Carson City School Board Meeting 3/22/2022

001[Music] evening everybody today is march 22nd 2022 we'll go ahead and call the school board meeting to order it is now 7 p.m we'll move on to the first agenda item which is adoption of the agenda as submitted and this is for possible action and public comment will be taken prior to any action we got a first and a second any public comment see no public in person public comment do we have any online public comment no mr varner thank you i'll go ahead and call for a vote then all in favor say aye aye any of you say nay and just so people know we have mr carini is joining us tonight remotely so if you hear some noise coming down from the ceiling that's him and we'll go ahead and move on to

002the flags which will be led by mr joe cassiopoul indivisible with liberty and justice thank you joe we'll go ahead and move on to the superintendent report and this is for information only thank you mr president members of the board members of the community our hosa students from carson high school recently attended the state leadership conference and that was held during the week of march 13th through the 16th and i'm glad to see that we've got staff members here mr sacalarius mr hunsaker and i don't see mrs gustafson but thanks to all these folks who helped tremendously in getting students ready i'd just like to share some information about their experience at the hosa event the carson high school chapter earned a bronze medal for the third largest hosa membership very impressive and also a

003silver in health science events and that was for participation in the testing that was done in december and january the hosa students competed in eight different events and chem came away with of the 21 students qualifying to attend the international leadership conference in nashville tennessee so congratulations that event will be held june 22nd through the 25th and these are the individual events and qualifiers in health care issues exam qualifiers were mackenzie fernandez arlene leblanc and brendan munoz health science events cultural diversities and disparities in health care first place winner alicia cortez solis medical reading riley goodmanson placed third health profession events clinical nursing first place by mckenna budd and a fifth place by avila oscenbach in medical assisting there was also students who qualified leadership events healthcare photography mackenzie fernandez and teamwork events public service

004announcements which was zach guthrie tyler palmer mackenzie fernandez earning second place so like to extend our congratulations to these students great showing at the hosa conference and we wish them well as they move on to the national event in nashville tennessee and thanks to our advisors again for their care for their oversight for their supervision of our students thank you mr president i'd just like to say congratulations to those students also that's a great accomplishment and we appreciate their hard work do we have anybody here from carson high for a report please come up and state your name for the record hi there so i'm sarah wiggins for the record and just to start off with some of our sports going on so we have a track meet this saturday at read or sorry excuse

005me this friday at read at 2 p.m the next swim meet is going to be 9 a.m the 26th here at the carson community center the next baseball game we had one today at 3 45 and the next one is going to be next tuesday at the same time and we have a softball tournament this weekend starting friday and ending saturday at read times to be determined for that and so far in student council we are just beginning to plan mainly the father-daughter dance friendship ball and prom and more information on that to come so very straightforward to the point and just planning more as we go thank you guys thank you and good luck with the father-daughter dance i know that's a great event i've been fortunate to attend a couple of those and

006it's always a good time so thank you again to everybody here from pioneer report seeing no one will move on to the national i mean excuse me nevada association school boards update so we had a joint uh executive board and board of directors meeting last friday and largely focused on the process of finding a replacement for deb oliver so we kind of have our feelers out to get some information about different companies or entities that might help us with a search as long as it's affordable for the um association and then i know there was a training the next day our next training will be coming in april so is that the end of april so hopefully we'll be getting information about that out shortly so everybody could get it on their calendars if they

007choose to attend and that is unless there's anything i'm missing laurel or stacy i think that kind of sums up where we are i mean i attended the training on saturday and it was one of the better trainings we'd have so that was good good we'll go ahead and move on to board reports joe are you ready uh yeah no specific report for pioneer tonight but just my usual reminder it's march and kids who are looking to students who are looking to go off for college or trade schools or whatever to just check the scholarship pages there's a lot of opportunities out there um you don't have to do it alone financially and if money is the only thing holding you back reach out there's a ton of resources so just want to make sure

008students are aware of that and since i've gone through it three times with my kids if anybody has any questions i'm always happy to lend you know whatever information i can thank you mr walker [Music] so good things are happening at mark twain elementary school they're looking forward to their student-led conferences which will be the 30th and 31st so they are hoping to get most families in in person but if that's a hardship for anybody they are going to make accommodations for zoom conferences so they're hoping to meet with all of their families next week and then on the first april 1st they're going to have a family bingo night that the proceeds are going to support kindness for chris and he went through that school his whole family went through that school and so

009they're certainly trying to support him in his challenging times right now and that concludes my report yeah that's a good event thank you stacey lupe from carson high school um they're hosting a choir puzzle on thursday night from 7 to 8 pm everyone is invited to come and listen to their talented 6 2 3 6 through 12 grade students um carson high school also hosted the band aroma last week and it was well attended it was a well-attended event that showcased their middle school and high school bands and that concludes my report thank you laurel four let me get that on there for fritsch elementary school mr brown would like to thank scott from carson city public works safe routes to school division because he came to fritsch and he was teaching students about safety

010when walking or biking to school and they hope that families will take advantage of the nice weather and bike or walk to school and also fritz students are looking forward to their next steam day which will take place this friday teachers have planned some great learning activities to engage the students in hands-on learning and for fremont elementary school dr ward lets us know that they're looking forward to parent-teacher conferences offering both in-person and zoom options and they had a great school improvement meeting yesterday and they're excited about moving towards becoming an avid elementary school and they're also looking forward to planning their biz their first big parents family engagement engagement event in may with more details to come and um also they are excited about enrolling the new pre-k and kindergarten students for the next

011year thank you don do you have anything no report this week thanks thank you from carson middle school students are starting their track season it's a great time for the students to have the opportunity to get involved in sports and four students qualified for the wrestling championships that we held in lovelock next weekend i'd like to wish those students good luck unfortunately i wasn't provided the name of those students but i do want to wish them good luck and also they said it was great to hear their band at the bandarama and all the other bands and this morning they had a hot air balloon at the school and the kids had a great time and it came on it was our sixth grade science students and it came at a good time because they

012just finished a unit on weather and the behavior of hot and cold air so it was a good learning experience for the students their s spec testing begins next week april 29th through april 5th it should be march 29th through april 5th and they'll be having an alternative class schedule but they'll have the same start school start and ending time and should be going out in paris square if it hasn't already and that's my report from carson middle at boardwoodbury i really don't know i don't have a report from them but i do know that last week they had a celebration because the children kids in school read over 52 000 books and words minutes during their reading week and as a result the kids got to soak the principal the vice principal and the

013pe coach with water balloons and squirt guns and i was able to see a lot of pictures from that event and it looked like the principal vice principal and the coach all had a good time along the kids they had a great time so that concludes my report we'll move on to association reports seeing no association reports we'll move on to a public comment comments will be accepted in person or through virtual participation via email comments may be made by members of the public on any matter within the authority of the board please note that public comment will be taken on items mark for possible action before action is taken on such items and members of the public are encouraged to comment on such items at the time they are being considered although members of

014the board although members of the board may respond to questions and discuss issues raised during public comment no action may be taken on such matter until the matter is placed on an agenda for action at a meeting of the board in making public comment speakers are asked to come to the table or podium sign in speak into the microphone and identify themselves for the record speakers are instructed to limit their comments into more than three minutes regardless of whether the comments are made in person or through virtual participation and to simply not repeat something somebody else has already said and this is for discussion so do we have any public comment come the podium and state your name for the record please good evening everyone recently the university of pennsylvania swimmer lia tom thomas won

015the national college athletic association championship meet in atlanta georgia leah thomas identifies as a transgender thomas was born a male and has undergone gender reassignment surgery thomas has been allowed to compete in women's swimming competitions and has subsequently shattered the majority of women's university records before the switch leah competed as will thomas and did not win any of his swimming meets the problem is thomas looks like a man is tall far more muscular and has a greater lung capacity than the real females he swims against if i say i am a man does that make it so likewise if a man claims to be a woman does it make it so there's really only two genders real genders allowing males who say they are females to compete in women's sports is a betrayal to all

016women it is not fair it is not right what it is is reverse discrimination i support transgender males competing against transgender males but not against real females also there's a darker side to this transgender male question there has been many sexual assaults committed against girls and women by males claiming to be females just look up on the website the most recent most controversial incident is louder county virginia one article reads a transgender male student was found guilty of violently raping a young girl in a woke schools bathroom facility my question is who are we protecting we should think long and hard we should think long and hard at what we are teaching our children in school thank you very much thank you mr president i just want to for the record that doesn't have anything

017to do with the jurisdiction of this board thank you any other public comment okay thank you the question was uh if they're commenting about the contract for the superintendent i would prefer you to wait until that comes up on the agenda so we don't repeat things and i have a bret ballard did you want to speak now or about the superintendent contract okay that'd be fine any other in-person public comment oh go ahead karen hi karen stevens for the record i would like to say that the previous comment has a lot to do with this meeting because apparently we want to teach transgender ism in the school here so she has every right to bring that up as a matter of fact usa today announced that rachel levine is woman of the year so um

018it's a bizarre world we live in and our school district seemingly wants to promote that so that's my comment about that one more time any in-person public comment this time cnn renee do we have any online public comment yes mr varner thank you this comment is from erin bean she's a teacher at carson high school and she wants to let everyone know how proud she is of miss stella thornton and that she's a remarkable young lady and that the board is going to be impressed with her presentation this evening the next comment mr varner is from robert harris mr harris states that he really wants to make the comments in person however unable to attend tonight i want to make the public aware of a few misleading comments that were made last meeting first the

019email comment about a fringe minority group who wants dr goldhart as superintendent as the representative from district 1 lupe pointed out when she voted for dr goldhart this is what the community wants is what she said i wanted to back up what lupe and i believe as the truth with facts when the district had six candidates for superintendent and the option to post online comments for feedback the results show dr goldhart got 28 percent more positive feedback than the next best candidate so lupe is correct in saying that this is what the community wants thanks again for listening to what the community wants in a superintendent and that is the most qualified candidate available the second misleading comment that was made was about the state approval of all curriculum in the classes the state does

020approve all curriculum for all schools however this includes all private schools in the state my concern is that the district can pick different books than they currently are choosing but because the board is not directly involved in the books and curriculum nonprofit groups and the union choose what is used i want to also understand why the board has not voted on the family life committee yet in an email that i was that i have not received a response to yet i asked mr varner and joe why sixth grade students are learning how to use contraceptives tonight i am asking why fifth grade students are learning how to make proud choices if this is not approved by the board why are the children being exposed to this topic my child was not emotionally mature enough for

021those topics because this is something i thought was between a parent and a child who gave the public school system the authority to speak with my child about this i don't co-parent with the school district please reach out to me with answers thank you any other online comments no mr varner that's all i have thank you all right thank you we'll move on to agenda item number seven presentation on return to learn and return to play procedures regarding concussion and traumatic brain injuries this is for discussion only and we have uh miss stella thornton to present just state your name for the record please and thank you for making the presentation tonight of course so stella thornton for the record let me pull this up all right awesome so um my name is stella thornton

022and i um with your permission i would like to bring adam hunsaker and frank is up here with me yes that'd be great thank you thank you all right so i um i am a junior at carson high school and i first want to say thank you to all of you for having me here today i'm presenting on two draft policies a return to learn plan and a return to play plan for concussions in the carson city school district this is personal to me and it is also part of my ap research project this year is creating these policies and then presenting them to all of you um i first want to just define a couple terms just so that we're all on the same page the return to learn plan is when a student

023has sustained a concussion or a traumatic brain injury and them coming back into school with accommodation so that they can be at school to the best of their ability the return to play plan is when a student returns from having a concussion or traumatic brain injury and they're going back into sports to make sure that they can fully go back into sports without hurting themselves again a concussion is an injury caused by a bump blow jolt or jolt to the head or body and a traumatic brain injury is the same thing but it causes more irreparable damage to the brain and it takes longer to heal so i want to first kind of share my personal experience with all of this so in september of 2021 um i've rode horses all my life but i

024ended up having a bit of a freak accident um i got blocked off my horse i hit my head um probably one of the only reasons i'm initially but then it went off at some point in time is it yeah i don't know why it's off we've got some help coming oh yeah i know it is cool thank you very much okay please come on okay sorry about the technical difficulty but there it is yay awesome okay so um like i was saying in september of last year i sustained a traumatic brain injury and i was out of school i started going back to school in october but then in october i got a second concussion um i ended up being out of school for about four months that's a long time especially as a

025junior especially i'm an ap student you know and i was gonna finish my all my classes for my ap capstone diploma um and so four months was a long time and unfortunately i personally didn't have that much information on concussions my parents didn't my teachers didn't all the people i knew didn't really have the information and so when we were able to find that information i had to fight for every accommodation in every inch to be able to get a 504 to be able to have half days in classes and so it was very difficult and i wondered about like all of the students before me and all the students after me would they have to fight the same way when they were still in the deep depths of all of their symptoms and i

026especially because since i was in my ap research class i decided that i wanted to change that and i felt that there was just this kind of lack of understanding but also just this lack of education and so for me i want my tbi to be the last tbi where the student is exhausted for advocating for themselves while they are still experiencing concussive symptoms because you're not yourself when you have a concussion no matter how long it takes you to recover and so with the help of adam hunsaker and frank saccalarios i created a survey to survey some of the carson high mostly student athletes but some students who sustained concussions or traumatic brain injuries and these are two of the big takeaways from that survey is you know it is kind of concerning that

027there are that have been a lot of concussions though keep in mind these are mainly student athletes but the more concerning part is the fact that most of these athletes went back to school when their concussion symptoms were still occurring and so this means that they were not able to go to school to the best of their ability and to participate in school to the best of their ability this is what leads me in the right return to learn plan so there are about if i missed it i apologize but is this students who returned is this over the course of what period of time you know a few school years as in the concussions so all of these concussions all of these concussions are um they range from people who returned um like from

028you know one day to five days it can be up to a month it's a variety of when they return to school but this is like it says right here on a case by case but it is current high school students yes who took this survey yes yeah no you're all good thank you okay so there are about 12 out of the 50 50 states in the united states that have return to learn policies and so the return to learn policy is a step-by-step process to gradually assimilate students back into school the policy that i have contains different information that is helpful for the education of teachers and of students and of anybody else that is in there and the main part is a return to learn plan and of course this is on a

029case-by-case basis but a return to learn plan needs to be completed before the student or student athlete is able to return to sports because you know students our student our student athletes are students first so i don't know if you have this up in front of you but if you do patients one and two are information on concussions and tbis it was very hard for me to find information on 504s and ieps i have a 504 in school now that has helped me tremendously to be able to go back to school to the best of my ability so i wanted to make sure students would be able to have that information as well page 3 is a step-by-step procedure for returning to school that has a lot of information that it's easy to read for

030anybody you know who has a concussion and wants to know exactly how they're going to return to learn page four is a daily symptom checklist that is something that up at unr dr murray who is in the neuromechanics lab who he uses adam hunsaker also uses that just to be able to record how many symptoms you have when you get a concussion or tbi and then you can see those symptoms go down to a point where then you are allowed to return back to school full-time or return to sports page five through seven are different school accommodations that a student could have um i am not saying that all of these accommodations would be something that one student would have but there are many different accommodations for individual case-by-case basis and then page eight is

031the concussion clearance form the adam hunsaker is used as it says in the form it does not clear the student to immediately go back to school or clear the student to immediately go back to play but it is a step that is needed for a physician or a medical specialist to be able to clear the student and then page nine are the resources that i use to create this policy and this policy along with the return to play policy will definitely help these numbers so of the students who did miss school you can see that the 57 of students who did miss school missed a week or more of school and the more it is proven that the more anxious you are when you sustain a concussion the longer it takes for you to recover

032from that concussion or traumatic brain injury so for these students who do miss school the more anxious they are like i said the longer it will take for them to recover the other important part leading into return to play plan is that 83 percent of the concussions or traumatic brain injuries in the survey that i saw were experienced during school sports sports and this is why we need the return to play plan so the return to play plan because of the national football league um in a period of like 2009 up until now they're all 50 states have some sort of return to play policies nevada does too though it is not a very complete policy it does help a little bit and so what i had is i um or adam oh my gosh

033adam hunsaker um had a policy that he created and so i updated that policy and so again it includes the gradual step-by-step and it includes permanent information especially at home instructions right after you've sustained a concussion so again pages one and two have the information on concussions and tbis and sports page three is the procedure immediately following a concussive event when you go home um like what you're supposed to eat what you're supposed to drink the symptoms that you need to check for to make sure that you know if you need to go to the emergency room you can go to the emergency room page four is the home concussion care page five is the return to play concussion procedure so that is the same the chart but made for returning sports and then page

034six is that same daily grade eight symptom checklist some of the return to play and some of the return to learn have the same parts because if it is a case-by-case basis a student may not need to go through the return to learn and only the return to play because they recover from their concussion um in a shorter amount of time but if it like my case which is a rare case i would have needed to go through the return to learn plan and then the return to play plan and then at page seven is the same concussion clearance form for the doctor and then page eight is the resources now this is the other important part too is that the education and understanding of guidance counselors and teachers and all of the adults that

035are surrounding people at school is this part right here that most of the students who were surveyed found that they did not feel that their teachers or their guidance counselors were educated on concussions or educate or understanding of them and that part to me is definitely what needs to change because i had a lot of difficulty with many of my teachers i think the teachers that i did not have difficulty for because having to advocate for myself i do know how to and i will but it is also hard to have to advocate every single day just to be able to come to school so these are some of the free education resources that you could potentially use for any kind of for students for staff for anybody that come from the cdc and so

036it's free training for all of those people like i said and it specifies for each type of people so for nurses for teachers etc and then there are also some of those resources for athletic trainers or for coaches as well so my three takeaways that i would like all of you to take away from this presentation is that student athletes are students first um they're in high school they're in middle school they're in elementary school no matter what their students first and i know you all know that but i just want to make sure to state that um all students should be protected by concussion policies there's something that does not take money to ins like to have but they are something that is pertinent to protect the health and well-being of any students and

037like i said i know that you all are here because you value the students health and well-being at carson high school and at all of the schools um here in the school district so i just had to repeat this again is that you know the students health and well-being is paramount to the school district and i know that you all take that into consideration so thank you for prioritizing these students and i also just wanted to um say thank you to the people on this list because i would not be here if not for these people so and here are some of the other survey percentages as well so now i would like to introduce with your permission frank sacalerius who has a couple things to say on why this is pertinent information to have

038in the school district um thank you for the record frank secularis i can tell you when i first started working as an athletic trainer way back in um up in washoe county school district been going through my education concussions were as most of us know we're just a you got to ding on the head you're fine you have nothing go back in and play what we found over time is as she mentioned through the nfl and their project that what we were doing is actually more harm to our athletes and our students than than any good um and that's where around that time that's when when policies started to change um when i was the athletic trainer here at carson high school we did institute um the return to play policy it has since been

039modified which is great and it should be and it should be continued to be modified as needed um and and through that i've seen how things have progressed and how it has affected students in their learning i can tell you even recently as you heard mr stokes say we just recently came back from the um hosa state conference where we actually had a student who competed who sustained a concussion i think three or four days before she left to go to state um was still having symptoms and with myself and ms gustafson both being former athletic trainers i can tell you that the conversations with her were [Music] probably not nice but very pointed into the fact that she probably shouldn't have been there but since she was already there and we found out when

040she was there there was not a whole lot we could do to send her home at that point and we let her participate i can tell you that that student is still struggling still has issues as we see her in our health science classes she struggles throughout the day i notice when i see her in the mornings she's okay and i can tell you by the afternoon when we see her in class sometimes i'm not sure that that anything is happening in there and that's no fault to her and i think what happens is and it has been my experience even when i have students in my sports medicine class students in my emt and first responder classes that are athletes that come from um that are coming in or coming back from concussions you

041can see that they're not there and when i question them why are you here why are you coming back to school i can see you're not ready and the remark is always i can't miss school i can't miss the work i can't miss it and the response that i give them is well that's nice that you're here and you think you can't miss it but what are you really remembering and getting out of it because it's great that you're here in person that's nice but nothing's going in in stain i can promise you that just from the experience i've seen with the students in my class um i think that this policy is a very good policy i think she's done a great job of her research and putting things together and i know um

042communicating with myself and adam i think this is something that our school district should really look into and i would totally support it thank you mr sacalerios now with your permission i would like to introduce adam hunsaker to say a few remarks as well for the record my name is adam hunsaker just to add to what what stella and frank have said i've been the athletic trainer at carson high school since 2013 i started there after frank left a position of athletic trainer i'm also now a science teacher at um carson high school this is my first year as a teacher since i've been the athletic trainer we have expanded the the concussion protocol that we utilize at carson high school as she mentioned her presentation all 50 states have a return to play legislation

043at the state level nevada's is pretty pretty limited in its scope it indicates that if if a student athlete displays symptoms of a concussion they should be removed from activity and cannot return until they are cleared by a health care provider and then it lists what qualifies as a health care provider to clear you from a concussion there is no actual formalized return to play plan in the state legislation and so when when i came here um i looked at what we were doing what mr sacularius was doing and and i i kind of more formalized that process and so we as a policy in the athletic department at carson high school have been utilizing a return to play pro plan since i started in 2013 and it has gone well the coaching staff the

044athletic coaching staff at carson high school has always been very supportive and understanding of the need for athletes to have a gradual return to play before they start playing sports again after they have recovered from their concussion where i have run into problems over the last nine years is the classroom portion of that the attitudes that have been expressed about students being apprehensive to miss school because of the work and the academic content they will miss is it's definitely there and as the survey showed not all teachers have an understanding of what a concussion does to the brain um if i have an athlete with a swollen ankle or a torn knee and they have a brace and walk with crutches it's easy to go in and say this athlete needs more time to get

045around the school to get to classes where this athlete needs to sit somewhere different in class to be able to accommodate this injury they have concussions post-concussion is one of those things that i kind of put in the same realm as mental health issues it's hard to put a finger on and it's hard to explain because you can't see it but it's there and it affects the students and it affects their academics and like frank mentioned they show up to school but nothing stays nothing goes in they show up and they take a test and they get a poor score on their test and so they're not doing themselves any favors academically by returning to school while they are still experiencing these concussion symptoms and as an athletic trainer it's been hit or miss when

046i in my role as athletic trainer have actually gone and tried to advocate for students without having the backing of an official policy that's adopted by the school or the school district it's basically i have to go in and ask the teacher for a favor and further to most teachers credits and the students that i've had to work with if i've gone and talked one-to-one with a teacher and explained it in a way i can explain it as an athletic trainer which is maybe a little better than the athlete who is currently experiencing concussion symptoms can explain it they've been responsive we've been able to to get those students that help but it would certainly be much better for the students if we had a formalized policy that we could point to with direction that

047we could provide the teachers training on with this is how we handle students who have experienced concussions and having 17 i think varsity sports at carson high school competing all year round i have one or two kids almost all the time that are in our concussion protocol football is obviously my best customer with concussions but the other sports are not immune to it i'm always having kids that have concussions it's actually funny i was at the baseball game today and i got an email from the swimming coach saying i had a swimmer that hit his head on the side of the pool i've never actually had a concussion on the swim team before so now apparently i do so they happen they're an issue and and we should definitely be doing things to support these

048athletes in their return to the classroom the return to the play protocol works really well what we need improvement on is helping them return to the classroom so that way they can be successful academically thank you thank you mr hunsaker um to add just one more thing to that too is that being able to have this return to learn plan in whatever format we are able to have it will immensely help the students and just to have something to fall back on because when you have a concussion it's hard to explain it to other people to because it is it's the invisible injury is what it has been known as is that concussions and traumatic brain injuries are the invisible injury you wouldn't think that i have one i have my red glasses right here

049if i need them if my eyes get too tired i have earplugs right here because sometimes sounds are too loud for me still i carry these around everywhere and it's been seven months and so for any concussions for any type of concussions whether it takes two days to recover from them or if you're still here in seven months having these plans potentially formalized in this school or or at the school district would help every single student who has to go through these so thank you so much for having us here stella i can't tell you you're terrific you know you're a terrific student and a person thank you for all the work you did on this and i'll just open up the board for comments or mike so first of all i think you were

050a little girl last time i saw you and i saw on the last line something about your brother's gonna be a high school next year and i thought oh my gosh time flies so one of the things i'd be really curious to see stella is it seemed like the survey was qualitative of students perception of their teachers and i would love to see you know there is so much to learn about brain injuries and education is huge and i think our teachers do need to learn more about it and so i would like to see like an actual survey of administration about what types of training they provide the teachers um mr stokes you know at the district level what is provided and then also of the teachers themselves what have they learned about it

051because that's one of the things that with any policy we're going to need an education piece because teachers like to be in control of their classroom and so we need to say this is why it's important here's how we help the students and so i think that that's a great place like a next step to really help you really strengthen the policy thank you stacy yeah i know the nia has a a policy and they have a protocol and the coaches have to take classes and it's based on the national federation of high school sports i didn't see any of that information in here um but i was really glad to see because you're right we have forgotten that piece that even people that aren't athletes get concussions um so to bring them back in

052the classroom and think about those accommodations was enlightening for me because i never thought about that i worked well with the nia with the concussion protocol when i was on the board but we never really looked at that entering the thing and i think that maybe even something that you want to bring up with the nia and have them adopt that part of the policy too to look into that but this is great information incredible that you're only a junior i can't wait to see what's coming next and we appreciate you bringing this to us yeah thank you very much um i do in my paper i did put some of that stuff from the ni dave lay but i ended up not putting it in my presentation um i didn't want to make it

053too long but that is definitely there are those courses as well which i have seen and could definitely put in the policies as well joe yeah stella thank you first and foremost you're an impressive person so thanks for coming in front of us and educating us i agree with you and i think we should have a policy and at the end of our board meetings we have requests for future agenda topics and just as a placeholder i'm going to mention that i want to work towards you know seeing this continue and turn into a policy that you know that can be incorporated so thanks for you know if you will spearheading this and we're picking up from where others may have started i think you know when i was a kid and frank mentioned it

054i mean we all bumped our heads we got clobbered i have first-hand experience with concussions and yeah we were just you know hey get back up get back in you know finish what you're doing and so this is real this is something that i think we can all get behind um and i'm glad to hear that the return to play seems to be in pretty good shape but to return to learn to me makes makes a lot of sense so um anyway i just wanted to let you know that we're not just sitting here listening to you i think we're taking it to heart and we want to see this you know get to the next step and become a policy so thank you thank you i appreciate that um yes i would love to

055continue working on this with all of you um i think that like you said it is immensely important um i am so glad that we do have a return to play plan though you know it is not for formalized it is just technically you could call it guidelines though it has been working for this school but having that updated and then the fact that we have no return to learn plan that like i said students athletes are students first so thank you so much and i'd love to continue working on this loopy go ahead i just want to commend you for advocating for yourself and knowing that this is going to help many other students so congratulations thank you i appreciate that [Music] get my mic on well done stella excellent presentation excellent research and

056information and i'm thinking about it with i think the return to learn is important i i appreciate that the school already has the protocols in place and i'm wondering if we don't have a policy and then a regulation because my guess is the different protocol changes rather frequently and probably depends on the individual and it might be appropriate to if when we do look at it to look at a policy and a regulation um so that they which is just how policies don't get updated as often as regulations do and regulations are how you enforce the policy and so that might be a way that we look at drafting that but um great work i i i'm i'm hoping you get a great grade on your uh av this looks like a five to me

057so thank you uh don do you have anything any comments or questions no just uh thank you very much for the presentation appreciate it thank you yeah i'm just going to kind of go along with what everybody said here uh you did a tremendous presentation a lot of work i could tell went into this project that you're doing and i think it's something that's going to help students in the future if and i'm sure we'll adopt something and just want to thank you very much and like everybody else says you're very impressive young lady thank you thank you [Applause] okay after that we'll move on to agenda item number eight annual report from carson high school on programs supports for students and celebrations this is for discussion only and we have principal bob chambers let's

058go ahead and state your name for the record again please bob chambers principal carson high school for sure mr stokes president barnard trustees thank you for having me here tonight um so stella is my neighbor um the thorntons are great people and that highlights why i have one of the best jobs in carson city and in carson city school district that she is er like an amazing representative of carson high school but also her teachers um also the community school board superintendent principals from other schools everybody that has supported her to get to where she is today that's what public education does right and i think sometimes we forget that we need to celebrate our students and all of the like we have amazing students in this school district uh i don't i don't know

059how many people in the crowd were able to go to bandarama or we'll be able to you know go to choirpalooza they're exceptionally talented and that's like public education gives them that platform and fosters that growth within them you know and for me it's just it's a special job i get to go to a great building with an amazing staff and students like stella every single day that can you know make me smile and have a have a great day with that stated it's been a tough year and it's been a tough year for all educators and it's been a tough year for students um i'm here to report it's getting better um and you know i know mike is in a different county and he's in another building and but i i would guess

060he would say the same thing it's it feels like school you know as we we are yeah the story and you know we're marching towards spring break and kids are going to get lively again um there's kind of the roller coaster of public education as you get closer to christmas and closer to that spring break it it'll it'll get peppy once again but it feels like school and it's nice to be able to walk into that building and and feel it and the students feel it and the teachers feel it too so as i go through this uh and obviously if you guys have any questions or comments you can stop me whenever all right so start off with our four year graduation rate um so if you look at the easiest way to explain

061this is we are reporting an 88.7 graduation rate if we were go if we were to go apples to apples the way we reported it last year statewide our number would be 93.1 however uh the state changed some of the guidelines as to how we report um our adult education students would be the easiest way to explain that so working working with tash in the district office we kind of decided like we could kind of report either side of that number but like let's just go rip the bandage off this year we'll report that the 88.7 percent as in um and then we update the way we put our students into adult ed to fix that kind of five percent because that is that that five percent is fixable um so that's kind of that

062basically that that five percent drop is our adult education and how we um put students into adult education and it's just a practice that we need to fix and we can fix it so i don't know if you if you're aware of a carson high school is also an alternative school so um basically the way we fix that is students that need to go into adult education we will do that through our site where previously we used mr santillo's actual adult dead and so we'll no longer use that practice so we can fix that i graduated 471 students we had five summer grads uh mr cassiopo was there at our summer graduation um it it might seem silly to some that we hold a graduation ceremony for five students um if they if they want

063to put their head down and grind and get it done in the summer through summer school if i have one student that does it i will hold a graduation for one student like it is that important to me that we get as many students across the stage as you know a high school diploma just means more opportunities for that student in a life without that high school diploma is a life that more likely is going to be a lot more difficult for them and have you know a financial impact in their life and and how they acquire jobs so it's i live in this town i raise my family in this town and i want as many high school graduates um and and going off to post secondary education as possible it's hard work to

064graduate and i had this conversation with some of my colleagues on the state board of education when we're pushing for a career in college readiness diplomas and i think that's a hope for everybody we'd love all of our kids to get that but we still have to celebrate every graduation because there's a lot of work that goes into getting across that stage and so i commend you for celebrating that those kids deserve it and i think a lot of people need to remember that we live in different financial times in carson city i i did not have a job until i was 18 years old like my job was to go to school and i didn't do a super great job with that all the time either we have students that work 20 30 40

065hours a week that are holding down like during their full-time job so they can support their family and taking high-level classes and trying to graduate from high school so there's there is a lot on board with our students so and i just think that sometimes we need to remember that um we all come from a variety of different backgrounds and come with our own struggles every single day and bob i think if i'm right the i could be wrong but i think the national 2021 national graduation rates around 85 percent so we're up around 88 percent and while we have troubles like everybody else i think we're given where we're at with you know what we've just gone through i think being above the national average is important and i think we're doing a good

066job there's always room you know there's always work to do and room to improve but as you indicated we know what that is and we know what to do so thanks to you and your staff for you know recognizing that and and you know i expect that we're going to see these numbers start climbing again so that is the expectation and i i mean i set my personal goal at 95 um so and and that's that is a lofty goal and and there's a lot and i don't know how you know deep you want to go into the weeds on that sort of stuff but you know if if a freshman student shows up and their butt in seat for two days and then they moved to oklahoma and there's no records transfer requests from

067oklahoma we don't know where they went their dropout they could graduate in oklahoma we might never find that out so there's there's a lot of stuff kind of behind the numbers as to why like you know and it's they're just rules and we follow the rules and we report and but we could always do a better job you guys and you mr zona and sam have worked really hard to fill in those holes and those gaps to try to find those people so kudos for that and my registrar hunts them down all right so our act results i don't i don't think it's going to be a shocker that um if you go to school in person one day a week um that your your scores and it was an exceptionally odd year last year

068uh and every i'm all right i thought i was just three men okay i didn't know i was on the timer luffy um so last year was a weird year right i at the end of the day those are my numbers so you got questions they weren't good nationally they weren't good within the state um they were difficult for us and just so and but i can i can give you some some general thoughts on that we did everything this year you know this year was a much more typical year i had an excellent turnout for a.c.t uh dr molden did a fantastic job i think we only have like 29 makeup makeup tests to take so it's like an amazing turnout for that which is always that is always like really good to have

069like most of your students show up that's a very good sign that they took it seriously they were well informed and ready to go we did all the all the background building for them um you know the boot camps and all those things but i i really i want you guys to know that when you do that stuff it's kind of like cramming for a final right the only thing that cramming for a final gets you is that last little bit that you're trying to kind of maintain in your brain the act is is really a test that is what they know from what they've been taught the entire time that they've been a student right and so the work that we're doing um with you know through marzano the work that we're doing with

070avid the work that we're doing with our formative and summative testing all of that like that's where the payday comes in getting you know vertically aligned and horizontally aligned with curriculum making sure that you're that you have a you know a high functioning curriculum and your and your teachers doing their job and and working together in their plc's that's the work that actually raises scores right and and i would hate to sit and you'd like i i think it'd be a little false for me to say hey we did all and we did all of the things to help them out right because it's important to know like yeah fill in all the bubbles like don't leave any blank you know like to ultimately raise those scores but you get the real gains that carson

071high school experienced both you know in the past years was the the hard work that tasha put in to clean up our curriculum to clean up what we do and make sure that we're doing everything properly it's my job to make sure that we continue that work uh going forward in that matter and then just across the district you know that you know pre-k through 12th grade that we're vertically aligned and doing all those things that we need to do questions just just a comment i think with act scores for the next couple years we're going to need to keep that in mind that the kids and the nation and everyone has been through um a trying time and um in some some ways a trauma and that's going to affect scores i think for

072quite a few years before we see him start going back and being reliable indicators of of what the kids have actually learned all right so for our 2021 advanced placement um just as a you know once again there's a little bit of a dip but i'm always like i will always have carson high school's ap program that we outscore um nevada um and then we also are able like in our uh globally i mean we compete at a really high level um with our ap program it's it's a flagship of carson high school it's impressive what we do so and then um to put it into context last year we had 200 like so last year in a you know weird that's last year weird coveted year right we had 256 students take 507 uh

073courses so um our kids did an amazing job and that three or higher means like that's the kind of that pass mark and when they qualified so with the next slide i would like to bring up uh scott morrison from wc he is dressed like a dad because he is a dad and he was out there doing you know the little league baseball he is my right-hand man scott um at wnc and we work together with our jump start program and i will give you kind of the by the numbers and scott because he also teaches our students so he can he can kind of give you a little bit more of that boots on the ground what's going on at carson high school so the dual enrollment is jump start our jump start students

074which we have freshman program sophomore junior senior um but that is also the edu individual courses and cte so when you when you look at that that number that's that's kind of everybody we have about 145 students taking 732 individual courses that grow your own edu course is still ticking along which i i don't know if you've heard but there is a teacher shortage um so i it might be important that we try to get kids into that and get them interested in going into education because at the end of the day it becomes very difficult to run a building without teachers that's that's hard to do so they are an important uh factor in that um where it says individual courses so that would be maybe the easiest way to explain if a student

075wanted to take auto body right it's they're not necessarily going to get a a cte cert through jump start or anything like that but but they have that option to go take that class and get that knowledge and get that credit and then we have cte jump start that is student those are students that are in a program to actually receive a certification maybe in like they're going to take a welding course and get fully certified and something like that so that's kind of the the breakdown of that all right yeah okay thank you scott morrison for the record from wnc i'm the director of the liberal arts division and also math faculty and proud to say i i'm teaching for my my fourth year straight in the jumpstart program and i'll i'll kind of

076circle back to that but i wanted to share some kind of high level numbers that i i find to be really impressive and and before i dive into that i want to just mention that the partnership with carson high school in terms of dual credit is is already strong and has been established for many years thanks to the hard work of many folks through the community leaders on every side of this and and it ends up providing really good opportunities for our students and that's the goal and and what you can see here is that there's more and more options all the time it began with a relatively small set of classes that students were had the option to to take and it has grown now to where we are turning out associate's degrees for

077graduating seniors from high school regularly and that's that's a sign of a healthy operating partnership and pipeline for these students but there are many other students who are taking advantage of of the opportunity to take college classes early to get a taste of that to get a connection with an institution of higher education before they leave the supportive environment of their own high school and so what we're doing is clearing that gap that can happen when students graduate and then need to make a new connection with a new place and sometimes they fail at that so we're filling that in and giving them the opportunity um in in the 2020 2021 year um i think you know it's really it's hard to look back at that time and look deeply at you know what a

078struggle it was to really continue to provide good services for our students we're struggling with all kinds of things but in that year we still had 145 dual credit students dual enrollment students with carson high school and we had several with pioneer as well and during that time 87 percent of those students passed all of their classes that they took that's actually lower than it has been in the past but during that year that's a really impressively high number 93 of the courses that were attempted were passed so that's where students earned college credit that went on a college transcript they could transfer to unr or anywhere else but many of our students go to unr many also transfer to schools outside the state and there's an established kind of success track record there as

079well 76 percent of the course grades that were earned were a's or b's and that that speaks to the partnership that is the supportive environment of the high school with the involvement of the college and the extra support pieces that these students take advantage of and so we've got um and my point with all of that is really that there's this strong growing partnership and it's really also to say thank you to all those involved bob and i work closely together on this but there are so many involved in supporting those kids because we've got kids who are 16 years old who are taking dual credit classes taking a full-time load of college classes and we've got kids in ninth and tenth grade starting out with one class per semester being successful and scaffolding up

080toward a degree 43 percent of the students served represented traditionally underserved ethnic populations during that time and that number has been growing year over year so we're providing greater access to students who've been traditionally underserved and um so i'll talk just a little bit i could talk about jumpstart and and and teaching students all day long but i will i will kind of go back a little bit to that 2020 2021 year and and i was finishing up um the second year with the second year jumpstart students there and i taught the calculus sequence calculus one and calculus two those were students who began as juniors in 2019 and they took pre-calc they did great there were 31 who started and 30 of them finished both semesters of pre-calculus and then went on and many

081of them decided to stay on the math pathway and take calculus and we had about um i think about 13 of those kids who finished calculus 2 in the spring semester of their high school graduation that's a that's a tall order i mean that's a hard class these kids were on their way toward being professionals in in sciences i mean hard science pathways engineers and or some that just didn't know what they wanted to do yet but they knew they were being successful in college and they had the opportunity so they took it others spread out into different areas but you know i shook hands with them on their way through graduation or fist bump as was the time when they graduated um and our drive through graduation in it and it gives me so

082much pride to see all those kids and many others from other area high schools graduating as well this year i've got um 19 juniors again so i kind of reset and went back and started with math 126 127 pathway again 19 kids they're all doing great there's not not really a risk among any of them academically they're all working really really hard and uh and like you said earlier it feels like school again finally i do teach on the carson high campus twice a week i go there and see the kids and it feels like it's kind of getting back to normal so um thanks again for all the partnership and support and um and i'd be happy to answer any questions it's not really a question but a comment when i went to pioneer

083um high school with mrs allen's class and not only were they getting college credit but there were kids in there that never thought that they would be able to do a college class and so that just having that class made them change their mind and think that they could go to wnc or unr which was amazing that they finally could see that they had this potential to go but they wouldn't have had that opportunity if we didn't have these dual credit things so i appreciate all the work that everybody has done to make these things possible i mean they're it's been great for those kids that already knew they were going to college but to talk to some of these kids who they're like i never even thought i could do this and they're excelling

084so i am it's amazing i'm so glad we're doing it thank you yeah knocking barriers out of the way for these kids so that they can give it a try find out what it's like and they flourish joe go ahead yeah as always thank you i think the the partnership that the school district and high school has with wnc and the partnership really with jumpstart that we have with a lot of universities is is fantastic you know i have a daughter who was a tough time to go to college but she did very well you know she um did jump start the two-year program where she got her associate's degree while she was in high school and she'll be graduating from unr and it took her two and a half years because she went to

085asu and the reason i'm bringing that up is not to tutor her own horn but she can't hear me so i can tutor a little bit is you know she went to asu and we always wonder you know how do our kids compare how do they compete with other kids and she did well a's and b's at asu then when covet hit and the school wanted to charge us a ton of money with little resources we pulled her back and she's finishing up at unr and again doing very very well so the high school the jumpstart program really prepared her well and her her you know the kids that she went to school with and even the ones before her that i check in with all did really well so i mean it really is

086a good program it's not for everybody and i try to tell parents and kids you know there's plenty of room and the program shouldn't feel like they're competing you know if you want to go ap you go ap if you want to go jump start you do that you know i try to encourage them do what you want to do because that's how you're going to be successful but i think we've really helped these students achieve at the level they want to achieve at so thanks for everything you're doing okay go ahead i also want to express my appreciation for what you guys do with for these students i also had the opportunity to have my daughter go through this program and i also had the opportunity to be part of the program when it

087was implemented at wnc so i definitely am a um a strong supporter of of the program and i know how many kids how many students have benefited from it i definitely would love to see more students be part of this program and and i appreciate that this opportunity is available to all students because all the students are um able and capable of of challenging themselves sometimes we just have to remind them that they are able to do it and by providing these these programs that that's definitely the right uh place to to uh have them get started in their own life so thank you thank you scott like kind of just one last thing on the on jumpstart is if you think to the evolution of the program when scott and i were kind of

088chuckling when it started off it was how do we bust students to how do we get them there you know and now you know remote we've removed financial barriers the foundation is taking care of like you know our books and materials so it's it's a really impressive program and what we've done and then at the end of the day i always kind of go back to you like we are all part of this community and every single time that a student gets an opportunity to take a post-secondary you know class is an opportunity for them to earn more money in their lifetime like there's there's a financial benefit to that student and that family and to raise people up and make sure that they can provide for their families is a big deal thank you

089scott so um and once again a bit of good news and celebration uh this is our current enrollment and across the board ap honors and jump start and that that is just jump start specific that's not i didn't do all dual enrollment on that we're um we are up across the board we have which i mean you can also you know we're not in a coveted year so students are more apt to take upper level classes when they know they're going to be in sitting in front of their teacher you know five days a week instead of one day a week um but the numbers are good they're healthy moving in the right direction i it would it would be misleading to say that we had you know around 1400 students um that because you

090may like students can be counted in multiple columns there right so you could you could take a you know ap a couple of ap classes and a couple of honors classes and you'd be counted in both those numbers but it is a good representation of our student body okay i did hear um some students who didn't take as many ap classes last year worried about the or as many of the more challenging classes because they were worried about the rigor level and not having as much time in class absolutely uh once again a little bit of a dip with last year with uh students going in for the millennium scholarship however still a strong number with our qualifiers qualifying through the act or qualifying through their credits and gpa mr chambers for the public could

091you tell them what the student has to do to qualify for the millennial scholarship off the top of my head they have to they have to score high on the a.c.t and they need good grades i'm guessing tasha probably hasn't oh tasha knows like that's what but it's like i can i can phone i can phone a friend because i don't even have to look and she's red right now and she's wanting to come up and tell you what that is all right thank you so chambers and miss fuson thank you another great thing about being the principal of carson high school is tasha is a like computer of knowledge so when i don't know something i have an excellent phone a friend to always help me out she also writes my evaluation all right

092um chronic absenteeism is down a bit this year not a shocker because students aren't clicking a button to say that they're in school today that was i mean just a very difficult way to go to school last year the good news is if you um i have i have a an interventionist and her main job is attendance right um and that's one way that we're using our sr funds to really focus on getting students back into the building because it's it's been difficult getting students to re-engage with education so the good news is if you were to take away our our medical which does count against us right like that that is part of like how the feds count that we would look very close to our um 2019 percentage so if you kind of

093took covid out of the equation and why students missed school we would be back to what it's always kind of looked like so that that would be the good news still a lot of work to do so you know what do we do we bombard parents with robocalls parent square messages attendance letters we have student conferences parent conferences whether that is direct conference where they come in or we resume the conference students placed on attendance contracts which are then monitored we we do we have home visits some students have to go to a student review board and then also like parents can be cited right so attendance is beyond critical for a high school to be successful like the students have to sit in the seat to receive the education so that they can score

094well so that i can report out you know happy numbers for everybody so that is why you know i felt it very important that i have an interventionist and her main job is to focus on doing all of those things and i mean it's one person for 2 300 students so it's a big job i mean and not the 2300 students are chronically absent but you get the idea it's a big job questions all right and so what are we doing to to support our students uh we do have before school at lunch and after school tutoring so and for a myriad of reasons students might not be able to attend you know the before like before school super early i get that after school a lot of times they you know they have to

095go to work but we also have a lunchtime tutoring to help support them we have an academic support class for our freshmen and sophomores who are really struggling and then they are a targeted group of students who get invited to come to this class to help them get back on track and and recoup the credits that they need we offer ap enrichment for our ap students which is just a chance for them to knuckle down and work on their ap works it is difficult we now have a jump start liaison on staff so a staff member who works with our jumpstart students to make sure that they're taken care of and they need every you know their needs are being met um obviously school counselors social workers we we now have a calm room so

096we we switched around the high school a little bit if you're familiar with the high school where the counselors are the office right next to them we changed that where our school social workers are so the social workers and the counselors and they're they're working in unison the social workers used to be out in the tech center it was kind of it was a bit odd to have back and forth they weren't really working well together because of the physical distance so we we move them together they're working well now our school resource officers are awesome i don't know where they went but they were just here hanneberger and meader are awesome and they do a great job for us once again i already mentioned the attendance interventionist it has been the lunchtime intramural says

097it was slow to take off i really thought that the basketball i mean i literally have like a hundred boys in the small gym that play basketball i'm like we are gonna like our first one is gonna be intramural basketball and we're gonna run tournaments and nobody showed up like crickets um fyi volleyball is super popular there's like 75 students in that gym in the big gym now like playing volleyball it's yeah they they do their own teams and they're like they're running tournaments and having a great time so i i mean i was i mean because we did we did basketball first then futsal and futsal was pretty well attended and then volleyball was last in volleyball's huge so it's and what that also does for the school is that takes another 75 students

098out of the hallways it decongests that area gives students more room to move so it that's working pretty well obviously i'm all you know we have we're back the clubs are doing everything that clubs do sports are doing sports choirs doing choir we're actually doing school this year um put on fafsa night we've had two fafsa nights for our parents for you know how to do all the the informational part of how to do scholarships and the technical side of doing that um and then just kind of a little highlight from miss gordon she has been working really hard like every senior uh senior english class made sure that they know how to write the scholarship essay um they they have all the scholarship information so that if that is the direction that they want

099to go that they are they have been well informed and well prepared to do that so that's just sort of how we're a brief shot of how we're supporting our kids any further questions joe do you have something well i was gonna say something oh mike go ahead i was just you know one of the things when you talk about your data and there's dips in the various data points right it's you know the size of your school i run a small school a fraction of the number of students you have and it's exhausting and so to run a high school of your size coordinate as many programs as you do i mean it's huge and so i think you have to give yourself some credit you kept the school open these kids are getting

100an education they're moving forward and so you know this we're gonna see some dips like laurel said for a while but we'll go we'll build from here you guys are back you guys have a great staff at the high school and you're gonna you're gonna just pick up where you left off it's just going to take a little bit of time to get the kids up to speed joe go ahead i concur with what what trustee walker said i think you know the important thing is we keep our eye on the target recognize what we're doing well recognize what needs improvement and you know work with these kids because like you said if they're not participating they're not in school there's not much we can teach them so getting them in school is the first

101thing of course um to the best of our ability making it you know reasonably interesting so that you know they're engaging and and just again recognizing what we're doing well and what needs improvement and i think you're you know you're doing that and you know again my hat's off to you and the staff because it is hard work it's a it's a big school i went to a high school that was that size when i was a kid and uh if you wanted to stay invisible you could and it's harder to stay invisible these days and you know and that's due to the hard work of everybody so thank you any other questions or comments don do you have anything oh no not really just uh if if you're wrapping up i've had uh now

102the second child going through carson high school my first is in graduate school my second's about to go to college it's really been successful for our family if if you wanted the opportunity is there at carson high i i really appreciate it lupe do you have something i commend you for the number of students that have applied for a nevada promise scholarship i mean that really is you know giving getting the students to start thinking about going to college so that's very impressive i i was just wondering myself uh the before and at lunch and after school tutoring you know off top you had how many uh students are taking advantage of those tutoring classes no i don't know the numbers off the top of my head it tends to increase as we get closer

103to the end of quarters right so as as things become more pertinent students tend to show up a little bit more and ask for help unit exams like that is when the okay thanks you're welcome laurel just just one more point um some information on the cte programs would be good to include in here because i know our cte students we had so many that earned their career ready certificates the culinary um i can't remember when that one's called but the osha and the different categories last year they did quite well in that too um i got the information from candy ruff and so i think that'd be good to include in this as well all right i would actually kind of think that that would be its own like because ct is such a

104huge program within carson high school it it's it's big um we i think we service around 1800 students and there's a there's a lot of many more movies i mean i could give like you could get the rough numbers and stuff but i don't really think you get the full picture unless you have an actual presentation on it maybe yeah maybe we can have one on that thank you very much i think it was a very good presentation very informative and thank you we're going ahead and moving on to agenda item number nine which is discussion on proposed changes to ccsd regulation 503 compulsory attendance age and this is for discussion only and ms fuson will be presenting thank you and thank you president varner tasha fuson for the record senate bill 102 during the

1052021 legislative session necessitated revisions to nevada provide statute 392.040 regarding the date by which a child must be of a certain age to enter school either in pre-kindergarten kindergarten and or first grade so beginning with the 22-23 school year this upcoming school year the date for admittance to pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and first grade will change to september 30 or from september 30th excuse me to the first day of the school year so we have updated our regulation 503 to reflect those changes if you are looking at your regulation in your packet um really that's that's the main change we did switch for instance um uh in many places you'll see uh we switched from the state of nevada to carson city specifically instead of staying in nevada the reason why is the districts in the

106state of nevada all have start dates around the same time but sometimes can vary by a week or so or sometimes a couple of days so what this really means to get to the nuts and bolts of it is that um now whatever the first day of school year is so whether it's you know typically we start mid-august so august 12th any of those students who would have been able to start from that from that august mid-august date till september 30th now have to wait until the following year there is one year of grace period uh that will be given for students in the state of nevada so if a current and i know we have several families out there who are concerned about this if we have a student who is currently in pre-k

107in a pre-k program either in a home or a private pre-k or a district-sponsored pre-k all the parent has to do is submit a written letter an affidavit that they sign stating that their student has completed pre-k and we will admit them to kindergarten this year so i want to make sure that our families out there are are know that so they're not as concerned but that is this year only the thought behind that is that then any student entering pre-k for the 22-23 school year will have to reach the age of four prior to the first day of school i also want to point out in this policy updates where there's many places where we scratched out for instance september 30th and put of a current school year the the the way nrs is

108written is a little um in my mind a little ambiguous and basically what it's saying is if a student for instance starts in a nevada school district that perhaps starts the week after hours okay so maybe this student turns five years old on august 17th and our school year starts on august 12th and the student would not be able to attend school in our district but is in lyon county and lyon starts maybe on the 19th so now the student is five years old before the first day of school in lyon county the student does get to start school in lyon county so that creates some of our challenges so the way nrs is written in the direction that we've got from the department of education is that if the student starts school in whatever

109district they're in and they're five years of age um for kindergartner and they're five years of age on that first day of school for that district that they attended then if they transfer to our district sometime during the mid-year we will honor that enrollment and the student will be allowed to continue in the grade that they're in however if if a student comes for instance from some other back east state that has a start date by like december 31st you have to be five so the student starts four years of age in that district and then transfers into our district this is for kindergarten only then we would not allow that student to start kindergarten so i just wanna it's very clearly i think um mr russell did a good job helping me craft this

110by using nrs language um but it's it's it it makes it very clear in here um what those different guidelines are but to make it as easy as possible for our parents who might be listening again what i want to point out is if your child is four years old before the first day of school in our district and you are qualify for pre-k enrollment then you would i would encourage you to apply for pre-k or if you're going to go to a private school etc your child must be four years of age in order to then next year go into kindergarten here for first graders it's a little bit different so for first grade if you've successfully completed kindergarten then the student is allowed to enter first grades but they have to must have

111successfully completed kindergarten so since compulsatory education ages in the state of nevada is only 7 to 18 years of age to the 18th birthday pre-k and kinder are not required grade levels so it's important for our families who have chosen to homeschool for instance their child in pre-k um or under kindergarten that they're aware of those entrance guidelines so we've put that information on our website we've also put out a notice in this in the newspaper in the local newspapers and we are really highly encouraging our families to call the school if they have a question but um but in terms of the policy like i said it's really minimal what you're seeing is update you're seeing this scratched out of september 30th and you're seeing the first day of the current school year so

112uh the other part i would like to point out on this update in the regulation is on the second page we did scratch the last section that it says exceptions for enrollment and that was because this is actually addressed this is for special needs students entering school at the age of three and it is it is actually addressed in different nrs and in in a different place within our policy so we just felt i felt it did not belong here and it kind of muddied the waters that's the only reason why it's it's taken out of this regulation but it's still it's still pertinent so if a student is in child find or provided early childhood services through our student support services then the child can be three but that's very specific for a student

113with special needs so it just didn't make sense to put it in this policy so that's why it's scratched um but otherwise that's pretty much the intent of this update is again just changing that start date for our families that are from military families um the the way state law is written is if you are transferred in the military to our state then whatever whatever grade your student is in whether it's pre-k kinder or first grade um we then honor that enrollment just as regular transfers so it is different for military families versus non-military families so that is also in the regulation but that hasn't changed that's been the same in state law so again the real change is just the start date from being september 30th to being the first day of whatever the

114first day is of the district calendar that year do you have any questions for me i would say just keep blasting this information out there because i'm antici anticipating a lot of mad parents come july and august next year and i think all of us are anticipating that so the more we get it out there the more families are prepared yes and i do want i agree with you thank you trustee walker and and i do want to assure our families that state law state law so it doesn't matter if you're in line if you're in washoe if you're in douglas or if you're in carson city it is the same law and those start days are the same so it is not something that we chose to change it was changed in the legislative

115session and changed an nrs but again for those families because several families have reached out with kids that are in private pre-k this year wanting to make sure their children can continue on to kinder next year and the answer is absolutely just bring in a letter that you've signed stating that your child has successfully completing or is completing pre-k currently and you know whether that's in your home school environment or whether or not that's at a private but you'll need to sign it and turn that in with your registration at the school and that is fine for this year but that is only allowed by by the department of bed for one year and one year only and laurel just i just want to um thank you for making that clear because that is and

116that they're allowing that one-year um allowance because you've got families who've already enrolled kids for two years in pre-k and then there's no other program for them to go to because they were planning on their birthday falling before september 30th and being able to attend school and so this this helps us to not have people wanting us to push the date of startup date of school back even though some people still want us to start after labor day um but that helps with it so i'm grateful that that is for those families that have already made those plans if you have a kid in pre-k this year you can or if they're not coming right into it do another year of pre-k and make that any other board discussion joe go ahead no thanks tasha

117i just had a general question for you i i haven't looked into other states and their attendance laws you know start dates if you will do you foresee is there any talk in nevada about having this compulsory start date occur earlier so that a student basically would be mandatory to go to kindergarten it always seemed odd to me and again i haven't looked into it much that we say ah you don't have to start school until first grade essentially that's an excellent question i have not heard any discussion on behalf of the state interestingly enough though we know that our state is moving forward with really big initiative for pre-k and universal pre-k um but but i've not heard any discussion about them actually making the mandatory age earlier yeah that's one of the reasons

118i bring it up it seems like we're you know we've got an island in the middle so all right thanks i got a question but uh you may not know the answer that's fine but the reason the state did this do you know why was it so the kids would be more mature when they entered school or do you know the reason for the change unfortunately no i was not i did not sit in any of the hearings uh for this bill i i do know there was a cry though amongst the districts to try to get the state to actually settle in on an actual day uh whether it be august 1st or august 15th or something of that sort um because it is difficult with um actually i'm going to have to give

119a shout out to our neighbors in washoe county they have three different calendars within their own district with three different start dates so luckily for us we don't have that but it does create challenges um for four districts even within the district but there was no appetite on behalf of the department of education to make even that kind of a statement so they were very very emphatic and clear that it would be the first day of whatever your calendar is for that particular year um there is and i'm sure you've read but this has always been in there that there is a piece that if the district the board of trustees felt that a family was circumventing you know for instance if you had a family who enrolled in lyon county if lyon county started

120a week late but they wouldn't make our date and then a week later tried to jump over to our district that we can deny enrollment to that student because they're they're basically district hopping for the sake of trying to enroll their students but i don't see that happening we've not really seen that be a problem in the past either but um yeah it'll be an interesting and unique year we do want to err on the side of our families this year as this transition is taking place so again any any family who might run up against a hardship or or um maybe thinks that they're having a challenge with the school i would uh request that they go ahead and call my office and i'll be happy to help any of our families with their

121enrollment questions or concerns that might arise so i know it's a hard transition year yeah well good before we move on don do you have anything no it seems pretty straightforward thank you tasha thank you very much uh excellent presentation thank you i appreciate it move on to agenda item number 10. discussion or excuse me designation of silva shirani and associates llc as the independent audit firm for fiscal year 2022 in amount not to see 65 000 as budgeted as required by nrs and this is for possible action thank you president varner good evening trustees this evening i bring to you an engagement letter from silva shirani and associates they are the audit firm that is taking care of our required external financial audit by nrs 354 624 for the last number of years i'll

122note that the price given for services in the engagement letter has increased over last year if you recall back we've gone through a couple iterations of changing and funding so back in 20 going to 2018 the state did a cleanup and found some errors within the funding formula which adversely affected the district and at that time we worked with a number of the contractors and vendors that we work with to see if we could get some price reductions just to help us out and mr silva at that time was was willing to do that and in fact held his price for three years so this year he's asking for about a four percent increase to 65 500 um and i think that is all so that is for your consideration this evening um uh if

123if you accept this and approve it we will submit this to the department of taxation which is required by nrs and start the early process of preparing for audit thank you any board discussion done i'll make a motion okay go ahead and move that the carson's do you want to discuss some more no go ahead i moved at the carson city school district board of trustees approved the audit firm of silva i apologize i'm going to screw this up is it scarini screening and associates llc as the auditors for fiscal year 2022 for a contract amount not to exceed sixty five thousand five hundred dollars serene maybe motion by dawn second by stacy this before we do it i would just like to thank uh mr silva for that freeze on the um um on

124the three years of the audit that he froze the salary of it i think the slight increase that he's requesting is reasonable and i appreciate his um from what i hear he's very cooperative to work with and and has has a good relationship so uh any public comment pepsi state your name for the record please pepsi strasbourg i just had a couple of questions does the firm have expenses on top of the fees second question is how long the firm has worked with the school district for this annual audit and the third question is when was the last time the partner in charge of the engagement was rotated thank you if you can go ahead i'm i'm uncertain of the question of the expenses over the fees um mr silva bills us on an hourly

125basis with progress billing over the time of the audit um normally the the final cost is in line with what he projects it to be um he has been our auditor since prior to mr silva coming the the last payment we made to our 2012 auditor was for i believe 92 000 for their services so this has been a significant savings for the district and the last question actually the primary auditor switched in this last audit um because the um the partner that was coming to our site um that really led the audit she due to well just due to personal reasons couldn't um be there so mr silva himself um was on site and and through um the ability to to access our accounting software um from his offices ended up was the primary

126for for the audit thank you i think the little clarification was when last time that we because i asked this question last year when the last time we sent out requests for proposal for audits right so it was going into that that 2013 audit correct thank you any other public comment in person come on up and say your name for the record denny french carson city nevada and it's just really to suggest that that particular microphone made it hard to hear but i caught most of it and thank you so much you did real well so that's my comment thank you all right thank you any other public comment before i move on to online public comment seeing none any online public comment no mr varner thank you cnn we'll go ahead and call for

127a vote all in favor say aye aye all opposed say no i'm an ai also so the most encouraging unanimously thank you okay we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item number 11. discussion possible action to approve comma approve with conditions continue or deny the terms of a proposed superintendent contract with dr john goldhart approval may have a fiscal impact inclusive of an annual salary up to 175 000 plus the cost of benefits attendant there too and this is for possible action and i will be making the presentation and hopefully everybody can hear all right as way the background i was tasked as being the board president to enter negotiations with mr goldhart on a proposed contract to bring back to the board for approval or their discussion thereof and contained in everybody's packet

128is the contract that was sent out to him with the changes that he requested be made the changes that he made or requested to be made is in the red ink everything else the black and the yellow is what was sent to him and the reason some of it is in yellow is because when we initially look like the original contract there are some changes that need to be made those are made and then that was a copy that was sent to dr goldhart to start the negotiations there was a telephone call held with dr goldhart uh mr ryan was there but he was not advocating he was there as our local representation or representative during that conversation it was proposed that we would be submitting or requesting a one-year contract with a possibility of

129a second year based upon approval by the board the salary at that time that was discussed was 170 thousand dollars to begin dr goldhart stated that he'd prefer two-year contract but that he would uh be willing to accept the one-year contract with those terms and he said that he would also accept the 170 000 salary so the proposed contract that was put together i used that as a basis to put the contract together and as everybody can see everybody should have a copy of it right i'm not gonna go through the whole legal jargon if that's okay i'll just go to the places where there's suggested changes and if that's okay with everybody the board okay the first change that was requested if you go to page three paragraph six evaluation the employee employer should

130evaluate an excess in writing the performance of the superintendent at least once each year prior to december 31st of each year during the term of the agreement the evaluation format shall be reasonably objective and that was what was in the contract and he added shall be mutually agreed upon by both the superintendent and the employee by august 8 then moving on to the bottom of the page numbers paragraph number seven term of employment renewal we had written the initial term of the agreement shall be for a period of one year commencing on july 1st 2022 and ending on june 30th 2023. changed and took out the word initial and change it to read the term of the agreement shall be for a period of two years commencing on july 1st 2022 and ending on june

13130th and if anybody has any questions we'll go along go and ask more or less we can wait till then go back and discuss everything if you go to the next page i mean excuse me page number four in the first paragraph he added at the end of that first paragraph and this is where it talks about the initial term of the agreement may be extended by mutual agreement of employer and then superintendent on the terms as set forth unless otherwise modified by the mutual agreement of the parties superintendent shall notify employer no less than 60 days prior to the end of the initial term of the agreement of his desire to request extension of the term thereof or allow the same to expire now that's what we had proposed in our contract and he

132added the employee the employer will notify the superintendent at least six months prior to the end of the agreement if they do not plan to renew the contract agreement then if you move on to paragraph number eight under compensation basically the change there was uh initially was proposed salary of 170 000 dollars and he changed that to 175 000. now i may add here that he that's about what he's making back there i think it makes 180 000 dollars back in new hampshire however in new hampshire he has to pay his purse retirement or state retirement and i think he indicated that was 25 what people need to keep in mind here is that the district pays the full amount of the burst contribution which is twenty nine point some percent of the salary and

133no state income tax and that was explained to him also you know as we negotiated the salary and i believe property taxes are higher but he says that the cost of housing is higher which it probably is i think that's the only change on that page if you go to page number five and you go down to paragraph d professional dues employer will pay superintendent state and national dues for membership and professional associations and that's the way we sent the contact to him of that wording he added in civic organizations and for professional journals and books then on paragraph c or e excuse me he added under professional learning with permission from the board of trustees president and vice president the employer will support and pay for the superintendent's professional learning now i i question

134that and he did say that he would be willing to base that upon money being available to pay for the training and with approval of the board excuse me go ahead well and i have a question i mean the president and the vice president don't have authority to expend funds without the vote of the board so i mean that in itself is problematic then if you go to paragraph f relocation expenses he added the superintendent will obtain three bids for relocation expenses from carson city area moving companies and will choose the most reasonable bid the employer will pay for relocation expenses then under f i guess it looks like i if the superintendent initiates departure yeah it's a one but it looks like but i'm sure it's one if the superintendent initiates departure from the

135district before june 30 2024 he shall reimburse the employee for relocation expenses on a percentage basis if the employer initiates an end to the agreement during the first year without cause they must pay an additional 90 days of the base salary to the superintendent now i questioned that also and he corresponded back that that was added by mistake and that could be removed that section could be removed that was the number two then if you move on to page number six at the paragraph g the first paragraph entry plans in transition he added the superintendent will provide the employer a comprehensive entry plan the employer will pay for travel housing and per diem for the superintendent to spend one full week in carson city before june 2022 for the superintendent meet one-on-one with each board

136trustee key central staff leaders current superintendent sheriff fire chief and principals as part of leadership transition and initial work of the entry plan now i don't know what definitely that would cost but i do know that to have him travel out here for that two days of his interview was over twelve hundred dollars so if we're looking at a week you're probably looking at over two thousand three thousand dollars so and you know i mean as educators and i mean i'm looking at dr ward who's in the audience who is also a principal when you take on a leadership position typically you go to the school and you meet with people and you do these things without asking your new employer to pay for that and so i think that that's i mean that's kind

137of the way educators do it so i mean for me that's kind of a i don't i don't agree with that i'll back up just a little bit on the relocation expenses uh initially he requested uh three bids i think the initial conversation we may have had was he wanted twenty thousand dollars and uh that was with a third party mr yugi that he'd i guess i don't know if he employed him or he was advocating on his uh behalf since then i questioned the three bids because i felt like we may be giving him a blank check so to speak and it was say fifty thousand dollars move his stuff i didn't want to put the district on that kind of uh liability for that expense so i asked him to clarify if he

138would be willing to cap those expenses and he did respond that they could be capped at 15 to 20 thousand dollars he stated that when he moved out to new hampshire it cost seventeen thousand dollars for his move out the next requested change was if you go to paragraph number 12 termination and we'll go down to paragraph number c and i'll go ahead and read that either party may terminate this agreement without cause upon 60 days prior written notice to the other party upon such determination without cause by employer or upon a vote of no commons by employer superintendent will be entitled to receive a severance in the amount of i initially had proposed uh one month but actually with the six state notice it comes out to three month period of time for the

139severance he changed that or added that his wording is the remaining time of the agreement or one year whichever is less of a regular base compensation so you know hypothetically i guess if if he at the end of the first year he wasn't mean uh it wasn't kept on that the district would be liable for 175 thousand dollars severance or if it was less than that you know then it'd be on a pro-rated basis go ahead i have a question for ryan ryan in the previous section it says that the employer will provide six months notice and then this is saying 60 days is that an inconsistency or is it because one is with cause i mean one is without cause so i think the paragraph you're looking at with the six month notice is

140on the district's intent to renew it at the end of the initial term uh the 60 days notice that's provided in the termination provision is a without cause termination uh prior to the end of the term of the agreement what i would maybe point out to you guys as you look at this if you go back to page five paragraph f2 which i believe mr varner said uh dr goldhart had asked to have removed um is in my opinion replaced with paragraph 12c and just from a legal standpoint if you think about it if you have an agreement with a 60-day termination clause from a termination provision it really doesn't matter what the term is you have a 60-day contract where that term becomes uh something more to consider is when a severance benefit is

141tied to the actual term of the contract and so that's just from a from a legal standpoint the the big difference between what mr in while you guys got me talking um just so the record's clear when mr varner um is saying we proposed we proposed the action that was passed by the board was direct mr varner to go negotiate with dr goldhart and that's what he did the conversation i believe was always clear that he had no ability to bind the district only to bring back what he was comfortable proposing as a contract for you to consider and in doing that uh bring back i think what dr goldhart is is comfortable in accepting and the decision will come to you but i hope that clarified your question mr walker about the the different

142termination provisions yeah and just to build on that uh mr ryan's exactly right any conversations and i had very few in-person conversations a lot of it was done via email back and forth and every correspondence i sent to him i always indicated that the contract was contingent upon approval of the board so i made it very clear throughout the process that i had no authority to approve a contract so just moving on so we can get back to the discussion is if you go to page eight there's no other changes that he's requested uh intel paragraph until page eight paragraph 16. under attorney fees in the event that any action is filed in relation to this agreement he added and took out some wording that was read i mean what did propose the uh unsuccessful

143party in the motion shall pay to the successful party in addition to all the sums that either party may be in called on to pay a reasonable sum for the successful parties for the to the successful party and he crossed that out and he just simply added each party is responsible to pay for their own attorney fees so that was a change that he also made and requested and i will add that the wording in this contract the legalese for lack of a term mr stokes's contract was used as a basis as a template for for going forward with a contract for dr guggenheart so really the requested changes that dr goldhart has requested and i guess this time we'll just open up for further discussion with the board um thank you richard and thank

144you for beginning um the negotiations and i appreciate you going um forward representing the district and i appreciate that you um offered what i consider conservative reasonable terms a one-year contract that you offered is is reasonable it's a reasonable offer all of our teachers are hired on a one-year probationary contract this was a split vote decision um and i think though um and i think offering 170 was reasonable as well um just because um his starting contract i looked it up it was 170 so i don't know in the three years if it's gone up to 180 but there is the difference in no income tax and our pers benefits that we pay for so i think that that is reasonable um i think as i went through this um dr goldhart has proposed changes

145that he has made an effort to protect himself and i think he wants to protect himself because his situation in manchester did not end well for him as he related to us he was brought in by his chair and out and told he would be terminated for cause and he obtained an employment lawyer um and he resigned and is now being paid through through mount from manchester through the end of june um so to me i i understand um sounds like he had a difficult board to work with and i understand his desire to protect himself i feel as board members here we also have an obligation to protect the district and to protect our our staff and our students because all of the funds that we have we are looking at next year having

146a 3.3 million reduction in revenues so when we look at what dr goldhart is proposing we have to think of what are we going to have to cut to cover that and so the salary that i'm not as as much but i read through this and i thought this is evidence of a me first attitude rather than a kid's first attitude and that has me that has me concerned i am concerned um with the circumstances surrounding his um the end of his employment in manchester because i feel that our our superintendent search agency did not fully vet him i think there are things that should have been brought to our attention that were not that i have discovered after the fact i think when he resigned there should have been a anything that was done

147before our interview date on january 25th i think there's things that should have been re-vetted and re-examined by our search superintendent search company upon his resignation so i'm looking at what would we do to protect the district i don't think that we should be paying for relocation expenses i believe that those were not advertised in our term i don't think that we've paid relocation expenses before i don't believe it's customary to pay relocation expenses for state employees and other government officials i have concerns with the fact that it is three bids and there is no cap because gas prices have gone up moving a truck from across the country is going to be significantly more if we're talking twenty thousand dollars um a parapro costs about that much to hire a parapro and we had

148to terminate or we had to um riff half of our kindergarten parapro so i'm wondering which classroom does dr goldhart want us to take a kindergarten parapro from so that he can move here um that's that's going to hurt kids um the entry plan in transition and and and i the other thing that that disturbs me with this and i think is frankly distasteful is that he wants us to pay for him to come out here he wants us to pay to for a week for work wants us to pay for him to move out here and he's still being paid by manchester through the end of june so he's double dipping into two school districts budgets to pay for his relocation and his entry um and a week here and i i i find

149that distasteful i think that hurts the kids in manchester i think that would hurt the kids here as well um as far as the the the actual salary if it's 170 or 175 to me that would be something i'd prefer the lower but i understand that um the severance pay that is very concerning to me i don't think that that that puts us at a great risk and we've seen districts across this our neighboring districts have to pay significant settlements out to um superintendents who have not performed well in their responsibilities and i think based on the work history that we've seen and those circumstances um i don't want to obligate this district to pay 175 000 for one year um if if things go sideways um that would be seven para pros so that

150would literally take away all of our kindergarten parapros um that's that's what we're looking at um i think as far as the attorney's fees he has requested that each party pay their own attorney's fees you have an attorney's fees clause in a contract because that protects each party from baseless claims or claims being filed against them and using the legal system either to file claims that are unlikely to be successful on the merits or that it may be used to harass um or to further their position in a settlement so i am absolutely opposed to um having each attorney having the attorneys pay each pay their own fees i think that um it provides us protection from baseless claims if if we keep that in there so i i i think there's information i don't

151know if i don't know if you have um been aware of it because it wasn't discovered by that but i want to make sure i don't know what it looks like in the contract but i want to make sure that we have some protection for our staff um an article that i think should have been discovered by our superintendent search and may explain some of the complications with his termination is a teacher who sent a complaint in november to the school board and the city officials who are the school board complaining about the working conditions that there were no photocopiers working that there were no that it was chaos in the schools um dr goldhart accused her of being involved with a political candidate and using that issue to make it appear that the manchester

152school district schools are in chaos to promote that candidate um two months later he publicly apologized to her that concerns me and it can is a judgment because we um often we receive emails and communications from our staff as as to issues and we forward that on to our superintendent um i i'm concerned um greatly that there's information that we were not informed of at the time of our decision-making i'm concerned i'm at this at this time looking at the contract um i i think he's trying to protect himself i think we're in a position that we as a board need to do everything within our power to protect the district from potential um a potential um settlement um situation and so i would move to deny the um proposed contract as it's written i'll

153second that any other well we need other board discussion joe do you have anything no yeah i do um yeah so this as i understand it is with his suggestions i mean we had you had a conversation with the fella he said hey this is what i'd like to see in the contract we we have not sent him a formal offer as i understand it we'd be if we decide to go that route we would be sending a formal offer yeah that's true we had not submitted a formal offer okay so part of my review and i did look at this through a couple of lenses laurel a lot of what you have to say i understand completely and i agree with some of that too um and i look at this from a couple

154ways if this if we were a private entity a private firm we'd enter into negotiations we'd talk about moving expenses we talk about this and the other and in the end you know we'd reach some kind of agreement we do that at my firm all the time we you know we bring somebody on we talk about expenses blah blah blah get them out here if that's what we want to do us being a public body and being stewards of public funds we have to be careful it's a different animal um so when i look at what he's requesting and i understand it and i feel that you know he has every right to ask what he wants to ask for and how we interpret that is up to us as a board and you know

155obviously as people individuals but just a couple of things i noted uh page three the evaluation format shall be reasonably objective shall be mutually agreed upon by both superintendent and the employer don't necessarily have a concern with that but if we're looking at a one-year contract my my preference would be to leave it as is as we have it um and then as part of a future negotiation if we decide we want to do something different once we get to know a new superintendent you know then we go down that road and we can make adjustments but initially i would leave it be and the question i would have about that joe is in this state we're required to vet those evaluations of the superintendent in the light of day in front of the public

156and if he said i'm not comfortable with that and we're past that august 8th date what's going to happen i mean the law is the law yeah and i agree with you and that's why i'm saying i don't recommend changing it i think we do it as we've been doing it um we don't make a change so per his request there i would say i'm not in favor of honoring his request on that um terms of employment at the bottom of page three i thought about this more than anything because in theory i understand you're moving across country you want some security but i'm in favor of the one-year contract the more i think of it because it gives again it gives us a chance to learn who he is and what not and gives

157the public a chance to learn who he is gives him a chance to learn who we are and how we operate and so i i think i would be in favor of the term of employment being a one year period as we had initially indicated in the contract let's see the on page four the highlighted section of the first paragraph sorry i i did some markups over the course of the weekend and the week and i regret my decision to use the pen of choice having a hard time reading my own scribble the so he's got the initially crossed or or he lined out initial term of the agreement maybe that's correct um superintendent shall notify employers see days i don't like the at least six months is where i'm going that's that's a lot

158of time um i've never encountered that in any anywhere i've worked you know private wise so i would not be in favor of us and you know having to notify the superintendent at least 60 months six months prior to the end of the agreement um i think that's excessive i think the way we had the language is fine uh let's see the salary i was again i was in favor of the 170 000 and the other thing the one-year contract allows is a renegotiat renegotiation of a salary upon some kind of renewal potentially so him accepting a one-year contract um allows him to you know at the end of the year in renegotiating a second contract saying hey you know i think you know based on how i've done i'm i deserve more so i'm

159not gonna lose sleep over five thousand dollars annually but my thought would be 170 000 i think is fair for a one year contract and again i um i appreciate the input i heard about and i didn't know that but that you know this district pays the pers his district or his state i guess doesn't and again we have no state income tax so you know 170 000 here is different than 170 000 thousand dollars if you look at it with the benefits uh that is well over two hundred thousand dollar uh compensation package yeah and i will say i mean i'm holding to the 170 but i will say you know we have a superintendent that you know in my opinion we we've had a superintendent in place for 14 years has done it

160done a wonderful job and i would argue he's underpaid but we've already crossed that bridge um we get a new superintendent he turns out to be he or she turns out to be somebody of high quality i'd be more than happy to see what we could do about additional compensation but you're right we're looking at a three million plus dollar deficit and we have to be really careful with public funds as far as the professional dues if i'm happy leaving it the way it is but if we were to [Music] add anything to it i don't like the language that he's proposing um what we typically do where i'm at is if you if if he or somebody else wants to join civic organizations and whatnot that would be upon approval of this body because

161there's a lot of civic organizations that really don't have anything to do with schools and so it would have to be something that would benefit this district and our students that again as a board we would consider and if we elected to say yeah we'd be willing to pay for that it would you know it would be in a public body and we would do a vote in those kinds of things um and then i would work if we did something like that i would say it's for an amount not to exceed you know a certain amount of money i wouldn't leave it open-ended but again i i like i kind of like the language the way it was and then um to trustee walker's point the president and the vice president alone don't have

162any authority it has to be the whole board so i think that's kind of a bit of a no-brainer there um relocation expenses again if we were a private corporation i'd be willing to enter into some kind of agreement with that if we did anything it would be in my opinion it would be a stipend not to exceed amount but again if he's getting paid through june and he's asking us for additional money i struggle with that a little bit i mean again i want to be careful we're not over committing in ourselves and and any one of these things isn't a whole lot of money by itself but it adds up um and again we for those that don't know we we have a deficit right now going on and you know fortunately we're

163getting some money to help us out but that money runs out fairly soon so i'm trying to keep that in mind um the week you know the the hey i'd like to come out here a week early i definitely don't like that because i think a lot of what he's talking about i want i want the new superintendent to do i want them to meet with us to meet with sheriff's department and everybody but you know i think that could start you know after the you know first day on the job if you will uh joe before you move on from the relocation yeah let's go back there um just so the public knows is in the job application request you know flyer that went out there was no mention of the district paying or

164committing to pay any relocation fees okay thank you yeah so so anyway so so as far as relocation expenses go i certainly understand it and then i don't you know i don't discredit him for wanting something like that there's an expense to moving but you know right now he's getting paid and and you know he's got the money to move i would assume his interview he also told us he was already moving out west correct he's a western person he wants to be close to his family so it's i mean no no and i understand that and i i did have a note on that as well um and then that item f2 you know if the employer initiates an end to the agreement he said he'd be willing to admit that yes i would

165like to strike that as well you're right i think we have language in there that discusses that if i understood mr russell correctly and i think i'm comfortable with that um i mentioned the entry plan and transition and then with either party terminating this agreement i think if we enter into a one-year agreement there's no issue of having to pay for a second the second year i just blew up my microphone sorry um but i don't yeah again i i would not want to obligate us to have to compensate somebody a full-year salary when these are public funds and you know what would we be getting for for 175 thousand dollars we'd just be eating it and there are other places and other staff that money could go to so i do appreciate that comment

166but i think the one year contract resolves that in my opinion and i think there was mr russell there was language in there that's set upon termination there is some kind of uh um sorry i'm drawing a blank now separate the paragraph you're looking at allows either party to terminate on 60 days notice right six days notice when you're talking in a contract means you have to pay them for that long yeah and it also gives an additional 30 days or one month uh salary right so that's built into that already and that essentially 90 days seems reasonable to me especially on a one one-year contract so and you said that was either party so if he decided to quit he would be getting paid for 90 days or 60 more days beyond the 60

167days he's required to tell us so i think that's problematic also is that just something that's in our contract or is that is there any kind of precedence for that do we do we have latitude in that i guess well so i i'm not like texting or anything i have the code on track on my phone so i can edit it as we go um part part of the consideration with the the way that it was written um is so that there's consideration both ways right um it it builds in good faith because an at-will termination in a contract situation you want to be really expressed about both parties ability to terminate it without cause or you want to take out the ability to terminate without cause out of the agreement and so to protect

168both the district and i would assume dr goldhart by building in a 60-day termination provision you're giving both parties flexibility there would be a cost if if dr goldhart exercised that option the cost would be defined very specifically as that 90-day period okay and i would like to protect both parties so i think that you know that makes sense and as far as the attorney i mean just on that same note how are we protecting both parties if how are we protecting ourself if he chooses he wants to go somebody you know he decides to go to another school district six months in and so then we're paying him through the end of the year see i mean that's not protecting us well protecting him it's not but i think what i think what the

169intent of that is and i don't want to get into the intent because i'm not qualified to talk about that is if there's extenuating circumstances to him wanting to depart i think that's where that's really i guess you know it protects him no matter what but allows both parties to be protected protection doesn't necessarily mean it's fair if he just decides to get up and go and hey um don't like carson city for whatever reason i'm out of here yeah it's not fair to us i agree but i don't know short of just getting rid of that altogether you know um i'd be looking for some legal advice on you know what makes sense as far as that goes so what makes sense is going to be whatever you guys are are comfortable with and

170whatever your your risk analysis is as you look at the contract um the foreseeability i guess uh of a no-cause termination on a very specifically defined um severance called a benefit or or tax whatever you want to call it um is a lot better than the unforeseeability of a litigation as to whether or not there was a material breach um and and so forth and what the liability associated with that and so what this does is builds in a protection for all parties that this agreement can be ended without protracted litigation okay and then the last looks like the last comment he had about the attorney fees i'm you know i don't know enough about that you know i appreciate what trustee crossman's comment was i think you know my hunches that's right you know

171there's uh you know there's some protection built into the way we have that language we're not a litigious district so you know if i'm putting money on somebody i'm going to put money on us in that you know we're not going to go down that road so i would hope that the way we've written it provides us the protection we need so i would like to keep it the way it was you know and just in terms of dr goldhart you know this is tough we don't know the fellow very well we only know what we learned through you know maybe some research we did through the interviews we had we got people's perspectives based on the survey certainly the waters were muddied back east and i'm not going to pretend i know the details

172associated with some of it or all of it some of it concerned me some of it not so much um but i think you know we go down this road we made an offer or no we didn't make an offer but we had a split vote that was decided on dr goldhart and i'm you know i'm okay giving the fella a chance but i do understand the concern but again i don't want to financially strap our district um by by accepting the turn you know the the change terms that he put in here so i'll leave it at that for now stacy so this part wasn't added by him it was part of ours on page two where it talks about the superintendent shall have responsibility in all personnel matters including selection assignment and transfer

173of employees including site administrators subject to approval by employer all in personnel matters brought to employer the superintendent shall present his recommendations in the event the employer does not approve said recommendation superintendent shall submit another recommendation have we done that we had this discussion and uh it has happened in the past but i don't think it's common practice now i think uh we do mainly that by the approval of the consent agenda but it has happened in the past okay i agree with the 170 if it ends up being a two-year contract we could negotiate then the arrays if he's doing well that's in here anyway with the compensation the professional learning mr stokes when you go to to like nasa conferences and stuff we don't approve that right that's something you decide and you

174think is beneficial are you talking about the monthly meetings with uh with mass that i attend as part of an organization just any of your professional development like we go to the national conference we go to nasby we don't get approval from the rest of the board to do that we we go on good faith that that's going to help our organization and i think that that we put that into you that in good faith you're going to continue your professional development like we've done with our administrators and our teachers yes i've i've been very specific though on what i attend and have tried not to be too extravagant in any of my journeyings i noticed none of them were in hawaii so no completely understand and so do we as a board for that

175matter the relocation things wasn't in the ad it's i'm against that um the entry plan he gets here july 1st he has time before school starts to get together with everyone so i'm not real hip on having that um those were my biggest other than some of the discussion we've already had by the other board members thank you lupe [Music] i feel it's appropriate to go with a one-year contract based on my recollection from his interview he seemed fully committed in this opportunity to be part of our district and i am um confident that you know if that is still his his desire i'm confident that he's going to excel and he's going to do the right thing for everyone um and you know after that one year contract then obviously it will give him

176an opportunity to you know reassess this is what i want is and and the same thing for us you know did it work out for everyone so i feel that it will be for the best interest of everyone to go with the with the one year contract um the one thing that was already mentioned and i'd like to just add to um to that also was the relocation expenses i do remember on his interview he did mention that one of the reasons why he was considering applying for a job here in carson city was because he was close to utah to his granddaughter so it would definitely be considered part of his personal uh reason to to move you know to the west so i agree that i don't feel that we need to pay

177for his um expenses um let's see what else do i have in here i think everything else has already been covered by the other trustees um so again my my vote is to go with a one-year contract thank you don in my uh listening here i think all of my fellow trustees who talked so far have really taken out all of the red changes of dr goldhart am i correct in my listening yeah i believe you're correct all right yeah and i would agree with that um i i have some serious reservations on these i'm just the fact that this has become adversarial but let's see what happens that's all i got thank you go ahead mike i had a couple questions i mean i also am a little concerned about the tone you know

178in this district we don't typically have adversarial relations between any of our groups we work well together when it's times are tough we all tighten our belts and get to work and do the best we can until we have the resources to kind of get back to normal and i mean i think when i read through this i didn't get a sense of we're putting the students first but when i hear you saying so your initial conversation with dr goldhart he accepted the terms or he was agreeable to the terms but then were at this point with all of these proposed changes so what was that process like in the negotiations the initial conversation was uh via telephone and we or i outlined you know what i thought would be appropriate and he was and

179that was the 170 thousand dollars and the reason that i came up 170 thousand dollars we have a superintendent now who's been a superintendent for 14 years making 180 000 or thereabouts and uh dr goldhart has is a current superintendent and but a two and a half year i think something like that superintendent so i had a hard time and bringing him in above what our current superintendent was earning so i thought 170 000 was fair to offer initially he uh agreed verbally on this initial conversation to accept that uh that he could do that or something like that he said i think and then as far as the one-year contract with the option to renew her second year he was hesitant uh so to speak he said he would prefer a two-year contract but

180then he did say that he would be able to accept the one-year contract with the second year optional by approval of the board so that's kind of where i went with the negotiations and preparing this contract now i was always preparing the contract i had in mind a lot of what you guys have already talked about conservative protection of the district i did not want to put us on the hook for a large severance package because like you guys mentioned especially laurel you know that that pays for salaries that we don't have money to pay right now so i took a very conservative approach and a lot of this language was what's been in the super our current superintendent's contract and um so i was a when he first sent this back uh you know

181i did reach out to him the email and told him that i was concerned about several of the items i was concerned about the relocation expense that he requested i had not anticipated that because it had not come up in any conversations or so i had not anticipated the relocation fee um then the three bids uh that initially was proposed by mr yugi i believe um there again felt it just didn't feel right about that because it could be a blank check like i said earlier who knows how much it would cost and i didn't want to put the district on the hook for a large amount of travel i mean relocation fees if any i'd prefer not any that's my that's why i wasn't included in the contract it never entered my mind to

182include it in the contract at one point with mr yugi who he had i guess employed i don't know if that's the right word i don't know if he was paying him or not or who was advocating on his behalf wanted he threw out a figure of seven thousand five hundred dollars for a salary uh he also threw out a vehicle allowance that was turned down right away you know that we told him we had uh i told him we had we had vehicles available for the superintendent to drive and uh the 187 500 was naturally turned down and um then everything else with uh mr goldhart or dr goldhart has been via email going back and forth of what uh you know have some clarification on what he put in the contract what he

183wanted to change this or when i came before the board i'd be able to tell you guys his thinking behind it and go ahead was there any discussion about an agreement is it reached between the two parties let's say that again please so was there any discussion about if we weren't able to agree on terms of the contract no it was just always that uh any uh contract would have to be approved by the board that i had don't you know my intent was to keep repeating that i as a board president had no ability to uh approve a contract that it had to go before the board and so what was the tone when you were mixing some of these ideas that they were proposing um like i said uh it was hard to

184tell the tone because it was via email um he seemed agreeable to setting a cap on the moving expense even though i still thought that was quite a cap of fifteen to twenty thousand dollars um when i questioned about the uh that paragraph or that item number two on the uh ninety day uh salary whatever we want to call it uh he basically just wrote back that that was put in there by mistake and could be removed so uh i i wanted to have the back and forth with a trail so to speak email trail so there would be no ambigu ambiguous thing where he could or somebody could misunderstand what was being said and so i have an email trail of any of the conversations back and forth my preference would be if the

185board wanted to to maintain the original contract that was sent to him with the without any of his additions to it from what i've heard i haven't heard anyone on the staff agree to the red items or anyone on the board agree to the red items that dr goldhart has proposed so to me the logical thing is to deny his proposal that's that's what he's indicated so i i i think that's where we would go um one question i had is that we do in the on page one say that he represents superintendent represents he has a valid administrative certificate issued by the state department of nevada state department of education don't know if he has that yet that would have to be modified if he um that he has to get it or something

186if we're going um at this point we we don't have an agreement because what mr president varner presented to him he countered with um and if we're not agreeable to the counter i i think we have to deny that deny what's before us i don't i don't see um maybe this is a two-part motion um on it but i don't i i don't see how we it's pretty much everything here and we do have a motion and a second on the floor so mr president i don't know if i can help a little bit go ahead uh the agreement won't be effective until july first 2022 and the conversation with dr goldhart is that his license is in process and will be in effect at the time the agreement becomes effective if not it'll have

187to be addressed if a contract is put in place um the board just i guess for everybody's edification can only act by four votes there's a motion on the table there will be public comment before any action if the motion passes that's the end of the day if not it's back to the board for another motion the way it's written it can be approved approved with conditions continued or denied and that can be whatever the board's pleasure if you want to do a president garner said and approve the proposal that he's put before you as an offer to dr goldhart without any of the red line changes you could do that or or anything in between i i personally i think it'd be tough to approve what um what the president has put forward because

188we've had that discussion but not seeing it in writing i think that is tough to approve here um if we go back to it um stacy you look like he had something i don't think necessarily in any time you're going to a job you ask for you you want somebody offers you something it's a back and forth kind of thing um and i don't think by taking out they mean one of the red things we could keep in is on number six on the evaluation shall be mutually agreed upon by the superintendent and the employer by august 8th at least we have a deadline of when we should have his evaluation ready stacy but what if he disagrees with it being done in a public setting as required by law what if he disagrees and

189and delays it that's only um that's only two meetings what if what if he disagrees with it wants to make changes that take longer then after august 8th we're left without an evaluation in any way to evaluate him even though we're required to do so by law i i i i think that um i think we never we we've been courteous to mr stokes and and informed him how we're going to evaluate him but i i think this is is one of the things that i there's there's too much i'm comfortable again leaving it the way it is i mean we're we're it sounds like we're willing to go you know recommend a one-year contract and we have a system currently in place we leave it alone and then you know in that case things

190work out and we you know a year later we go through contract negotiations you know we have the benefit of time and we have the ability to discuss how we might change things if we choose to do so at that later time but i think i'm no problem leaving it the way it is i mean it's again we do have to be careful with how we go forward because i mean i would imagine anything he wants is gonna he could ask for whatever he wants but we're bound by the law we're bound by the nrs and mr russell's gonna you know remind us of that so i don't know how that would work but i would imagine he would get into a sticky situation if he wanted to do something that was against the nrs

191so i i don't know that i'm all worked up about that but i think if we leave it alone we're fine we're talking about a contract and so it's very big to say leave it as it is when we have varying proposals so what does that mean leave what as it is well we have as we have a contract written and then mr goldhart came and said i'd like to make these changes in red how to change this in red what we what what trustee varner i'm hoping i'm using the right word proposed to him not what he's proposing to us i would just say i really haven't heard anybody in favor of the proposed changes by the candidate so i mean i think that like i said we have a motion in a second

192on the floor i mean i would i would recommend opening to public conversation and then we could figure out where to go from there so go ahead no i was just to clarify the motion the motion was to deny the contract as in front of us with the changes in it and was seconded okay okay we'll go ahead at this time then since it is an action go ahead i just want to make sure the record's clear so i understand i thought the motion was to deny the contract altogether and that was seconded yeah is the is the motion to deny the red proposed changes to the contract as it's presented and written the red is written in so to me i think if we don't want the red we deny the entire contract and

193we get a contract that is more agreeable to you know and and that may be a second motion if you want to go forward and and direct him to uh direct the president to say these are the terms that we're comfortable with presenting and then go with that but as this is written i i don't see how we can approve this because most of the terms in here as it appears were not agreeable to the board well and that's kind of going to the same point that i was raising with joe it's that it's confusing and i think we need a very clear document if we're talking about a contract i would hate to have anything ambiguous and i would like to present yeah i would like to present you know make an official present

194an official contract for mr goldhart to dr goldhart to approve or you know to accept or not accept or i guess he would have the right to say okay here's you know here's here's a counter i'd like to make then we could review that but i need something clear that we can send him because you know you've had discussions with him but it hasn't come to the board so i think i think we think we need to send the fella a contract you know this is what we're willing to offer you i mean that's what i would do if we're at my place of employment we'd send him a contract and then as a full board we can start having some you know more informed discussion so if i hear what you're saying is to

195send him a contract and not allow him to change it just sign it or not sign it no i'm not saying that i'm saying he'd have the option to request changes to it but yeah we could go back and forth we haven't has a board we haven't said here's the agreement you know here's here's the contract we're sending you you know this was just you know you were you had discussions with them and you know on behalf of the board i guess but as a board we you know this is the first time we've got together and talked about this and said this is what we're willing to offer so but don't you think i mean this whole thing i mean i have a bad taste in my mouth i think we're about to make

196a very large mistake that we're going to be talking about in a year from now so number one the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up but i believe we told the president to negotiate what the terms we thought would be agreeable which is what he has in which we're saying this is what we would present is what president barnard has has negotiated with individual who isn't happy with it so i'm not sure what good it's going to do to send the exact same thing a second time that he's rejected when they've been going back and forth so i'm not sure well i mean i don't know that he's rejected it i would do the same thing i would say hey i read your i read your proposed agreement and here's what

197i'd like to add to it and if we come back and say no we don't accept your changes then the offer for lack of a better term as it stands is what we're offering i know there's some fear of the unknown and i get there's some hairs raising on the back of people's necks but you know we don't have that you don't have an agreement you haven't reached an agreement there's you know i i think he i think mr varner went in good faith to negotiate and um what mr mr goldhart has indicated that's not acceptable and he's come back with with his requests that we have said are not acceptable so you want to punt to just go a different direction is that what i'm hearing at this point i don't think that this

198is a contract that i would recommend we enter into um i i i think um i think there's a lot i i at this this action the options were to approve approve with conditions continue or deny i think we've denied pretty much everything that this proposed contract that mr goldhart is there so i to me i think we deny it where we go from there that may be another agenda item maybe it's direction that we give after this but i i don't see how this is anything clear that we can say we approve this contract or that that we even i i think we've we've detailed out the vast majority of the contract we we don't agree with so i think uh mr ryan would like to say something what ryan mr walker i was

199just gonna say and and i don't know about all of you but i mean we've had people in the district which have read this and have reached out to me with real concerns about this proposal and i think that i think we have to be very careful about the culture of this district because i guarantee you 10 10 minutes down the road i'm going to be hiring a lot of teachers this year and i know every school in that district is going to be hiring teachers and we're paying seven thousand dollar bonus and i know washoe county is going to have hundreds of jobs and so what i'm saying is we have to support our employees and we have to make sure that what we're doing we could look them in the face and say

200we did this in good faith and i'm i'm concerned about this process at that point you know i'm people are sending articles we've spent the last year and a half defending that we're not teaching critical race theory in our schools and i'm getting articles about as superintendent defending a mandatory training about critical race that is was controversial and employees were walking out of the training and quitting their jobs and he was defending it and so it's like so what's going to happen with this person as a superintendent here when you know we're trying to maintain where we teach facts we teach the standards our students our parents they shouldn't know what our political leanings are we present information and it's unbiased and i think we need to be able to maintain that so mr president

201can i offer just a lot of stuff um so miss dr goldhart has not been offered a formal contract because president varner did not have the board approval of any contract to offer them that's what's before you tonight uh reconsideration very respectfully to all board members reconsideration of the decision is not on the on the agenda it's simply the contract and and the proposed terms and what president varner has proposed is the contract that's in front of you without any of the red markings that were inserted by dr goldhart and so the contract if it were approved as proposed by president varner would be the contract that's in the packet without any of the red line suggested changes um it's up to you if approval with conditions were to change some of those things for

202example to add some staff protection um as as was discussed uh denial of of the contract is just that it's denial of the contract and that gives um that that effectively could end the conversation i hope that helps i'm not trying to confuse the matters at all i just want everybody to understand the the matters that are actually before you it is confusing but uh we anybody want to change the motions on the table or so we have a second on the motion and the motion that's on the table now is to deny the contract just to clarify since the motion's been made do we need to move forward on it so for clarity back to what mr russell said i just want to make sure i'm understanding this i don't want to you know

203i don't want to be ignorant in my vote the contract or if we were to approve or deny the contract does it or does it not include what's in red it would be dependent on your motion um what's our current motion i guess is what i mean motion is to deny the contract okay which in which when we say okay and that includes what's it doesn't prevent the board from bringing another contract back at a certain time there could be denial with conditions to go back to the contract drawing board and bring it back approval of the contract could be approval from anywhere from what was proposed by president varner which does not include any of the red lines in other words if there's a red line edition it would be taken out if there's

204a red line deletion it would put back in you could approve the red lines as requested and what that does is it puts president varner back in the position to go back to dr goldhart and say here's the contract that's approved um yes or no and present the the answer to you um if it's denied then there's no contract at issue mr barner still has no authority and and the board has to decide what to do then did that answer your question i'm sorry i know it's confusing yeah no it it i think it answers my question i mean and and i want to be clear i don't want i want the red items that were stricken to be unstricken i want the suggested editions in red we've got we've got red we've got items

205that i think dr goldhart changed to red and struck him out and then he said i'd like this language to be added instead and what i'd like what i'd like to get to is the original intent of trustee varner and that that's just as presented without any red lines anything red in there would be taken out with that corruption that's my thought so with the motion that we have on the table after that's voted on and say that it passes then we can come back with another motion that we can use the contract as presented in black right no i can't make anybody's motion for them if the conversation needs to continue the emotion can be amended to deny as presented with direction to bring another another shot back the the agenda topic is to

206approve approve with conditions continue or deny the terms of the proposed superintendent contract my motion is to deny the terms of the proposed contract what we have is a proposed contract what you're talking about doing is making a firm offer and if we instruct mr varner to make an offer we're not approving a contract we're approving an offer for him to make and i think the language of it saying that we're approving a contract no one's in agreement with the terms of this proposed contract so i think that it would be prudent to follow to deny what is proposed here this is this is what we've been presented with is a proposed contract that has the red all over it if you would like a clearer offer and i want to be clear that it's

207an offer because it's not clear that mr goldhart is going to agree to what the offer might be um so i think we need to be careful that we don't call it a contract that we're approving them because at that point it's not either um so i i think as confusing as this is i think it would behoove us to deny what's in here as proposed and and then go forward from there with the second motion if they wanted to and so just so i'm sorry just trying just i'm just trying to understand this and you know i i haven't felt this ignorant in a long time so i'm just looking at the discussion and possible action to approve approve with conditions are is the approved with conditions portion of this statement dr goldhart conditions

208or is it our conditions based on the marked up contract in front of us for lack of a better proof with conditions means you can approve it subject to whatever changes you want to get to or whatever things you want to add to it okay all right any other discussion uh don do you have anything i i know you're you already had something earlier but i am uh i am listening and i agree on the denial of of the red i agree with laurel i agree with what's on the table and we do have that motion on the table so yeah we do have most on the table so uh bar in any other discussion with the board mr president i hate to interrupt and i'm not i'm not trying to interrupt i i would

209gently suggest some some guidance uh attendant to it outright denial if if that's the motion if it's denial with direction to bring back something different denial to redraft with all the red lines removed something along those lines outright denial does not give the district any flexibility do you want to do a different motion or add to your motion laurel i i i'm trying to think of how to do this because i i don't think we can approve something that is this messy so um i i i think it's okay to go with the first motion on this action item or the motion that i've made all right what yeah i mean i i think you could deny and then the alternative continue it until we have a cleaner draft and make instructions to to have

210a complete cleaner draft i i also am of the opinion that we didn't do we didn't get the investigation in the vetting process that we needed so that that's what makes it um difficult because i i see i see yes i see this costing the district um that's not the discussion right now the discussion is the contract we decided we already made the vote it was split granted but we made the vote so we're just talking about the terms of the contract now and i do agree the contract has to be cleaned up for it to go forward there's no doubt about that for me but i think per per mr russell you know the way it's set up it's kind of dead in the water and we can't it ties the district's hands and

211i know that we want our hands tied you look like you got something to say well i'm i'm i'm thinking of this because i i the motion is to deny this proposed contract but what you're looking at doing and what you guys want to do is bring back a formal offer and so i think we need to not call it a contract at this time because there isn't an agreement mr goldhart is not in agreement with what you presented which is basically what everyone here is saying they agree with so so i guess we're just i i'm not i'm i'm not is that how you want me to change it again i can't i can't make the motion for you um the the agreement as mr mr varner have to be really clear again had

212no ability to offer terms of a contract right and so what he's brought before you tonight is what he would be comfortable as proposed terms of a contract they are shown in this document without the red lines what dr goldhart has requested uh as his proposal for terms of a contract are shown in the contract plus the red lines and the board can either direct dr varner or president garner to remove the red lines and present the the terms of the contract and i'll say terms of the contract in the form uh presenting your packet without the the red lines or do whatever else but i my only point is if you straight deny he can't do anything and there is limbo of the board having taken action to approve offering the position of superintendent

213without any ability to move forward the contract for that position it's up to you if you want to modify your motion and we really couldn't just say all the we're going to subtract all the red because in the proposed contract the candidate's name is wrong and so we have to make sure that because that's in red so i think that that's i think that's part of the messiness of it all yeah we're getting cleaner with this situation um i i will say to deny the contract as presented here and the proposals and direct to come back with a cleaner offer yes so trustee crossman if when you're i know so i mean i think that that's that's clear as mud i mean if we said we're if your amendment was to deny the terms of

214this proposed contract and direct the president to propose the original proposal or their pro's contract to the candidate then that gives basically president barnard says my original offer is our offer but we need to make sure that we have his name spelled correctly in the car yes and i guess the reason i am just wanting to start fresh with what we're proposing is because there's a lot of i'm i i don't think anyone agrees with a lot of the red but then it's not clear i don't know so could so could your could you edit your motion to deny the proposed contract and direct the president to reengage with the candidate or starting with the original terms i think that that's what if he doesn't have any authority to go back where are we going

215to go from this point is the question i think they're asking i i think that amendment would work so i would agree with her amendment to deny the proposed contract and direct the president to go um to the candidate with the original proposal as our offer yeah i'm more comfortable with that i think we have to have a an ability to move forward in some way and i agree mike are you going to second then amended motion yeah that was my second but i guess i should say that with the candidates team spelled correctly okay thank you uh we have a motion on the table uh we'll open a public comment now they want to restate the motion the motion was to deny the contract as submitted and direct the president to go back to

216the candidate with the original offer as our proposal with the name spelled correctly in the contract okay uh we'll go ahead and move on now uh to public comment you graduated go ahead and come on up and uh please state your name for the record please it's torturous hello my name is thank you uh my name is casey sylvester and um i just want to point out that um this is definitely in negotiations this is consistent with the way some theories on how you do negotiations are to ask for everything hold your position and see what happens and so what the candidate dr goldhart has requested is certainly a little bit extensive that doesn't mean that the board should not take a position of approve with comments and comment back per um trustee crossman and

217walker's uh motion to go back to the original i'm in support of continuing negotiations with dr goldhart and right now the board has all the leverage and there are a lot of concerning things that are in his red line especially with the evaluation criteria being selected after the hire and then him having ability to turn those down and then him having a severance package not to mention a lot of upfront money to do with him moving forward and so there's a lot of concerns with that and the way he has it written the board is going to have no leverage um and right now they're in a position of you know you are in a position of power in these negotiations and so you should absolutely go back to the original request and continue that

218forward to dr goldhart um i wouldn't be opposed to a few of those uh concessions that he's asked for or maybe to meet him halfway on one or two of those but for the most part he's asking for a lot so i just i want to throw out that i don't think that denial or walking away from this negotiation is is right at this time we're still early in negotiations the board has all the negotiating power right now and that's something that they should work with for the time being thank you i had a couple here that signed up let me call the guys who uh did this first brett i think ballard or bellard bellard everybody hear me okay hi there my name is uh brett bellard i am a 87 graduate carson high

219go senators um i'm a local addiction medicine and family physician here in town and i come here today as a taxpayer a homeowner and a physician who has many patients who are students and employees of the school district um you guys know how tenuous some of our financial things are nowadays and so i really think some of the decisions that need to be made really need to be done with fiscal responsibility in mind you guys have totally discussed all the red revisions that were done which i think are absolutely excessive as a physician executive i look at new contracts for high level executives all the time and nobody does relocation anymore nobody um i'm asking for a week of hotel and travel to meet everybody before he starts i'm struggling as to why that couldn't

220be done via zoom i mean and that's just kind of a excessive ask really for no reason for something that should not be done um most professional contracts nowadays it's the loser of the legal event who pays the cost not both parties most concerning to me is his raising his contract from one to two years and the severance time frame we've seen in the past decade our neighboring school district washoe county pay how many years of severance packages for fired superintendents i don't know and that's just really not anything that we need to add to our school district at this time when you look at all of these things together [Music] they kind of give you a picture not of someone who is student focused first they come across as legally defensive somewhat combative and

221definitely someone who use the term culture doesn't seem like is going to be giving the proper culture for this community and so you have this motion in front of you to reject the current contract which i think is a great idea but if me personally if i was hiring another physician or an executive and i got this contract in front of me with these revisions i would say thanks but no thanks you're not the kind of person we want here and i really think the board before they send out the original contract again should really take a pause and think about does this change what you think about this candidate because to me it does thank you very much the next one who signed up to speak is maxine bradshaw my name is maxine bradshaw

222and i'm here to speak on agenda item 11. the terms of dr john goldhart's contract specifically salary and i had written this up earlier but i think i have more to add after tonight's conversation to reiterate past points presented what i was looking at when i went back and looked at dr goldhart's records and what i saw was that it had been established and we looked at this we we looked at his resume we listened to his interview and from his history on his resume and his past qualifications we supported him and you know that the public widely supported him we continued to do that what i've heard tonight is from a couple of people very very exasperated and very disturbed by the fact that this man has been supported and that he got as

223far as he did here i keep hearing what ifs what ifs what ifs i understand you have to protect the district i get that but you haven't even given this man a chance i mean you have already drawn and courted this guy and he's not even here are you i mean i don't understand this uh and and the fact that you're giving him a one-year contract i don't know how you feel too threatened and if you remove all the red from the contract it's back to what he originally presented you can offer him that you know you're just saying no we don't want the changes here you go um but i just think in support of these actions i felt that if this man had a chance and i don't even know if anyone could

224approve anything in in a year 12 months at a job you know he's never been here before um but he does have experience and i i would not question that he doesn't want things for the kids i think that the man has proven in his track record what he has done for the school children he's proven that over and over again in his programs look again at what he's done look at his history you know there but i think that some people are just disturbed by some things about him and i believe in giving this man a chance i really do and as far as that goes i was reading in you're on the other hand from your agenda statement and i quote approval quote approval may have a fiscal impact inclusive of an annual

225salary up to 175 thousand dollars unquote i strongly urge the board to re-examine the evaluation skill they've been using considering the collective salaries of the current superintendent richard stokes associate superintendent tasha fewson and cio andrew fuelling which is costing carson city taxpayers 497 thousand dollars ninety four hundred ninety seven thousand twelve dollars annually with nevada still ranking 50th in the nation i mean we're talking money here right that's what is costing us that much so think about that thank you very much any other in-person comment the lady in the back there she's been raising her hand richard if you don't mind uh state your name for the record please yeah my name is jody sorzik i am an 84 graduate and i have four kids that have graduated in carson high school district i am

226very disturbed by what dr goldhart came back with i came to the table late in this and watch the board meeting last time after the fact i watched the entirety of it and one of the things that concerned me is everybody kept saying that he had all this experience being a superintendent he was in his first contract as a superintendent for the first time in new hampshire and he did not even complete that contract as he was in the middle of that he went looking for another job i don't know everything that happened there i've looked up a lot of research it looks like there were problems on both sides of the aisle but he did not even finish that original contract so to say he had a bunch of experience as a superintendent i

227don't agree that he did that that's pretty limited um as far as the money that we're offering him um richard stokes as of a couple years ago was only getting 160 000 a year and we're offering this guy to start with 170 000 and he's asking for more than that um dr goldhart was making um for the year of 2020 to 2021 171 725 in new hampshire that was per u.s news in uh february of 2022 the cost of living in carson city i looked that up it's on salary.com it shows that we are at a negative 8.2 lower than manchester new hampshire so not only do we not have taxes here sales tax here but we also have the advantage of the 29 towards pers he's asking for relocation costs which i think is

228absurd um he's also asking to um for a severance package that i believe really makes him look like he is totally trying to protect himself you know he was uh quoted in the union leader news in new hampshire he said some tell me that it's a step down to go from a larger district to a smaller district but i see it as a step up i'm looking for some place some people would call small so i can focus on what matters most students and community engagement those matter to me a lot i honestly question that comment because what he's offering and what he's come back with makes me feel like he is totally out for himself and not out for our children and i think our children are very important we are at a loss

229in this district already money wise and we need to be very careful on how we proceed thank you jody richard richard nagle the thing about it is is i think that he asked for everything he could think of to get it's a con it's a negotiation as far as he took it and he's testing the waters are we rich or not okay we're not we're going to be we're in the hole we're going to be 3 million in the hole next year that's a common thing we need to relay that message back to him i lived in new hampshire they have no sale they have no income tax there too okay so that's a wash sales tax can be dependent upon which county you go to can be higher but you know again that's a

230wash too um the thing about it is is is that we have to protect ourselves and i agree with mr walker that a lot of things we have to be financially prudent and joe and joe cassiopa said that and so is crossman we need to be financially prudent in these matters and we need to send us a solid message to dr goldhart that we you got to come in with with a budget axe to begin with and we can't give you the red carpet but maybe we can turn around and say you can earn that carpet okay with benefits or something like that okay you could earn perks or whatever down the road what i'm saying is that he should have in his evaluation no no but no employee i've ever heard or met has

231had input on their evaluation okay that that to me it's a little bit out there but then again what i think we should do is have a criteria based evaluation for him so that he meets certain goals that are attainable but we give him goals in his evaluation so that he can achieve those goals and if he doesn't meet those goals then we can put him in a developmental planner to find out why and get it going but again if we want to have any continuous quality improvement in our district which we need to get better the the act scores they said were like 17 for combined and i googled it and the nation is supposed to be 20. i mean that's a nice goal you know to bring us up to the nation's standards

232to get us there you know because it takes 24 to get into an ivy league college so these things need to be a criteria-based skill based analysis you know to give him goals that to work for and get those and then maybe there could be some conventional compensation with those goals that are be reached i'm not talking about a raise but maybe a bonus or something like that and i think even the teachers should be getting on that same pathway where if they meet their their they exceed their goals they should be given a carrot you know but again i think that the work environment is what people work for more than the paycheck and we need to make a better work environment for our schools and i think if we do that we can

233win thank you richard go ahead pepsi pepsi strasbourg i sent many comments and i really appreciate the trustees taking the time to read it i i think this is a negotiation there were back and forth discussion so i don't think either party felt that it was the final word on that negotiation and it says salary of 175 plus the cost of benefits is included in this motion i think so that's a great start i also suggested in my write-up to the trustees that they should be a fixed and variable just as richard said that the variable is earned upon the performance of goals that is agreed upon um so what i was a little bit surprised was the re-litigating of the choice because that is a done deal this is now about the contract and

234to figure out the terms of the contract that best suits both parties you cannot have a one-party win all because that will not create the working conditions that is necessary to improve our district so i urge the board to have an open mind i mentioned in my write-up that the relocation was not included in the ad so that you have a lot of reasons to reject some of the redlined items some of them are not that crazy like uh stoke said that he had the flexibility and he addressed with self-restraint to choose the classes that he took i'm sure that we can encourage the new superintendent to do the same so some of it where there's a 5 000 difference or uh la or the original offer some of them could be negotiated and especially

235if the contract is one year you have plenty of flexibility there so i please work with the gentleman to see how we can come to an agreement versus relitigating the choice thank you thank you go ahead and come on up and state your name for the record please thank you uh president and chair and members thank you um i had all sorts of questions that's all the posturing i also was having trouble keeping up because it's very complicated and i wasn't any way shape or form criticizing any of you i was just as frustrated but you contain it better so i was all over the place because i had questions i wanted to ask some questions i think mr vanner vamer was president was put in a tough spot being the sole connection and i

236don't think that should be the case he should have the attorney available and have everything that he has seen and transferring back and forth watched over i think that would take a lot of the weight off of you i think that's very tough plus the fact that it wasn't a face-to-face situation they didn't skype it or the fancy things to do to read a person to have a sense of what's going on is so important that's why i want more people to come to the meetings they can read you they know that you're sincere they know your commitment to the kids they can look you in the eye and get a sense of you can't do that i wasn't at the program where he was being evaluated or being considered for the job i avoided

237that intentionally i went to wnc's uh employment deal when they were looking for a new president and that was so hard for me because each candidate had so much that they could have given great if they could have had them all so i couldn't that would be hard so i intentionally avoided that so i don't know the man i don't know what you've negotiated about as far as your feelings about him or how you figured him out but i don't see anybody saying hey we have what we've got we're sharing with you an opportunity for a job these are what we can pay you this is what we can do and if you don't like it that should have been determined before you decided to take the job so to me i'm going somewhere there's

238a cart before the horse and that hurts me because it puts you all in the spot where now you're renegotiating the thought of who you hired more than what your contract should have been start out with firm and set and determined by you all then you can present it to him you don't like it i'm sorry we're gonna have to start looking for another person and i really just don't want you to have to be on your own with this gentleman i don't want any of you feeling that your contributions aren't important but it's not happening together you just said a bit ago this is the first time you've met about a lot of this and i appreciate very much your help but you haven't really made it simpler for me somehow and thank you

239thank you jason come on up jason tingle um how did we get here i'm not i'm not even sure how this even ended up here i don't think our process was wrong i actually uh agree with miss crossman for once this his offer was definitely ridiculous but that is a negotiation negotiation is two parties trying to come together on terms with inflation and everything else going on i don't blame the man okay so for anybody else to sit in this room and say they've never looked at a job in several job positions and chosen it because one paid more than the other maybe you chose that school maybe you chose the position of a a principal or as i heard earlier physician who cares about his patients isn't going to go from making a hundred

240thousand dollars a year to 50 because he cares about his patients that much i'm sorry that's not the real world that's not the way this works so us even talking about like mr cassiopo said i'm getting the feeling that we're just trying to maybe punt this whole thing and and that's not up for discussion he's already been voted in it's a negotiation i don't see a problem with saying everything he put in there yes i disagree with and i don't think that the money in there is worth it i don't quite frankly the weak thing was ridiculous too but i mean to start over and go over this whole thing and to say it's not about money especially in the middle of inflation the way it is right now he's just doing the same thing

241we would do he's testing the boundaries to see where we're gonna go i don't fault him for it because i know every single person here has done it at one point or another okay so for us to go back on that i think we're just gonna set it everything back behind i don't agree with another statement made that the the cart was put before the horse you don't know the experience i agree with the offer that was put out for him it's more than mr stokes was making i think it was more than a fair offer i think he's just testing the waters but to just completely boot the whole thing out i agree with denying it but there there should be a counteroffer there should be something where can we meet him somewhere is

242it small i don't agree with everything i agree with you guys on that it's too much but just to completely throw the whole thing out on a negotiation is not a proper way to negotiate he has to look out for himself too he does care about kids i'm sure just like all of you care about your job but you're going to look out for yourselves before anything else i'm sure of it we all do so that's all i'm going to say on it i just think that we need to come back with something give him what we can do and go from there thank you any other in-person comment karen okay now i'm on first of all i'd like to thank president varner for all his efforts in the negotiation process i truly believe he

243did that in good faith but please refresh my memory some of you who thought that carson city school district should recruit as superintendent with a salary of at least two hundred thousand dollars so that we could get a viable candidate andrew fueling agreed that it was only one person's salary so he could make it work why are we bantering back and forth about five thousand dollars now that's way under what you originally capped the salary out or asked or maybe it was even more than two hundred thousand you know i'm in my 60s i forget some of this but it was substantial amount of money and it's way less than he's being offered now and you guys are acting like he's greedy good god um i do pre appreciate some of the concerns regarding dr

244goldhart's proposed contract however he has every right to negotiate it this is typical i believe the board should send him a proposal with revised conditions some of his requests are reasonable in fact mr stokes attends training studies does not get pre-prior approval from the board so what is so ridiculous about that i mean some of the comments are just you know have me scratching my head anyway um i do appreciate all the time and effort that's been put into this to try to get a good superintendent for the school district because our children deserve it and we are living in very trying times and so we do need to be careful and thank you for your time thank you very much any other in-person public comment mrs sorcick [Music] press the button hey there you

245go okay are we on yes thank you ron swarzick carson city resident former school board member um just to keep this short i agree with trustee crossman deny the way the agenda is written deny what was proposed and then you're going to the next step but i've got to make a comment about the carson city school district [Music] being a former board member it's a good district we got a lot of people that work together nothing is perfect but our administrators and all of our teachers they all tend to pull together when i read this proposal of another educator the first thing i thought about was did he look at the financial condition of the carson city school district number one does he really care about kids and i'm just looking at this that's why

246i would agree to deny the contract as proposed just as the agenda you can send back what was originally proposed i mean that was part of your motion and then go from there but i would just caution you to advise because this is a darn good district and our kids deserved to keep this district going the way it is thank you thank you ron [Music] once more any in-person comment cnn will close in-person comment and we'll go to on any online comment mr varner this comment is from excuse me linda herzl she does not feel that the district should pay for his moving expenses he chose to apply here also i don't think the district should pay for his professional development or his professional organization fees the district doesn't pay for the teachers professional development

247or professional organizations thank you and the next comment is from mary foster she's the office manager at empire elementary she states as she was completing the public comment i listened to trustee crossman's comments and i agree wholeheartedly with everything she has said thank you mrs crossman as an 11-year employee of the district that is barely making forty thousand dollars per year to hear the proposed increased salary and more importantly the moving travel expense the moving travel expenses and possible severance package i'm outraged i and all of us here in the us are facing seven percent inflation and the possibility of little of little if no wage increased this coming year and the thought of possible risks and staff due to budget deficits are another thing to think about how could you possibly approve the expenses

248he is requesting he applied for the job and knew he would have to move the expenses for that move are his expenses to bear thank you for your time mr varner that's all i have thank you very much we'll go ahead and close online public comment and now we have a motion on the table in a second i'll go ahead and call for a vote all in favor say aye hi thank you don any opposition say nay [Music] okay don what okay motion carries with uh six to one vote oh you you said me oh okay thank you okay i'll go ahead joe then uh like i said the motion carries i just wanted to thank everybody for your patience who's sitting out here it's been a tough year we don't always agree on things

249sometimes the public comment gets a little heated i just appreciated everybody you know the comments i heard tonight whether you're in agreement or not in agreement with with all of us or some of us everybody was respectful tonight i just wanted to say thank you [Music] any other comment before we uh move on i guess i would just add that the approach that i took was to be as conservative as i could and i think that was the right approach hopefully and we'll move on from here thank you we'll go on to item agenda item number 12. approval the consent agenda this is for possible action so public comment will be taken prior to any action so do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda motion by stacy second by joe any uh

250public comment on this item okay seeing no in-person public comment we'll close the emperor's in public comment and move on to online public comment no mr varner thank you see you none i'll call for a vote all in favor say aye hi thank you dawn motion carries uh we'll move on to item number 13 the information items for discussion only no action will be taken i think everybody has probably read those already so we'll just kind of leave it at that agenda item number 14 request for future gender topics joe yeah as i mentioned before again the um stella thornton's presentation i really wasn't aware of much of this i'd like to make sure we don't lose sight of this and um i'll say get this on the agenda as it makes sense to do

251so and as a development of a policy and a regulation you know start getting developed i just don't want to lose sight of this i think it's important thank you joe did i see any of the hands down there i know laurel had something or yeah i just i i have concerns um about the process i have concerns about what was not discovered um by our um search i i've had two reliable sources tell me that they were not called as references which leads me to believe that perhaps other references weren't checked other things were not looked into and um i i think that we might want to re-examine um there's quite a bit of information that was easily found that was that could have been easily found that was not and was not presented

252to us um and i i think that we should reevaluate that and and reconsider any other future agenda items topics with what laurel said if we're going to do that we would want to do that at our next meeting so okay well i guess we're at the point of adjournment thank you guys for attending and your comments thank for the board members for all your discussion and uh great comments and we'll talk to everyone later thank you [Music] so [Music] you