School Board Meeting 6/22/2021

001[Music] so [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] you [Music] hey everybody it's seven o'clock on tuesday july 13th we're going to call the carson city school board of trustees meeting to order with that item one is adoption of the agenda so moved motion in a second any board discussion seeing none any public comment on the agenda please come up to the microphone i'd like to recommend to the board that item 6b for discussion only since the third version of the reopening plan was not did not have sufficient review time either for the trustees or for the public and that a if there is an urgency of time to submit it to the department of education then a special meeting be called to for the approval step thank you thank you okay any other public

002comment on this agenda item any comments remote robert harris i second that motion thank you robert okay see um back to the board all those in favor aye item two flag salute and trustee ramirez the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice item three superintendents report uh this is for information only superintendent stokes thank you mr president members of the board community community members have a few items we were privileged to attend an event today that was held by a new company in town by the name of biomat and it is a company that is a plasma donation center and of course plasma is used for a number of medical purposes and procedures the company made a thousand dollar donation to

003the carson city schools foundation and at that event i was privileged to go with president cassiopo who is of course our president of the school board we also had in attendance mr steve reynolds who's our foundation president and also valerie dockery who is our grants and special projects director so that was a nice event we wish them well as a new company they um seem to be very interested in being able to forge um relationships and partnerships with the school district and so look forward to having them as a community partner i also wanted to update the board on actions recently taken by the niaa and i know that trustee wilkie has interest in this area but i know she no longer sits on that board but she may have some additional information should she

004choose to share it at a recent meeting of the niaaa the discussion called for the implementation of a temporary adjustment in athletic eligibility for the 2122 school year and what this means is that any student athlete that is planning to participate in league sanctioned sports during the fall and spring semesters of the school year if they become ineligible due to unsatisfactory grades at because of grades at the end of the semester this new rule will allow those students to be temporarily made eligible for three weeks and then during the regular process of the temporary or of the three week grade check if the student becomes eligible during that three week period of time then the student athlete may continue to participate if the student athlete fails to become eligible by the third week grade check

005then that student athlete is ineligible to participate until grades are at an acceptable level so part of this thinking was to provide some extra consideration for students that may have experienced learning loss or challenges in their academic record due to the pandemic uh with that mr president i'll hand the mic back to you thank you very much we'll move on item four board reports um let's start off with nevada association with school board's update okay so um the nevada association of school boards had a board of directors meeting in elko the last weekend in june and we were able to also tour ranch 71 isn't that what was it 71 outside of elko and learn about the c cte information on on ranching and the um artificial insemination efforts that are going on in the

006ranching out there so most of the cattle though were up in the mountains because it was too hot in elko for them to even stay down in the pasture so we didn't get to see all of the cattle that they had there but we learned quite a bit about it and also wanted to let you know that there are two positions on state councils that nazbe has been asked to present any board member can apply for it it is the teacher teachers and leaders council and the early childhood council that we're looking for positions and we've been informed by um that governor sysolak would like three applicants for each position so so far we do not have three applicants for each so if any of you are interested in serving on one of those state

007councils please let me know we'll get that in and then just another reminder we have training coming up september 10th and 11th in las vegas and also october 8th and 9th in reno it will be the same training so you can choose which date works best for your calendar um and and we're going to keep that next year we're going to try to have more trainings with everyone in the state able to attend so that we can have that unity um as an association also um mark your calendars for the annual conference november 11th through 13th um at like at harvey's um so that concludes my report great thank you very much uh let's go to board reports we'll start with trustee walker trustee wilkie um just to follow up on the nia stuff because

008it wasn't the last vote i got to take but they did send out their directive and it has a really nice flow chart that really shows you exactly what we're talking about because it's a little convoluted sometimes when you read it so that is on their website if you want to see it and that's my report rusty kareem i have uh just some news coming up in less than a month already the carson high school blue thunder marching band starts their band camp on monday august 2nd at 8 a.m so any high school band members interested anybody interested just show up august 2nd 8 am at the band room and that'll go for two weeks before school starts ending on friday august 13th with a uh 6 p.m parent preview of the show and that's

009all i have tonight great thank you trustee ramirez i do not have a report this evening rusty crossman i don't have a report from my schools but just something um that affects schools and in carson city that i read about and i wanted to share in case you guys hadn't heard and i thought you might be interested um kutiven stevens is going to be a senior at urineton high school he is the only member of the team of eurington's cross-country team he is an excellent runner i had a chance to meet him when i was working the track meets in carson and he ran against my son a very nice young man um and he is doing a remembrance run in august where he will be running from the stuart indian school in carson city

010to yerington it's 50 miles in remembrance of his grandfather who at eight years old was brought to the stewart indian school and ran away home to euronton three different times and having had eight-year-old boys five of them that have been eight um the thought of those kids running and that that boy running back to his family um is it so he is inviting anyone in the running community to run and join him on this remembrance run to um honor um his ancestry in that and he said you don't have to run the whole way you can run and then get in a support vehicle if you want so i just thought that was a really um inspirational thing he's he's a fabulous athlete athlete who has been training all year by himself and and he's

011he's he's won every race he's been in in urine and not just because you're into small but amongst all of them and he he he's really good he's better than a lot of the um the top division the 5a school runners when he ran in the track meets too so i just wanted to share that no that's great thank you and i can tell you i've run 50 mile races before you need support so let give me some information on that and i can send it out to the local running group groups and if anybody's interested in aid stations or something like that i think we might get some volunteers that way that'd be great okay trustee warner i have no report tonight hey thank you and as far as me i don't have a

012report either summer time um item six association reports do we have any association reports tonight either in person or remote no mr cassiopo all right seeing none item six and i apologize i was going to say something when you guys came up for that this is for possible action it doesn't mean we have to take action but i think it needs to be presented excuse me to the board and then we can amongst the board we can determine whether or not it's you know we want to call for action or postpone it or whatnot but we don't have to take action so item six discussion and possible action to approve the carson city school district's plan for in-person instruction continuity of services and path forward for distance education for the 2021-2022 school year and again

013for possible action superintendent stokes thank you mr president members of the board community members thank you for this opportunity to make this presentation i'd like to preface my remarks uh with some information and uh this slide essentially explains what we've tried to do obviously we are tasked with the responsibility of looking after the safety the well-being [Music] the for all the benefit of our student staff and certainly for their families we've had a year and three months of tough learning of different accessibility to [Music] information that is typically presented in schools we've had a variety of instructional delivery systems and looking to get to that place where that delivery system is as good as it can be obviously we have a desire to foster positive relationships and interactions not only at school but also in

014the community the work that we're doing has to be fiscally feasible and of course there is always going to be with any public school change impact on the community so all these things were really things that we are taking into consideration as we look forward to the next year at school i want the trustees and also the community to know that i understand and recognize there are concerns over some of the changes that have occurred this is going on across the state many of my and your colleagues also have school board meetings this evening and at those meetings because tomorrow is the deadline that we have been given by the state department of education to submit these safe school reopening plans there's a lot of scrambling we were one hoping that there would be some

015uniformity at the state level not only the department of education but also the governor's office to give us some guidance we have had a number of meetings where we have had feedback from the community this is going on in other communities as well where there is a lot of interest and a lot of concern and i for one would like our our friends that are here tonight to know that we are very interested in what they say and that we want them to feel included we want them to feel like they've had an opportunity for input we appreciate the time and energy that they've taken to come and be part of these meetings and with that i'd like to also say that we have not received that additional guidance that we were hoping for from

016governmental agencies so as a result we're left with a deadline that is tomorrow and so based on my presentation based on board discussion based on the feedback that we receive from community members it all plays into what we ultimately do but i think it does need to be said that we've tried hybrid models we've tried remote learning the best system for education is to have our students back in school in front of a qualified teacher and that's probably the main goal that i have as we consider all of these conditions that we're being asked to address i have made no attempt to hide the fact that all of the conditions associated with this reopening plan can be subject to change as we have seen over the last year and a half as schools have been

017closed completely or as they've been reopened partially so with that little beginning i just like to work through um the reopening plan so while while the there are some conditions and some situations that are changed in the plan that was presented at the last meeting i'm happy to answer questions and discuss with the board and the community uh anything that they feel is a substantive change that requi is an example of a significant uh change or um moving away of anything that was in the last the last plan so with that the reopening of our schools and grounds next year for the 2021-2022 school year will be based on the current calendar that's in effect and so the board's already approved that calendar in form or in past school board meetings and i've included a

018copy of that calendar uh on the path forward distance education reopening plan and i think we had copies of those available back on the back table we are suggesting and recommending strongly that school be in session five days per week for in-person on-campus learning now part of the reason for doing this work and submitting this information to the department of education and to the federal government is that because of the pandemic some families have elected to remain at home and not attend school on campus and in person and so we are required to explain to the department of ed how we are going to accomplish the remote learning and that will be done in our school district by an application process to pioneer academy on that campus we will have teachers who will be supporting

019a k-12 remote learning process but different from last year where all families have the opportunity to select that remote learning process we are working in conjunction with the principals and the families so that application doesn't necessarily mean that all students are a good candidate for an online remote program so we're taking into account students that might have a medical issue we're taking into account students that have been successful in remote learning programs in fact who have done very well and have been able to advance or you know proceed in their standard program because of the online program so certainly there are students and families that are very well uh suited for remote learning and we we want to make that available as necessary we also know that students during the course of any school year

020will fall ill to childhood illnesses sometimes very significant illnesses or injury and typically those conditions are rather short-lived and because all of our students are given chromebooks and we work with families that don't have good access to the internet we can provide the ongoing education for students to receive the same curriculum and lessons that are actually going on in their classroom even if they have to stay home for a short period of time and that's that's due to the fact that we have uh really good working chromebooks and also we can assist families who need that extra connectivity to the internet and then i also just want to state that we recognize that the national center for disease control is the nation's clearinghouse essentially of data and information associated with pandemics and with public health

021in general and so we pay attention to that information it's it's something that applies to a wide variety of individuals but certainly is recognized for the information that it maintains the use of face masks the wearing of face masks is not required for the 2022 school year as stated earlier this particular concept and topic is in high debate across the state we have a number of school districts that are planning to require the wearing of face masks we have a number of school districts in the state that are as in our case not requiring the wearing of face masks however carson city school district highly encourages the use of face masks for unvaccinated persons over the age of two years of age this is [Music] please look at the first bullet the wearing of face

022masks is not required for the 2022 school year if you think about what is in front of us here we have the national health organization of the cdc making a recommendation and the second small bullet under that first one is essentially taken word for word from the cdc now because the school district encourages it it doesn't mean that it's required if you walk into any store in our community you'll see that the majority of the people who are going into retail establishments are not wearing face masks to have a requirement of face masks in the school and then not enforce it means nothing and as a consequence we are stating that it's going to be then in the next bullet point down individuals may voluntarily wear a face mask in school on school grounds or

023in school vehicles [Music] if people do not believe in wearing face masks we're not requiring them to have a vaccination in order to be employed by the school district or to be enrolled in the schools or to attend schools so vaccinations are out there they're available at no cost in a variety of locations they're not being offered by the school district and we are not requiring that vaccinations be a part of any part of the school so that's a personal that's a family decision we respect that um but i also just want to let you know that it is a recommendation of the cdc that people consider obtaining a vaccination the other uh bullet that has not been stated up here is a low if a localized outbreak of coven 19 or variant results as

024a result of a multi-layered aspect of trying to get a hold of that outbreak and to prevent school closures we may employ a temporary use of face masks to try to get out in front of that [Music] okay health and well-being these are items that we employed to a large degree of success last year a wellness check should be conducted prior to coming to school and this is for staff volunteers students anybody who is going to come onto campus we're encouraging staff students volunteers please stay home if you don't feel well i didn't really want to use the word social distancing but we all know what that is so the topic the concept is position yourself in a place where you're not going to be too close to someone and we try to do this

025at school the principals have developed really slick processes where they're able to use little stickers that they put on the floor stickers that they put in the cafeteria that help students know where to sit and all of these are just aimed at providing a a space envelope as it were around individuals and trying to prevent people from coming into contact with contagions simply trying to stay healthy we will have a number of personal protective equipment available for staff we will also have a high number of [Music] face masks for anybody who voluntarily desires to wear them while they're at school we have registered nurses that are available in our schools and again while vaccinations for covet or its variants are encouraged they are not mandatory and we will do our best to try to keep

026students staff and families current with guidelines that come out of our local and regional health offices as well as at the national level as you know student attendance in the state of nevada is mandatory for children ages 7 through 18. we are proposing that for the next school year all special population programs will be in place so programs that serve students with individual education plans students who are english language learners students who are gifted and talented the next bullet says extra and co-curricular activities you'll know that from last year there were a number of restrictions placed on not only athletics but also on our band and our choir and so all of these activities are proposed to be available for the opening of school next year and especially with regard to athletics the niaa that

027we've already heard about tonight will continue to guide and direct those activities one of the requirements for the state department of education is that we show and this is this is not a hard thing to do we've always been able to maintain and record student attendance and academic progress and so this is just a re-commitment to that end our students will receive standards-based grade-level curriculum and they'll be provided all the instructional information and material through face-to-face in class models but this will also these items will also be available to our remote students part of our requirement here is to also assure families and students that teachers are accessible to students and families via the internet or telephone but there is a limitation and that is that that time that the teachers are available is during

028regularly scheduled instructional time can't expect teachers to always be available on weekends or holidays or after the regular work hours there was a question here a week or so ago or at our last board meeting about social and emotional supports we do have a number of uh individuals who work in our schools some have licenses in family relations and spacing the exact terminology but lsw licensed social workers who are capable of providing guidance and direction for students and families and then the other item that is important to note is we will continue as in years past with professional development for staff at all levels not just teachers but also those who work in support areas of the school district school operations the services that you see on this screen are those that we have always

029had available in the school district and they will continue all of those services will be employed you also see the schedules for the different levels of schools in the school district and so for any regular school day those are the times and the dates not the dates rather but the times that you would expect for our schools to take back up a regular five day per week schedule so going through some of the individual services in case there are questions transportation services are available to qualifying students as you know we do have a system of walk zones so the students have to be outside of that walk zone in order to qualify for school district transportation during our electronic registration registration process there's a place in that program that allows parents as they're updating their

030children's information to indicate whether or not their student plans to use district transportation this is really helpful for our folks because we are being asked to operate buses at approximately 66 percent occupancy but i also want the community especially to know that we have never left a student at a bus stop because of the social distance distance component we have either had those students get on the bus or if the students are at a school we have sent an additional bus to the school so that those students have a way home so we will not leave any students at a bus stop however if that student or family consistently is outside of or inside of the school zone they may be contacted either by the schools or the transportation department just so that we can

031make sure that we're providing that service as it has been administered and then of course after the day of transporting students our buses are sanitized by our transportation staff from the perspective of nutrition services students who are attending school in person will be provided breakfast and lunch free of charge for the 2021-2022 school year this is a a statement that and a benefit that has been provided by the department of agriculture and so that will be engaged here in our district as well we do however encourage families to complete the free and reduced lunch meal application form that gives us opportunities to maintain data that we then will use for grant programs that are providing dollars through the department of education and also through the federal government when school was was closed in two marches

032ago not this last march with the year before school meals were made available to all individuals and that will not be the case for next year there will not be meals available for weekends so just wanted the the folks who use our nutrition services to be aware of that meal there were some questions at a recent board meeting about our use of school lunches and so i asked for some general statements from our staff with regard to the nutrition benefits of our meals and there are federal guidelines that are strictly adhered to and those have to do with a number of calories the amount of sodium fat it's also important to note that meals are served with fruit and or vegetable servings and when whole grain or when when any of the foods that is

033that are served come from grains that whole grains are used and in addition the rich enriched flower that has additional vitamins minerals and fibers are also used from our operations department cleaning sanitizing and disinfecting this list really the the schedule that has been identified by our director of operations for being able to keep our schools clean and to try and manage [Music] any infectious disease that might find its way into the school so even though this is a time of covet 19 and its variants this process is also used to battle the common cold uh any kinds of flus and certainly any other infectious disease that might find its way into the schools you'll see there that we do air exchanges and filtration unfortunately our area is prone to the impact of wildfires you'll remember

034this from our last school year and so even though we had this process in place it did not make sense to exchange air that had that was smoke-filled and replace it with from the outside of the schools and then pump that into our schools in a air exchange process and so we do have high quality filters those filters are changed regularly and if we do have clear skies outside and our air quality is good then those air exchanges happen three times a day and is aimed at reducing again any airborne contaminants that might be impacting the health and well-being of our students and also our staff there were also some questions about cleaning products we put together a whole list of items that are used in the schools and those were also made available for

035individuals to take a look at so if you have any particular questions on those we will make every attempt we can to provide that information to you information technology as indicated earlier we do provide a chromebook to every student families that may be needing reliable internet connectivity should contact their school administration and any chromebooks that happen to break down as a result of just typical use wear and tear the school individual schools where the students attend will be able to manage those repairs or provide a new chromebook if if needed we have a variety of ways that we attempt to provide information to our community we have an electronic web page we have a [Music] public information officer that helps us with press releases we use our automated telephone calling system to a great extent

036as do our schools we also use texts emails and social media and then of course our teachers our principals even in some cases some of our parapros are active in using classroom information and outreach to contact families and to discuss any school related activity or even student related issue that might be necessary we also have at the school's signage in both english and in spanish to try to provide as much information as we can about good typical personal hygiene you know coughing into your elbow or sneezing into your elbow washing your hands before meals and getting lots of sleep and eating well all of those things that are part of staying well so that information in addition to some printed materials that the schools will have in the front office is important for our staff

037members we know that some staff have contacted us and we encourage others too if they still have issues with being able to work outside of their home obviously we're a school we require people to be able to come to school and to accomplish their everyday assignments as a result if they feel like they being our employees if they have any kind of health concern or issue that they worry about we would ask that they contact their health care provider and then contact our human resources department if special arrangements need to be considered so as in other slides that we've already seen now we would ask our staff to monitor their own daily health symptoms maximize physical distance when it's practicable we realize we're in a people business and you can't always do that there are

038times when teachers and staff members get closer than the former social distancing distances and so we we understand that we also would encourage any of our staff members who are needed on a daily basis just to simply consider the impact that personal travel might have on their assignment and just to consider that as they make plans for activities during the year and again to if when they get up if they don't feel well then they're certainly encouraged to stay home so there's been a request to lengthen this process i do know that we've been given a deadline of tomorrow to submit this i also know that it is feasible that conditions during any school year will change and we also have this if you jump right to the bottom bullet it says seek public input

039again after six months of school operations so i believe that our leaders have given us direction that says these conditions can change and so while there has been a a hard deadline placed on us i'm not sure what's going to happen if that deadline is missed but obviously they're looking down the road a ways to say if if additional input is selected and changes are made within six months there must be some flexibility within the process we are seeking approval for this certainly looking to receive guidance and direction from the board with regard to anything that seems unreasonable or not in a common sense manner and i know that because this is posted in that as an action item there would also be opportunity for public feedback tonight so mr president unless you have specific

040questions for me in a nutshell that is our plan it is in text form [Music] i think that has been provided to our folks i have tried to indicate in this document anything that has been shaded is new language anything that has a strikethrough through it is language that we would propose that be deleted from this document okay thank you superintendent stokes so i'm sure we'll have some questions or comments on this topic but let's start with the board um any questions or comments from the board rich i'd just like to say that uh once again we appreciate you guys input and we're listening listen to you guys and we want to hear more from you but i think that some of the changes that we heard being requested before were made in this latest

041plan like the no masks on the school buses that was taken out and changed and that was one of the things that i think was brought up before and i think that we've tried to as this document was prepared take the input that you guys gave us into consideration and uh but like i said uh i know you probably have more concerns that we'd like to listen to anybody else on the board seeing none i'll just reiterate um what rich said you know we we do take everybody's comments seriously i know there's some differing views on this and our job is to balance all the views we get input in person we get input through email we get input in the supermarket we run into people all over the place and you know these are

042serious topics and serious concerns and we do try to take them seriously and understand them to the best of our individual abilities but just to again be clear we're not requiring masks anything can change for better or worse but we're not requiring masks if a kid shows up at the bus stop and that child or their family doesn't want them to wear a mask they're still going to get on the bus we're not going to make them wear a mask and their school day will be mask free if i understand that correctly it's personal if personal option if they want to wear a mask they can but we're not making them wear a mask either um with that um last chance any comments from the board okay any comments related to this agenda item please

043just come up one at a time state your name at the microphone just make sure the green light's on it looks like it is my name is karen stevens and i'm very disturbed about this highly encouraged are these children going to be harassed into uh thinking they have to wear a mask they're going to be have these masks shoved in their hands and told them they're going to have to wear them because it says highly encourages like um like they're going to be bullied or something that's the feeling i get from this and any intelligent person knows that wearing a mask is like trying to keep a mosquito out of your yard with a chain link fence it's it doesn't work they're they're magnets for bacteria and causes all sorts of issues so i'm very

044upset about this wording i i find it very untrustworthy so that's my comment on that thank you no student is going to be bullied if you think a student is being bullied bring it to our attention and we'll deal with it on an individual basis uh laurel sure just just a comment i was thinking of um with that language in there last summer during the special session certain organizations casino hotel casinos were given immunity from transmission of covet school districts were not given any immunity from that this is something while it's an encouragement it's not required but it is encouragement that does give us not immunity but it does give us some measure to avoid potential liability should an outbreak occur within the school we do have our plan is the encouragement of it because

045that is that is still a possibility that school districts were not provided protection to resume operations and and that's why some of the districts in the state didn't resume any any type of schooling so um to me this gives us liability protection to include this phrase because it is consistent with the cdc recommendation and i i think that our compliance with those recommendations is the best way to avoid potential liability next please um pepsi strasberg and richard nagle the first thing i like to say that i took the trouble of comparing the first version to the second version and i was a little disappointed that now we have a third version without adequate time for review either for the board of trustees or for the public and if the board had received this document previous

046to the public then there is another issue that i'm sure mr ryan will address my recommendation were under the re reopening school building and ground section page two and three of the july 13th version i want to emphasize that the governor has returned authority to local school officials to mitigate the spread of covet 19 and the city has delegated the same authority to the school district and therefore to this board the board of trustees at the final authority of this plan i was going to make specific comments about the section 5 of the previous version and also to say that the cdc is an advisory group with no legal authority the cdc guidance is the school that has also said that the school district can adjust policies based on local conditions and please remind yourself

047that the local conditions in carson city is that that we have 51 vaccination rate in carson city and that percentage does not include the recovered covert patients who have natural antibodies so the protected citizenry residence percentage is a lot higher probably close to herd immunity on the new version of the section five the only relevant facts were related to that vaccinations are not necessary max are not necessary and nobody is going to ask anybody for their certification of vaccination don't ask don't tell the rest of the highlighted yellow items are pure direct copy of the cdc who we know has changes according to the whims of the political climate [Applause] so i second what karen said earlier these wording and verbatim copy from the cdc guidelines is very troubling though many people who don't frequent

048these school board meetings are not used to the protocols that you all follow will take the word of encouraged and mistake it as a suggestion particularly when it comes from authoritative figures like teachers and other staff in the school i recommend that these yellow highlighted items which is a direct copy of the cdc version be taken out and only the relevant factors remain which is related to the non-use of mass no vaccination and no records what i'm concerned about is that parents will read this item 5a where it says mass are encouraged for unvaccinated people over the age of two years that they will pull their children where they can from schools which i think will be detrimental to public education in carson city i said that at the last board meeting that we have

049to make sure that we have this capacity and this capacity at full funding and we cannot afford to have parents pull their students from their children irrespective of what their rationale is from schools item number six also talks about the national center of disease control and again as i said they're an advisory board and item 6 is not necessary i would have gone a little further on item 7 and say that good hygiene and continued sanitation practices should be not encouraged but mandated because we know that you all want to have the staff and student safety as a paramount importance in the school district and this is a very effective preventative measure lastly the item 4 which was on technology i saw the also in the powerpoint that the district will provide all enrolled students

050with chromebooks and internet connection i wasn't clear on that because i was wondering whether it was for students who are experiencing short-term absences or whether it was for all students i think that the district should clarify what that meant the website version said stated that the district technology will support this service under the section of discussing short-term absences when it refers to a service i interpret a service typically to indicate a duration a period my last point is i recommend to the board since this is the this may be approved today given the timelines that superintendent stokes mentioned that the amendments are made before it is approved if it is approved today thank you very much thank you pepsi any additional public comment on this item yes sir just speak your name into the microphone

051good evening board members oh yeah for the record my name is mori kirland and i'm a high school carson high school honor student so the first thing i would like to address is that i think on behalf of myself and the community at large we support that masks won't be required as they restrict breathing limit participation in school activities and make teaching and attending classes vastly more difficult and provide no proven health benefit so i think we support this but as my preceding community members have said i will re reiterate it the specific wording quote highly encouraged seems kind of concerning so i'd like to ask the superintendent what that would entail let me take a crack at it richard and then please correct me if i'm wrong oh i'm sorry i just i was

052just gonna real quick we're encouraging it because those are the directives we're hearing from the cdc and health organizations but we're not enforcing it we're not going to ridicule anybody for not wearing it we're not going to tolerate ridicule or bullying in fact that's in our policies not to so it's just merely making a statement that this recommendation exists by some entities and again we're not going to require it okay thank you and then as my final comment on this agenda item i just like to give my support on behalf of myself at least for full school attendance being offered and encouraged because last year was incredibly difficult and damaging because we weren't allowed to do many of the things that school regularly entails we weren't usually allowed within reasonable distances to other people we

053weren't even allowed to meet half of the people we should have known so forging social connections was highly limited and um extracurricular activities were very much they weren't offered as much as they should have been and so again social connections were very much limited um so i'd just like to say that i'm highly i'm highly encouraged that this year will be normal and i think many parents students and staff members here in the district are as well thank you robert harris i just have a question are the public school buses under the department of transportation's authority richard i'd defer that to you to clarify carson city school district or the state department the carson city school bus system is it regulated by the department of transportation federally the we receive dollars from the state department

054who receives it from the federal government so um mr fueling anything to add to that we'd have to sorry we have to bring you up here okay go ahead jose delfin for the record i can tell you the department of transportation does uh is the licensing body for the cdls that are being issued right for our bus drivers and the random testing with regard to drugs and alcohol and that's about it as far as their involvement okay so they don't they're not the ones recommending the mass not that i'm aware of okay i was just curious because i didn't want any you know later on because i know airplanes and everything else there's some ambiguity as far as what the policies are but the dot was clear that's why i was just curious right and

055we ascribed to not just federal but you know our our drivers take the cdl test out of dmv here in carson city okay thank you okay any additional public comment on this item yes sir just state your name for the record hi my name is lee elliott and i'm the resident of carson city and mr stokes i'm gonna counter you on a couple of things okay one of them is that you know my wife she was a counselor for 11 years and she has taught me and she taught social the social whatever you want to call them social workers and she taught at wnc and she uh has told me over and over again there is a complete different type of genre that you go through to become a school counselor as compared to a

056social worker there's a total different different way of looking at things i know she was very proud of what she did at border wick gray for 11 years and she said she would come out of retirement as a part-time counselor not as a social worker to help kids that are in need if she didn't have to wear the stupid mask and it sounds like you guys are going to throw that away but i want you to be aware that these kids are so confused right now they don't know what's right they don't know what race they are they don't know what sex they are they don't know any of that stuff and they're they're as confused as the day that you know their mom and dad said this is your name so you have to

057really look hard at retrieving funds from some place that will allow trained counselors to come back into the schools social workers are good don't get me wrong because there's ugly stuff that happens at schools with kids okay they get you know they used to come to my wife oh we need that my mom and dad have done this to me or my brother and sisters have picked on me you know and and so we're not here for you guys we're here for the kids the kids that are our future in this country and if we don't treat them well now then guess what we're going to lose two or three generations to come and i strongly believe that so i know i know you're gonna have a rebuttal and i know that which is good

058that's what makes america great but let me tell you something as a politician because i'm running for state senate just let you guys know uh this is important guys we need to save our kids we need to save our kids from this critical race theory we need to save our kids from the mask we need to save our kids from all this so please please look in your heart and souls and let's move forward for our kids for our kids not for you and me okay that's important thank you [Applause] thank you lee any other public comment on this item okay seeing none oh please i'm maxine bradshaw um my concern is that the one thing i do want to say is that there's a lot of time that has been spent since a year

059ago march a year ago february when all of this first hit the united states about cdc and some of these organizations and groups but the wonderful thing is that we have hundreds of thousands of doctors hundreds of thousands globally and that many just the united states who have come forward and said they have they have documented this these are medical health professionals the list is growing one of the ones you've probably heard of is american uh federation of or not federation it's america frontline doctors aflds.org dr simon gold is behind this and what she has said over and over again is that mosques do nothing in fact they're detrimental to these children period and she has gone out and and declared exactly what this cobit is the problem that we have faced in this state

060and we've sent many letters we the people of nevada have sent thousands of letters out to our commissioners our board of supervisors and we've let the public know that these are the facts the medical facts this is really what is happening here they this has become a political machine we know it but what we need to do is take it from the health professionals that are telling you the truth by hundreds of thousands they have documented it the great barrington declaration is one you need to look that up because that is signed by physicians all over the last count and this was about this was last year was over 57 000 doctors had signed that you need to look at the facts go to your medical health professionals and look and ask them right down

061in douglas menin and garnerville ask a few of those physicians what they're recommending to their patients they are treating their patients with hydroxychloroquine and some of these things let's look at the facts let's stop looking at the agencies that are playing pseudo doctors with this and do not have the facts cdc does not have the facts and i agree with everyone here that spoke up about highly recommending something i think you know in your hearts exactly the message you're sending the people when you say that they're going to take that only one way and that's it so look for the facts listen to the truth go to those lines and see what they're putting out there because the citizens are standing up and we are filing legal documents to address these issues that we don't

062want vaccines we do not want our children vaccinated we do not want our grandchildren vaccinated [Applause] okay the green light on the bottom right should be on i know everybody in this room is not quite old enough to remember when computers actually were born can we just get your name for the right my name is michael morrissey with battleborn patriots taking nevada back most of the people in this room remember the day computers came out most of the people in this room didn't even know what the internet was until the mid 90s now our kids have these things in their hand at all times doing their homework or whatever it is they're doing face social social networking facebooking whatever there's something came out today that they aren't gonna get to see on my facebook come

063on wake up i'll read this to you at the entrance gate of the university in south africa the following message was posted for contemplation destroying any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs yeah plan right now sorry we yeah we got to limit this just to the plan itself well you don't have anything in there about this but i'm still going to read it well you can read it during public comment but this pertains just how long was that how long was that going next item okay i'll do it then thank you but the thing is with the with that in mind we are educating our future we deserve to have they deserve to have the same minimum education of the iowa school systems that was the standard back in those days we'll

064be here any additional public comment on this topic okay seeing none we're going to close public comment on this topic mr cassiopo i have emails i'm sorry i meant to say in person yeah you have comments for me i i do mr thank you um know some most of these topics are with regards to no masks at school so i'm going to go that and as well as unvaccinated students so i'm going to proceed then with with the plan it doesn't specifically reference the plan but if it if if the plan covered it i think it's fair okay okay thank you this first comment is from charlotte stewart the vaccine isn't safe for children and should not be used in healthy people because they are more at risk of death from the vaccine we're at

065the point where we should be treating covid like the flu but instead there is talk of continuing this nonsense covet variants are a lie the vaccine is causing weak immune systems that can't understand covenant and all the students there's is a supposed variant the counties around us have lifted their mask mandates but now there is talk of force forcing our children and teachers to be vaccinated before removing them this is a violation of our freedom discrimination as well as a direct attack on our children and teachers health and well-being if something is not done legal actions for violation of these rights will be taken please stand up for our children enough is enough forcing online education or masks is not the answer please bring back in-person learning no mask no forced vaccines also leave equity

066and lgbtq out of the curriculum this kind of curriculum is sorry i'm going to just stop you on that part of it okay that's not part of this topic okay let me go on to the next we have time for that topic it's from gregory bentz says let the kids breathe the parents can decide you are accountable to us rochelle will it board members we homeschool last year because of the mass and we'll do so again solely because of mask if they aren't dropped from school stop telling us it's required and that your hands are tied they're not the mayor has given you the power to choose for your children despite what the cdc guidelines say many other areas have dropped masks for children it can be done those areas have all proven that the

067masks are not needed because children are not transmitters please follow the good science that has proven masks are not just useless but harmful to our children this comment is from nancy jones no more masks at school the mayor has given the school board the power to determine how to proceed for the coming school year you need to implement the will of the parents and people who elected you and not that the dictates of unelected federal officials anyone who feels safer wearing a mask can wear one but no one especially children and youth should be required to cover their face and reduce their breathing capacity by strapping a germ-ridden mask to their face to participate in taxpayer-funded schools stop it now the next comment is from lori george please consider no mandatory mask for the upcoming

068school year and allowing parents to make their decision for their families according to the cdc it is up to the school board to make the mass decision and are no longer required to require mass to be worn at school you have the authority to put these personal health decisions back into the parents and individuals who work at the schools control to decide for themselves as it should be this comment is from rachel reyes our family is against mask being mandated for unvaccinated children if the school district decides to make it mandatory for unvaccinated children to wear masks we have decided that we will homeschool our three kids laurel barrett i am unable to attend the meeting in person but strongly believe our students need to get back in school without the mask mandate there are

069only children once and the school experience will last a lifetime this comment is from trevor oxboro listen to the parents who show up at each school board meeting do you require masks for unvaccinated students do not require masks for unvaccinated students in this coming school year do not institute othering policies to unvaccinated students in the upcoming school year do not hide behind the mayor or governor and shirk your duty to educate the students equally this comment is from ted oxboro listen to the parents do not require masks for unvaccinated students in the coming year do not institute othering policies to unvaccinated students in the coming school year do not hide behind the mayor or governor and neglect your duty to educate students this comment is from jill oxborough and mr president it says the exact

070same thing again do not require do not institute othering and do not hide behind the mayor or governor and this comment is from janice baldwin please do not require masks for anyone this coming school year this is putting too much fear in the children that's all i have mr president great thank you very much okay everybody thank you appreciate your comments sincerely i'm gonna bring this back to the board um this is an item for possible action so any uh further comment or discussion from the board rich i'm just wondering there was a concern expressed about 5a highly encouraging the use of face mask do we want to soften that a little bit i mean just put encourage highly we'd encourage it and maybe by taking out highly encouraged it may soften a little bit

071to the parents just a thought or i i just think that we do have to give ourselves some protection um and those those who don't want to wear masks are not going to wear masks and it's not going to be required of them but those who maybe are unsure um there may be some and if they want to wear masks they should be able to wear masks um i think if this is the language that is coming out from the cdc that they're highly encouraging i think most most stores that you go into have a sign saying masks are not required for the fully vaccinated and i'm sure many of the people in there without masks are unvaccinated as well but i think that that does provide some protection from liability to us so i

072i'm okay with leaving it in there just for that reason yeah i think for us just my opinion as a school board when we do a comparison to businesses it is i think it is a bit of an apple and oranges thing it's a it's a personal business they can within reason do whatever they want we do have some folks we do have to answer to we do have to listen to to some degree but i do i do like the idea that we're we're not requiring masks i think we're to a point where people can be left to make their own judgment and um i do i do respect the fact that while you know certain things aren't law you know we do have to listen to folks and and what some of the

073you know what some of these entities have to say to include our people our population and whatnot i agree with rich you know highly encourages i don't know which is it's wordsmithing at this point but um sorry we're sorry we did we closed public comments so i can't reopen it again it's a violation of the open meeting law i know but it is well what did you do so i didn't do anything with the swine flu there was no there wasn't an issue with this um anyway so my my sense is my sense is i is i know we talked about this before i i'd like the language to say the use of face masks for unvaccinated persons is encouraged and not necessarily that we solely encourage it and i think that's all i have

074to add on that yeah mike go ahead i'm just not sure what's the difference um i think it's subtle but i think you know what i'm hearing from folks in the audience and from others on both sides of the issue is that words do make a difference people interpret things in different ways and when some people read this they say i mean we heard it tonight we're strongly encouraging it and some people are attributing that to potential bullying and things like that which i know we're not doing we have policies against it and i can assure folks we're not going to tolerate it we don't and if it's happening in our schools we want to hear about it stacy i think we're going to have more of a backlash bully-wise for people wearing masks so

075i think that's something that we cover in our policies too i'm not worried about that but i think that there's going to be more backlash there i'm glad to see that we're doing away with the the mask on the bus generally just because of the nia allows us to be the ones that decide if we're having masks that are events so then they don't have to carry their mask on the bus and then leave it in the bus when they go to do the activity so and i don't have any trouble going ahead and doing an action item tonight i think we've given plenty of opportunities to get input on this i think we have done a lot of wordsmithing on it highly recommended whatever the board feels more natural with i'm fine with but

076i don't think that that would have to hold this item up so that because our next board meeting is two weeks before school starts and i don't think that that's um prudent for us for our our students to have to wait another two weeks so um i'm more than able to make a decision tonight great thank you any additional board comments or recommendation for a motion we have public comment out there yeah she's not liking it [Laughter] very well could be i i was just going to say whether you want to believe it or not we did take a lot of your comments into consideration when this document was drafted and i know it may not be perfect in your mind but i think it's really the best we can do right now and i

077think i agree i think that we have to go ahead and get something to the state it is a living document that can be changed so if we find that it's not working as we go along it can be amended and changed so i just want to again thank everybody for their input i move that the carson city school board district board of trustees approved the district's plan for in-person instruction continuity of the services and path forward for distance and education for the 2021-2022 school year as submitted second okay we have a motion we have a second any further board discussion um the motion was as is correct so not seeing any further board discussion do we have any more public comment on this my son suffered from this wine and it was beyond horrible

078okay um i was terrified for my daughter to get it and i don't remember any discussion about anything and 14 000 children died so i don't understand where the liability comes in if it's the same thing i mean for one thing it's impossible to see the schools but my whole point is if it something that killed thousands of children wasn't an issue then why is this such a huge issue in regards to you being so concerned over liability anyone suing the school there's an outbreak no thank you robert harris just to give you a little feedback uh last year of my okay my daughter sorry we had we had public comment from you already oh so well i was going to talk about the liability aspect of it because she brought it up we had

079i had okay yeah but we can't just keep we also have the right to not repeat things one after i'm not repeating so thank you i'm giving a testimonial as far as what happened so uh my daughter how was school today she said great we had two hours of extra play yard time today why is that oh we had two kids throw up in their mass so i called the school and i said hey do the kids have coronavirus in the school oh due to hipaa laws we can't tell you that so i'm not sure what the liability problem is but they wouldn't tell me if anybody had coronavirus and we had you know the janitors cleaning up the school so i don't i don't see the i mean it is wordsmithing but i don't

080see how that matters sure thank you do we have anybody that chimed in remotely renee no mr cassiopo okay i'm to bring this back to the board um all those in favor okay motion carries thank you okay we're gonna move on to item seven which is public comment um and i'll just read this comments will be accepted in person or through virtual participation via email comments may be made by members of the public on any any matter within the authority of this board please note the public comment will be taken on items marked for possible action before action is taken and members of the public are encouraged to comment on such items at the time they're being considered although members of the board may respond to questions and discuss issues raised no action may be

081taken on such matters until the matter is placed on the agenda for action at a meeting of the board in making public comments speakers are asked to come to the table or podium sign in excuse me speaking of the microphone and identify themselves for the record speakers are instructed to limit their comments to no more than three minutes regardless of whether the comments are made in person or through virtual participation and to not simply repeat comments made by others this is for discussion only any public comment oh here we go [Laughter] welcome michael morrissey this green light's on see if i can and michael before you start i just wanted i apologize i do have some people who signed in but since i didn't say it in time please i'll let you go first and

082then i'm going to call from the list i'm on your list anyway okay and then i'll bring people up who may not have filled out a form yeah put on my eyeballs as i was saying before most of us in this room many of us in this room were around before computers enter and delete were on the same end are different ends of the same stick called a pencil in south africa the following message was posted for contemplation destroying any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs or the use of long-range missiles it only requires lowering the quality of the education and allowing cheating and the examinations by the students patients die at the hands of such doctors buildings collapse at the hands of such engineers money is lost at the hands of

083such accountants and economists humanity dies at the hands of such religious scholars justice is lost at the hands of such judges the collapse of education is the collapse of a nation therefore i charge you with educating these kids in the same manner in which you were high education they need to know what rights they're giving up teach the constitution they need to know that how this government works is not like any other teach the constitution they need to know that world history is very important to maintain the authority of the united states in the united states they need to know that benghazi was a problem they also need to know that kenya doesn't have the same education system as we do but yet they're further ahead than we are because of our education system today

084please teach children properly [Applause] okay thank you next we have is it maury carland you're good uh let's see is it johanna packwood did i miss did i mess that up johanna's johanna sorry i'm not sure which one's best we'll go over here good evening i'm johanna packwood and i'm going to bring up the elephant in the room which is critical race theory tonight i come to you as a very concerned student on behalf of other concerned students as a senior in high school i have borne witness to the manifestation of critical race theory and i will be the first person to advocate for the banning of this curriculum i don't want to make this a left or right issue but i understand what it's like to have your point of view and beliefs belittled

085to be called out in class and to be publicly embarrassed and criticized critical race theory is a radical ideology not because of its roots of its root principles but because it can't coexist with any other teaching the responsibilities of our educators are set in stone they are to teach us reading writing and arithmetic and it has become very apparent that they have done a dull job when high school seniors graduate with an irresponsible foundation of hatred for their country but can't read at a 12th grade level you know something has gone terribly wrong first and foremost we should be upholding the american story for all of its glory and not its discrepancies secondly america has real competition with india and china as our world continues its transition into a tech based living our competition grows

086and it has become increasingly obvious americans don't know how to compete in this new world not only are we not only are you forcing the hateful red rhetoric down our throats but you are actively t not you but you are actively failing to teach us how to compete which is actually a disservice to you you have made us complacent with second third fourth and even last place i don't just think that's a tragedy i think this is a crime our educators are to teach us how to think and not what to think and it seems like we have lost sight of that so on behalf of the students we all care about so much rearrange our priorities take politics out of the classroom altogether let's reinforce the fundamental teachings and let's come to the conclusion

087that we are the next generation of competitors thank you next we have robert harris yeah good luck yeah robert harris because the school district had not clarified what equity is we are left with what national organizations defined what equity is i have referenced graceschools.org multiple times for clarity of equity we have also taken upon ourselves to make up our own definitions of equity due to the lack of transparency from the district and the need for public education of parents on these new phrases either one of two things is true with our school district either we are lucky enough to live in the only school district that is not pushing education from an equitable lens or our school board is not being honest with us i'm going with the latter based on the two largest teachers

088unions saying they support crts and school and will fight for teachers who get in trouble for teaching this minutia of contradictions and opinion-based education i thought facts of history were already being taught in schools but the american federation of teachers union leader wants honest history whatever that is over the weekend i was able to get some insight into what a local high school teacher thinks about teaching crt apparently if you disagree with teaching equity you are white and republican however i see a lot of people from various backgrounds who are extremely upset over this topic i would encourage everyone to look up loudoun county virginia according to bestplaces.net loudoun county is a strong liberal county and the parents from multiple political backgrounds have come together to fight equity and crt i would suggest giving your

089staff and teachers some bullet points so they don't sound ignorant or narrow-minded i thought taking someone's race into consideration when educating them was discrimination when did that change either way i am here to tell you that my two youngest children will not be attending your schools next year my sixth grader was signed up for the avid program next year but we will not be participating in this program because your equity czar is in charge of the program i have also convinced four other families not to attend your schools next year between homeschooling and our excellent religious schools we have all found solutions that work for us if i did my math correctly that is one hundred thousand dollars you will not be getting for your efforts my goal is to reach a million dollars i

090also had the pleasure of talking to a current student who spoke about some intimidation and threatening of grade manipulation because of ideology differences from her male teacher hopefully this student follows my advice of contacting an individual that is collecting specific events such as this that are actionable my hope for mr stokes is you change your course and this does not leave a stain on your career when you retire i believe it is far more effective to do everything in our power to give every child the kind of start thanks robert we're at three minutes okay the kind of future they deserve thank you [Applause] i'll take it three minutes thank you okay next we have heather heather ko yes um that was ed and that's coming from a student you guys need to take people

091like johanna seriously she is in the school system and i would like to know what kind of an out you're going to give parents like me because i will not send my child to school i told him he could walk out if there is any mention of any racial anything you're not dividing children like this i have i have looked up everything in regards to this this is nazi evil divisive racist and you're all right with that and that's sick and i want to know what kind of options you're going to give parents like me because i am told my son he could walk out you know my daughter her best friend he's biracial so my son's friend that he spent the weekend with she's also bi-racial so what do you say to the parents

092are they going to have to choose a parent that they like or dislike you have not thought this through this is so incredibly divisive and racist and it should not be anywhere near our schools and i want you to stand up for these kids they need to there is so much that they need to make up for after last year and this should not even be an issue right now the only thing you should be focusing on is that kids respect one another and they don't look at each other because of their skin color i have different races in my family and my nephew he refuses to put it on any application for a job because he refuses because every time he does he gets hired immediately that's really gross instead he puts white because

093he said he wants to be hired because he is the right person for the job and you guys are destroying these kids if you do this but i want to know what you're going to do for parents like me because i'm not going to put my son through that i'm not so please come up with a way to fix this because it's really cruel to do to kids they don't see color they don't believe it or not thank you okay next lee i'm not sure elliott oh yeah thanks i went to public school me too if you are silent about your beliefs i don't need a microphone but you if you are silent about your beliefs because you are worried someone will be offended then your beliefs are not important to you but rather what

094people think about you is when you stand up for what's right and true you will receive both hate and love but everyone will know what you are fighting for so guess what here goes i never cared that anyone was gay until it was shoved down my throat and i never cared what color or race you were until you started blaming me for all your problems and i never cared about your political affiliation until you started condemning me for mine i really never cared where you were born until you started erasing my history and blame me for my ancestors and all our society's problems today and you know i never cared if your beliefs were different than mine until you said mine were wrong but now i care my patience my tolerance are gone and let

095me tell you this i'm not alone feeling this way there are millions and millions of americans that feel just like i do and sooner or later you're gonna have to deal with the truth because if you don't then this great nation that we supposedly all love will tear itself apart at the seams and never ever recover i want to ask you a question you with five five kids that that's a rough i just met somebody with seven kids you walk by a playground what do you see you see kids out there enjoying themselves running jumping hugging they don't look at color they don't even want to look at color they want to know who has the ball they want to know who's the cutest look at that boy over there we don't care what color

096they are race is no issue for the kids at all none if that's the case guess what you you you you we're all racists if we believe that and i don't care how strong you are that you say oh i'm not a racist never have been guess what you're wrong we adults are responsible for teaching our kids to be racist and that's a fact okay teaching crt is teaching our kids how to hate one another thank you very much thank you very much [Applause] marie king who is that sorry go marco barb uh barb mathers for the record as stated by marie king she's giving me her time it's on it's green um just for starters this forum is incredibly frustrating because there's absolutely no opportunity for discussion tonight's a perfect example of how inefficient

097this is um parents across the nation are trying to speak at school board meetings and they're literally getting arrested i'm grateful we get to talk and ours we're cut off you know and um don't get to have very much time but we there is no opportunity for discussion you guys listened to a ton of people say we don't want masks and then you voted to keep it in as highly recommending masks everybody who's here doesn't want that all the emails who are sent in don't want masks and it's in the plan that we're not having mass this upcoming school year but it's also in the plan that things can change the set the president has already been set that masks are necessary for basically saving the planet everybody who's here has told you at all

098the meetings that i've been to that masks don't do a dang thing literally they are not helpful at all it's a psychological band-aid you've got something on your face that makes you think you're like you're safe but it's not doing anything it's spreading everything more i took my third grader out of school and homeschooled him and had to continue to work which is literally impossible because i didn't want him to wear a mask at school i talked to him about it today he actually wanted to come and talk to you guys and i said what would you say to the board and he said i would tell them i don't want to wear a mask he's nine he doesn't wanna wear a mask and he said i'm just like you mom i can't breathe you

099can't breathe when you're wearing a mask you can't think when you can't breathe you can't study and you're uncomfortable and your heart rate increases and you can't do anything you guys are telling us to our face we're not gonna do masks next year you haven't responded to my emails you haven't responded to my emails and you haven't responded to my emails the rest of you have responded to some of my emails not but not directly answered all of my questions i don't want masks in the school period you've got loopholes all over that stupid plan that masks are going to be possible in the future none of us want masks we don't want masks period if parents want to choose to wear them if they want their kids to choose to wear them that is

100up to them and saying that people have the right to wear them is true but we also have the right not to wear them and i'm really sick of you guys siding with sisilak and all of his emergency mandates that it's a year and a half later why are we still in a state of emergency why are masks even being discussed still i don't understand why this is still being discussed sisalak does not care about his constituents he doesn't care about our kids he doesn't care that las vegas had a record number of suicides in 2020 from um [Music] march uh 16th to december of 2020 it's a nine-month period 19 children committed suicide that's double what happened the previous school year that's a lot of kids committing suicide and i don't want that to

101to happen i don't want our children to be so scared that they have to wear masks everywhere i see teenagers all the time in public adults aren't really wearing masks right now but teenagers are wearing masks they're literally terrified and that pisses me off because you guys made them afraid we should have never enforced mass this never should have even be been like heather talked about swine flu tons of people died way more people died from that under obama didn't do anything no masks no mandates no shutting down businesses sysolac literally destroyed the small business in nevada businesses were open for 40 years and they closed and i mean it's just it's it's infuriating that he is able to have this kind of power and i know that when the school board and the county

102commissioners and the sheriff are on the same page that's when things are able to get done you guys are hiding behind sisalak we have 13 out of 16 counties that are in the process of either being constitutional or currently constitutional and they're saying guess what cislac we don't want to do what you're telling us to do so we're not going to enforce mass we're not going to mandate them we're not going to make kids wear them on the bus we're not going to keep something open in the plan that currently we're not wearing masks but if something changes and when that wave comes in the fall we're gonna enforce the masks i don't want that as a loophole or any kind of opening at all at all masks should not be enforced in the schools

103i don't want my kid to have to go and be uncomfortable at school and you've mentioned that the kids that are wearing masks are the ones that are going to be bullied no that's totally the other way around um and any kind of division at all is not what we want to have in our schools we don't want our children to be set up to be bullied middle school high school elementary school is hard enough as it is we don't need to add anything that causes further division and i am i'm calling you guys out we really need you to stand up for the kids no one in any of these meetings has said man we are so excited to be in the bottom of the nation in education we are so excited with the

104education that our kids are receiving you guys have got to listen to the parents thanks bob [Applause] yeah tim smith tim tim smith we'll try we'll try him again i've got one uh pepsi and richard are they still here i'm still here yes i just want to pepsi strasbourg i just want to make a quick comment that i know that uh trustee crossman is a lawyer right so but i don't really believe that what you said that the putting the covet language in the reopening plan gives you any sort of immunity from anything so i will investigate that and i will get additional lawyer assessment to challenge your comment in this board meeting that putting the cdc language thank you thank you i would ask i'm i know people are upset about some of this

105stuff and i get it but i'd like to minimize addressing individual board members and address the board as a whole thank you and to be specific i didn't say immunity i said it's the potential to have avoid liability because it gives you a defensible position immunity was given in the special session to other organizations but not school districts and mr president just as a reminder we did have public comment on the plan already the general public comment is for items not on the agenda yeah thanks for the clarification did tim smith come back in the room is he out there do you know do we have anybody else that hasn't signed in that wants to make public oven i just had a question um the lady in the back first she got her hand up

106first my name is christine hosh and i happily admit i don't have a child in the carson city school district my one grandchild graduated four years ago i have a really good memory of his eighth grade experience he was at carson middle school and their civics project at veterans day was the poster with a parent or someone they knew that had been in the military my son and his grandson or his son my grandson worked on it extensively i was very proud that he had that experience my son and i was glad that the school acknowledged that there was a place for the military in this country what i'm very unhappy with now is even the thought of critical race theory coming to our school district the idea that we are going to teach our

107children that i'm an oppressor because i'm white and johnny over here is oppressed because he's black or brown or a native american is absolutely abhorrent to me and to any other thinking adult that teaches racism as many people have said tonight and as a voting member of carson city population i want you all to know that anybody who pushes critical race theory as a member of this board is going to have at least one person vying for their seat in their next election [Applause] sir did you want to come up you just have to come up to the microphone and state your name um i just had a question i came to a meeting three or four weeks ago sorry what's your name ryan kurland thanks where the topic was crt and i missed several

108meetings in the intervening time and the topic since we've opened up or you opened up the public comments a lot of people have spoken about crt inequity so my question is at that first meeting that i attended a month ago or so it was said that at that time you had no intention of teaching crt or the 16-19 project or having either of those items come up in the curricula for the coming year so based on the comments that preceded me in the open in this open section my question is did something change did something happen within the last several weeks or or are people just reiterating their continued opposition to it which i totally go along with for the reasons i stated before it's not scholarly um you know it's it's just frankfurt school

109cultural marxism you know that's all it is but anyway um nothing nothing changed on our end nothing changed the same yeah some of the same discussions have been being presented by the public and as you heard we're not trusted well i'm a relative newcomer to carson city that remains to be seen but uh i hope i hope you know you stick to your word and keep it out of the curriculum thank you okay any additional in-person public comment yes my name's karen stevens should know me by now because i've been here for every meeting for the last two months i'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak i'm highly disappointed with some of the people on this panel that i know and um i would like to address the issue what's the difference

110between highly encourages and encourages i'll tell you what the difference is karen sorry we've already had public comment on the plan both no i'm giving a definition we had public comment on the plan okay well apparently somebody needs to figure out what the difference between those two words are um also mr stokes i asked you at another meeting how much the carson city school district got per child and if you recall you told me something around 7 000 something dollars i was wondering if you might want to amend that figure since i happen to know what it is [Music] a lot of the questions that i get about per pupil amounts i was referring to the general fund we had uh here in the audience that same evening uh our fiscal services director who said

111that number is closer to eleven thousand dollars per student okay but you didn't tell us that we didn't i didn't hear it i was looking at you and i didn't hear it coming out of your mouth [Music] okay um another thing is there's a website that's called nomasforkids.com and on that website um parents are able to report adverse effects of wearing a mask and of receiving an experimental gene gene therapy shot so um on that website there are stories of children that have experienced psychological neurological pulmonary dermal and cardiac effects from force mask mandates so i would encourage uh people to go onto that website and check it out and make any reports that they would like to again that's nomasforkids.com another item i'd like to bring up is that if there's any teachers uh

112listening or hear and and don't want to be in the teachers union there is an open period between january or july 1st and july 15th that they can opt out of being in the union and so time is of the essence if they don't want to pay the up to 850 a year to be in the union that um most of them encourage crt which apparently we're calling it equity and that they go to the website [Music] envyteacherchoice.com and that's all i have to say to today and i will see you in two weeks since it's apparent that you don't really give a about what the parents and community care about time's up thank you anybody else for public comment um sorry behind you sir yes yes ma'am and then you're next hello is this

113on okay hi my name is cindy olivieri sorry what's your name cindy olivieri and i've worked in the public schools for a long time and i'm wondering what do you have in place to train your teachers on how to handle all of this do you have any trainings or policies that will teach the teachers how they should behave with regards to the masks and other issues that have been brought up today i didn't see anything in the plan i know you talked about the plan but is there anything put in place for training teachers and educating them about how to behave to students with students in their classrooms because you may have some rogue teachers out there that may want to push this ideology even though it may not be mandated or in the state

114standards so i just was wondering if there was something in place um just real quick there is training that that's conducted throughout the school year and teachers go through training before the school year starts and a lot of this information that we're hearing is i don't want to say it's new because obviously it's been out there for a while but it's really hit a a point of interest for folks recently so i can't say if there is specific training to this but i would think there would be richard i don't know if you have anything to add to that it is never okay for any of our teachers to treat students badly that would be an expectation going into any school year that if that occurred i would expect to receive a call which i

115would then work with the principal and the teacher we would try to find out what has gone on but it's never okay to treat our students poorly okay thank you i just you know i know teachers that um persist in their ideology and that you know they maybe give students a hard time and one way or another as she was saying previously that i hope that doesn't happen but i know it it has so i just was wondering if you had anything in place to kind of protect kids or notify teachers that that behavior is not allowed no thank you i can tell you i've had three kids in the district and now i've graduated out and whenever i've had concerns and i've had this is before i was a trustee that i've had to

116bring it up to teachers or administrators or whatnot i've always been welcome to voice my concern and i never felt like i was pushed aside okay thank you very much thank you yes sir thank you my name is david backwood i'm a lifelong carson city resident and a graduate of carson high school first off i'd like to say thank you to all of you for doing this this is clearly a difficult job i don't envy you i'm a proud father of johanna who spoke so eloquently tonight and i'm thrilled that she is taking part in the american dream and her self-governance and i just wanted to leave you all with a little anecdote i'm a software developer and a manager of a small company in reno that does automation services for major insurance companies in

117the last year we've interviewed over 60 local people we've hired four of those 60 in every instance our locally educated our natively educated people were drowned out by foreign students they're hungrier they're smarter they are ready to tackle this world they want this dream and our students are fully unprepared for the competition that is coming since world war ii we've pretty much had this stage to ourselves but there's a new world out there and these young people are ready to do it and our kids are not up to the task currently i understand the desire to teach them everything but we need to focus on the areas where we need to be competitive in the future if we want to stay on top and continue to evolve and grow as we have thank you thank

118you any additional public comment yes sir hello my name is richard nagle i just i just want to voice a concern i have and and that is the growing home school movement that i have there's a lot of things going on with this and i just feel that there's a lot of people that are just satisfied with the school system here and i think that we really need to take us a good hard look in the mirror and see what we're doing right what we're doing wrong and how why are we disenfranchising these people and how we can bring them back in but just food for thought i want everybody to think about because it's a lot of money we're losing with these people walking away from the school system and it's getting bigger and

119bigger every day and i've i'm i want to find out what's going on with this movement so i'm going to go to a class on home schooling tomorrow night find out what's going on but i again we really need to take a sharp look at that thank you [Applause] anybody else in the audience yes ma'am i'm maxine bradshaw i just have one comment we just heard something about a week ago that was really disturbing that's related to crt and now they have something called sel social emotional learning will be heard from a douglas county school board member who came and met with us over a week ago and he defined that that is a precursor to crt that's an intro to it and they're teaching that in douglas county schools right now so i want

120to make you aware that that's not acceptable either it's just not acceptable i don't care what name you call it by but that is happening right now and that is exactly i spoke to a child with a grandmother who clarified what that is so just be aware that that that's exactly the same thing so you can call it by any name you want to but i'm not none of us here in favor of crt we know where it leads we're not in favor of seo we know where it leads thank you thank you [Applause] any additional in-person public comment okay seeing none i'm going to close in person public comment and renee any uh remote public comment mr cassiopo i received um additional comment but it has with regards to our reopening plan so unfortunately

121i missed that during that particular time okay if you would just make sure that gets submitted into the record i will thank you okay at this time i'm going to close public comment and again we do thank everybody for coming it is a difficult job to listen to all of this but we do appreciate it and we are now going to uh close item seven and move on to item eight discussion on proposed changes to ccsd regulation 517 graduation requirements this is for discussion only and tasha fuson tasha maybe just give everybody a chance to funnel out if they wish to i know how to clear a room you you cleared the room usually aj does that right [Laughter] go ahead whenever you're ready okay thank you president cassiopo tasha fuson for the record um

122the approval of assembly bill 288 in the 2013 legislative session made significant changes to high school graduation requirements in nevada these changes were phased in as the state board of education made decisions related to specific requirements of the bill so over the past obviously eight years there's been a phase-in process of all those um changes over the course of multiple years um the updates in our regulation 517 reflect the most current requirements for students graduating from the christian city school district in the class of 2022 and beyond so some items to note start on page two of the regulation i believe this is in your packet the first thing you'll notice is that the middle column titled honors diploma uh is has strike through language and the reason for that is because the honors diploma

123was phased out and the college and career ready diploma which is the column to the right of that was phased in so that's part of that legislative session change so that's what you're simply seeing is for so the honors was related to class of 2019 and 2020 the last time we updated obviously we're beyond that class and therefore we're just simply taking that language out of the regulation you'll also notice down the left hand column where it lists the courses or the names of courses you'll see a strikethrough on the word social studies we've changed that or we're changing that to geography and world history and want you to know that specific change was not part of the legislative session of 2013 it's simply that in the carson city school district what we teach in

124our schools is the students have an option between geography and or world history to fulfill that credit so we wanted it more specific to what we require within our district so that's the change there and underneath that one computer science and applications you see the word applications with a strikethrough and it's replaced with technology that graduation requirement was changed a few years back is actually the first requirement for next year's graduating class to have that course with that specific curriculum it changed the applications to more of a computer science piece so instead of just learning how to use word and excel there is more of an emphasis on programming and and the behind the scenes if you will of technology so um that is you see on page two if you um flip to page

125four what you'll notice on page four is there is an addition to the required assessments to earn a diploma so um senate bill 322 passed in 2017 that states that a pupil in any public high school must take an examination as a condition condition for graduation containing a number of questions determined by the district which are identical to the civics portion of the naturalization test adopted by the united states citizenship and immigration services of the department of homeland security effective in july 1st of 2019. in essence what that means is all students in government classes now end up having to take a civics test there is not a pass requirement a score required for that it is a participation requirement so in essence now what you see also then is end of course examinations with

126strikethroughs and that is because those are no longer required for students to participate in what we used to refer to as eocs so now in addition to passing your credit requirements a student does have to take the a.c.t that's the current adopted college readiness assessment in our state so they have to take the a.c.t without a required score to pass so it's participation they have to take the science portion of the um nevada science assessment again it's a requirement for participation not for graduation uh excuse me not a pass rate uh for graduation just participation and now this civics assessment so that's what you're seeing there then you see um on page um well as you go through the rest of the pages after that up until page eight what you're typically seeing is those

127same things that i already mentioned with the names of courses changes that's what you see the change the the strikethroughs there and then on page eight since the honors diploma was taken out of that first table you see all of it again the verbiage strip the the strikethrough on the the language there the only other thing to really note is on page 10. what i did with this since there was some changes or really ambiguous language i should say in terms of what those scores are for a student to earn the ccr diploma we actually put the scores the required scores in there so when you look at english for instance it says a ct english score of 18 right where the strike through language below it just says must meet the scores you know

128set forth by the regions of the university of nevada et cetera i thought it would be clearer to our families or anyone who would read this regulation to actually have the required score so that was the rationale for that yes get my microphone on tasha how do the scores relate or do they relate can you relate them to other districts other states is that like 18 for a act english score kind of what folks are shooting for or so that that's an excellent question in our state know that that that um there's there's two different scores that you would pay attention to that are meaningful to schools or to districts the state has set forth a a lower score than what act recommends for instance that is used in our nevada school performance frameworks for

129schools to indicate proficiency i believe the reason why the state did that was we do test our students in their junior year and students can of course continue to take the a.c.t throughout the end of the junior year and all throughout the senior year but but it is a lower score than what act itself identifies as the college ready benchmark that they use to say this is this is correlated to a student earning a ceo better and that college level course does that make sense so that score is a little bit lower than um in all those areas than what a ct itself would say is a college ready score but that's the score that's required for the college and career readiness diploma designation and then on page 12 you'll see um that uh quite

130a bit of that it has strike through as well and that's because it was the requirements for the class of 2019 2020 2011 on an alternative diploma so again old uh old language excuse me 2019 2020 and 2021. and i believe in essence those are really the the major changes as you can see most of it is just removal of language to try to clean up this 16-page regulation to make it a little bit more manageable for schools and for families and again the only real significant change or addition i should say is the addition of that civics test i have on the civics test i i think that language that the senate bill includes that the test will contain a number of questions determined by the district which are identical so i just thought

131that was kind of funny that they said you can determine it but they have to be identical but it has to be identical and and i would say to anyone who is listening or anyone on the board who might be interested um we we are happy to share for instance the study guide that we prepare for our students if anyone's interested we don't want to obviously put out an assessment out there directly for people to look at but we're happy to put out a study guide if anybody was interested what was contained in that civics assessment we have that i was going to ask a different question i have one in the on page one this is a student who fulfills requirements for high school diploma but has not fulfilled the plan set forth in

132the academic plan is still eligible for graduation do we still have that you have to do the senior project in order to graduate at the high school at carson high school yes but it is not part of our graduation requirements for our county because pioneer high school doesn't require so that is a site-specific requirement so where would a parent find that i mean if they're if they're looking for graduation requirements and we don't have it broken out here so that is in the carson high school student handbook and all their graduation information that they send home to families so do we need to put it in here so that it is we can it doesn't it doesn't pertain to all seniors just once just okay we could put i i'm happy to um to put

133a note in there i will tell you that carson high school is currently um in discussions to transition requirements for their senior projects and i think what we'd want to have happen is maybe for them to make their their um their plan solidify their plan and then be able to communicate that to families and then we could definitely include that if that's the wish not necessarily them but maybe something in there that says that the high schools have a prerogative or whatever word ms crossman would use there that additional requirements by schools is applicable or whatever just so that when they read this they're not thinking that this doesn't supersede carson high's obligations or whatever but something in there to clarify that absolutely and again i would request the leniency to be able to wait

134until they determine what their changes are going to be only because i believe they're going to uh to more clearly attach it to the college and career readiness diploma piece but absolutely i i concur and i think it could be general i don't think you have to wait for them to decide what they're going to do i think it could just be a general thing in there that says that you know the high schools could have other requirements for graduation or something to that board and to look additional requirements i i will absolutely i can do that i will note um too that um and i'm sure i believe you're all aware but in case there is anyone listening who's not aware that the carson city school district does have higher requirements for graduation or

135higher graduation requirements in the state we require all of our students to earn a fourth year of mathematics and a third year of science credit to graduate from high school we also require 24 credits versus the state's 22 and a half there is four families as part of their graduation plans or their academic plans as commented here who for because of the needs of the student if there's unique individual needs of the student so can those can be waived there is a waiver process and it does talk about that in this regulation the exceptions it's not a change it's it's the same as it's been but just to put that out there so that you're all aware of that um and then we do work of course with students who are on individualized academic uh

136plans for either ieps or ilips for english language learners and 504 plans so any students who have individualized academic plan that necessitates some adjustments to our what we would consider our standard requirements for a diploma we can make some adjustments with families and students on that and then the other thing is it talks about the national merit scholarship qualifying test is that still applicable yes national merits qualifying assessment is the psat taken in the junior year i'll show back to the table on page two for the standard diploma at the bottom it says for standard diploma required gpa is not applicable isn't i just wanted clarification on how to interpret that we do have a gpa requirement to graduate not for a standard diploma students simply have to pass the associated courses so as long

137as the student passes the course and gains the credit so they have to have four english credits but there's not a minimum gpa required for that a student can graduate we hope it's not going to have it but with a point you know point one or not one point something i should say not a point one point one something but like a 1.0 you know which is basically a d average so there's not a minimum requirement so that is what that required gpa is there's not any set you just have to pass the required number of courses okay and the same goes with the alternate and the adult dead diploma [Music] okay this is actually just for discussion only so all right my mic off any questions from the board anything else tougher i don't

138have a question but i just like to say that i'm glad to hear that they're maybe going to change the senior project requirements or whatever you want to call it i think i've talked to you before or some other people about uh you know i think it need to be upgraded and what they do so i'm hoping that's what they're looking at i know principal chambers has shared with me that he has the senior project committee is in discussions about obviously coming off of the year that we had last year and some changes that they had to make because of closures and hybrids etc that they're looking at this opportunity to really see if they can make it more relevant to students so i don't know what the outcome of that will be but i

139do know his team is is currently working on that um and i mean currently speaking the the expectation that students participate in it would would still hold i don't want anyone to think you know that that that requirement is going to change but what that means for students to what extent it means what it entails i know they were there they're putting those pieces together and what they do is they share the information with all seniors through their their english classes there is actually actually put they have a book that they have that walks students through the process they also have it on their school website under senior projects so i just don't want to give misinformation about where they're at so my conversation with principal chambers was you know a few weeks ago and

140i don't know exactly where they're at but i know that's in discussions for updates okay well thank you very much absolutely thank you um we're going to take just a a short break seriously no more than five minutes just uh if folks need to use the restroom or anything so it's uh nine i can almost see the clock about nine we'll call it 9 19. so 9 24 i'm starting up again [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] ah [Music] um [Music] me [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so everybody i apologize um i ran us five minutes over on the break and i do apologize for taking up your time but we are going to move on to item nine discussion and possible

141action to designate critical labor shortages in special education and bus driver positions and to allow acceptance of applications from retired teachers to fill positions in special education and bus drivers as allowed under nrs 286.523 this is for possible action and we have dr jose delfin presenting thank you president cassiopo and trustees president cassie oppel you summed up my entire report i think we should just vote on it that was a perfect summary i'm here to help um back in 2001 nrs 286.5 286.5223 was passed and it does allow the public employee retirement system to re-employ retirees and get their pers benefit while teaching full-time or filling a critical labor shortage position so i come before you tonight as uh president cassiopo described to bring forth two positions that are very critical in our district right

142now and the first one is special education teacher we typically have about six vacancies per year we've had that for a long time easily for the last 10 years that i've been doing this job for about 13 so at least 10 of those years we've had vacancies in that field it's a tough position to fill it's a very labor-intensive position there are a lot of ieps and responsibilities associated with being a special education teacher i can tell you i've been to many graduations at unr and other universities and i always try to hear for any special education graduates that get called across the stage and i can tell you not very many maybe two a year that i hear of a name that uh of somebody who wants to be a sped teacher so because

143of that i come before you to try to get your approval because we need this to be on the record i submit the form which you have in your board packet uh from pers that states on the title critical need position designation form and it gives you an explanation of all of those items that i just listed it's only to last for two years so i'll probably come back in 2023 if i'm still able to do the same thing and give you some more information about what other critical needs may be but i know special education has been one of those for for many many years um trying to make sure i have everything covered here what we've tried to do is try to recruit our own people from our staff parapros student students that

144are going through the edu 110 class to try to become teachers specifically but also special ed teachers we've had some success but not as much to fill all those vacancies we have posted all our vacancies as you know online on college and career university websites word of mouth we recruit heavily within our region we definitely try to get out there in recruitment fairs and we beg borrow and steal wherever we can to find some good quality special education teachers for our district so as such that's going to be my first call to the board to get approval and then the second position would be the school bus driver and i want to say the same thing for this one if i could just say ditto but easily for the last five years not quite as

145prevalent as special education teachers but for the last five years sheree fletcher and i have been really hard-pressed to try to find every bus driver out there to work for us we typically have a vacancy of two that we have per year that go unfilled and i know that doesn't sound like a lot but that's a lot of kids on a bus so what happens if we don't have the bus drivers is we're doubling up on routes buses tend to be a little bit more populated and it does take a little bit more time to collect all the kids so with that i i know that we do the same thing we advertise in the local area you've probably seen me on tv and lately i've been out there trying to address our shortages in

146all three news channels i don't like seeing myself on tv but that's what it takes then i'll do it joe's really good at it i saw him out in the hallway he's done a great job so that said on behalf of the transportation department i'm also hoping that you approve um bus driver as a critical need position for the carson city school district thank you any questions for dr delfin stacy so i think we should just put one in for special ed it's been recurring and recurring i mean there's nothing we can do there why don't we do that for the special ed para pros though i think we have like four or five openings there why why just the teachers that's a great question i i probably might do it next year mrs wilkie

147i i try to see a trend i would say the last year we started seeing that trend of not enough special ed parapros but i've got to see at least a few more years for that trend to come before you so that's how this forum is set up you know i i can't call it just because i see it that way this year i've got to see a trend in it so probably next year i'll come before you and then we've had the same problems with bus drivers you've seen the ads on tv for washo they're given two thousand dollar bonuses thousand dollars referrals yeah is it do we need to up our pay do we need to to start looking at that is that something that we need to look at the budget because

148i mean we're talking we're only going to have 66 percent occupancy and we have it's a tough job because isn't it you do something in the morning and then you don't do anything until the afternoon kind of thing too for the most part correct right so is there something that we need to look at as a as an organization to pull people back into that where it would fit them it would be you know money aj i know you're you're missing mr fueling i i know you want them to come up here but uh i think this is one way to to fill it for this next year but i don't see this trend going downward i think it's something that we need to probably look at so that we can fix the problem instead

149of having to ask if there's a way to do that so mr fueling and i and mr stokes and mrs fuson did meet about this the last couple of times that we've been together about doing some hiring bonuses um and mr fueling hopefully has some good news that we can go forward with that well i i don't know about good news just yet we have to talk more sorry um but uh trustee wilkie aj feeling for the record um one thing i i just want to bring your attention because uh it it really i mean the news from washoe was that was kind of big news and that that's a lot of money they're throwing around um going back to my kind of boring side of things and this whole new funding plan and the

150whole harmless and all that so you you are hearing about districts doing this sort of thing and you have some districts that have come out of in this new funding model in a much better place than they were going into it and so you have like clark county um washoe lion all around us that have more money now than they ever had and so the esser money on top of that which you can use for you can't you're not supposed to use for like bonuses and things like that but you carrying incentives and um some kind of maintenance incentive and i don't know everything about that one um but they're just in very different places it's not not an apples-to-apples comparison to look at washoe and us unfortunately i i really wish um that was

151the case but but it is something that we've been discussing and i don't know exactly where that'll go but uh clearly it's a concern otherwise you wouldn't be up here so and i just think we need to hear that that you guys are looking at at different ways and because you guys don't you know pat yourselves on the back saying you're looking at different stuff you know that kind of thing you guys are always real tight knows and i think a lot of people think that we're just you know we don't care or whatever and that and that's the other thing i know our budget's tight but now with the covet thing going away and stuff they can start at burger king for fifteen dollars an hour so i'm really getting nervous about our especially

152our classified staff i mean i think the big thing is our benefits i think we need to really hold on to those and promote those to to have people think about the future you know where you got your health insurance you got purrs and that kind of thing but i think it's something and i know that the funding formula is not in our favor but maybe we just need to look at other ways to promote different things and i mean because we we have a shortage in custodians when you look at the website there's there's a bunch there um so i'm just i'm getting nervous about that that level of of people because of you know burger king for 15 an hour harbor freight is 20 an hour everybody's hiring and to get we want

153to still keep the cream of the crop because this is the best district ever so we have to keep that bar but it's just something i just wanted people to advise that we are looking at those kind of things we're not just not trying it's just people aren't out there trust you wookie you took the words right out of my mouth i did say to the reporters and they didn't actually put this on the news but at 14 an hour let's say as starting pay whether you're looking at nutrition or custodian when you total up the benefits we have great insurance benefits here in carson city and pers you're looking at fifty thousand dollars that is spent for that particular fourteen an hour dollar an hour job and i tried to convey that on the

154news to let them know that there are other benefits or extras that happen as a full-time employee here for the district also promoted future careers because once you have your foot in the district you can move up to any other jobs that you want i know that we have an aging staff i'm going to be facing retirements and it actually started two years ago as the staff ages out and we have more retirements because there's going to be more uh opportunities for promotions into supervisory higher paying positions so you may start out at 14 an hour but that doesn't mean that's where you're going to stay when you end your career here we're also working with mr rodina in the work based learning area and trying to recruit our own students into careers into the

155school district so this year we have a handful of students that are working as custodians all over the district so i mean i've i've said it for years if you start at as a full-time person you can retire at the age of 48 with a full pension and the neat thing is we've had people starting classified go into pair positions and then become teachers the next level folks is those teachers that have come from our own stock if you will become school administrators and that's my next level is as we go through all the different categories of employment here in the school district and i think i'm going off topic now is to keep hiring from within but but that's really the main recruiting effort to answer your question a very long way mrs wilkie

156is our best success is hiring from our own folks in carson city thank you mike well and i was just going to say we've been experiencing shortages in education for years and years now and it's only worse with this job market in every industry people aren't working and there's a lot of incentives right now for people to not work yet and so i think we're kind of battling a bigger issue at this point and i think that when you really look at the culture that surrounds education look at what we experience tonight and the job has become devalued and not real respected in a lot of ways and it's tough to encourage young people to want to go into a career like this when you could make a lot more money doing probably a much

157easier job when you look at a college career so i think it's just kind of a systematic type thing right now yeah i know it's it's a challenge and i appreciate what you guys are doing i mean my feeling is and it's contrary to what our budget allows us to do but i'd like to see us get to a point where our starting salaries for those types of positions can be up so that it's it's more appealing to folks i agree with you trustee cassiopo and i've been looking at those salary studies across the nation sure richard by designating the bus drivers the critical need that could be any retired state employee right or county employee that could apply not just the school district employee correct so we'll we'll hire you trustee varner after tonight

158conflict of interest with him serving as a trustee so he could resign as a trustee too that was his point okay um this is an action item any other questions or does someone want to make a motion can i make a motion i move that the carson city school district board of trustees pursuant to nrs286 58523 in light of the efforts made by the district to fill the open positions in special education and bus drivers as outlined by dr delfin today in the documents submitted we are making the findings findings required by the statute and we adopt the written findings made by dr delphin in the nevada pers forms presented to the board of trustees and based on those written findings we declared that the statutory provisions provided in nrs 286 523 have been met

159that there is a critical shortage of labor for special education teachers and bus driver positions for a period not exceeding two years a second then okay we have a motion second by trustee ramirez any further board discussion seeing none any public comment on this seeing none no mr no mr cassiopo back to the board all those in favor aye hi any opposed thank you motion carries awesome thank you very much okay item 10 discussion and possible action to approve the nevada association of school boards nasby nominations to be considered for recognition during the 2021 annual conference this is for past possible action and i'll lead us off here at our last board meeting we were at first hoping to have our nominations in but we just needed a little bit more time give it a

160little bit more thought so we we don't miss anybody and i think that was successful we have a pretty good list of folks here and correct me if i'm wrong but what we want to do is what we need to do is narrow this down to the nominees and we need to get write-ups on each of these folks some we might have and we just have to update but um we have to have this submitted by august 13th which only gives us another board meeting to to rev you know to review anything we need to review so what i'd like to do is go through the list of nominees and see if we two meetings i'm sorry that's right i'm two meetings so we can get started on these um um write-ups for folks if

161you will so starting off um educator of the year and i might miss something joe yeah mike i recommend if you go through the nomination forms just in the order they are so that because i think we called them different things than what they might be okay fair enough so yeah yeah no i'm trying to get there sorry fingers aren't working okay so we have nasby individual school board member of the year um and it might take me longer to go through here maybe i'll call on everybody if you had a recommendation there richard let's start with you i don't you recommended joe i think that was me i recommended joe and uh keith neville from mineral those were the only ones i could think of that were two years and joe you haven't won

162a nazbe award have you no okay so that was one of my reasons and this is again this is for individuals school board member of the year keep in mind there's a category for veteran and new so when i nominated joe also and i believe we have a nomination written up which is kind of a win-win can we path of least resistance right here so i hope that we nominate joe cassiopo for our individual school board member of the year second okay i'll write that one [Laughter] move on to i don't take any of this personally yes sir just so the record is clear that we haven't actually proved emotion before you take public comment on all of it i would suggest maybe just calling it nominations with a second and then you can have

163one vote at the end okay yeah yeah okay okay so that's what we'll do just to be clear these are just nominations and no no no so now we have nasby award to an individual friend of k-12 public education or k-12 public education advocacy organization and i i did the rotary based on the air purifiers and yeah holiday on heroes which is were the two organizations i thought that stood out this year do we have any other nominations richard i missed who you nominated i'm sorry the rotary club for their their donation of air purifiers and heroes for holiday those were the two okay and i guess it's okay any other nominations seeing that oh just a thought because i do i really like what rotary's done i'm just reading the thing that the the

164description of the coordinates recognized by advocating on behalf of k-12 public education across the state particularly during sessions so did the rotary advocate during the session no no individual friend of k-12 public education or public education advocacy organization so i think we could do rotary i mean we can nominate them if the committee doesn't select them they don't select them but i mean we can still nominate them for being a good partner okay just we're going to do it at the end we're going to call we'll make a motion and then we'll second it then so the third one is nasby board secretary are you gonna do the the vote and then are you gonna assign the who's writing what i'm just i'm gonna do it all at the i'm gonna do it all at

165the end not me if i get joe's okay so nasby board secretary or administrative assistants or other board support staff person of the year so mr president i was one of the things i was thinking reading through this is i think raymond madeiros would be a great person he did a lot of outreach and coordination of outreach with families and communication and there were a lot of nights that it was rich renee raymond in here so i think that he'd be a great person because and i nominated him for the director but he's not and he's not a director i didn't realize he didn't have that position okay do we have any other nominations okay seeing none we're going to move on to nasby district level administrator of the year impacting student achievement um i

166had an uh valerie dockery nominated i think given the budget cuts and things that we've been facing and the ability to write grant she's been kind of at the forefront of many successful grants and um been a long time advocate and a great asset to our school district and uh mr president if i could just interject here just to to add a little more information uh mr medeiros is a director so he he certainly fulfills that um that level of expertise and duty in his position okay mike and i was also thinking that along those lines i know rich doesn't want the the headache but i think tash has done a great job of really kind of showing up some curriculum issues and this has been a really tough year and having to really navigate

167some tough waters and untreaded waters and so i think she'd be a great person in that i also think aj but aj won last year with his work with paul so i would say that i think tasha would be an outstanding nominee as also and i still like carrie pryor for that one we did her last year i think the work that she does is incredible um oh am i in the wrong one is she he's not an administrator is she she is now so i think in terms of being able to write it up we're we might be premature yeah we can do two for the district level administrator impacting student achievement so we're thinking tasha and valerie for this and then raymond is also a director but i think he fits in the

168board supports other board support staff too and mike called me on that one and i i think he's right that's probably the better place for him to win okay okay so we have valerie dockery and tasha fuson for district level administrator of the year impacting student achievement okay next nazbe innovative educator of the year i nominated um mimi laughlin from boardwork everybody speaks very highly of her she is very energetic she's always available to help she's a tosa right now but the feedback i'm getting is that she's helping any teacher anytime and i just think she'd be a great nominee okay mike i nominated ananda campbell and she you know she works with everybody at that high school she works with people in the elementary schools and the middle schools so she not only collaborates

169with them she's co-teaching lessons she's on the food for thought board she's doing tons of things working with the library in the community and i think that she's one of our unsung heroes that we kind of keep taking from and she doesn't get a lot of recognition she doesn't ask for a lot of recognition and so i think that she's very deserving of an award like this and if you'll remember she brought up the project that she's working on that carson high yearbook digitalia station and stuff that she's doing is incredible and preserving history not just for the high school but for our city and our state and and that's a huge undertaking for her and mrs quinn so i really think that gives her a little bump up this year that we didn't have

170last year too and in this category we can only bring forth one nomination so and and to be fair i think all of our educators were innovators this year in so many ways that it's it's going to be it it's probably going to be this is always a very competitive category um at nasby but i think all of them well i figured that was a given yeah okay any other nominations or are those the two we're considering so far okay moving on we have nasby local governance team of the year we won yeah didn't we two years ago no two years ago we won school board of the year oh and then last year we won not last year but was it last year we were governance team not last year the year before okay

171i'll turn my mic back on i did notice that we and there's not a school board of the year category anymore it's just local governance team of the year so that superintendent the superintendent and the school board kind of a it's a question i'm just asking all of you when we say governance team of the year very few very few districts do the coordination i think we do with the city is it reasonable to think about like a joint nomination the school board with the carson city supervisors would that be unique enough to or you think that's stretching a little bit i mean i think we could put that as a factor in there but we are the governance for the school district right so i mean that coordination effort could be could just be

172part of the write-up yeah yeah okay okay we'll pat ourselves on the back from what i've heard tonight i think we're issuing i don't know almost thought about washoe with their 12 hours of public comment but okay let's go to um nazbe media award for outstanding education reporting in a television radio print or online journalism format [Laughter] well you know i've not only around here but i see jessica in around dayton i see her at other events i think that she's one of those people that's in the room that people don't always know she's there and she does get the message out for us so i think that jessica for sure yeah agreed okay then we have nasby director of the year one of the 17 board of directors and i think i think mike

173mike is is ours he's he's i think that's good okay any others okay moving on nasby new school board member of the year that's richard because lupe won last year we're going for the sweep and i put dawn in there for the work he's also do he does with the band and i think that i know all the time i appreciate it i think that's the same thing you said last year it is we're going to give him the humble pie award next year is yours now fair enough we're not going to force an award on you my award would be not getting an award there you go okay so next is nasby school administrator of the year i had dan brown because the administrators made him administrator of the year that was my basis

174for that right nominate two so we can choose either elementary or middle or high or yeah and i had i had um jennifer joseph for the work she's done at fremont i think she really came in there and was an effective leader i also had nominated dr joseph well and i also think that for this being bob's first year at the high school and let's be honest our high school is a beast tasha could tell you i mean he not only did he do that effectively but we didn't have big problems getting a new principal in a school that size i think that that speaks follow volumes in a pandemic i think that he's done a phenomenal job for his first year yeah no i think those are three three good nominees we're going to

175have to whittle it down to two we have dan brown jennifer joseph and bob chambers okay next is nasby school district employee making a difference this is somebody who works behind the scenes to impact student learning and achievement leticia okay and this is another uh category where we can make we can submit two nominations so i wanted to nominate the nurses because they had to go above and beyond and they had to do the kyovid thing i want to do the nutrition staff because they were the ones that worked every single day of that covid during covet and then afterwards and the custodial staff those are my three numbers we we need a person because if we just do a category i know but i'm just saying and i also so at the high school

176we have bridget gordon who does a lot of work with different students and groups and another hard-working person that's just kind of behind the scenes really making an impact also my friend tara sacularius the pe teacher at seleger does just about everything at that school and she's not usually recognized where she's just kind of working behind the scenes and then carrie pryor i think i think all three of the people i chose are also really beneficial for morale and this has been a year that we've needed those cheerleaders and so i think that that's a component that we really want to look for is people like tara kerry bridget who are really keeping people going keeping things positive because that's good for the kids and our staff okay so as far as individuals go then

177we have four nominees for this category and we'll have to since i have to nominate an individual then i want to do at least i only know is the nurses so sheila's stories i would like to nominate i don't know who's ahead of nutrition anymore okay i i think that nurses do need some recognition because they did work very very hard i just want to throw out i i nominated i just want to get on the record victoria smith a school social worker at carson middle school uh you know i think she's doing a good job there with the kids especially during the pandemic and then i know this doesn't fit the category but i'm going to throw it out there i nominated louie the uh crossing guard at barbic bray uh that guy is

178just a really good face for the school i mean he knows every kid he knows every almost every parent he's out there just always very happy greeting everybody he's just a terrific example of a school employee i think okay so we have our work cut out on this one is such a tough category because especially this year there are so many people that make and and that have made such a difference i i think i think he's still working he's not my kid's best driver anybody mr castro knew every kid that got on his bus um and he he now is is the sub so he runs whatever route he runs all the routes but you know i just i don't know there's so many people that impact our kids i think what we have

179to do is you know give some thought into i mean all these people are deserving there's no question about that is you know based on the climate we're in and what we've gone through who we think has the best chance to stand out you know during a review panel review all right so that said let's move on to veteran school board member of the year well joe we put you for something else actually i think this is the one you had to have two terms correct stacy's already won the award um more than one so i think that that i would say we have laurel and then i also thought of in lyon county bridget peterson who was the president of nasbi prior to laurel who does a lot of things not just advocating for

180all the school boards with the legislature but she does some some other things behind the scenes and she has asked me not to nominate her she said do that in several years but i think we have to have her and don go to lunch yeah her dawn and lupe it'll be a great great conversation the state who has been serving because sometimes there's really good board members that are in their last year um across the state and that in other districts and so okay and honestly i think i think laurel and bridget those are two great names to bring forward okay so just as a review then um we're gonna just go back and hit this one more time and then we'll see if we can whittle it down to where we can make a

181motion so we've got nasby individuals school board member of the year so that is joe me we have so that's a no-brainer we're down to one don't argue that away and like i said i'll write that one um nasbee award to an individual friend of k-12 public education or k-12 public education advocacy organization and sounded to me if i got it right we were talking the rotary club and i think we have to be specific is it technically there's two rotary clubs aren't there in town there's sunset and there's and so we just want to make sure we're we we nominate the correct one the air purifiers it was the noon rotary club yeah okay and i think the other important thing is that they recognize a high school senior every two weeks or every

182month every week and they and they give them and they recognize a teacher of the month and all of those recognitions have monetary uh honorariums associated right and not that that's but it's indirectly associated but you know we've had three exchange students over the years and rotary was instrumental in in in the exchange program and those kids come into our schools and assimilate they've done well there as well and ours have done the same going over yeah okay um board secretary or administrative assistant or other board support staff person of the year and the only name i heard here was raymond medeiros and is that a appropriate category for raymond i believe so other board support staff person i think that's where that's where it works it fits okay okay district level administrator of the

183year impacting student achievement and we had valerie dockery and tasha fuson and each board can nominate two for this category so unless i miss somebody that could be our two those could be our two okay um nasb innovative educator of the year and this is one individual where we have two people brought forward mimi laughlin and ananda campbell so we want to point counterpoint this still going with it mrs campbell okay well why don't we just when we just go down the board mike what's your recommendation i'll say ananda okay and i'm sorry stacy you mrs campbell yep okay just on okay lupe okay i think we got it figured out sorry sorry rich no both fantastic choices no doubt okay nasby local governance team of the year and that would be the carson city

184school district unless anybody wants to argue that away [Music] i'm going to move on to the next category real quick media award for outstanding education reporting in a television radio print or online journalism format and we had our very own jessica okay and whoever writes that has to put in the mother's day story because i'll just make everybody cry and nasby director of the year mr walker okay a new school board member of the year trustee varner and school administrator of the year and we had we can we can bring forward two and we have three dan brown jennifer award to joseph and bob chambers and again i think it's not just it's not just words but they're all they're all great choices um i'll just i'll just put in a vote for jennifer because

185again i've watched what she's done over at fremont i've gone over there i've seen all of them in action they've all done well but she's you know she came to us several times she set a plan asked permission to for us to trust her and give her plan a chance and and we saw success and uh that's why i i voted for her but why don't we again we'll just the fastest way to do it is just go down the table um and mike we'll just start with you again i would say uh i'll vote for a high school in an elementary so i'll say bob and dan bob and dan okay um bob and dan because dan was nominated by his peers and that's my biggest thing sure dawn okay lupe laurel right and

186i too and bob and jennifer okay so bob and jennifer are moving forward yeah no disrespect to principal brown he's he's truly fantastic okay school district employee making a difference i ran out of paper with all these nominations so bear with me um we can bring forward two and again we have leticia bridge according tara secularis carrie pryor sheila story victoria victoria smith and i don't know louie's last name louis the crossing guard and so what is it okay i'm just writing them down real quick so we can yeah so why don't we i would normally what rich why don't we start with you this time we'll go the other way um i would say leticia and i would reserve the second choice because i got a conflict okay laurel so on this i'm trying

187to think of what are we gonna write about because i i know everybody's doing good but people who are nominating if you can give a plug about what we're gonna write about i think that would be helpful too um i don't know yeah like what are you gonna write about what do we i mean i mean i already wrote for leticia um last year and i know she um is fabulous so i wouldn't be opposed to nominating her again and then between sheila and bridget they both have done really good things i just i don't know specifics to put either one to to make a judgment on that because i i think they both have good things so i i'm not narrowing it down for you so you're not i'm not sorry like jeopardy though

188i can hear the music you gotta you want us to come back to you yeah okay sorry lupe i vote leticia and bridget gordon bridget really helped the students consider or she strongly encouraged them to go to college i saw her working with students on an individual basis and when i was out there at the high school recruiting she would bring students to me and i could see the passion that she had in the students and in the time that she invested in them to stay positive and to move forward with their education so i i see that she did a lot for the students especially this year at the pandemic where they really needed that so i feel that i would um have a strong vote for her so and i and in fact

189i could help with uh with the um letter of nomination yep okay thank you don leticia and uh tara leticians i'm sorry who tara okay stacy i'm torn i think the louis story could be really good but not sure we could win with it i'm all about winning so i'm looking for a sweep in my last two years um so uh i'm i really like carrie prior in this but i don't know if it fits the description um only because it's provided to nevada's children by employees but i mean she impacts those children a lot by the way she motivates and keeps our our teachers our first year teachers especially um yeah i don't know how people are going to vote but i mean my feeling is a direct impact to students might be better

190might lend more weight so i'm going to go with leticia and sheila okay mike and i'll say bridget and carrie okay guess who we're back to the rubric that they've given us unique contributions achieved in this position innovative thinking about ways to improve student learning and achievement that have resulted in increased student achievement for the school of the district or the state so i think looking at the rubric i'm going to go with bridget i think she has done a lot and she's had good results with for for she's done a lot to improve student achievement for first-time college um kids particularly first-generation college students a lot of successes last year and a tough time to apply who's who's number two out of the leticia has four votes bridget has three votes tara kerry and

191sheila each have one vote okay i'll i'll do leticia too so okay so bridget and leticia are moving forward good okay um veteran school board member of the year this just to make sure this is one and we have laurel and bridget peterson and i'm gonna maybe i'll start this off since i don't usually can i just say because bridget doesn't want us to nominate her i would just say why don't we just stop you stole my thunder that's all right and you should see the write-up laurel did for herself no i'm joking all okay all right um i think we're ready if some if we have any more discussion great otherwise i think we're ready for a motion so after we make the motion and we have the candidates is that when you're assigning

192yeah let's do that and then we'll we'll assign who's doing who's writing what i'll move that we um nominate the agreed upon slate of nominees and do you have that are you okay with that i figured you were just wanted to ask okay we have a motion by trustee walker second by trustee varner any further board discussion seeing none any public comment dr delfin i don't get to say very much but uh dr delphin jose delton for the record i just wanted to just shout out anser for this pandemic year she did a great job behind the scenes touched every school every department put dots everywhere physically put stickers and social distancing and i know she worked tirelessly working with staff that were covered positive and settling them down i i just want to let

193you know she's been a rock star in my point of view don't mean to mess you up right so we do have a motion on the table and we have a second any additional any additional comments any remote comments on this topic no mr cassiopo okay i'm going to call call the motion all those in favor hi do we have any opposed okay motion carries unanimously so with that let's talk about who's doing what write-ups so let's start back at the beginning i believe stacy wants to do my write-up it was so successful last time i mean i'll give better bullet points to laurel okay um the noon rotary club i'll work on that support staff person of the year raymond medeiros okay um district level administrator of the year impacting student achievement i'm happy

194to help with with one or both of those it is sorry valerie and tasha so if you work on valerie's all coordinate with tasha okay all right okay yeah we'll come and talk to you and get some bullets and we'll give it to laurel to make it sound good and i'd just like to say i i have insights as well be happy too you might be happy to contribute okay thank you mike was that you on um for tasha okay thank you okay um innovate innovative educator of the year ananda campbell i think i i think i have one that i've worked on before so yeah okay carson city school district local governance team of the year right don't we always have to update it there's three of you guys that haven't gotten them so

195you know we're more than happy to to let you update it i don't mind having a part and trying to don hasn't it i think that might be a good idea to a few people just so we hit the highlights okay there's no superintendent because last time that was the governance team was if they include the superintendent and then we had the superintendent and then we had the school board okay how about the media award for outstanding education reporting see what happens when you go on vacation okay and uh nasby director of the year that's mike walker do we i don't know do we have a draft i was okay but i'm kind of thinking i don't mean to throw it to somebody else but i'm kind of thinking you're laurel because you're you have

196a better understanding of what that is for a number of reasons we don't want stacy writing something about mike okay a new school board member of the year rich varner [Laughter] i'm happy to take a crack at that i've been working pretty close with rich so i'm happy to and i'll shoot that to everybody to get some input to include you yeah okay and nasby school administrator of the year jennifer ward to joseph and bob chambers so i'm i nominated jennifer so i'm happy to do that okay no let us let us do them and then we'll we'll run it by you for final review and how about bob okay i know mike already had a few on his plate so i don't know if someone else can jump in and help lupe is that

197too much for your plate mike i know you're a busy guy right okay um okay no that would be helpful okay and then we have school district employee making a difference leticia and bridgette so how about tasha if you and i work together on bridget and then you do leticia since you work with her more would that work okay yeah that would be helpful okay and drumroll veteran school board member of the year mrs crossman so don it would just need updating so if you'd like to take that one you can or i can take it one whoever my wife uh genie helped me with that right dawn's wife so i'll put her uh she's long in bed now so she's not listening but uh i'll put her in charge updating uh laurel and laurel

198give me some notes okay so we have two meetings until we have to submit these um and we've got you know some got a fair amount to write so the idea would be let's try to see if we can get these written up by the next meeting knowing that we got a little bit of time after that but we're going to need them ahead of time to get those to renee so let's let's shoot for next meeting let's see if we can have them and then we can polish them up as needed and i'd like to get those to renee before that second meeting um unless anyone sees a flaw in that i'm just going to be gone okay so let's talk let's talk sooner rather than later and okay all right so we have

199our homework there okay so we're going to move on to item 11. approval of the consent agenda i'll move that we accept the consent agenda as submitted motion by trustee walker second by trustee varner any board comment any public comment in person or remote no mr cassiopo okay board all those in favor aye aye um 12 is informational items for discussion only any questions on the informational items seeing none how about requests for future agenda topics just real quick in a matter of time since we're going to be looking for a new superintendent positions open i'd like to look at policy number zero three zero three which states out some of the the policy on the duties of the superintendent to make sure that they're up to date and what we're looking for so that

200when we do open that position it's already done we're not going to be redoing it yeah good idea and i think we should be timely with that and can we get that i don't know what our next agenda looks like can we get that on the agenda okay okay any other requests for future agenda topics seeing none we're adjourned thank you everybody [Music] so [Music] you