring that up here to say we have so many people that is there anyway, is there anything we could do? Is there more grants that we could file for or um I don't know money fairy
191can come and solve it for us? I I don't I don't know the answer, but in the name of being a voice for all the people that have come to me, I wanted to bring it up. >> I I appreciate that, Trusty Peterson. Right. Um so when the when the state grants went away for it, um the the feeling immediately and and this is something that I took kind of personally at the time because I I think the need the needs we were seeing is what what can we do then, right? And and so we were able to find federal grants and then that federal grant went away. But then there was another one. And then that one went away. But then there was another one. Right. And and I I think the the value
192that shows that that that money these last few years, the um the money, the federal grant money that has been used could have been used in many other ways. But I the the stance the district took was this is something that has value. And so we kept trying to find ways to to make that work. And I um but I there is you know there is some reality to often times um things come because of grants and it is such a frustrating thing because I I feel like I think more from like the state legislative level but even at the federal level oftentimes they're not they're not expecting some of these grants to last forever. but they view it as sort of like seed money and if you can get this started with a grant
193then you are going to be able to figure out how to continue it and and I think that that is the most frustrating thing for me because we're clearly talking about people here and um the the idea that somehow given the financial circumstances that the state has kind of left us in um you know there there there is just no clear or easy option and and it it's a really frustrating place to be. Um we will, you know, continue looking. I know um well, the the grants world is just there's just not as many options as as there used to be, but we can continue and take a look back through some of that. Um but we we have done some of that work already. Um, but I I take your point. Thank you. Good
194evening. Christy Perkins. I'm the director of MTSS, student engagement and student wellness for the school district. Um I know this does not solve the issue we have at hand of reducing employees but for the last 5 years we have been part of the project aware grant that has provided us the opportunity to work with our community partners and our contractors in our school district to come into the schools to provide one-on-one tier three services for our most critical atne students. Um we have secured a couple grants. The mental health block grant currently and we do have um that approved at this time for next year which will allow us to continue those contractors coming into our schools to support those students they have been working with. That does not solve our tier one problem of
195course of having that person there every single day in your site supporting the kids' needs as they come about which we know I know very well as being a former school site administrator myself those happen all the time every day and they are critical um staff members but we do have the support of our contractors and our community partners and we have some grant money currently to continue that work um our MTSS work for those students who are very dependent on those tier three services. That service will continue into next year. We'll be starting the year with about um $200,000 in that grant to support that contractor work um that has been going on for the last 5 years in our schools. I know that doesn't solve all the issues and it doesn't take away
196the concern. Um but our students will still be supported um in need, not in the same way um that they are. it will have to look differently. Um, but we do have some community partners that are well established. They are part of our schools. They have been working with these students and families for many years and those services will be able to continue um at that tier three and some tier 2 um level as well. Is there uh any concern with um without that um first response so to speak um that the higher levels would become overwhelmed? Would kids who did not get to receive the attention at that lower be expedited or would they just um be put back on classroom teachers or nursing who who catches them? Uh so some of our training
197over the last 5 years with our MTSS work, our counselors have been trained in some of these interventions. Our nursing staff, our SRO staff, our partners with JO have um some availability for interventions to bring that more frequently into schools such as um J our JO partners have a prevention on vaping, let's say. So they are very willing to come into our schools and really focus more on that tier one piece. um so students don't fall through the cracks. We also of course have our universal screeners. We have SOS um which we screen all seventh graders in our district to for signs of suicide. Um and that will continue because those are community partners who've um secured those grants. So they come in and help provide those services. And then yes, when it moves beyond
198a tier one, um, of course that's going to be your administrative classroom teacher, your MTSS site team is going to have to take some of that work. Your, um, at the secondary level who has counselors and social workers currently. Unfortunately, some of that is going to fall back onto the counseling team. Um it's really going to take that team approach to support all of those needs with the partnerships of our community partners and our contractors for higher level tier three clinical services. Um we'll have to refer out more frequently back to Carson Tahoe Health. Some of those things we've p been able to pull back a little bit the last few years because we have had a a really strong social worker team as full-time employees, but some of that will have to be referred
199back out to the community. Rusty Varnner, >> I I appreciate you bringing the social workers up because I think we all have received a lot of uh input about the value of the social workers, not only from social workers, but teachers, administrators, and so I think we understand there's a a real value to them. But unfortunately, you know, I've I've worked where I've operated off of grants and I know at some point they end. And unfortunately at that time some employees have to be let go because you don't have the money to continue the program. So I mean I'm aware of the value of the social workers and the value of not having the money to continue the program. Um, I'm glad that you brought up because that was going to be one of my
200questions about the contractors coming in. So, at least there would be some uh support for the students. Uh, it's not going to lose all support. Is that correct? That's the way I understood it. And, um, if there's some way that we could come up with the money, I think there's value to keeping some of the social workers. But, uh, that may be a discussion that we have later on. Um I I do know that uh with the projected deficit that we have to make cuts and uh you know and my priority is um you know we're all here for the students and we have to keep the teachers in the classroom teaching the the children and so unfortunately there's going to have to be some difficult decisions made and u I I don't know where
201to get the money. I guess that's the the bottom line. But uh thank you for your comments and thank you for all your hard work and I know it's very difficult. >> Uh thank you um superintendent for the the presentation and thank you for addressing the social workers as well. Um but if I if I get this right, this is extremely difficult and I don't know that um the public realizes the magnitude of what we're facing in the next five years. If we continue to spend at the rate that we're spending, we will have a zero balance at FY30. We will be dipping into our reserves that much and we will have a zero balance. And so the problem is real. And um be I and I correct me if I'm wrong. I'm seeing that
202it could even be sooner than that because our projections of our base funding is projecting on the enrollment that we have now. And so that FY27 we project at the same enrollment and then FY28 if we projected the same enrollment. But are we not stating that the enrollment is going to continue to decrease? >> That is correct. >> Right. So then it would be FY29. we're going to be looking at a zero balance if we continue to spend at the deficit spending that we are right now. So, um, you know, with that being said, I mean, I think every school district is in a tough spot. Every entity I I don't know any entity that is, you know, thriving at a rate that they're not scrambling to try to find um to try to find
203funding. I know that you said that you didn't want to um go into operating at all, but um uh AJ, I just don't see how you can't I in all honesty, I just don't know how you can't even go into it at 5% of a reduction this next year and bring that deficit spending, you know, from 3.6 million to possibly three million. Um because how are we going to look at this and say, you know, um if we continue to only make the cuts, it's only going to get worse. And so if we did a 5% and then a 5% and a 5% um I don't know. I I know we gave you the direction at 2.9 million and I appreciate you and Spencer working at at bringing it from 7.3 down to 3.6. six.
204I do I appreciate the effort on that and the work that it must have taken to get there and everybody else is as well. I know you guys are all um looking at cuts, but it just it frightens me. It really really um scares me to look and go, "Oh my gosh, you know, FY FY29, that's not too far away." And you know, we can't be counting on the legislature to be, you know, changing our bus our base funding mechanism. I would hope that they do, but I can't say that they will. And so, um, with that, I just, if you would maybe just look at maybe 5% to bring that a little bit closer to less than that because we're only going to be looking at more the following year, especially when enrollment goes
205down. um our base spending is going to be even less than the 68 million that we have and then we're going to be looking at more things. The other thing that I would like to offer as well is if we could make a um a conservative effort not to be bringing in any more new like um I don't even know if it's you know any more new software or programming or um anything that's going to be taking if we don't have the revenue coming in to sustain it is what I'm asking. Um I believe I sent an email um to you about something that I had heard and I would hope that you would address that to say that no, we're not going to try to dive into another program here or another project over
206here if we know that we cannot sustain it financially. And so I would ask that we you just always keep that in the back of your mind as well. Um yeah. >> Um I think we all know that the governor has a um preference for supporting charter schools. Has there been any discussions about how the potential impact of uh the charter schools might even further affect our division or our district? So, um that was a big question mark even in projecting the budget for this coming year because there there was one um charter school approved by the state charter authority through um uh an application from Academica. Academica is a charter management organization based out of Florida um that has opened up several charter schools in northern and southern Nevada. Um, so they the the
207approval was for them, I believe, to open up a K through a K through eight school. It would start as a K2 school, I think, with an expected enrollment of about 180. Um, eventually going to over 500. Um, that has been delayed based on what I know, which is just going on the website. There's no communication really um between the entities. Um but that clearly could have an impact. We're we're not um well so Elco school district recently this year had a charter school open up um and they were already in in a um little more precarious financial position and they I I forget the number of students they lost but it it was well beyond what they expected in the first year and they uh I think it added or they lost something I
208don't think it was I don't I think it was all due to that charter school, but they lost something like $6 million in revenue from what they had initially projected. Um, many years ago, White Pine, which is much smaller district and much more impactful, but they had a new charter school open up that took one-third of the entire district's population. It's a small district, but that was a horrible time for them with the impact that had on the schools and on staff. So, it's something that we're certainly keeping an eye on. Um, again, as of right now, it appears the opening is being delayed at least one year. Um, so it's it is something else that we need to keep in mind because that that could certainly impact in the future. >> And, uh, school
209choice. Uh, I read something that, you know, the governor's really in favor of school choice. Now, if they can choose the school they want to go to, but do they have to provide their own transportation or would the district be responsible for the transportation costs? So, um it it depends and we're still um doing work on this. Um but if if there depending on what school they do attend and um it's you know what what its rankings in the state look like potentially you would have to um either pay for or reimburse for transportation costs to other schools. Um, again, it's a little complicated. There there's some grants out there or a grant that is supposed to help with some of that cost, but I don't entirely understand how it all works just yet. We're
210still trying to figure that out. >> I had a follow-up question. When you're proposing, when you're looking at the budget for FY27, when you do your numbers, and Spencer, um, if you'd address this as well, do you look at putting in the numbers for inflation? because I mean like I'm sure our health benefits are going to go up. Um who's to say PERS isn't going to go up as well. So when you're doing that spending, do you look at that like do you put a 3% on what we think inflation's going to do to the cost of everything? >> Generally, no. Um our our budgets for um schools and departments have been relatively flat. um except for certain items like our property and casualty insurance, we we know that will go up. So, we'll put
211an adjustment in for that. Um but but as far as like a generic increase because we know costs are going up, know everyone really generally is held flat. the kind of the primary exception has been um safety services. As there has been more and more demand to expand um cameras around the district and all the programming needed to make that happen, we've had to increase that budget over time. Um as far as health insurance, we do budget um expecting a 9% increase. We we don't really know what it's going to be, but nine has been kind of a a high in we we we have been incredibly fortunate as a district with our health insurance costs. So that that has been the highest end number we've had in the almost 13 years or I sorry
21212 years I've been here now. Um so that's kind of where we've held. So there there are surgically a couple that we do keep up with. But in terms of just, you know, what a school's budget is or what a department's budget is, they're generally just held flat and they have been for a a while. >> Any additional questions? Well, thank you very much for good news. All right. Thank you. And Spencer, I appreciate your work on this as well and your monthly updates. I appreciate it. All right. But thank you, AJ. I appreciate that. All right, we'll close agenda item number 10 and move on to agenda item number 11. This is approval of the consent agenda. This is for possible action. Um, any discussion? Do I have a motion? >> So moved. >>
213Second. All right. So I have a motion by Trusty Varner, seconded by Trustee Roberts. Public comment. >> Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. I. >> Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Moving on to agenda item number 12, information agenda items. This is for discussion only. No action will be taken. Did you all have a chance to review them? Do you have any questions? All right. Seeing none, we will move on to agenda item number 13. This is a request for future agenda items and we'll go ahead and start. Do we have any future agenda items, trustees? No. the uh superintendent's evaluation. Are we able to get it on the next agenda? >> We will not be getting it on the March agenda as we anticipate that being a long agenda, but we are prepared to
214do it with his goals at the first meeting in April. >> April. Got it. Yep. We will be doing >> Yeah, he tried to eliminate it, but I I stayed strong. Yeah. But yeah, so we'll and he'll be adding his goals to that as well. Um, so yes. And then um is it possible and I see that um Chrissy Perkins is here as well. Could we get a um a presentation on the absenteeism at some point? The chronics absenteeism, the rate that we're going um tardies. I would like to be able to address the tardies and how that um equates into the absences. That would be great if we can get that at a future meeting as well. Okay. Anything else? All right, moving on. Uh, agenda item number 14. We are adjourned. Thank you
215very much for your time. Hey.