Shop to order.

This will be the first on the agenda.

The rest of the agenda will be taking place at 6 p.m.

So at this time we have a roundtable discussion among board members and staff addressing the following topic for discussion only no action.

This is a presentation and discussion regarding the general fund, summer school fund and gifts and donations fund in the Carson City School District presented by Spencer Woodward.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President, members of the board.

As you know, this will be our final workshop, at least at the level of detail that we've gone into all of the funds.

I'm going over the final three funds that we haven't covered in our previous workshops.

I have a couple of smaller funds that we'll start out with.

First one is our summer school fund.

As way of information, the last couple of years this fund has been uh mostly idle as summer school costs have been covered by ESSER funds.

We don't anticipate that this year, and we've budgeted accordingly.

Uh, where funds from this are generally transferred from the general fund.

Um so if you look at our worksheet here, we'll we'll quickly go over some of the expenditures.

And the bulk of this is for salary and benefits of 131,000.

The difference here is this does not cover any one position, one full-time equivalency.

It is all based off extra duty or extra hours performed by many employees who uh cover summer school.

Um we're required to have an administrative member there, nurse there, and then of course instructors and paraprofessionals.

And so that 131,000 covers mostly salary and a little bit of benefits because for these individuals there's not PERS cost for this because it's extra above and beyond their full-time equivalent positions.

On top of that, we also budget uh $73,800 for supplies as needed for summer school for a total amount of 205,000.

I believe last year that was pretty close to what we spent out of multiple funding sources to cover our summer school expenditures.

The revenues of where this comes from.

Um, we had some funds sitting there that were unspent from the COVID years.

So the opening fund balance of 180,000 was already transferred from the general fund a couple years prior, and it's just been sitting there waiting for its opportunity to shine, which will be this summer.

And then to cover the our needs that we've anticipated, we're uh transferring 25,000 from the general fund for a total of 205,000.

This is one of those funds where we we budget to spend everything that we have in there.

If there is, if we don't spend everything totally that we have, then we would reduce that transfer from the general fund.

Um we don't, or we can leave like we did a couple of years ago, we would just leave an amount here that would reduce next year's transfer from the general fund.

Any questions so far?

Yeah, so and how I'd like to do this is we'll go one fund, ask the questions, go the next fund and ask the questions, and then if we have questions that address the overall budget, we'll go down the line as well.

Okay.

So yes, I do have a question.

Um you said that we had funds coming in from the SR fund, and we no longer will have that.

Is that correct?

Yeah, SR funds have all been expended now.

September 30th, more or less was the deadline for the spending those.

So this upcoming summer, those funds are not available to us anymore.

The last couple of years that is 100% covered our our summer school costs.

Okay.

So I guess my question would be summer school is used for students who didn't take advantage of going to school or taking advantage of a regular school year, correct?

Uh you could say that there's certainly some students that probably didn't maximize their potential during the school year.

So they're given a second chance through summer school.

Yes, they have an opportunity to typically earn credits or credit recovery is often what it's referred to.

So why wouldn't we be charging them?

Why shouldn't they pay for summer school?

We don't do that.

We could in the past, a lot of times um, if students are free and reduced, we don't charge them, so there still would be some costs involved.

We have charged for some tuition in the past.

It's typically a small amount, and we still have costs very similar to what we've budgeted for.

Okay, just would like to take note then.

Um for public, I do think that if we continue to go in the spending that we do, I think it would be um something that we should look at too in the future.

That this is if this is a second chance for them.

They didn't take you know the opportunity, the first chance that they were given in a regular school year.

And if they want to graduate, they may want to, we may want to look at having them pay for summer school.

Any other questions?

Go ahead.

Uh trustee.

Um are we required to offer some of school?

That's an excellent question from the funding side.

I'm not sure that we are.

I do know that it it would leave a gap in education with some of our students, especially we're trying to get them to graduate with our cohorts.

Um it would severely put us behind in keeping our graduation rates where we want them to be.

So that's why we've have offered that is because it is it's beneficial for our students and gives does give them that opportunity to stay on track and graduate with our cohorts.

Trustee Robert.

Um yeah, what what is the timeline?

Is this like throughout the summer?

Is this a program that could be shortened down to save on some funding?

It uh it's a it's a four-week time period during the summer.

So to get it much shorter would probably start to uh lose some return on investment to to short it and still have students be able to learn what they need to learn.

Okay, and is this just are we strictly talking high school?

Secondary levels.

So middle and high and night.

And is there what are the benefits to having that at middle school?

Because you just talked about you know, graduation and such.

Uh that's able to keep those eighth graders on track so that they're able to advance to high school.

That's the majority of our of our middle school students or those that need to get a couple more credits to be able to start high school the next year instead of being held back for a year.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

All right, seeing none will please please continue.

All righty.

Moving on.

Um next fund here is our gifts and donations fund.

And as you can see, we don't have any salary and benefits that are covered out of this, although that uh this is one of those that as funds become available, we could um transfer those funds from like purchase services to salary and benefits if we did receive a gift or a donation that was to cover salary specifically.

Not very common that we do have something like that.

Typically, it is in the case of, hey, here's $10,000 towards summer school.

And then that would be a case where that would be managed through this fund, but it could be um the budget authority could be transferred to gifts and donations.

Um we've budgeted a total of 328,000.

And again, something to think of.

This is a budgeted number, so we don't necessarily always receive um that total amount of uh if you look at the revenues we budgeted for a uh various donations of 200,000.

We don't necessarily always receive that amount, but we guess a little bit high that we're going to receive that and in turn spend it so that if we do get a large donation, we don't need to come and augment this and go through the entire process that takes.

And that number is kind of where we've said just based off the historical gifts that we've received that would be operated through this fund.

Uh the majority of what we do get for this goes to supplies.

Uh, we have a lot of community partners who give gifts, a couple I can think of off the top of my head, certainly not exhaustive.

Uh the Dolan class project goes through here.

Uh, we receive funds from Carson City Toyota that is managed through this.

And a lot of private donations, we have some private donors who don't wish to be named who will give money to uh to either certain schools, and then we manage that through here, or if they just give it at our discretion, then it we can allocate that to the to school supplies where we see fit.

So a lot of what this is, we have some funds, and sometimes we'll get a gift for funds that isn't always spent in one year.

So that's why we would have an open fund balance in this.

We started with 128,000.

And again, a lot of these are we receive gifts that are earmarked for certain things, so we will wish to honor uh the givers uh wishes the best we can and keep track of that from one fiscal year to the next.

So again, a lot of that is you know, we might receive $1,500 for school supplies uh for a specific classroom or grade, and they might only spend $1,200, there'd be 300 residual that would be in that opening fund balance.

Uh so this is tracked by a project and our our grants department does a wonderful job of keeping track of all of those so that if someone comes and asks us, hey, how is my donation spent?

We have very good records to be able to do that.

Again, salary benefits is pretty rare to be spent out of this fund.

Typically it's for supplies or specific items that the donations the donors request us to use it for.

So at the end of the day, it's restricted funds.

Yes.

Not unrestricted.

So we wouldn't be able to pull 328,000 and say we want it to go to salaries and benefits, it is restricted to a specific project.

Restricted typically by the donors' wishes.

So it could be the kind of thing we go and say, hey, could we reallocate this?

Or if some of there might be kind of a statute of limitations, if you will, if we've had something that's been there for 10 years and is kind of defunct, sometimes we'll repurpose that.

But again, typically for the most part, it stays with what the donors wish it to be used for.

Okay.

And then how often, I mean, do you know like are do are we aggressive at going in trying to seek donations?

I I would say aggressive might be a little bit too strong of a term for us.

We're as proactive as we can be with the resources we have.

You know, we don't, if we had a full-time person dedicated to that, I'm certain we could drum up some more resources, but we don't have the funds to do that to support someone that could do that.

Um our grants department does do a lot of solicitation.

We do receive quite a few.

We've got some good community partners that have been ongoing donors, and we work really work to maintain those relationships with them.

Great, thank you.

Any additional questions?

Right.

Seeing none, uh, thank you, Spencer.

We'll move on to the general fund.

All righty, thank you.

As you know, general fund is the largest and most diverse fund.

Um given that we only have about 20 minutes to talk about this.

I've I've kept this in the same format as we've done with all the rest of the funds.

I recognize it might not get to the level of detail that you're hoping, but we can kind of go through this and and it will be a great starting point and might be uh something that gives you a request for future information that we can provide.

Um and as you mentioned, you know, our funds in the 200s are typically more restrictive.

Our general fund is the least restrictive.

We can't break the law with it, but we do get have a lot more leeway in determining how and it's sped and spent, and you as board members give us direction in uh utilization of the general fund.

So I know this sheet is uh flip flop.

I'm gonna go ahead and start with the revenues, even though they're at the bottom.

So if you look in that blue section, this shows the the total amount of resources that we have available.

We have local sources of 1.1 million.

The bulk of that comes from uh earnings on investments for our ending fund balance that is invested according to NRS.

And then federal sources.

We get a small amount of federal sources that do go to the general fund.

Again, most anything that we get federally is going to be um allocated and sourced through fund 280.

There's a few exceptions to that that totals up to this.

Some of that amount is um we're allowed to charge a small amount of overhead for overseeing general fund or uh federally funded grants, and that offsets the cost of the general fund for example myself, our grants department, people that are that oversee and and do some work towards that were able to charge a small amount of indirect costs, is the term that they use.

That's what makes up the bulk of that 155,000.

And then of course the lion's share of our revenue comes from the PCFP, the the um I knew that I if I can't think of what that acronym stands for, probably 98% of people in here do.

Pupil centered funding plan.

I knew it would come to me if I if I um monologues for a minute there.

Uh that's where the the majority of our funding comes from.

It's all rolled into that at the state level and then divvied out to us on a per pupil basis, and that's 79.5 million.

Again, that that amount is exactly tied to our daily enrollment, and uh that can go up or down depending on what our enrollment does throughout the year.

And then of course, our opening fund balance balances we discussed uh the with our audit at the last board meeting, 18.000 was our audited ending fund balance balance.

So at the end of FI25, which become becomes our opening fund balance for this year.

So all that told together, that's 98.9 million dollars available to us.

Um if you look at the totals of the budget, we have 86.3 budgeted, meaning we didn't budget everything we have available.

Uh by statute, we have to we can't budget to less than 4% of the ending fund balance.

So there's at least 4% there.

Uh we haven't budgeted down to that amount for several years as we have a very healthy ending fund balance.

I'm gonna go ahead and go up to uh the expenditures.

Are there any questions regarding revenues?

Prior to me digging into that.

Any questions?

No.

Thank you.

All righty.

As with all of our expenditures, the bulk of what we spend is on our personnel.

Uh general fund is no exception to that.

So of that total um of 86 million that we've budgeted from the general fund, 65 million is salary and benefits.

And I've broken that down by our full-time equivalence for our certified staff, our classified staff, and our administration is an executive staff.

So for certified staff, um, it's 300, just shy of 370 full-time equivalencies.

That is a uh decimal number because some of those positions are split funded with grant funds.

That includes 25 kindergarten teachers, 131 elementary teachers, and 178 secondary teachers, and other certified of 35.14, which includes interventionists, counselors, librarians, RNs, um, technology integration specialists, and our TOSAs.

I think is a pretty pretty exhaustive list there of those that are in that other category.

So again, that's just shy of 370 uh people that we have budgeted for.

This number might not be quite exactly today how many people we have in those positions because there could be a few vacancies.

It also might be a few reduced from what we've actually budgeted for.

It's between our actual and our budgeted, that 369 positions.

Um that's our certified staff.

Um our salary and benefits for our classified staff.

We have 200 full-time equivalent positions there.

And that includes a wide variety uh variety of employees.

That includes uh our accounts, our folks in fiscal services, administrative assistants, uh both in the district office and at the sites, bus drivers, campus supervisors, clinical aids, clinical procedure nurse, custodians, distance ed assistants, uh groundskeepers, HR analysts, IT tech uh technicians, um there's a two or three positions underneath that, uh librarians, uh library techs, maintenance um folks, mechanics, pair pros, warehouse, and a couple of others in there.

And so that's 200 uh full-time uh positions there or full-time equivalencies in our classified staff funded out of the general fund.

And then salary benefits for administration and executive, that's four to 44 full-time equivalencies, site administration, which would be principals, assistant principals, vice principals, or deans.

There's 25 of those folks between our 10 schools, and then our executive positions.

Uh, there's 19 that's from the superintendent, the chief officers, directors, and managers.

And all told that that's 65 million dollars for salary and benefits.

Um, just kind of as a way of reference, that's 612 uh full-time equivalents for general fund.

We have about 970 full-time equivalents district wide, so there's about 358 funded from grant or other sources.

Any questions for salary and benefits?

All righty, just scroll this down here.

Well, sorry, not so the other categories, and again, this is kind of follows the format of the state uh state budgeting form that we use.

So we have our professional services, which this could be anything from softwares can be in here.

Um district council is in here, our audit is in here.

Those are some of the examples of the professional services that are in that amount.

And that's 3.8 million district wide.

I do have a question on that one.

Okay.

Um, because I know when you brought up the special education, and we do supplement the general fund does supplement some of the special education fund.

Is that here?

That wouldn't be there if we get done about four lines of transfers out.

We'll we'll be right there then.

So this would be if it's specifically paid for out of the general fund.

If it's something that's 100% covered out of for special ed, we would pay for out of fund 250, and then would include it in transfers from the general fund if there weren't sufficient special education dollars to cover it.

Yeah, so because when we got the special education, if my memory is correct, we were close to a little over half a million is supplemented, and I could be wrong though.

Okay, but let's just say an amount was supplemented from the general fund.

Could it be possibly salary and benefits or how would we know where it's coming from?

So it's transferred to the special education fund, and then in the special education fund, it's allocated via salaries or benefits or programs and services.

So that's where the that level of detail of the spending would take place in the special education fund, and then it's simply um shown as a transfer out from the general fund because there's so as the state collects their data, we don't want it to show up in two places that we spent salary in the general fund and then salary in the special education fund.

So it's a single line item of a transfer out of the general fund, and then all that detail happens in the special education fund.

Okay, so that would it would be on the transfer out then.

Yeah.

Okay, I get that.

And I know we only have like 10 minutes.

So and I know we have some general questions to to do with that as well.

So if we can go just a little bit quicker.

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, like I say, covering the salary benefits, that's about 85% of our spending.

So we spent more time on that.

Uh these other items, so program materials and supplies.

This is everything from classroom supplies, pencils, erasers, glue, paper, chalk.

If we still have chalk boards, I don't think we do, dry erase markers, et cetera.

Those type of things are in there, but there's also this can include um like scholastic materials if we have publications there, a very wide branch uh range.

Um it also would include the curriculum items in there.

So that's 5.2 million for the year.

Um equipment is any purchase of a an item that's greater than $5,000 in value.

Uh the majority of this is transfer is budgeted for bus purchases.

That's a slightly less than what it would take to purchase two buses at this point.

Um, but again, and there's a couple other smaller things in there.

We don't have a lot of, we haven't budgeted for a lot of large things this year.

We're in pretty good shape for that.

Dues fees and miscellaneous, a large part of what it this is is our carry forward each site.

We allow them carry amount forward from the previous year, and that's budgeted for as a miscellaneous, and then they typically will move that budget authority to where they're spending.

They're spending it in supplies, or if they're buying a special software for their second graders, then they would transfer that to their, but that's where it lives in our budget.

So uh uh just shy of 500,000 of that is is our carry forward, and then we have to do uh have a few small expenditures in that category.

Next line item is our transfers out, and that's 10.1 million.

Um, and that's transferred from the general fund to all of our funds.

So the bulk of that, as you were alluding to earlier, is our transfer to our special education fund, which is 9.2 million, just shy of that.

We transfer uh about 600,000 to at risk fund, 190,000 to the gate fund, and 120,000 to the EL fund, and then 25,000 to the summer school fund.

So those all total out as the 10.1 million of transfers out.

And as mentioned, we're working to reduce that transfer to the special education fund by uh making sure that we still check all the boxes we need to and provide all the surfaces we need to in the most efficient manner in hopes to reduce that transfer for FY27.

So the final thing on there is the contingency of a million dollars that we budgeted as a just in case scenario.

Uh we don't spend that unless we come to the board and say, hey, we would like to use the contingency funds on this, and this is the reason why I believe the last six or seven years we have not used any contingency funding, but it's a budgeted item there.

So that totals our expenditures of 86.3 million compared to our revenues of 98.9, which includes our opening fund balance.

And that leaves us with a net surplus.

And I apologize, I probably should have changed the way this is described because this is actually shows a deficit budget.

This probably would be more accurately described as our ending fund balance, is what that 12.6 million is as budgeted.

Uh, keep in mind the last four years and more, we have not spent everything we budgeted, and our ending fund balance has ended up higher than the budgeted amount, including last year.

Any questions?

Yes.

So um so what we are looking at is our open fund balance minus the expenditures was it's approximately 5.5 million.

And is that what we were told that it was going to that is our if you remember in all our budgetation budget presentations, we talk about our taxation deficit.

That 5.5 is the taxation deficit.

We focus more on our structural deficit, which is that taxation deficit minus our contingency and minus our carry forward, which the two of those is typically about 1.5 million, which brings us really roughly to that 3.5 million deficit budgeted deficit.

3.5.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so this lines up with our last meeting that if we continue to spend at a 3.5 deficit in four years, we'll be at a zero balance.

Correct.

And we will, yeah.

So it's three or I think I we did it, it was like three three in a three-quarters year, we're gonna be at zero balance if we continue to do the spending as we are now.

So just wanted to give give you all heads up on that.

Okay, so the other question though that I have as well is um for the general fund.

I mean, I know at the next meeting or the meeting after that, you'll be bringing us presenting us with a three-inch packet of the budget, and we'll be asked to approve the um budget moving forward.

So the when I asked for these workshops, the reason being is one to provide us with education on each of those funds.

Okay.

Where is the money?

What is it being used for?

The other reason then is for us then as trustees to be able to look and say, here it is, here's the general fund.

When we're going to vote on that budget, we can then look and say, where can we where can cuts be made?

Or where have cuts, where are cuts being made.

And that's where I think is an informed board, is the questions that we need to be asking is exactly you know, specifically where where are those cuts being made.

And so um the I know this is a lot and a lot to digest because it is from for me as well.

And so I think um when Spencer, when you're presenting the budget, how I would like to see it moving forward, is um really kind of giving us a cover sheet, or maybe it might take three sheets of where exactly the cuts are being made.

You know, um, I know that when we spoke about the special education, we asked that that transfer out be reduced from the 9.1 million.

And I believe we we asked for a lot of it to be reduced out of that.

You know, it's kind of like if if it's not a necessity, then if it's not by NRS, we really need to look at it and say, you know, keep that in that transfer out a whole lot lower than that.

Summer school you just brought up as well.

Maybe we look at tuition, you know, to keep it as well.

If it's gonna keep, I think what we're all forced with up here, if it's gonna keep um people in the classrooms student-facing, that's what we need to be concentrating on.

However, I don't want to control it.

We got three minutes.

Were there any additional questions?

No, out of the general fund, we make several transfers outright.

Nutrition is one that we have to use to transfer out.

Uh we have our our nutrition has uh a surplus and ending fund balance that has covered the transfer out for last year.

It should cover this year, and depending on where things end up, it may cover or partially cover next year.

But so the public understands in the past we've had to transfer money into the nutrition that hasn't, it's not a self-funded thing.

So typically we have had to supplement that with general fund dollars.

So and uh I I know we don't have much time, but out of this general fund uh under the salaries, how much of that goes towards uh the PERS system?

Um as a very rough general rule of thumb, you could say that approximately probably about 32 percent of that amount would be PERS.

So if you look at the 65 million that we have budgeted here, roughly 32 percent.

The PRS percentage is a little higher than that, but with some other benefits in there, that would that would give you a pretty pretty ballpark amount of what it is.

And what is the funding for the jump start program come out of?

Jump start has been covered out of uh some grant funds over the past couple of years, and then uh I I'm having completed my analysis if we have some grant funding to cover that or if that's gonna be coming from general fund to cover some of the tuition for that.

And uh I know don't have much time, but for the public, do you know what that cost is?

So they know.

Um I would rough guess I think we're right around between two and three hundred thousand dollars.

Keep in mind that we're also by paying for that tuition, we're covering teachers for those students that if we didn't have jump start, then we would be paying for teachers to cover the students that we have in jump start.

Thank you.

Or like most districts, most districts don't do 100%.

They do either a 70-30 or a 50-50, you know, on that um tuition for that as well.

You're welcome.

All right.

Um no further questions.

We'll go ahead and close then the um workshop.

Thank you so much, Spencer.

I think this was this has been extremely informative.

You're very welcome.

And then uh maybe we could get in our board packets or at some point if you can email us all of the um fund analysis that you've provided us since we started these workshops.

I think that would be extremely helpful for every board member.

Certainly can do that.

President Walt, can I ask for something?

Um, is it possible to provide us with the um list on the let's see on the funding sort on the general fund?

Is it possible to separate the certified classified and administrative executive?

Is it possible to do that?

It is.

Um if I have till 601 really roughly, that 65 million is about uh 42.8 million on the on the um I'm gonna hand that you're gonna provide us.

Yeah.

Oh, certainly.

Yeah, we're gonna have to start right now.

But um, and if you can follow it up on an email.

Um, that'd be great.

Thank you so much.

Thanks all right.

So it is six o'clock, and at this time, we will go ahead and call the um Carson City School Board.

Trustee meeting to order.

Okay.

Um, so with that, we will move on to agenda item number two.

This is adoption of the agenda agenda.

This is for possible action.

And at this time, I will ask the um the board of trustees.

Um we will be pulling item number 13 from the agenda.

Um, due to the fact that superintendent uh AJ Fueling is not feeling well this evening and will not be in attendance.

So, with that, pulling agenda item number 13.

Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

Uh moved by Trustee Roberts.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Seconded by Trustee Varner.

Do I have public comment?

Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you.

And at this time, we'll move on to agenda item number three, which is the flag slew by Trusty Roberts.

Could you agree?

And to the public stance.

One nation under God.

Thank you.

We'll move on to agenda item number four.

This is superintendent's report, and this will be given to us um by associates uh by Mr.

Saddler, sorry.

That's all right.

Yeah, Dan Sadler for the record, uh Chief Human Resources Officer.

Uh filling in for Superintendent Fueling this evening.

He's not feeling well.

Hope he's feeling better soon.

Uh first, we're gonna start.

We have some uh champions with us here this evening that we would like to recognize.

Uh, we have the 2026 High Desert Interscholastic Bowling Program champions from Carson High School.

And we'd we would like to thank our coaches, Danny Dunbar, Ron Pasqual, Rich Sharp, as well as our advisor, trustee Michelle Peterson.

And so uh turn things over to uh coaches if you want to say anything to the board here or if you could if coaches if you would um go to the other side of the table, and then if they could each um if each student will introduce yourself, let us know your grade level and um what your highest score was we'll do this.

We're gonna go through this first.

Thanks for having us tonight.

Um good evening, and thank you for having us tonight and recognizing our Carson's uh high school athletes on their back-to-back championship win in the high desert interscholastic bowling program.

This achievement adds to a long tradition of success for the Carson High School Bowling team, and we're incredibly proud of what this group has accomplished.

This year's team had a unique energy.

While we lost veteran players, we gained new faces who quickly came together to form something special.

They brought enthusiasm, positivity, and a strong sense of teamwork that set them apart.

Their commitment to practice to improving their individual skills, and most importantly to each other was truly inspiring to witness.

As a coach, it's always rewarding to watch athletes of different ages and experience levels grow into a cohesive team.

Over time, you become more than just a coach, you become a mentor, a supporter, and in many ways part of their extended family.

You see their highs, their lows, you check in on them and check in, check in on them beyond the sport, and you celebrate their growth both on and off the lanes.

That's what makes this experience so meaningful.

This season also marked a personal milestone for me.

Uh watching a full cycle of athletes grow from freshmen into seniors, seeing that development is both fulfilling and bittersweet.

You're proud of who they become well knowing it's time for them to move on to their next chapter.

This uh the competition this year was tough.

Many matches came down to the final games where focus, discipline, and trust in one another made all the difference.

After an early loss, this team found its rhythm and never looked back, staying steady, humble, and committed to taking on it, taking it on one match at a time.

All while also participating in Saturday coaching sessions, youth leagues, scholarship tournaments, and other competitions throughout the region.

In closing, I want to say how proud I am of this team, not just for their accomplishments, but for their character effort and unity they showed throughout the season.

I'm also grateful for the coaching staff and the support system that makes all of this possible.

And to the parents, thank you.

Your kids become our kids during the season, and the relationship we built with them are something always uh that we value.

Thank you for trusting us with them and supporting them in every step of the way.

And to the team, you've given us something truly special, something you've earned for yourselves, your family, your school, and your community to be proud of.

Great job.

So with that, this year, we've had um numerous awards at the end of our championship, which all come with scholarships.

And this year we had Hannah Glyssen and Jack Peterson, um, both juniors.

They were selected for the regional all-star team earning a scholarship um this year.

Um, we have a few that aren't here.

Uh Tatum Geiger, a freshman and Nate Christa, uh, who's our sophomore, was honored for the league at uh the JB Bowlers of the year.

Uh Donnie Wass, she was a junior.

She was recognized having the female uh average of 177 out of the entire league of 188 bowlers.

And most importantly, we have Jake Cronin and Kaya Dunbar here, who I'll read this for you.

So both are seniors and we're selected as the Carson High Varsity Bowlers of the Year.

Uh this would normally earn each of them a modest scholarship.

However, once each school has made their nominations, the league forwards the kids' nomination note and performance record and academics to an outside panel who selects one male and one female to be named League Bowler of the Year.

Both Jake and Kaya received this additional additional honor this year, each of them earning the Ron Acostigo scholarship of $2,500 each.

So with that, if you guys would like to introduce yourselves, and I'm sorry, what did you ask for their highest?

Well, yes.

So if your average, your name, grade level, average score, and then any awards that you won.

Uh, my name is Kaya Dunbar.

I've been on the high school bowling team for the last four years.

Um, I've been a team captain for all four of those years as well.

Um, this year I got the Ronana Casio Award, like Ron said, and which is was a 2500 scholarship as well.

Earlier before that, I got a scholarship to an offer of 26,000 at Clark University to go to bowl for them.

And then my highest um series this season was like a 596, and my average is a 180.

Uh, my name is Indiana Pasqual.

I am the third team captain of the team.

I cannot tell you my high game, a high series.

I'm around a 190 average bowler.

This is my third year of being on Carson Eye bowling.

That's pretty much all I gotta say.

Uh, I'm Jack Peterson.

I'm a junior.

This is my third year on the team.

Um, high game, I think was like a 220 something.

And then my average was like a 167.

Um, and then I won the nomination for the all-star team.

My name is Ryan Thompson.

I'm a freshman bowler.

This is my first year.

My highest game was around a 205, with my average being around 170.

My name is Julian McAwee, and I'm a freshman.

My highest game is 203, and my average is around 130.

I am Jake Ellis Cronin, and my highest game is a 300.

Um my average is a 203.

And I also won the Ron Nicasio Award.

And I'm a senior on the team.

I just wanted uh Danny Dunbar, the head coach can't be here.

Probably the prior part being the proprietor of bowling alley.

He didn't have a mechanic to be there, so he couldn't be here.

Um, he's missed.

He's the main reason out of the coaches why we're at this point.

Um I can't say much because I'll cry.

So 19 out of 23 years.

Hopefully do it again next year.

Uh well, thank you for joining us this evening.

I know sometimes it's very hard because I think this is right about the same time you guys are at the Bowling Alley.

So we appreciate you being here and you know being able to be recognized.

Um, so congratulations.

We're we were so excited to hear um from Trustee Peterson at the meetings, how well you guys did and how much fun, how much fun you guys are having throughout the season.

So we greatly appreciate you.

And um, congratulations and and good luck in the future for those of you who are moving on.

Very proud of you.

Any other questions, comments?

Um, yeah.

I um, as she said, I'm also the advisor for the bowling team, so I get to have a little more uh involvement than the average spectator.

Um, you guys are wonderful people, and I feel very honored, like Rich, to get to be with you.

Um, I've had students or children of my own on several different um teams through their school career.

Um there's definitely something special here at this team.

You guys are a family.

Um, you uh look out for each other, you support each other, you're cheer for each other, you um celebrate the achievements, and you pick each other up in the struggle.

Um, and it's it's just a gift to be a part of it.

So um I appreciate all that you guys bring to the lanes when we do that.

School board meetings can get pretty heavy.

The rest of this meeting will probably be a little bit heavier, but an absolute highlight is any time we can have kids come to the meeting and we can celebrate you guys because you are why we are here.

You are why we do what we do, why we sit here through these meetings is to give you guys as many opportunities as you can academically and outside of the classroom.

And I love that you guys are taking full advantage of that and like Kaya going on um getting a scholarship to college to bowl um because of the foundation that's been built here.

Um, Jake, you want to share your after plans?

Where are you going after this?

Well, after I graduate.

On the mic.

After I graduate, I'm gonna go to California for I don't know, a couple weeks or something in my Chevy Love, and then on the afterwards of that.

Big boy plans.

What's that?

What are your big boy plans?

Oh, yeah.

Um I'm enlisted in the Navy as a construction mechanic, and I'll be going on to that.

Thank you.

So, not just great bowlers, great people.

You guys are the best.

That's all.

Thank you.

Um, if you guys will line up here in the middle and we'll get a picture.

Parents, you can uh come out to the side or in the front.

And I just want to want to say one more thing.

You guys heard about all those scholarships, and I know you guys got kids.

We bowl every Saturday, youth come in.

Start, we just ended, but I think it starts up in August.

August.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So bring your kids down.

They can be a part of this.

Thank you.

Excellent job.

Uh, just a couple more items to report on here.

It is music in our schools month uh nationally, and uh last week was Bandorama on Monday night.

Excuse me.

Last week was Bandorama.

This Monday uh was Choir Palooza, both really incredible events that we have here in the community.

I want to give special thanks to Christina Bourne for all her leadership and organizing and really to all of our music teachers.

We have a great team of music teachers in our district.

Uh, they work really closely together to make sure these amazing amazing events take place.

So I want to thank all of our music teachers, and also uh, and probably just as importantly as our custodial staff.

They do a great job of helping out and getting that event set up and taken down.

So uh kudos to our wonderful custodial staff as well.

Uh in keeping with that theme, the Carson High School Theater Arts and Music Department recently completed a successful run on Broadway here in Carson City, actually at the community centers.

Uh, want to congratulate our staff and students on their performance of Greece, uh, which was here at the community center.

Special thanks to Director Darby Beckwith, music director, Andy Sonomaker, choreographer Mikey Kaske, and orchestra director, Dr.

Brian Fox.

And of course, thank you to all of our students who worked so hard for their performances.

And just lastly, a reminder for everybody in case you haven't been paying attention to the calendar or the beautiful weather that we're having outside uh spring break is on the horizon here.

So uh students and most of our staff will be off uh starting Monday, April 6th through April 10th, returning to school on Monday, April 13th.

So hopefully that nice weather continues for spring break coming up.

And that is all I have this evening.

Great, thank you.

We'll move on to agenda item number five, board reports, board member comments.

We'll start.

This is informational only, and we'll start with Carson High Activities.

Do we have a Carson High School representative?

Is there anybody out in the hallway?

No.

All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move on to the Carson High Silver Campus activities.

Do we have a representative?

I don't believe they have a representative yet, so I will be sharing announcements.

Great, thank you.

So from Dr.

Molden.

Uh, she um shares with us that the Silver Campus is proud to announce partnerships that they have being building on within trades across the community.

Uh Concursa Auto Body from Reno visited the school in March 17 and spoke to the entire campus about all the opportunities that exist within the auto body field.

Um, the representative also shared what students should inspire to complete before they apply, apprenticeship opportunities and wages.

Uh, today uh Carson City Toyota came over to the campus after school to show students how to change a flat tire.

Um they also chatted with the representative about um ways that they can get um involving the automotive field.

On April 2nd, um Hope Sullivan, the Carson City Community and Economic Development Director will be on campus to speak with the entire school about all the opportunities available within the city planner program.

Uh if students uh choose not to go to college, this is one avenue for them to be successful.

Um, the list is growing for after the spring break and and into May, so there's more to come.

Uh she's also very excited about these coming Friday, March 27th.

They're going to be taking the majority of the school on an academic field trip to Riverside Park.

The Carson City Park Rangers are going to share all of the opportunities to become a park ranger.

And then they will explore the river and surrounding area as part of the of an English math, social studies, and science experiment.

Students will be required to calculate water levels, research the Korean war memorial, and how it applies today.

Investigate the wetland plant matter surrounding the park, and then write an essay about what they have learned.

So that is a report from Silver Campus.

Great.

Thank you.

Did you want to continue with your schools?

From Mrs.

Crookshanks from Mark Twain.

Um, she would like to highlight the STEM night, which is taking place tonight at the site at the at the school.

Uh, Sierra Nevada Journey will be coming to offer students and families fun activities and that they can do together.

And they're looking forward to seeing all families during parent teacher conferences.

That concludes my report.

Great, thank you.

Trustee Roberts.

Yes, from Dr.

Ward at Fremont.

They are looking forward to parent-teacher conferences and working towards having 100% of our parents meet with our teachers one-on-one in a conference.

They have a huge steam night.

Um, unfortunately, the same night as our board meeting.

Um, the event starts at five and finishes up at seven with many community members, including Home Depot, UNR, Lowe's, Costco, Nevada State Parks, and DRI.

And we would like to thank Terry Schiffer, our computer literacy science teacher in advance for all her hard work and dedication on this event.

Terry also deserves a shout-out as she was recognized as part of the Northern Nevada STEM Teachers of the Year.

So congratulations, Terry.

Great, thank you.

Trustee Clapham.

Thank you.

Um, from Ms.

Hoppy, uh, Eagle Valley Middle School.

Um, regarding academics, they have successfully reached the end of the third quarter thanks to the staff and students.

Homework clubs still available Monday through Thursday until 4 p.m.

in transportation is provided.

And on early release days, students are encouraged to stay after school to catch up on assignments from 12 to 225, but there is no transportation on those days.

Uh, regarding athletics, they're looking forward to the track tournament at Carson Middle School on Thursday.

Also, 18 of the wrestlers qualified to participate in the Tonneva Championship on Saturday.

Some upcoming events.

Students will be highlighting their talents by displaying projects they have been working on.

Community partners will be joining to highlight future career opportunities for the students.

The event will begin at 12 p.m.

for students and will continue after school until approximately 4 30.

And parents are encouraged to join after school at 2 25.

Lastly, a huge thank you to the leadership crew, Mr.

Spriggs and Mrs.

Schnabel do many things for the school.

They also support all of their athletic events by advertising all of the school events and supplying the snack bar.

Thanks to both of them, they make all of the school events fun for everyone.

And then from Miss Robinson.

My apologies.

They're really working hard to do their best.

Testing will continue through next week.

Many of the wrestlers will be competing in the Toniva Wrestling Championship this Saturday in Lovelock.

And their first sixth grade track meet is this Thursday.

The students sounded great at the choir Palooza in Bandarama, Bandarama, both of which took place this last week.

Lots of kids doing amazing things at Carson Middle School.

Thank you.

Trustee Peterson.

Nice and short for me today.

No uh report for Carson High and for Sealager.

All they have is that Ms.

Pryor would like to us to know that they have brought back physical fitness testing.

Uh Mr.

Malmed is actively testing our K through five students in push-ups, sit-ups, sit and reach, mile run, shuttle run, and standing long jump.

And trustees, if any of you would like to test your fitness, you are invited to Sealagar to join them.

Yeah, yeah, go relive it.

Yeah, I'm busy the whole week, sorry.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then Trusty Varner, if you will do your school and NASB after that, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Um for Boardwick Bray.

They have their parent teacher conferences next week, uh, March 31st through April 13th or 3rd, I'm sorry.

And they are really looking forward to meeting with all their families and are aiming for 100% attendance.

They also have their bunny math back challenge coming up on Wednesday, which is tomorrow, with the reward of an egg hunt on April 3rd for all those that meet their goal.

They also have their next house meeting on April 3rd.

And that's my report for Boardwork, but I have one for Fritz Elementary.

Principal Brown is pleased to announce that the Fritz teachers look forward to shaking hands at the parent teacher conferences being held March 31st to April 3rd.

Uh, they're hoping that they get 100% participation from the parents.

Also, their PTA is hitting the ice with Tahoe Night Monsters this Friday and Sunday.

And he wanted to let everybody know the good seats are still available if you'd like to attend.

And I think most importantly, from this report is it is Mr.

Brown's birthday.

So we'd like to wish him a happy birthday.

I think he's 39 again, is what I've been told.

But anyway, that's my report for the school school.

And if you'll continue with NASP, I overlook that.

I'm sorry.

Uh, for the public, uh, number one, thank you guys for being here.

But we're also a member of the Nevada Association School Boards, which is a statewide organization that's um made up of representatives from all 17 school districts.

And this last Friday, we had our joint meeting for direct directors and the executive committee, where several uh important issues were discussed.

One of the most important things in my mind was um the dues committee had met previously, and I happened to be on that committee.

And uh we were due for a 5% due increase this year, but uh we were able to get it down to where there's no increase in dues for this coming year, which I thought that was really good.

Also, uh state superintendent of instruction uh Wakefield attended the meeting and talked about the new district accountability system that's been developed.

And one of the important things about that is one of the measures that are going to be looking at is if a district has a continuing decline in their ending fund balance, that's going to be held against them.

So that's why you know we're really paying attention to the budget also.

Uh there were several items discussed about some of the projects that uh NASBI has supported during the legislative session, and they're preparing for this next session already on some of the things that are going to be uh supporting.

One of the biggest things that uh this last session that NASBY was involved in was their the rural school funding initiative, which authorized the AB 224, authorized up to 100 million dollars in state bonds to fund urgent school facilities improvements in rural districts with limited tax capacity.

What this means is that White Pine County is finally going to be able to build a new school, which a lot of the schools are over 100 years old.

So that was a big uh push this last session, and they're going to try to push again to uh renew that so other schools can take advantage of other school districts could take advantage of it.

Uh they're going to support efforts to bring back the programs that would provide free meals to every student in Nevada, regardless of their ability to pay.

They're going to oppose any effort that takes away the ability of a school district to determine the use of cell phones in the classroom.

In other words, they want to leave it with local control.

See, there's other things here.

Uh they're going to support additional funding for special education curriculum and programs in the classroom, which we all know we sorely need.

And I think that's probably the biggest things that they're going to be supporting this year, but there'll be other things that come up.

And as the year moves on and the uh legislative agenda is adopted, then I'll make sure that everyone here knows.

And I also I think sent you the minutes for the last meeting, so if you want to review those, uh, you can do that.

And also uh gave you some other information for your review.

And that is really my report for NASBY.

Great, thank you.

I do have a question.

If um you could bring it to NASBY's attention with the um governor's uh race election, if they could pay attention to who is running for election and what they are supporting, that would be great.

Yeah, uh I I did fail to mention that uh on Saturday morning, the day of the professional development training.

There were a couple of legislators that have attended that meeting, and they talked about the upcoming session and what their plans are for that.

But the uh Tom Clark and associates who are our lobbyist firm, they are paying attention to all the different legislators and uh political uh candidates who are running for office to make sure that uh they're aware of what agenda we would like to see and to see what their agenda is.

So they are on top of that.

If that's something that you could if you get updates and present back to us, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Yeah, definitely.

Uh I'll get ongoing updates and I'll forward that to you guys.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Um, yes, and so for my report for Empire Elementary School, Ms.

Virgil mentions that they are looking forward to the third quarter awards assembly for parents this Friday to highlight the students' amazing academic growth and achievement.

So I would encourage all parents to attend to support your students and your children.

That'd be great.

Um, and then I would also like to mention that um the Carson High School representative that's usually here is absent this evening because he is traveling back from a baseball tournament from California.

So he's unable to make it this evening.

So hopefully they had great success as well.

All right, that concludes agenda item number five.

We'll move on to agenda item number six, association reports.

Do we have any association reports?

All right, thank you.

Good evening.

Uh CHRO, Mr.

Saddler, President Walt, and trustees and members of the public.

My name is Brian Wallace.

I am the president of OCEA, which represents the certified staff within the Carson City School District.

OCA appreciates the board's willingness to continue to confront the difficult financial realities, including their proposal to operate or attempt to operate with a 2.5 to $3 million deficit.

However, this approach is not sustainable under the current funding structure and it is forcing us to risk unraveling all of our hard work, including being the only school district in the state of Nevada with a social worker at every single site.

With the implementation of the pupil centered funding plan, school districts in Nevada no longer benefit from the stability once provided by the hold harmless provisions.

In the past, those production protections held buffered districts from sudden year-to-year funding fluctuations that we are now experiencing.

Without them, districts are now exposed to unpredictable and often significant swings in revenue and are having to respond immediately.

This lack of stability makes long-term planning far more difficult.

It forces districts into a reactive position rather than allowing for thoughtful strategic decision making.

And we have seen that around the state, including in Douglas County currently.

Staffing in particular becomes increasingly risky.

Which I hope Superintendent Wakefield is taking due note of based on the comments you just shared, trustee.

What we are experiencing in Carson City is not an isolated issue.

It is the result of what can be best described as a funding lag trap.

Decisions are made based on prior data leading to delayed financial consequences, creating budget shocks for our districts, like the one we are now facing, resulting in a potential drastic reduction in services to our students.

We must be mindful of the message this is going to send to the Nevada legislature.

If Carson City and other districts continue to operate under this model, it will appear to the legislature that this district and our other brothers and sister districts can absorb these funding challenges without significant consequences.

While we are fortunate to have reserves relying on them is not the long-term solution.

Looking ahead to the 2027 legislative session, it is going to be critical for all of us in this room and on the dais to be present and engaged.

Lawmakers need to see and hear directly from those impacted, especially school board members who are being asked year after year to have us do more with less.

Your voices, your leadership will be essential inside that building, advocating for more stable and sustainable funding model for Carson City students.

The Nevada State Education Association and OCA looks forward to seeing you inside the building during the Nevada 2027 legislative session.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Wallace.

Trustee Varner, you had a comment.

Yes, to your point, uh, and thank you for your comments.

Uh NASBY, the Nevada Associated School Board.

We do have a subcommittee for legislative uh concerns, and uh we will be attending the legislature on ongoing basis.

And uh there's also going to be a meeting with all the legislators at the start of the session, which we normally do, where we'll have opportunity to share our thoughts about the budget.

And uh I can tell you and guarantee that there's ongoing conversations about the budget uh situation in Nevada right now for the school districts.

So that's ongoing, and that's one of the main priorities for the um uh our lobbyist.

Thank you.

Great, thank you for that input.

Um any other additional associates.

All right, seeing none, we'll close the jet uh agenda item number six and go on to agenda item number seven.

This is for public comment.

Um, before we get into public comment, I just uh would like the public to know that since we pulled agenda item number 13, which is the discussion of possible action of to authorize the superintendent to issue a notice of layoff due to the reduction in force.

Um, it is no longer on the agenda.

So you would then you have an option to submit your public comment now, it uh agenda item number seven, or you can wait until it resurfaces at a future meeting.

Okay, I just want to put that out there.

Um, but before we get on to that, we will I will ask Renee, did we have any public comment via email?

Yes, President Walt, thank you.

I so public comment was received via email by the file from the following um staff and or community members.

Lynn Garrett, Laura Hale, Bill Buckley, Bobby Johnson, Shana Stockton, Sage Lazennial, Amber Schuck, Kaylee Chandler, Shania Sear, Heather Arrozco, Jennifer Kilpatrick, Kyra Morgan, Chris Graham, Talia Medina, Heather Saler, Jessica Weiser, Naomi Gaschu, Jared Gilster, Janie Smith, Amanda Hall, Jessica Damro, Danica Williams, Caitlin Faron, Abby Haywood, Amanda Blackwell, Kyra Morgan, Laurel Malik, Amy Perez, Narisa Mortenson, Jenny Weimer, Tia Olsen, McKinsey, Torresilius, Katie Wood, Chase Rowe, Sonia, Lara Angulo, and Jenny Crane.

Copies of the emailed public comment was provided to the trustees and will be included in the permanent record.

Thank you.

Great, thank you so much.

I would also like to mention as well, agenda item number 12 is discussion only.

Since this will is not an agenda item, we do not ask for public comment during that agenda item.

So if you are here to discuss or to make public comment on agenda item number 12, you would do so at this time as well.

All right, so to um keep this going, I see that we have uh quite a bit of public comment.

Uh please note that um you are limited.

Um, your comments are no more than three minutes.

And um, so what will happen is if you go over three minutes, the buzzer will buzz and then you will have to stop.

But keep in mind anything that you would like to add to that, please.

You're more than welcome to email as well.

Okay.

All right.

So we're gonna go ahead and start with um Sherry Curtis.

If you would please come up.

Uh behind Sherry will be Macy Lawrence and Ariel Lawrence.

So if you guys will just come up, um, you know, be ready to go.

And um, when you start, uh please press the um microphone.

Once you see the green, it is on, and you can go ahead and start with your public comment.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Sherry Curtis.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight and share my opinion.

As a concerned parent, I am here asking you to please reconsider your decisions in regards to letting our school social workers go.

These social workers are placed in our schools with sole intent to intervene and help children experiencing crisis situations.

They're they are there to help children who do not have adequate home lives and aid families in emergency situations.

Though I am here in support for each and every person who may be possibly affected by the choice to cut these positions from our schools, I'm here tonight speaking on my behalf of Nicole Sitton.

My children and I are deeply saddened and shocked since learning what may be happening.

And from personal experience over the last nine years, Miss And has walked every step of my family's journey right beside us.

Over the last nine years, uh, we have worked together.

My family has experienced all of the realms of life, from being a recovering teen mom, regaining custody of my kids back, to experiencing homeless while dealing with a terminal family illness, and all the highs and lows in between, and most recently getting out of an unstable situation into a safe environment.

Ms.

Sitton has been there to make sure that my children and I were okay every step of the way.

Always there to lend a hand to them in any literal situation that she could.

My children and hundreds of other children, I'm sure, have spent countless brave days opening up to these social workers who have become confided friends for them.

These social workers make sure that the kids are heard and understood.

They give them a safe place to think, relax, and express their emotions.

It puts me in disbelief that getting rid of these people that play such an important role to these students is being considered, especially when you put into perspection or perspective the generation that we are living in where teens' mental health crisis and suicide are on such a high rise.

Most of the children that these social workers are dealing with don't have parents that take care of them nor provide good lives for them.

Many of them are struggling with minimum to no parental guidance at all.

Many of these children look to their social workers for love and support that they lack elsewhere.

Elimination of these positions in our school district is putting our students in direct lines of unsafe and vulnerable situations.

As a members of a board that has been elected to protect, lead and keep the best interests of every student in mind.

I'm strongly asking you to reconsider your thoughts and decisions in this matter.

Last but not least, I would like to thank Miss Sitten for every selfless choice that you have made while standing along every alongside every student who has needed your guidance and support.

Thank you for continuing to be the amazing person that you set out to position.

Thank you.

Uh thank you for your public comment.

Macy Lawrence.

This is Macy right here.

Oh hi.

Yeah.

Hi.

Hi, I'm Macy Lawrence, and I'm here to speak and share my opinion on how you are trying to take our school social workers.

In my experience, Misson has helped me overcome many issues that I cannot talk about in front of others.

With her kind words and gentle hugs, she has helped many kids in school, and that is why we need her to stay and work in our schools as a social as a social worker.

If you were to take away school social workers, then you would be taking then you would be hurting kids because they wouldn't have be able to talk about bad homes and school situations.

Many would be able to express what they're feeling and possibly and possibly hurting themselves.

Miss In helps students in other ways, like when I was at the school, Miss Sin would introduce me to new students, so they would um so they felt welcome to our to their new school.

And my experience, she's always made sure I was heard, comfortable, safe, and understood.

She always listened and um and did what she could to help me.

Please don't take our school social workers anyway and oh wow.

Away, please don't.

Um, thank you.

Thank you.

Ariel.

Good evening, my name.

Good evening.

My name is Ariel Lawrence.

I'm a student at Freddy Elementary.

I'm here to speak in support of Miss Sitton.

I am seeing.

It's okay.

Okay.

It says, I am here to speak in support of Miss Sitton.

I have seen how much Miss Sitton helps us every single day because of the kids like me, or because of that, kids like me have someone that we can trust and talk to when things are hard.

When I see Miss Sitton helping someone calm down or giving someone a safe place to go, it makes our whole school feel like a home, even if we don't have one.

Without Miss Sitton and all the social workers, we wouldn't have that extra help when we need it.

That makes it easier to focus on school and being a normal student.

I strongly ask to keep Miss Sitton and all the social workers in our schools.

We need them here.

Thank you for your time and the opportunity to speak today.

Ariel Lawrence.

Thank you very much.

Come on.

Thank you.

Uh Dylan Blues, then Patricia Hernandez, Hara, Nicole Sitton.

Please make sure the the microphone has a green.

Press the button to have a green.

Okay, go ahead.

My name is Dylan Pleuse, and I really think that Miss Stephanie should stay at our school because she because she helps us with our things that make us she helps us kids that are angry and destroy rooms, and and she helps kids calm down.

And she really um is a really good friend, and I think that she should stay at our school.

Thank you very much.

Uh Patricia Hernandez, Hara.

And then if we could have Nicole sitting ready to go.

Oh, okay.

Hi.

My name is Patricia Hernandez Juarez.

I'm a school social worker over at Empire Elementary School.

Um, I became a school social worker because I know what it feels like to go through hard things as a child.

Someone there to truly listen or support you.

That lived experience is what drive us, what drives me to do the work every day with my students.

The decision is devastating.

And I'm already seeing it firsthand.

My students are not okay.

Many are anxious, confused, heartbroken at the thought of losing someone that they trust.

Cutting school social workers will have a direct and lasting impact on students that I serve and everyone else who is a school social worker.

I currently run about 15 groups, supporting 79 students total in those groups, and approximately 40 of those can qualify as medicated recipients, whom I see twice a week.

This presents a potential opportunity for reimbursement, estimating around $6,569 a month alone.

And probably even more for the ones that I do one-on-one check-ins.

But beyond the numbers, these are children who rely on consistent relationship-based support to navigate anxiety, trauma, and challenges outside of school.

For some, I am the only consistent and safe adult that they have.

Without that relationship, their sense of safety is disrupted.

Their ability to regulate, focus, and learn is deeply affected.

This decision doesn't just remove a position, it removes a lifeline.

Our students deserve to feel safe, supported, and heard.

Without school social workers, we are taking away a critical piece of that support system, and consequences will be felt in their behavior, attendance, and academic success.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um tabulus of ELA.

Be ready.

All right, go ahead, Nicole.

For the record, Nicole Sitton, school social worker, Fritch Elementary School.

I have served as a school social worker with the Carson City School District for the past 11 years.

And as one of the first school social workers in our state, dedicating my career to supporting youth and families in our community.

During this time, I have collaborated closely with teachers, staff, school resource officers, McKinney Bento services, DCFS, and community partners support some of our most vulnerable students.

As a pioneer in this role, I have witnessed firsthand the profound changes affecting our community's youth over the past decade.

When I first stepped into this role, there was really no clear roadmap.

I walked in with little more than a resource binder and a notepad and a strong belief in what a school social worker could be.

From that point, I began building system supports, relationships, and resources to meet the real needs of our students and families.

In many ways, I helped shape this role and what it looks like in the strip church today.

Over the past 11 years, we have a whole has served have served hundreds of students and families, often in moments of crisis.

I myself have also had the privilege of working with families supporting multiple children over time and building trust that cannot be quickly replaced.

That continuity helps families stay connected to schools and break cycles of crisis.

Three years ago, I created a program called Growth Garden, combining cognitive behavioral techniques with horticultural to support students experience trauma, loss, and homelessness.

What began as a neglected school garden has become a space where students build coping skills, resilience, and a sense of stability while learning to grow the garden as well as grow within themselves.

I ask who will continue these services at this critical level if school social workers are removed.

The school social workers have also collaborated with Carson City Sheriff's Department on crisis prevention efforts.

While many factors contribute to student safety, it is meaningful that there have been no youth deaths by suicide in our district this year.

I believe that reflects in part the quiet prevention work that school social workers do every day.

Identifying risk early, building trust, and intervening before crisis escalates.

The need has not decreased.

At my school alone, we have had over a hundred plus students experiencing homelessness or in transition over the past two years.

And I currently manage 70 active cases at the elementary level, seeing these students on a regular basis, most of which have embedded through the data-driven MTSS system.

Without social workers, students in crisis may go unsupported.

Families will have fewer connections to essential resources, and already overextended staff will be extent expected to take on complex needs without the time, training, or appropriate licensure to do so.

This will impact not only student well being but well-being, but also attendance, behavior, and academic success.

If we are truly committed to prioritizing our students, our decisions must reflect that commitment.

Eliminating our school social workers does not simply remove positions.

Thank you.

So we have Katie, Diana, and then Stephanie.

Umadi Marcus.

Next, go ahead, Katie.

Hello, my name is Katie Sarate, and I'm a member of the Carson City community.

Thank you for giving me the chance to speak to you all today.

I came here in support of the school the school social workers that work day in and day out to provide students with the skills and resources that are uh that will allow them to be successful and supported throughout their time as a student in the Carson City School District.

As a social work intern with the Carson City School District, I have witnessed the impact that social workers have not only had on staff but uh students firsthand.

As MTSS is one of the major focuses of the school district going forward, ensuring that proper process of the tiered interventions are being followed is important.

Social workers play an integral part in providing and creating groups, providing one-on-one supports for students, connecting students and families with resources, and assist families and students during holidays.

That's only to name a few of the services they provide.

These are all supports that are provided at the school sites and can be immediate interventions that can assist students with regulating and setting them up to be successful as they continue throughout their day in classes.

Having to refer out for services that students rely on at school on a day-to-day basis would build barriers for them and their families and can impact the learning of the student.

Many cannot access these resources in our community due to other barriers that they are facing.

For some, the social workers in the schools are the only trusted adults they may feel supported by.

Before making a decision, I would like you to consider the importance of social workers in our schools and the input you have received from countless community members.

Thank you for your time.

Diana So hi, my name is Diana Aviela, and I teach the graduate level social work students at the University of Nevada Reno.

Many of my students complete internships within the Carson City School District, working alongside your school social workers.

Through this partnership, I have firsthand, I've seen firsthand the level of expertise training and impact these professionals bring to your schools and students.

School social workers are highly trained mental health professionals.

They hold graduate level degrees and receive extensive clinical training in areas such as clinical child development, trauma-informed care, crisis intervention, family systems, and ethical mental health practices.

These are specialized skills that cannot be simply reassigned to others or replaced through short staff trainings.

Carson City School District has a strong multi-tiered system of support.

MTSS is successful because it is built on a multidisciplinary team where each professional contributes a specific set of skills.

Teachers provide instructions, administrators manage systems, nurses address medical needs, and school social workers provide mental health assessments, interventions, family engagement.

When each professional operates within their area of expertise, the system really works.

And honestly, you guys need more school social workers at each school.

The district itself has highlighted the success of this model.

Several Carson City schools have received the Diamond Award for outstanding work and sustained implement implementation of MTSS, supported by strong data systems and positive outcomes.

That level of success is resulted of coordinated specialized work from professionals across disciplines.

Sometimes the work may seem simple on the surface.

Someone might say that a student's cooling down or taking a break, but in reality, a trained school social workers providing clinical intervention, assessing safety, using evidence-based regulation strategies, recognizing trauma responses, and determining what level of support a student needs.

Expecting teachers, administrations, administrators, or nurses to absorb these responsibilities after a short training would not only be unrealistic, but it raises serious ethical concerns within what scope of practice these individuals are in.

Additionally, reliant solely on the outside contractors cannot be replaced.

Embedded school social workers.

Contractors provide a service for a limited time where school social workers become part of the school community.

They know the students, know the families, know the cultures, as we can tell of our little aerial earlier.

They are invested not only in providing service, but in supporting the entire school environment.

I encourage the board to continue exploring ways to sustain these professionals within your schools.

And I know if you guys had the money, you guys would throw it out.

But hopefully, one of you guys really steps up to find the funding that these students really need.

Removing school social workers does not remove the student needs, it simply removes the trained professionals best equipped to meet them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So we have Stephanie, and then after Stephanie will be Taylor, Mendeli, and Jennifer Williams.

Good evening, members of the board.

My name is Stephanie Navila Marcos, and I am a school of social worker.

This school year alone, I have served 177 students.

67 of those students are currently part of my tier two caseload, which focuses on preventative mental health support so that challenges do not escalate into crisis situation.

The students receiving these supports are navigating very real and complex experiences.

Some students have witnessed domestic violence in the home, others are coping with sexual trauma, and many are dealing with the emotional impact of their parents separating and the instability that can come with that process.

I support a student who has gone through leukemia and extensive medical procedures, others who are grieving the death of a loved one, some who are living with mental health diagnosis, and others who have experienced suicide ideation and hospitalization.

These are the realities that students carry with them into our classrooms every day.

Looking specifically at my January data using documentation, 78% of the services I provided were tier two interventions.

That tells us something important.

The majority of the work is happening and happening in schools is preventative support, not crisis response.

Within MTSS, we often hear you cannot use a tier three intervention to work your way out of a tier two issue.

If preventative supports disappear, more students will reach crisis level.

A behavior plan alone will not work if the mental health need driving that behavior is not addressed.

When students are dealing with trauma, grief, anxiety, or instability at home, they first need the skills and support to regulate and process those experiences.

Even though I currently have 67 active tier two students, the MTSS model is working.

Throughout the year, some students graduate back to tier one because they have learned the skills they need.

I want to address sustainability.

I know the board has heard a range of things about Medicaid reimbursement.

Sometimes that it is only pennies to the dollar, but the reality is that Medicaid can be part of the solution.

For example, a 30-minute preventative counseling session reimburses $60 through Medicaid.

In January alone, I documented 177 notes using that code.

If a hundred of those sessions were Medicaid eligible, that would generate $6,000 in one month using one code alone.

To make that realistic, that would be 25 students with Medicaid being seen four times in a month, which is a very realistic number of students in a school setting.

These are services that are already happening with our students.

We're not asking the district to carry this work alone.

We're asking for the opportunity to demonstrate that school social workers can help sustain these positions through the billable clinical work we are already trained to provide.

Prevention is what keeps children from becoming crisis.

I encourage the board to examine Medicaid reimbursement and the BH work system we already use for documentation, which has the ability to build Medicaid as a practical way to sustain school social work positions.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Taylor.

Taylor, Jennifer, and then I think it's uh Valencia Rodriguez.

Hello, my name's Taylor Mandelli.

I'm a speech language pathologist at Sealaker Elementary.

I have the privilege of working alongside Stephanie Navidad Marcos, who was just sitting next to me.

Um, and to piggyback off of that, I guess um, my I have a couple points I want to make.

I know I only have three minutes though.

Um, but one of the main points is um I watched, you know, I watched on YouTube as I was cooking dinner for my toddlers last um meeting, and I didn't hear Medicaid brought up at all in terms of like within the whole district, there's only a handful of employees who could actually generate revenue, speech pathologists being one, um, social workers being another.

Um, and I just would like that to be part of the discussion when you guys are making these big decisions.

I don't know all the numbers.

Stephanie just gave an awesome presentation in terms of the data and the numbers.

Um, I would just like that to be taken into consideration.

Um, another thing is I have the pleasure of working alongside Stephanie and um the MTSS team at my school.

It's my understanding that a mental health professional of some sort is required to be on our team.

So I'm not sure what the what's gonna happen if we get if we don't have social workers on each site.

Um, also as part of MTSS, um, I don't know if it's been brought to the meetings ever or to your guys' attention that MTSS, as of right now this year, we don't have um funding to um have like case managers like we should in for tier two, tier three interventions.

So with the cutting of social workers, I'm not sure who's going to absolve all the cases that they have through MTSS.

Um, so we've been working tirelessly to implement MTSS throughout our schools.

I think that this would be a huge step back.

Um, getting rid of social workers who are huge in that whole process.

As other people have mentioned, um, there is a ripple effect.

So I understand that there's not the money to support it, but just yeah, I don't know.

I would like us to think about longevity and um like what's gonna happen and what other things could happen, like attendance.

I know wholeheartedly we have so many students who come to school and whose attendance has come up.

I know we've been working tirelessly to lower our absentee numbers.

Kids would not be coming to school if it wasn't for Miss Stephanie.

She is their safe place.

Um, as sad as that is.

Um, and it's not just a matter of them feeling sad, it's her clinical skilled interventions that she is providing that other staff members cannot provide.

I do not have the licensing or the scope of practice or the skill set to do what she is doing.

Um, my last point was that at the last meeting, um, somebody had mentioned that there's contractors who can come in.

Um, the girl who so bravely spoke at the last meeting, um the high schooler.

I really don't think she would have been making reports that she did to a contractor and not somebody who was a full-time staff member at her site.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Jennifer Williams, and then is there Alicia Rodriguez ready to go?

And then uh Sherry um.

Hello, my name is Jennifer Williams.

I teach fourth grade at Sealager Elementary.

Um, I'm here tonight to speak about school social workers.

Um I sent an email out explaining why we should not be cutting teachers or social workers.

Um I'm not gonna read that email.

I'm here to speak about the actual impact that school social workers have had on me, all my students, and actually my colleagues.

It's not just for the kids, too.

They um really help everybody in the building.

Um, I used the name Stephanie and Avi Dad Marcos in my email, and as well as all the other social workers here that you've heard about so far tonight.

I've had a student walk through my classroom doors after almost losing a battle with childhood cancer.

Um instead of this poor girl going to another building for another appointment.

She finds comfort in Miss Stephanie.

Um kids make fun of her cancer hair, she finds comfort in Miss Stephanie.

Um she is their safe place when they've already dealt with so much at the age of 10.

Um I was pregnant, which was a very hard pregnancy to happen.

Um, I was under the stress of a child who was very violent and throwing chairs in my room and destroying classrooms.

Stephanie was the only one who could de-escalate this child in that moment.

So she's taking, she has that ability to de-escalate these students and these situations and not only keeping myself safe in that time, but also the other 23 children in my classroom.

Um she doesn't just help with students, she's also counseled staff when they've received graphic death threats that were credible, not just hearsay.

The school social workers are crucial at all levels.

However, elementary school social workers are vital.

Without them, we don't have the extra support staffing to replace them.

The secondary level does have deans, counselors, and administrators.

We don't have those personnel in our in our school.

Um, without them, we're gonna begin to fall apart.

Um, administrators are already expected to do so much.

And if we take out the social workers and how much they alleviate throughout the day, we will see a decrease of learning for all learners because we are seeing such an increase in behaviors that are taking away the learners and the safe or the learning and the safety away.

Um, please do not cut elementary school social workers.

And if you can, please save all social workers.

They all deserve their time in our buildings.

Supporting our children is worth a budget deficit that we can work on recouping with a tighter budget in mind.

I encourage you before you vote on this, please spend a few days with our social workers and see what they truly have to conquer through each day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Basilia Rodriguez for the record, licensed master social worker, school social worker at Fremont Elementary.

I know that this is not an easy task.

But I'm here to advocate for the I'm so sorry.

Could you speak closer to the microphone, please?

I know that this isn't an easy task that you guys have.

Um, but I'm here to advocate for the mental health and well-being of our students, our families, and our staff moving forward.

At Fremont, we are a community committed to providing high-quality student-centered instruction that promotes social, emotional, and academic growth in a safe environment with our vision of fostering lifelong learners who achieve their maximum potential.

I've learned to follow our motto of find a way by collaborating with community resources.

Um, as social workers at the elementary level are the only mental health professionals there.

So it's been hard.

School social workers play a key role in connecting and bridging gaps between students, families, community resources, school and home environments.

From these identified needs, we complete referrals or provide interventions at different tiers, such as individual sessions or groups so that the appropriate services are being received.

These past two weeks alone, I have received referrals of students with suicide ideation, students in need of therapy referrals.

I've completed home visits and partnered with community resources for additional support, such as our school resource officers, our food for thought, division of child and family services, and Ron Wood, all on top of running the seven groups that I have on a weekly basis and my individual student check-ins.

This goes to show that our students face a diverse range of hardships from day to day.

Students do not leave these struggles outside of school doors, and they affect students who are trying their best in a situation they may have little to no control.

School social workers are able to offer that social emotional support, a safe space, and provide healthy coping strategies for students to use and implement as needed.

The most common question I've heard since February on eliminating school social workers is who will carry the work.

As mentioned, there are no other mental health professionals at the elementary sites who will be able to identify and refer students for additional support.

Who will assess the students stating they are self-harming and want to take their own lives?

Who is going to sit with parents, complete referrals, complete safety plans, and follow up?

Crisis does not have a time slot in each day.

School social workers are fundamental at every level of school.

But I ask that you please reconsider the many lives that will be impacted by the decision to eliminate all 12 full-time employees, especially leaving the six elementary schools without mental health professionals to address these needs.

I'm asking that you put the safety of our students and their mental health as a priority.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Sherry?

Sherry, then Bethany, uh Want and Kathy White.

Thank you for the opportunity for me to talk to you today.

For the record, my name is Sherry Scaffidi.

I am an intervention paraprofessional at Fremont Elementary School.

As you may know, there are many surveys that track state by their ranking in education.

The World Population Review ranks the state of Nevada 44th in education.

In my capacity as an intervention paraprofessional, I work with all grade levels, K through five.

I work with a few fifth grade students that cannot read what I consider simple words, words such as like made, roll.

There are other examples in the grades I work with where students are not up to grade level.

I believe by cutting funding to the paraprofessional program, we are letting our children down.

Two years ago, I worked with a Hispanic fifth grade student.

She spoke beautiful English and beautiful Spanish, but could not read in English.

She struggled but kept on with her reading.

When she could finally read one of those books by herself, she was so proud that it brought tears to my eyes.

This is why we paraprofessionals do what we do to help our students succeed.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Bethany.

Good evening, members of the board.

My name is Bethany Want, and I'm a school nurse within the Carson City School District.

I work in our schools every day, and I see firsthand the struggles our students face.

The trauma, the fear, the mental health challenges, and the critical role school social workers play in keeping them safe, healthy, and able to learn.

Tonight I'm here to share the voices of the children within our schools.

I don't have food at my house.

I'm scared to go home.

My parents scream and throw things every night.

I was raped.

I'm fat and I'm ugly and I want to die.

The world would be better off without me.

These are not dramatic statements.

These statements are said every day in our schools, and when those statements are made, those children are usually sitting across from a school social worker.

At the last school board meeting, a topic of conversation was making sure students are in the classroom engaged and learning.

But what happens when children are in the classroom and don't have the support they need to function in there?

What happens to the student who cannot regulate their emotions and has loud outbursts that stop an entire classroom from learning?

Yes, you will have students in the classroom, but there will be no learning or engagement happening.

You would be checking a box to students in a class, but with no actual education that is happening.

Without school social workers, there will be no one there to step in, de-escalate, support that child, and help the classroom return to learning.

Instead, that responsibility will fall on teachers, incredible educators who are already stretched so thin.

They have never been trained or educated to handle the level of trauma, crisis, and mental health needs we see every single day.

At the previous school board meeting, I also heard it said that a grant would allow tier three students to still have access to contractors.

I strongly encourage every single one of you with becoming familiar with what happens before a student ever reaches a tier one status or tier three status.

There's a tier one, there's a tier two, and then there's a tier three.

If it were not for the workers, school social workers do every single day at a tier one and tier two level, the number of students reaching tier three would be off the charts, far beyond what any grant could ever fund or contractors could ever manage.

It is our school social workers who grind every single day to keep students stable, healthy, and safe.

I understand that we are facing a we are facing a budget deficit, but eliminating all school social workers is not a solution to get out of a financial deficit.

It is a decision that will create consequences far greater than the savings.

I especially urge you to think about our elementary schools.

In the elementary buildings, there are no counselors, there's no deans, there's no additional support staffed.

The district is already talking about eliminating even more support staff within our schools, making resources even more scarce.

So why would it ever be considered cutting the specialized people who carry all the clinical hours in education to help our students?

When you look into the budget, look into ways where funding can be brought in through avenues such as Medicaid billing.

The district has not had to invest in our social workers for the last several years because of grant funding.

Now the district needs to find a way to invest in them because by doing so, you are investing investing in our children of our community and our future town.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Kathy White, and then if Eleanor Williams and I think it's Gareth Williams, be ready to speak.

Good evening.

I'm Kathy White, and I've lived in Carson City for 54 years.

And this is the first time I felt the need to be at one of your meetings so I could address the proposed decision to eliminate school social workers in Carson City School District.

I want to be clear.

This is not just a staffing change.

This is a decision that would directly impact the safety, mental health, and ability of our students to learn.

I have to ask has anyone truly looked at the data?

Have you looked at how many students school social workers serve every single day?

How many crises they de-escalate?

How many students they check in with, sometimes multiple times a day, just to make sure those children can stay in school and feel safe.

These professionals are not optional support.

They are essential.

And I want to share a real example of why.

Last year, my grandson, who was in kindergarten, just six years old, was in the restroom at school when another student put his hands around his neck and choked him.

After that, he was terrified to go to school.

He was terrified to use the restroom.

He could not access the education because he did not feel safe.

The only reason he was able to return to feel secure again and to continue learning was because of the school social worker.

That social worker worked with him daily, helping him process that trauma, rebuild his sense of safety, and simply be a child in a classroom again.

Without that support, he would not have been able to access the free public education he is entitled to.

So I ask you, what happens now when incidents like this occur?

And they will, and there is no trained professional in the building to respond.

What happens to the students who experience trauma inside the walls of our schools?

It's easy to talk about students who already have identified needs and say they can be referred to outside contractors.

But what about the students who don't have a diagnosis, who aren't already in the system, and who suddenly experienced crisis at school?

What about the children who are impacted by the behaviors of high-risk students?

Who is going to support them in that moment?

Removing school social workers shifts the burden onto staff who are not trained for it, and it leaves vulnerable children without the support they need in the exact moment that they need it.

It will create more trauma, more disruption, and more barriers to learning.

Our schools should be a place where children feel safe, supported, and ready to learn.

Eliminating school social workers moves us in the opposite direction.

I urge you to reconsider this decision.

Listen to the people who are actually doing this work every day.

Look at the data, look at the real stories like my grandsons, and ask yourself if this is truly what is best for our children, because right now this decision is not in their best interest.

Because right now, this decision is not in their best interest.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have Eleanor Williams, Gareth Williams, and Danica Williams.

I'm Eleanor Williams, and I'm a student at Eagle Valley Middle School.

School staff, particularly particularly social workers are important for all students.

They have impacts large and small to many students.

In my own experience, I had Miss Stephanie at Sealager who made a large impact on my life.

And I know that there are other students at other schools with their own Miss Stephanie who feel the same.

School social workers are amazing people and probably some of the nicest people that I have encountered in this district.

From my experience, I always went to Miss Stephanie when I was feeling down and sad, and when I was done meeting with her, I wasn't sad or down anymore.

In 2022, I was in fourth grade.

My grandma had just passed away.

She was the one person I could go to after my grandma passed away because she actually understood me and what I was going through.

I don't go to Sea Lager anymore, but my brothers do.

And when there is back to school events in the beginning of the school year, I will always go looking for her.

When I do go look for looking for her, she still remembers me, which shows how much she cares for her students and even former students.

I hope that you will maintain funding our social workers and other staff to ensure our students get the same care that they have had.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, hi, my name is Gareth Williams.

I am a student at Sealager Elementary School.

And with our social workers, Mrs.

Stephanie, um, I have a hard time learning because I have ADHD and I freak out, I get anxiety.

I don't know what to do, but when I go to Miss Stephanie, she's the one that can help.

If I get scared or people make me uncomfortable or threats to me, I go to her and she talks me out of it.

And I feel good again because when I first walk in, I'm still scared to even go to school.

And when I walk first walk into her classroom, I feel really comfortable there.

It's like a second home to me because it's like calm, it's warm, and I can actually speak freely, and someone actually understands.

And normally when I talk to other people, like my teachers, um, students, uh, they always some of them understand, some of them don't.

And when I what just when I go to uh Miss Stephanie, she helps.

So this um can this idea of getting rid of social workers, I don't agree on that because they help us a lot, and I don't know what um my life at Seelager would be anymore without Miss Stephanie and the other social workers.

Thank you.

Uh Danica uh Danica, Molly McGregor, and then Bailey Arbor.

For the record, my name is Dr.

Danica Williams.

I'm a parent of three children, two of which you just met in the Carson City School District.

I'm also a former Carson City student and a public health professional.

I also serve on the Carson City or Carson City School District Family Life Advisory Committee.

I'm speaking today as a parent whose children have been directly helped by the very positions you may be considering cutting under agenda item 13.

I have one daughter at Eagle Valley Middle School, who previously attended Sealager, and two sons current currently at Sealagar.

Every one of my children has needed help at some point from school social workers, intervention specialists, or student support staff.

These people are not extras.

They are part of what makes school a safe place for our kids.

A few years ago, my family went through one of the hardest experiences we have faced.

My mother, who cared for my children while my husband and I worked, was diagnosed with cancer and passed away only a few months later.

My children were incredibly close to her.

Their world changed overnight, but school did not stop.

They still had to show up every day and try to learn while carrying grief that even adults struggled to handle.

It was the school support staff who carried them through that time.

At Sealagar Elementary School, Miss Stephanie, the school social worker, became a household name in our home.

When my children needed somewhere to go when emotions hit during the school day, she was there.

When they could not explain why they were sad or overwhelmed, she was there.

When grief made it impossible to focus on learning, she was there.

Teachers educate our children's minds.

People like Miss Stephanie care for their hearts.

Without that support, my children would not be where they are today.

My daughter would not be an honor society if she had fallen behind during that time.

My sons would not be growing into the young men.

They are becoming without the staff who step in early to help kids handle big emotions before they turn into bigger problems.

As a parent, I send my children to school every morning, trusting they are safe, not just physically, but emotionally.

I trust that if something happens during the day, there is someone there who knows how to help them get through it.

As a public health professional, I can tell you that cutting these positions does not make problems go away.

It moves them.

We see the effects in discipline, mental health crises, absenteeism, and sometimes tragedies, people later ask how they could have been prevented.

We talk about preventing use suicide.

We talk about preventing violence in schools.

We talk about helping children succeed.

These staff are part of how we do that.

Before coming tonight, I asked my children what Miss Stephanie means to them.

Their full words are in my written submission.

But my 10-year-old told me she helps me.

She talks me through it.

She says you can do this, get through the day.

And when she says that, I always get through the day.

Miss Stephanie has changed my life at school.

Budgets matter, but so do children.

As you consider it, agenda item 13.

Please remember, the cost savings of cutting these positions will show up in the budget, but the cost of losing them will show up in our children.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bailey, Barber, and then Lindsay Bly.

For the record, my name is Molly McGregor.

I'm a social worker at uh Carson Middle School.

I didn't prepare anything tonight because I have no words.

If after a decade of service you guys don't understand what we do, I have no words to describe what we do.

Um I hear everyone here tonight, and I am overwhelmed and amazed at all of the people here in support of the work we do.

But what are our babies gonna do?

You know, the elementary school has nobody.

I'm a secondary level, I'm expendable.

I have counselors who are amazing.

What are those babies gonna do?

What contractor is gonna fill a 70 person caseload plus an extra 40 to 70 people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity?

What contractor is gonna take my role and trudge behind the field of St.

Teresa's looking for a family that's living in a tent?

What contractor is gonna do that?

What contractor is gonna come in and work with these kids every day?

Provide therapy when they need it, billable services, by the way.

Even if we don't have all clinicians on staff, we are all, every one of us, all 12 of us providing viable billable services, which has not really been discussed by this board.

I didn't hear anybody defending that last time.

We met and discussed this.

There was no discussion of that.

And I hear no discussion directly to our team who are qualified mental health professionals who, if some of us have been to school for the equivalent of a doctorate degree.

We are experts in our field.

These kids need us here.

They need you to know that you care about them.

And who, why contractor is gonna do that?

You know, we are seeing unprecedented numbers of homelessness, unprecedented numbers of suicidal ideation and attempts, unprecedented numbers of homicidal ideation.

I am the only person at my school site this year that has identified active homicidal ideation with method plan and intent and developed those safety plans.

You are creating by eliminating all of us a massive safety and liability issue that I don't even think you have begun to understand.

These children are worth it.

And in a world that is so chaotic, somebody needs to know that that 1.3 million dollars is worth it, that we are sustainable and can sustain our jobs.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have uh Bailey Barber, Lindsay Bly, and then Carrie Pryor.

Good evening, members of the board.

I stood before you in February, asking you to see the value of school social workers.

Tonight, I'm asking you who will take the responsibility of what happens if we're gone.

Before you make this decision, I have one request.

Answer the hard questions.

Because if these positions are eliminated, the needs do not disappear, the crises do not disappear, and the students do not disappear.

Since the last meeting, I have gone through a cycle of grief.

I've felt sadness and anger.

I felt frustrated and disenfranchised by systems that should support the work that we do, and yet I am still here advocating for the 12 school social workers who for the first time will cost this district money, but whose impact on students is immeasurable.

Every student deserves someone in their corner.

And every student's corner looks a little different.

For some, it's a friendly face in the halls.

For others, it's an adult they turn to when their life is falling apart.

This is the reality of our work, from comforting a student who lost a pet to sitting with a teen grieving a parent to safety planning and connecting families to therapy, food, housing, and other resources.

We're the bridge from the school to home to the community.

The need is urgent.

According to the 2021 Nevada Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 45% of teenagers felt sad or hopelessness almost every day for two or more weeks.

Twenty-two percent seriously considered attempting suicide.

22% made a plan for how they would attempt suicide.

And 12% actually attempted suicide.

So before these positions are eliminated, I ask again, who takes their place?

Who will respond when a student is suicidal or being abused?

Who will help support McKinney Vinto students while at school?

Who will distribute food and basic need items, manage school resource programs, or coach teachers through mandated reports, who de-escalate students in crisis, who will run prevention programs like Week of Respect, Mental Health Month, Erica's Lighthouse, and SOS, who will build enough trust that students feel safe sharing the hardest things in their lives?

A trusted adult and a contractor are not the same.

You cannot contract out crisis, you cannot contract out abuse, you cannot contract out day-to-day support, community resource linkage, or school social worker.

At Silver Campus, I've worked with 68 out of our 82 students this year.

Every day I see the impact, a student who can focus after a tragedy, a teen with anxiety, a parent guided to resources, and these moments save futures.

Investing in social workers is not a cost.

It is an investment in student success, healthier families, stronger communities, it's prevention, it's hope, and it's essential.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We have Lindsay Bly, Carrie Pryor, and then Wilma Johnson.

Hi, I am Lindsay Bly, a teacher at Sealager Elementary.

Um, and I just came to talk to you guys because if the choice is not accepted to keep social workers at every single elementary school, every single middle school, high school needs must be, then you will be effectively crippling Carson City School District.

You will be taking away the opportunity for every single student to come to school, have a safe place to be themselves, have a safe place to be in general, and a safe place to learn.

If we want those great test scores that are so important and big, we need to provide a place where kids can be kids, where they aren't worried about if they have food, if they are safe.

As a teacher, if I did not have a social worker at my school last year, I would have had to evacuate my room multiple times a month, which now destroys my students' learning opportunity for my whole class, as well as the class that we have to evacuate into for at least 30 minutes while that student is helped by admin if they're not already handling several other students in crisis.

As a teacher, I am not qualified, trained, or licensed to help students going through suicidal ideations or self-harm.

I am not qualified or trained or licensed to help students get food, help families get food, clothing, and safety when they can't at home, either because of financial strength issues or because of neglect.

I am not qualified, licensed or trained to help students and families create a returning to class plan after they have been hospitalized or removed from the classroom.

I am not qualified, trained or skilled in helping students who are going through physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse of any type.

That is not my job as a teacher as much as I would love it to be.

I need to be able to educate my students and give them all the chance to learn that they can.

I need someone who has that skill, who has that experience to help those students in the right ways, ways that I cannot, ways that I wish I could, but don't know how to.

And if we do not have a social worker at every site, those students are not going to trust a contractor.

They're not gonna trust a shared social worker to open up to, to be honest with.

Families will not trust a stranger that they see maybe once a month if they aren't helping other schools.

Furthermore, we are going to have a lot of upset parents if this, if we do not have someone for these students when they are having a hard time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Carrie Pryor, William Johnson, if you'll be ready, and then Sarah Romeo.

Carrie Pryor, principal of Seelagar Elementary School.

I'm not sure what I can add to the already outcry to support our social workers, but I often say silence is acceptance.

And that means that if you don't speak up for what you believe in or advocate by see being silent, you're accepting it.

And so I'm going to offer my voice whether it will change the outcome or not.

I want to start by acknowledging the weight of the decisions before you are bored.

When resources are limited, prioritization becomes unavoidable, and none of these choices are easy.

Every position in our district represents a person who contributes to students and schools.

And I want to be very clear that advocating for one role does not mean or is not meant to diminish the value of any other position that may be affected by these reductions.

However, I am here tonight to advocate strongly for maintaining elementary social workers in Carson City School District.

Without them, 3,000 elementary students will be left without access to tier one mental health services.

At Al Sealager, I have seen firsthand the work of a social worker and how far it goes beyond what can be captured in a job description.

Miss Stephanie, our social worker, is a confidant to students who need a safe, trusted adult, often the one person they feel comfortable turning to when everything else feels uncertain.

When a student is in crisis, she is consistently the first to respond.

In crisis situations, she brings calm, training, and compassion into moments that can quickly quickly escalate.

Her presence protects students, supports staff, and restores a sense of safety across campus.

And after those moments pass, she checks on everyone involved, the student, the staff, and others impacted, making sure no one is left carrying that weight alone.

In my 31 years in education, I can say that Miss Stephanie has also been one of my greatest mentors.

She has coached me as a school leader to pause, to use my wise mind, and to proceed with awareness to consider our school goals, my thoughts and feelings, the situation and the perspective of others.

That kind of coaching from an exceptional mental health provider, educator, and advocate for growth and self-awareness has made me a better school leader.

And at Sealager, everyone, including the principal, is always learning.

Beyond individual situations, elementary school social workers are deeply embedded in the overall functioning of our schools.

They provide staff training, support our MTSS systems as case managers, and I thank you for your time.

Thank you.

William Johnson, Sarah Romeo, and then Nate Smith.

Good evening.

My name is Wilma Johnson.

I work, I've been working for 16 years for the school district from elementary to high school.

Currently I'm at Fritz Elementary, and I can tell you this.

What our students are bringing into the classroom today is heavier than ever before.

It's not just academics anymore.

It's anxiety, instability, trauma, and situations at home that many children don't know how to process.

There have been many times when a student behavior or academic performance suddenly changed.

And it wasn't until our social worker became involved that we understood why.

In some cases, these students were dealing with things no child should ever have to carry.

Parents going through divorce, no food at home, constant conflict, neglect, and even abuse.

Without a social worker, these situations just don't disappear.

They just go unseen.

And those students risk being labeled as behavior problems instead of children who need help.

And what we are seeing in our schools right now is that behavior is escalating.

Teachers are already being asked to do more than ever, drive academic growth, prepare students for testing, close learning gaps, and at the same time manage increasingly challenging and sometimes unsafe behaviors.

There is simply no capacity left to also take on level the level of social and emotional support, many students not required.

That's where social workers come in.

They are not extra, they are not a luxury, they are essential.

They help students regulate cope and return to learning.

They support families, they help prevent situations from escalating before they become a crisis.

We cannot expect academic success without emotional support.

The two go hand in hand.

Removing social workers doesn't just take away support, it creates a gap.

For some of our students, school is the only place where they feel safe, supported, and seen.

For some, we're the consistency they don't have anywhere else.

If we truly want these children to grow up into positive, functioning members of society, then the team supporting them needs to stay intact.

And right now, that team is working.

There is a say, there's a saying.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Removing social workers is not fixing anything.

It's taking away something that is already helping.

If anything, our students need more support right now, not less.

If expectations for our students and educators continue to rise, then the support systems must remain in place.

Without them, we are not setting our school up for success.

We are setting them up to struggle.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We have uh Sarah Romeo, Nate Smith, and then if uh Marianne Giddens would be ready.

For the record, my name is Sarah Romeo, and I'm here on behalf of recess.

I have um children aging 21, 18, 17, 13, and seven, which has taken me through elementary about 15 years now.

And I was part of the parent group that originally came to the school board fighting for recess.

And this is a complete turnover in the new board.

So just a little history as to why we were there.

We had a principal change at Fritch Elementary, which we had three recesses instituted, and the new principal knocked it down to two, and he counted that morning recess before instruction started as a third recess.

And so that's why we went to the school board so that we could uh make a firm policy so that at individual sites and individual administrators couldn't change um just how they wanted to.

Um, and at that time we supported um with American Pediatric Associates and CDC, and you're gonna have additional parents that will give you that information as well.

But um essentially that board move forward with the three recesses, 15 minutes each or 45 minutes total of um that learning period for students to be included in their school day.

Um I feel like I came prepared, um, ready to argue the social emotional and learning part of recess, and I feel that it goes hand in hand with what the other parents are saying with the social workers and how important that is.

But for your website, it says your goals for SEL are to promote student self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationships, and responsible decision-making skills, improve students' attitudes and beliefs that self about self, others in school, and to better the test scores, more confident students with greater drive for success.

When you have recess, students are able to work on their adaptation and coping skills, including perseverance and self-control are required during these interactions.

These skills are necessary in life to deal effectively with others.

With holding recess may actually limit development of important skills in kids who need the most.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Don't usually come to these things, but uh heard that recess might be reduced, and given what I have heard in the previous hour, um, I can't see how that student wellness and well-being uh is not at the forefront of everything we're trying to do here.

So, you know, there's a million studies we can show you.

Uh I looked up a quick search right before I came.

I can send you 30 positive studies about recess and outdoor time and the benefits that has towards children.

Um, it's often the primary source of physical activity for a lot of students.

Um scheduled breaks reduce stress and burnout in students, improving classroom readiness, um, which again, based on everything that we've heard can only improve the situation for the students.

So uh again, urge you guys not to take away recess from children.

Um it's not uncommon that my kids come home from school having not eaten their lunch and not had enough time to play, and that's with adequate breaks or semi-adequate breaks right now.

So uh urge you guys, please do not take recess away from kids.

Thank you.

Uh Mary Ann Giddens, Amanda Barlow, and then uh Brad Barber.

I am Mary Ann Giddens, mom of three children, two who attend Borderwick Bray.

I am an involved parent who works a full-time job, and I have also dedicated countless hours to volunteering because I believe in partnership between parents and school.

I come here tonight to express my overwhelming concern and disappointment with the district's consideration to change the policy for recess.

Recess is critical to social emotional learning, which is identified in the CCSD wellness policy and regulations.

In fact, non-structured play is a critical component of SEL, with benefits including increased creativity, play through cooperation and negotiation, problem solving, stress relief, and improved academic performance and brain function.

Quite simply, recess is developmentally beneficial.

And on the heels again of everything we've heard tonight, it seems even more important.

The new policy proposal reduces the overall recess time by 34%.

And I cannot help but wonder how do we find ourselves in a place where we are looking to make cuts in recess.

For decades in our system of modern education, recess has been a fixture in school days and arguably the best part of the day for some kids.

In my opinion, reducing recess will ultimately make our kids suffer as a result of adult mismanagement somewhere along the pathway.

Why are we proposing to reduce recess time?

There are 410 minutes in each school day.

What is the justification to reduce recess from 45 minutes to 30 minutes each day?

What are we trying to accomplish?

And if the answer does not provide a benefit to the students' overall well-being, then we are doing a disservice to them.

I believe that when most adults reflect on childhood experience, some of the fondest memories are recess, playing tag, learning invaluable life lessons without even knowing it.

Additionally, the proposed policy eliminates the following ver verbiage.

Cognitive processing and academic performance depend on regular breaks from classroom work.

To be effective, these breaks should be sufficient to allow the student to mentally decompress.

Why would we eliminate this verbiage?

It clearly states some of the benefits and importance of recess.

My youngest son does not love school, but he is an excellent student.

He is respectful, he is empathetic, and he works very hard.

And during recess, he also plays hard and works out his pent-up energy.

I am confident that he, as well as most other kids, play at recess.

They are better students for it.

And quite frankly, you might achieve the overall better results that you're actually seeking from students.

Reducing the time of recess is counterintuitive to trying to get the best out of our kids.

I would argue that we should give more recess.

Studies show this to be true.

Although my kids do well academically, in our home, things such as academic scoring and map testing do not define them.

We are trying to raise well-rounded kids who have honesty, integrity, and do their best every day.

This should not be about how much work students can endure, but rather how the school supports learning and development while making it fun so that kids are engaged and ready to learn.

Thank you.

Amanda Barlow, Brad Barber, and then Christine Wagner.

Good evening, and thank you for your time this evening.

Schools are being asked to assume quite a bit right now.

Lots of responsibilities.

I'm sorry, could you speak more into the microphone?

Thank you.

Thank you.

And uh state your name for the record.

Amanda Barlow.

Um, schools are being asked to assume a lot of responsibilities right now.

They're safe haven for so many children.

First, social workers provide valuable support to our most vulnerable children.

Um, they bring unique knowledge and skill to the school system and the student service students they service.

They support teachers and children and families beyond the classroom so that children can improve their ability to um to perform academically.

I can't imagine taking this resource out of schools.

Second, I also want to speak in favor of recess for children.

Recus provides many benefits to children, as my um other parents have indicated here.

It improves focus and memory and also gives it children a chance to decompress and just run around and have some free time.

Um, pushing children by removing recess and is their ability to develop academically, socially, and emotionally.

Uh as an employee, I'm entitled to a 15-minute break every morning, a 15-minute break every afternoon, and a 30 to 60 minute lunch.

Why would we not give this to our children as well?

I think that by some of the things that we're considering here today are very hard choices.

They're hard budgetary choices, they're hard school choices in general, but I don't think they're going to be good for our children long term.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Brad, Barber, Christine Wagner, and then um My name's Brad Barber.

And um it's a sad day in Carson City when uh when child and and teenage mental health seems to be taking the back seat.

Um, I've been emergency substitute teacher um for a couple years, and I can tell you almost two or three times a week, there was an incident in the classroom.

And uh, and I'm so grateful to these ladies for coming and helping me.

Um, you know, I know some of these ladies personally, and they work their butts off.

You know, they take this job.

It's not it's not a job, it's their life, it's their livelihood, you know, and uh and they take it very seriously, and they take their, you know, I told my kids don't take your work home, they take their work home.

You know, they care about these kids.

It's just tough, you know.

Um, I was heartbroken the other day, and my daughter told me um, I'm gonna lose my job.

So um I need to prepare all these teachers and counselors with the tools to help my kids, you know.

And um, man, it was just really heartbreaking.

Um, you know, I feel for these for these young ladies that they work so hard, you know.

Um I just hope that you guys can reconsider and um find an alternative, you know, because uh I really feel that we need these.

This is our not just our future, these are these kids' future, right?

These are the children, you know.

Who's gonna take care of this stuff if these ladies don't do this?

So that's all I got.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Christine Wagner, Maggie Utsall, and then Caitlin Shacone.

Hi, my name is Christine Wagner.

I'm a teacher at Fritch Elementary.

I'm in my 18th year of teaching.

Um, during that time, I have witnessed significant and concerning changes in both the family dynamic and student behavior.

Each year, student conduct has become increasingly severe, aggressive, and at times violent.

What was once an occasional issue involving one student has now become a daily reality involving multiple students.

I have personally been spat on.

I've had chairs, books, and other objects thrown at me.

I have intervened situations where students were attempting to harm one another.

I've been told to shut up, called stupid, directed to F off, and called an F and bitch by eight and nine-year-olds.

I ask you, would you tolerate this for your mother, your wife, your sister, or your daughter?

Well, I am a mother.

I am a daughter, and I am a sister.

This currently is reality for educators.

Additionally, staff members are being threatened with physical violence by students and at times by parents.

These are not isolated incidences.

They occur daily across our classrooms.

As school staff, we are expected to manage and endure this behavior.

However, outside the school setting, many of these same actions, particularly towards public officials, would be considered assault and would be addressed accordingly.

The lack of consistent accountability for students and parents in the areas of behavior, academics, homework, and attendance is contributing to this growing problem.

We are also seeing a concerning shift in priorities.

For some, a 15-minute recess is treated as more important than learning or appropriate behavior, using a small portion of that time to help a student complete an assignment they refuse to do in class or to review work missed due to absences and vacations, or to have them refocus and reflect on behavior is reasonable and does not harm a child.

Students are currently receiving more recess time than is required by NRS.

If recess is truly a priority, then move breakfast out of the classroom and back to the cafeteria.

This would provide a more effective balance while addressing ongoing concerns about food waste, cleanliness, and behavior in the classroom.

Each year, academic expectations continue to rise while proficiency standards and pacing increases.

Yet support that helps students meet these expectations, such as interventionalists, are being reduced.

The gap between student performance and grade level, performing at grade level and those significantly below.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, thank you.

And if you have additional, you can submit it.

I'm sorry, what was that?

I said if you have additional comments, please go feel free to email it to the school district.

Thank you.

Then Caitlin Chicone and Katrina Blues.

Okay.

Good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Emotional score.

All right, nice.

Okay, hello.

It's Maggie.

Maggie Utsall.

That would be Maggie.

You go, please, first.

Maggie, please go first.

Um, so good afternoon, those here and not, and to all members of the board.

I'm here today to discuss one miracle that happened in my life because of one single person.

When I first started in my high school career, I wasn't who C U C standing here before you today.

I was closed off, scared and sad.

I looked for every excuse not to go home because just for a little longer, I didn't have to go back to the silence of an empty room and the bombardment of my own self-worth.

My self-worth was so low that uh during the beginning years, I landed in the hospital twice with ketoacidosis because I just thought that my diabetes wasn't worth taking care of because of everything that was going on.

I was just going through the motions and I was just going through, and I wanted to go survive one more day.

After so long of that behavior, a well-made mask formed.

Then a new person entered my life.

She listened and to what I had to say without trying to immediately push me off to someone else.

She held my hand through some of the hardest times in my life, like my grandfather being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the man I look up to more than anyone in my life, or me dealing with the grief and regret after losing one of my best friends due to a brain tumor.

She pushed me forward.

She gave me resources that genuinely helped me and made me find feel like a person.

I became the student representative of Pioneer, then the Silver Campus for a time, and even the president of the National Honor Society before I was dissolved to the main campus.

One of the most notable things is she was recommending me to a summer camp called Ryla that taught me service above self, which sparked my passion for helping others, and in the process gave me peace of mind.

I went back to that summer camp as a student counselor, which was one of the best weekends I've ever had because I got to help a group of eighth graders realize that they're not alone going into their high school career.

She pushed me towards my passion for art, and now I'm achieving my three-year-long dream, something I thought wasn't possible because I thought dreams just never came true.

Now I'm the apprentice at Hooligan's Inc.

Tattoo with one of the best mentors known to man in my stead.

I'm here today because one person saw potential and was willing to cultivate that and encourage that potential.

That person is Miss Bailey Barber, the school social worker you'll lose, along with her, every school social worker who has helped every student here today, and so many more.

I carry with me a page full of 53 signatures.

Uh 53 signatures that power my voice, which is out of 82 from the Silver Campus.

I require these signatures in 10 minutes.

People care so much about her that they're willing to sign immediately, without a second thought.

If you fire every school social worker, you'll lose and throw the thread that binds these schools, the motivation to build a passion-filled future after high school.

And we will damn well fight for it.

Thank you.

Caitlin.

So Caitlin Shacone and then Katrina Blues.

Hello, my name is Caitlin Chicone, and I teach second grade at um Celagur Elementary.

Our students need a social worker.

Without emotional regulation, students cannot access our regular, rigorous curriculums.

Our students are dealing with stress, anxiety, trauma, and other factors.

Our social workers support these students in dealing with those factors using effective coping strategies.

I deeply care about my students, but I am not a therapist or a social worker, and I do not have the specialized training that students in our schools need.

If we want our students to be successful and they need that, they need social emotional tools.

I must ask who will teach our students these tools without our social workers.

We must support our students.

To do this, we must keep our social workers.

They are integral to this mission.

I do not know all of our social workers, but I do know how amazing they are in our schools.

However, I am privileged to work with our social worker, Miss Stephanie.

She keeps our school safe and is always willing to help anyone in need, whether that's a student, someone on our staff, and me.

The students love her, trust her, and are always excited to see her.

She's an integral part integral part of our team.

Our students deserve to feel safe and loved at school.

Miss Stephanie makes our students feel safe and loved at school.

Please don't take their safe space away.

I urge you to support our students.

I urge you to come to our school to see everything Miss Stephanie does in just one day.

I urge you to support the funding of our social workers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Katrina Blues.

Okay.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Katarina Blues, and my daughter spoke earlier tonight.

And just fingers crossed, we can do the same thing here.

Um I'm not here just as a teacher in our district.

I do teach second grade at Sealager, but I'm also here as a parent.

Um I get to see our schools from two very different perspectives.

I get to see it from my classroom, and I get to see it from my kitchen table at home.

And from both of those places, I can say with certainty that our school needs social workers.

When people think about schools, they often think about reading and math and science and test scores.

We have S back coming.

And those things matter.

But the truth is that learning cannot happen if a child is overwhelmed by the challenges outside of the classroom.

Every day, students walk through our doors carrying things that you cannot see.

Some children are trying to focus on reading while they're worrying about if their family has a place to sleep that night.

Others are dealing with bullying, depression, or other problems at home.

Social workers are often our first line of support for those students.

That tier one, that tier two.

They're the people who notice when a student becomes withdrawn.

They help a child process grief from losing a loved one.

They connect families with programs and counseling, housing assistance, and community resources.

They step in before that small problem becomes a huge crisis.

As a teacher, I care deeply about my students, but I am not trained as a therapist, as a crisis counselor, or a family resource coordinator.

Social workers bring that specialized training and the time that the students and families need.

Without our social workers, teachers are being asked to take on that role.

When a social worker helps the student stabilize emotionally, that student can return to our classroom ready to learn.

When those families receive the support they need, attendance improves, behavior improves, and academic success success will follow.

As a parent, I want my children to be successful academically, but more than anything, I want them to grow up in a community where they know that there are adults who will help them when something is wrong.

And I know Miss Stephanie truly helps keep things running.

She's there for the students and the staff.

She brings a calmness to a situation that might otherwise feel overwhelming.

Our students trust her.

Our school community is stronger because she's there.

If we truly want everyone to succeed in our classrooms and in life, we must support the whole child, not just the academic part of them.

Social workers are not an extra.

They are an essential part of our system.

And if you don't see their value, please come hang out with Stephanie for a day.

Come hang out in my classroom and see how many times you'll see her.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That is all of the signed um public comment that we have.

Is there any additional public comment?

I had questions that I put in.

We cannot answer questions during public comment.

Okay.

So please state your name.

Is it on?

Okay.

My name is Robin Maisy.

I am a teacher here in the Carson City School District.

And I am a kindergarten teacher at Empire.

I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to speak, so I'm a little nervous, but I'll make it quick.

Um our social workers are preventative care.

If you take a person to the doctor, you're doing preventative care.

If you give a person meds, you're doing preventative care.

Our social workers are preventing suicides.

They're preventing children from being abused.

They're preventing children from becoming suicidal.

They're preventing our children from being afraid of adults who are there to help them.

Every single one of them has anxiety of some sort.

And there is one particular that I send to Miss Patty because she is the quiet one.

She is the one that will go unnoticed if you weren't paying attention.

This child will cry quietly and you won't notice.

This child is terrified that both her parents are going to die.

And she won't talk to me.

Not because she's afraid, but because she knows that she's safe with me.

She knows she can talk to me, but she doesn't want to ruin her friendships having fun.

She doesn't want to ruin the fun that we're having in class.

So she needs that person to talk to, to cry to, because she knows with Miss Patty, she can break down and have those tears and not have her friends tease her or her friends be afraid to hold her.

She knows that she can come to me and I'll hold her all day if I have to.

I've done it twice today with two of my students because they just break down in tears and they just need to be held.

I can't do that for all 11, and I couldn't imagine doing that for all 25 every single second of the day.

And I've done it before, it's hard.

We need Miss Patty.

We need all of our social workers.

Please find a different uh solution instead of taking them away because then you're preventing the prevention.

You're taking away something that we need to prevent the harm that you have heard that's going to happen, the fear that's going to happen.

We need our social workers.

Please find a different way to solve this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, go ahead.

Hi, my name is uh Claudia.

I'm here because I do.

I am worried.

I'm worried for my kids for all the kids.

Um social workers are being us like a second parents.

They take care of them.

They help even with something I can't.

Sometimes I can't um like even control my emotions, you know.

I can help them control their emotions.

So and they feel safe with them.

They feel they can trust them, they help them.

My I have a seven-year-old, which he's on Sealager Elementary.

Miss Stephanie has help him.

Like, I don't I don't have a word, but he used to be very aggressive with me and with everybody, all the kids.

He used to be like scratching me, hitting me.

It's being good time that thus not happening.

And it makes me happy to have them because I know if they need help, they're they're there.

I I feel good when they're at school.

I feel like they are saved on school.

They have somebody that look for them.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Next.

Please state your name.

My name is Faith Barber.

And I don't have anything prepared because I wasn't going to speak tonight.

But I went to a behavioral health meeting.

It's on it's a behavioral health task force.

Not this month, but for last month.

And we had a presentation by Carson Tahoe Hospital.

And the whole presentation was on their strategic plan.

And that we have an epidemic, and our highest need in Carson City is youth mental health.

And then when I heard that the school social workers were being cut, it just doesn't make sense to me.

And there's nothing that I can say that everyone else didn't say.

And I know about budgets and grants and all this stuff.

But I also know that there's gotta be a different solution because I think that this is not going to help.

It's gonna cause an issue, and it's gonna cost a lot more money than it's gonna save because you're gonna have teachers that can't teach.

It's everything that's been said tonight.

And um, I just wouldn't have felt right about myself if I didn't say something about this presentation that I saw about youth mental health.

Um, we didn't used to have the things that we have going on when all of us were in school.

Um, do I know what the issue is?

I have opinions, but that doesn't matter, you know, the tablets, the internet, all the things that the kids are exposed to today.

But we didn't have the need that we have, and today we have a need.

We have a need for these these ladies that um I know my daughter's a social worker at one of the schools, and I know for a fact that she feeds six families every week.

She goes and gets food for these kids on her own time and brings it in.

Um I don't know who's gonna do that.

A contractor, the teachers can't, they don't have time.

So um, anyways, thank you for listening, and I hope you listened to everyone else here tonight, and I'm sure you did.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, yes, please state your name for the record.

Tracy Angel.

I am fortunate that I have been able to work with all of the social workers here with my job.

I'm an advocate for domestic violence and sexual assault.

I put that aside.

That is not why I'm here.

I'm coming to you as a parent who recently got a phone call of a kiddo at the high school who was suicidal.

If that social worker had not been there at that moment and at that time, and had built that trust over this year in the high school, I can tell you that outcome could have been very different.

After that kiddo spent quality time at a great facility here, which Carson City is lucky to have now.

It's with the work that our social workers are doing that we're able to help the kiddos within our school.

I know that you guys have a tough job and that budgets are hard and grants and everything, but I want you to consider once these social workers who work tirelessly every day, if they're gone, what does that do to the students, your attendance, and to the success of our school district?

I was proud of Carson City School District for accepting our students and accepting our social workers and putting them on as employees.

I know that that's not the common for our state, but I was proud of Carson City.

Right now, this decision and what is in front of you, I am not proud to be part of.

I hope that you reconsider and that you do find a solution to help our kiddos.

Because I know that we don't know what's happening at home or with anything that's going on, and that's teachers and the administrative already have so much that they're doing.

These social workers are working and they're making an impact.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yes.

Gentlemen at the end.

I am Logan Hodies.

I am a student at Sealager Elementary.

And I deeply believe that we need to keep social workers at the school.

If we start at the beginning, when social workers were added to the school, 60 over 60% fewer incidents involved police or law enforcement at the schools.

And when we have to have a police member come to the school, in the end, it actually ends up costing more money than if we were to just keep the social workers at the schools.

And not only that, but the amount of incidents go down when went down when the social workers came to the schools.

The social workers are the kids' safety.

When they need someone to talk to, they're not going to go talk to a police officer about what's going on because you don't just have the same trust.

But when the social workers are there, you can really talk to or express yourself because they will listen.

Because the police officers do a good job at their job, but they're not there to calm down the student and make them feel safe.

We need these social workers so they can do their job.

And I believe that we need to find a way to be able to keep social workers at the school so that we won't go or you guys won't go over budget.

And that way we can still keep them at the school, keep the kids safety, and keep the kids learning.

If we keep the social workers, when we keep the social workers, the kids, if a kid crashes out in the classroom, he's not only disturbing, he's not only stopping or they aren't stopping themselves from learning.

They're stopping maybe not even the class, maybe multiple classes around.

So we need to keep the social workers that way we can continue the learning of other students.

Thank you.

Next, hello, my name is Bruck Schlottman.

Um, I'm coming to you with the perspective of a registered nurse out in the community.

Um, I have had the unique opportunity to be present in the inpatient adolescent facilities in the community.

Um, and I apologize that this is heavy, but I've also been present in the hospital in the ER during what's called a donor walk for teenagers that have committed suicide.

That is where the patient, the teenager who lost their life to suicide, and the family is donating their organs to another family because they have lost their child.

Um so I'm here to say that I've seen the credit the tier three, a lot of the tier three.

Um, and every time we have one of these, we wonder what can we do?

How can we have avoided this?

How could we have what did we miss?

What could we have done to avoid being here?

And the answer is tier one and two tier two.

It's your social workers, it's the care that avoids getting us all the way to tier three um and these crisis situations.

So I just am here to ask you to reconsider because the value that these social workers provide is just immeasurable.

Um, and I just I think every one of you social workers for what you do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, uh please state your name.

Uh Mike Mathis.

I was a uh special education teacher for a dozen years at Eagle Valley Middle School, so I'm very intimate and familiar with uh challenges teachers and administrators face.

Went back to school, got master's in social work, and now work at a community mental health center as a psychiatric case worker.

And I have literally worked with dozens of students and families in the district in as a liaison into outside community services, and that has given me a perspective that social workers are my prime point of contact in order to find out about these families so I can meet their needs.

Right now, literally, I have a 10-year-old student who is uh incarcerated who was looking for a residential treatment facility.

Um, and another student whose family is homeless living in the DV shelter, and I am getting a referral for another person, apparently from Carson Middle School.

Uh just found out about today.

All of that is in the past two days.

Okay.

School social workers are absolutely essential for my job as much as anything, because I can go in the community and into the schools, find out what is happening with the kids, and try and target our interventions with community and what we have out there in order to meet the needs of the families.

Without them, simply put, again, I was a special ed teacher.

Admin can't do it.

Counselors can't do it all.

School social workers are the key ability I have to serve the families in this community.

Dozens of people over the years.

So please definitely beg that you guys reconsider this decision because this does not stop.

The issues that we're talking about right now will continue.

Once they graduate, it doesn't just poof vanish and all the issues go away.

They're still there.

This affects the community and will for years to come.

Okay.

It's not simply a matter of holding hands.

I'm not trying to be patronizing.

But bottom line is the services they're doing will directly affect the community as a whole for years to come.

Just no other way around it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Please, Chris, uh yes.

Make sure it's green and then state your name for the record.

Hi, my name is Rhett Garrett, and um I'm fairly new to the Carson City community, but I'm here because I'm married to my hero, a high school social worker.

And um it's probably not a whole lot that I can say that hasn't already been said tonight.

But I've been here at a couple of the last school board meetings, um, listening to them online.

And I believe at one of them you mentioned you got something like 30 plus emails reaching out to you.

Um, you asked some really pointed questions to the last one that who's going to take over uh the responsibilities that cutting this position would end up um ending up causing.

And I urge you to really deeply investigate that.

I think a lot of the people that they're considering can step into this role are not actually qualified or not willing.

I've heard um different things from just uh getting to be into this amazing community, and I think it's clear where the community stands.

I think you guys have all heard it uh over and over tonight, and we'll continue hearing it.

So I hope that you guys decide to put uh kind of your money where your mouth is and uh uh represent the community because I think this is just a huge, huge issue to every every level from kids to parents.

Um yeah, there's not a whole lot that I can say that hasn't already been said, but I think this is just a deeply important issue.

And I know that uh you guys have talked about at one of the last meetings, no new budgeting because you guys are in such a huge deficit.

Um, but I know the budget also goes to brand new stadium lights, and I don't know if how much that is more important than the well-being of our children's health.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Next hi, my name is Samantha Samso.

I am a paraprofessional on the Silver Campus, but I'm also coming here as the Carson High Wrestling Coach to bring an athletic perspective into the school social workers.

But on a personal note, I was a 15-year-old who lost their dad who did not have a social worker in their corner.

I slipped through the cracks, and I struggled really, really hard to get myself back on track.

And if I had a social worker like I work with Miss Bailey every single day, who these kids have so many struggles, and she br builds them back up and she gets them ready for school.

If I had somebody like that, I think I would have been way more successful in my life.

I didn't go to college.

I'm restarting my life at 27, and I just want to say this is someone who didn't have anybody in their corner, like Miss Bailey does every single day to these students.

But also I have kids on my wrestling team who struggle when they get hurt, and their only identity is a sport, but now they can't wrestle.

I'm not qualified as much as I wish I could to provide them that support.

I tell them to reach out to their social workers, their counselors, to help them build an identity outside of that sport.

The crisis of suicide rates of kids who think athletics is their whole identity, and then they lose it is so high.

And I think if we pull social workers and mental health professionals outside of that, we're losing athletes.

We're losing just regular old kids, and I just wanted to bring that up.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Is there any additional public comment?

All right, seeing none, we are going to take a five-minute recess.

Um, board members, we will see you back at 824.

This is the interview and possible action on appointment of applicants to fill the Carson City School District School Board Trustee Vacancy of District 5.

This is for uh possible action.

And if we could close that door, please.

Okay, we do have two applicants.

And Mr.

Sadler, will we will we be starting with Miss Tina Satuki?

I'm gonna connect here to the Zoom, and that would be the intent is to start with her.

Let me just give me a second.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

And just so the public knows as well.

Um this was uh Miss Tatuki had had this planned um to be away on this weekend for quite some time before this was scheduled interview date.

Okay, real quick.

Uh Mr.

Tuki, can you hear us?

Yes, I can hear you.

Can you hear me?

I can hear you, but I'm sitting right in front of the computer here.

So I'm gonna see if I can turn this up.

Can you put the microphone right by the audio of the computer possibly?

You might have to do that.

Yes, thank you very much.

Can you please try to?

That's the speaker.

Yeah, can you say something again, Tina?

Yes, can you hear me?

That's a fan.

Yes.

I think the speakers are just going to hear.

All right, let's try that again.

All right, this is Tina Sutuki.

Can you hear me?

Yes, much better.

Thank you.

Now you can't see them though.

I I think that's I can see myself on screens behind you.

Okay, we'll get my big head out of the way here.

So thank you.

Um it might be a little awkward because the camera's not going to face the board, but I think the way the microphone is right now, that that'll be okay here.

So all right, so thank you.

Um, and thank you for applying for the uh vacancies of the school board trustee.

We have a series of questions that we will be asking you.

Each board member has a question that they will be asking you, and we'll be going um down the line uh asking those questions.

And then at the same time, we will be asking the second uh applicant, Mr.

Steve Reynolds, the same questions as well.

So thank you again, and we'll go ahead and start with question number one.

Yes, uh good evening, and thank you for uh waiting.

The first question we have is what interests you in filling this trustee vacancy.

Why do you believe you are prepared to step into the role at this time?

And are you able to be physically present and actively participate in board meetings and or other required district meetings on a regular basis?

So it's a multiple.

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

It's kind of a multi-part question.

All right, so after I forget to answer any question, please um please remind me, but I appreciate the board being um accommodating with my schedule.

I I know one of the speakers earlier this evening actually asked the board um to take a much more active role in advocating uh for uh education in the next state legislative session, and I'm actually in Washington DC right now.

It's been a very long day.

It's 11:30 my time.

Um, but I've spent the day actually speaking with our national legislators, our senators and our congressmen advocating for funding for education programs here in the state of Nevada.

Um I'm a very proud um homeowner in Carson City, um, blessed to live there, and it's not just where I live, but it's where I'm committed to improving the schools, the lives of our students, and even our community.

I've spent my entire career, 30 years in education working across Nevada to improve systems, um, and that's really what drives me to sit on this board because I really want to have the opportunity to uh improve the system in the community that I live and that I love in throughout my career as a teacher, as a school leader, and even in my state leadership roles, I've really seen what has worked well for our students and what hasn't worked well for our students.

So I understand a lot of the realities that are facing our schools every day from balancing resources to supporting educators, the focus on improving student achievement, and of course, maintaining a safe and positive learning environment, as I heard all of our parents and teachers speak earlier today.

Currently, I serve as the executive director for the Nevada Association of Technical Education, which again is why I'm in Washington DC.

I also work for the Nevada Department of Education part-time, and in that work, I've had the opportunity to really see all of the policies that are put in place at the state level that really have a direct impact at the local level.

And sometimes a lot of those policies are put in place for good intentions, but they don't see ultimately how they actually impact teachers in their buildings and students in their classroom.

So I think that perspective that I have or can bring to the table makes it a unique opportunity for me to sit on the board because I have seen education from all different levels across the state.

Thank you.

One other part of the question, if you could answer it.

Are you able to be physically present and actively participate in board meetings andor other required district meetings on a regular basis?

Yes, I do plan on being present.

I know that every March I come to this conference, so it's it's been on my agenda every year for the last five years, meeting with our state senators and our state congressmen.

But normally I would plan on being on all at the all the board meetings in person.

Great, thank you.

Question number two.

All right, second question is what do you see as the proper role of a school board trustee in relation to the superintendent, district staff, and day-to-day operations of the schools?

I see the school board more as a governance mechanism mechanism, setting the vision for the school district, establishing policy, ensuring ensuring accountability, and making sure that we're making strategic decisions, especially at resources.

I know across the state, Carson is not unique across the state.

All 17 of our school districts are really struggling with our budget deficits right now and finding ways that we can or we have to address those issues, but uh in ways that have the minimum impact on our students.

So I understand that that's kind of the role of the board.

Um, the superintendent takes the direction we give him and is in charge of implementing that, right?

Leading the district, managing the day-to-day operations and executing that vision.

As a board member, I'd be very intentional about staying in that governance role.

That means that we focus on outcomes, we ask thoughtful data decision or data-driven questions, and we ensure that everything that we do aligns with our district priorities and results without getting in the weeds of the day-to-day operations.

Great, thank you.

Question number three.

Um, school boards often face difficult decisions under public scrutiny.

How would you handle situations where community members strongly disagree with the board decision?

I think the community plays such a part in building a strong uh educational system.

I think the key is transparency and really making sure that every decision we make and sometimes they're gonna have to be very hard decisions why they're being made and showing them all the different things that we explore in order to make those decisions.

I know it's always difficult, even from my previous experience as a high school principal in Clark County.

We were given our budget, and we had the autonomous responsibility.

I had a 11 million dollar budget.

It was my responsibility as a building principal to determine how I was going to staff my building.

And sometimes that was very, very difficult, and you try and make those decisions based on what's going to have the less less of a negative impact on your students.

But I think you really have to look at the data before you make decisions.

You ask for community input, you look at the data, and you share that data with community, right?

They need to know what the numbers say, right?

And why you're having to make decisions uh that may not always be popular, but maybe it's um the lesser of all evils.

Great, thank you.

Question number four.

Yes, school district budgets require balancing limited resources with student and staff needs.

What experience do you have reviewing budgets, financial reports, or making funding decisions?

And how would you approach budget priorities as a trustee?

Um, I kind of just mentioned a little bit of about that as a building principal in Clark County.

We were um provided a lump sum budget.

So for my particular building, I was a high school principal.

My budget was 11 million dollars, and I had to pay for everything out of that budget from staffing to power to buses for the students to get to school.

So there was a lot of different decisions that we had to make as a leadership team.

Um, and I didn't make those in isolation, right?

Like I think part of the responsibility is to make sure that you work with your team members, you get good input from all of the different um people on your team, all the different offices, right?

I I remember having conversations with my uh head custodian, my building and uh his staff to see how we could eliminate some of our wasteful spending.

I think we even talked about turning off the lights in the building, right?

In certain hallways when they weren't there cleaning in the in the evening.

So I think it it takes a really uh a real concerted team effort to um get as much input as you can to make those decisions.

Thank you.

Uh question number five: how would you build trust with the community while also respecting board governance, confidentiality, and legal obligations?

Um well, I think transparency is key, and I know legally, again, my formal role, right?

When we're talking about staffing or staffing issues, a lot of those things have to be held in confidence.

But when it comes to something like budget or test scores, or all to me, that all needs to be transparent.

Again, as my role as the executive director for the Nevada Association of Technical Education, we manage their budget and everything's transparent, right?

We have transparent Nevada that tells everybody what everybody's salary is.

Um, anyone can go look it up, but our I think our our public has a right to see um what funds are being uh given to the district, where those funds are coming from and how those funds are being spended.

And I think when the public has access to that information and we communicate that information and we explain why certain decisions have to be made, they may not always like it, but they tend to be much more agreeable and they they have some understanding of why those that those decisions are being made.

So it's really about good transparency and good communication.

Thank you.

Question number six.

And I will be asking you question number six.

As you may know, over the years, our student demography has changed today.

Our largest student population in our district are Latinos.

What perspective, professional experience or community involvement would you bring to the board that would help close achievement gaps and improve outcomes for our diverse student population?

Um, I've had quite a bit of experience working with diverse populations.

Um part of my responsibility as a classroom teacher.

I I my first year as a classroom teacher, I taught we used to call it ESL, right?

Now we call our students multilingual learners.

We want to do that asset space approach for our students that they are bilingual, sometimes trilingual.

Um, so had experience in the classroom, had experience working in a um in a high school in Las Vegas as a school administrator where 70% of my students were minority students, um, 60% of them free and reduced lunch status, so have that experience as well.

And then I've actually even worked with my job with the Nevada Department of Education creating coursework for for teachers on how to support multilingual learners in the classroom, right?

Like, so um, how do you read a reader assessment that our our multilingual learners students take, and then how do you adapt your instruction to meet those needs and make sure that all students are provided the resources that they need to be successful?

So not only help develop that course, but I actually still teach that course now.

I teach that course for Western Nevada College on how to help support your multilingual learners in the classroom.

So a lot of experience working with those demographics.

Great, thank you.

That that is um all the questions that we have.

Um, you are more than welcome to stay online and listen to the second applicant if you would like.

So at this time we will invite uh Mr.

Steve Reynolds to the table.

Mr.

Reynolds, Mr.

Reynolds?

Oh, I can't.

It's your turn.

Give me a minute.

Yep.

I've had hearing aids for the last year.

All right, thank you.

To be honest with you, I didn't think it was fair to hear the questions.

Um could you please uh sit down?

And I'm not just mentioning that.

Okay.

I'm gonna ask you, Mr.

Reynolds, if you could please sit down and uh speak into the microphone, please.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right, yes, we understand that, but it is a public meeting, so there's no way we could we could turn it off.

Yeah, I'm planning a committee.

Yes, all right.

So we're gonna go ahead and start with question number one.

They are the same questions.

Can you hear me okay?

I'm sorry.

Can you hear me okay?

Okay.

What interests you in feeling this trustee vacancy?

Why do you believe you are prepared to step into the role at this time?

And are you able to be physically present and actively participate in board meetings and or other required district meetings on a regular basis?

Um I need to turn it on, yes, please.

Okay, there you go.

Um, in order.

First off, um, I grew up in a family of educators.

Both my parents were educators, okay.

And uh so, and I have five brothers and sisters.

I know a lot about education for years and years.

Anyway, the uh and I've been committed to education in Carson City just like all the other communities.

I've taken part in a lot of things, and uh some of you know me.

I've I've done a lot of things here, and I served two terms on this board, okay, uh, during the first during the recession, and we had uh we had some hard decisions to make and uh I think uh they were very hard decisions, but we made a five-year plan, and we were in a position in this district that we had some money in the bank and we could last it.

Actually, this district, and I I have not patting myself on the back any more than any of the other people that were involved in doing this, okay.

But this district actually came out better financially than any other district in the state.

So I bring that up just simply because that's an experience that I can share with all of you and with the district, and you know, I think I know a little more than some people.

I and this is not again anything against um the person applying for the and I I'm sorry if that came across that way, then I apologize.

And can I attend these meetings?

Yes, and I'm actually retiring in just a few months from my business that I've been involved with for uh X number of years, and I think I'm gonna have more time than I want to have.

But anyway, uh, did I answer your questions?

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Question number two.

Question number two what do you see as the proper role of a school board trustee in relation to the superintendent, district staff, and day-to-day operations of the schools?

My familiarity.

Uh what do you see as your role as a school board trustee with the superintendent, district staff, and the daily operations?

Um I I already have a role in interacting with them on a regular basis through my position on the on the board for the uh Carson City School Foundation.

Um I am a representative of the community to the administration to the board, um representative of my ward and of the community in my interface with any of those positions.

Okay, and that uh since I already know all of them fairly well.

Um I mean I can call them if I need to, but basically, but that's my role to answer your question.

Do I need to do I need to answer more of it?

Um perhaps on the on the day-to-day operations, like where do you see yourself in in that kind of involvement?

Um not my job.

Is that seriously?

It's not my job.

Okay.

Um that's what we paid them for.

We pay them good money.

Okay.

Our job, I believe, as a trustee is to be oversight and again represent the community in that oversight.

Thank you.

Question number three.

School boards often face difficult decisions under public scrutiny.

How would you handle situations where community members strongly disagree with a board decision?

That's a fair question.

Um you're gonna be facing some really tough decisions, and you know that.

Okay.

And uh I think I'm a fairly thick-skinned person.

Um I have no problem representing the reasons why the district has to make decisions that you're probably gonna have to make.

And the uh I don't know.

I if you're asking me, I'd have any concern about representing uh the district's activity to the somebody who doesn't agree with it.

I think I'm well versed enough in dealing with uh angry customers that I can represent the district very well.

Thank you.

Question number four.

School district budgets require balancing limited resources with student and staff needs.

What experience do you have reviewing budgets, financial reports, or making funding decisions?

And how would you approach budget priorities as a trustee?

I spent um 19 years in the in uh working in the corporate world, and most of that I spent in a management position where I had to look at 15 pages of budget reports on our monthly activities, and uh from that report, I mean, giving the act giving accounts computers or something, no, anyway, I won't go there.

Anyway, the uh they printed out 15 pages of planning and anything that was more than a 5% variance, we had to write a report on, okay, and we also had to make projections, and that was just in that was just in the corporate world that I worked in.

Okay.

I've owned a business for 24 years.

And I I've had to do yeah, I do half the bookkeeping myself and then took counsel from the uh you know my bookkeeper.

Okay, but I've had a lot of experience with this.

Yeah, I had a lot of experience during that two terms of being on the school board in dealing with school board uh budgets and all.

So I think I think between that I've got quite a bit of experience.

Thank you.

How would you build trust with the community while also respecting board governance, confidentiality and legal obligations?

Could you say that again?

I'm sorry, I kind of missed it.

I'm so sorry.

Sometimes I speak a little too fast.

I wasn't looking close enough.

Yeah, how would you build trust with the community while also respecting board governance, confidentiality, and legal obligations?

I've been on several boards, and I think I know myself pretty well.

A couple of you know me.

Um I'm not a confrontational person, I just not that way.

Okay, and I um far as building trust, um you just off you gotta be truthful across the board.

And it may not be comfortable to be truthful, but you have to be truthful.

And the other thing, the you don't you don't want to, you don't want to bring on confrontation.

You don't want to um, but again, you have to um you represent the community by going out and back before I about half back before I was spending too much time with my own business.

I was part of the chamber, I was part of other committees, I was always at the school, so I have an opportunity.

I know a lot of people in the community, as you probably do, but um you know, again, um I I've never had real arguments uh with people on any of the boards or committees I've ever been on.

You know, I'm not a confrontational person.

Thank you.

Does that answer your question?

Um what about the confidentiality?

Um we I I mean you answer the the question we know about yeah.

No, the business I worked in was the newspaper business.

And I wasn't on the editorial side, I was on the uh I was on the business side.

I manage advertising departments, production departments, things like that.

The rule in the newspaper business is when an advertiser comes in or somebody comes in and tells you something and wants to run 19 cents a pound on the turkey sale.

You do not share that with any other grocery in town.

When if somebody comes in and tells you a story about something, unless you get three other people that say that story is correct, you don't run it in the newspaper.

Confentiality is nothing new.

Thank you.

And I will ask you question number six.

As you may know, over the years, our student demographic has changed.

Today, our largest student population in our district are Latinos.

What perspective, professional experience or community involvement would you bring to the board that would help close achievement gaps and improve outcomes for our diverse student population?

Yeah.

So when I moved here, I had to look up the because I was working for the paper and I had to do some studies.

Okay.

So I realized that Carson City was the second highest, had the second highest age per capita.

The only county larger than us in the state was Nye.

Okay, and that's just gotten worse, no doubt.

So I I guess your questions about how do I view the change that's gonna happen in our district from attendance because of the growth in the older population?

Did I misunderstand your question?

I can't I can repeat the question again.

Um what perspective, professional experience or community involving involvement would you bring to the board that would help close achievement gaps and improve outcomes for our diverse student population?

Recognizing that our highest uh student population in our district are Latinos.

Okay, so if so, would I what would I bring to the diversity of age to close the achievement gaps?

All of that.

Um it's an interesting question because I've hired, I've worked with every age group, every diversity, um matter what they I mean, I've I've hired and worked with and uh communicated with uh I I think every diverse way you want to look at our community and many other communities.

I have been in uh four different communities that that the commun that the the uh that the corporation moved me through.

So I I've had and I I've had to interact with lots and lots of people and have had no issue whatsoever.

Thank you very much.

That concludes the questions that we have to ask.

Um, board members, if you could tally if you haven't already finished your tallies.

So at this time, this is an action item.

And first, I'd like to uh thank both of you for applying uh to fill this position.

It isn't easy to interview in a public meeting.

So I appreciate you both doing so because we we know that it is not an easy task to do.

So I appreciate your time and willingness to do so.

This is an action item, and at this time uh if we would like to discuss, I will open it up for discussion, or if we would like to just move to a vote.

If you'd like to move to a vote, I am looking for a motion.

Anybody?

Yeah, I'll I'll make a motion.

Uh before I do though, uh, I want to echo what uh President uh Walt said.

Thank you both for applying.

Uh I always hate these kind of things because when people want to basically volunteer for positions, it's really hard to uh make the decision we have to.

My motion would be that I move the Carson, I move that the Carson City School District.

Board of Trustees approved the appointment of Tina Saduki to fill the vacancy in District Five created by the resignation of Mr.

Michael Walker.

Do I have a second?

I'll second that.

So we have a motion from Trustee Varner, second from Trustee Roberts.

I'll open it up to public comment.

Seeing no public comment, we'll go ahead and make this uh into a vote.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye opposed.

All right.

Uh motion passes unanimously.

And thank you again, Mr.

Reynolds, for applying, and Miss Um Sichuki.

Tina, and I think it's Tatustuki, right?

Can I make a statement?

Yes, thank you.

Yes.

Yes, go ahead.

Okay.

Um, I appreciate the board's decision.

And I appreciate also or commend uh that someone would come out and volunteer to be on the on the school board.

And I'm not upset about this whatsoever.

I got I got plenty of things that I can do.

Okay.

So and uh anyway, thank you again for spending time with me.

Yeah, thank you.

We greatly appreciate everything you do for the community.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Reynolds.

Uh yeah, so we do appreciate everything.

And so then at this time, I believe then um our next board meeting that we will see Ms.

Statuski at is April 14th.

All right, we'll go ahead.

Fantastic.

I'll be there April 14th.

All right, thank you.

Oops, sorry.

Um, yes, and Ms.

Cortez will be in touch.

All right, thank you.

We'll go ahead and close agenda item number eight.

Thank you, and have a good evening.

And we'll move on to agenda item number nine.

This is an informational update on the college-bound advanced placement AP program at Carson High School.

This is for discussion only, presented by Brandon Bringhurst and Bridget Gordon.

I think we got it down to like 45 minutes earlier.

We'll try and keep it a little brief, but thank you.

Um Brandon Bringhurst, Chief Academic Officer.

We're excited to share with you some information about college board programs at Carson High School.

Um we are going to start with a brief video from some of our Carson High School students.

Hopefully, this is Maria Benchief.

I'm a senior person high school who's currently going down the AP route of choices.

Hi there, my name is Maria Benchief.

I'm a senior person high school who's currently going on the AP route.

I really like this program and this route of class choices because it's only a lot about my own ethics.

It doesn't provide me with a more challenging course, that it provided me with a lot of opportunities to kind of challenge myself with the amount of work that I'm taking on myself.

And then it's opened a lot of opportunities when we need to kind of develop a lot of items in resilience.

You know, I've learned a study with the tests over how to, you know, study effectively for different things like that, and then a lot of different responsibilities as well.

So that's one of the things that I bought out of the course.

I go down the AP row.

Um I think the reason why I chose the A B also as like a first generation of college future college student.

Um kind of think more outside of the box and kind of help me grow more as a person.

And then also uh taking the AP courses allows you to kind of skip courses and save money of college and kind of just branch out differently than uh you would somewhere else.

I'm just going to because I like learning and maybe teachers actually enjoy the subject and help uh with their learning and help excel you uh through high school and benefit you in college and being able to uh know that you learn and knowing that you enjoy learning.

I will expect an IC and I take an A take A because I knew and helped the business in my GPA because I go to college.

And then also the AP does like at the end of the year, I hope that I would pass it so that I can take that to college and then hopefully like taking away like that money expense and like AD open so many opportunities in different classes, and it makes them a little more involved and like opens up my brain a little more.

So we thought it was important for you to hear a little bit from some of our students about why they choose the AP route.

As you know, at Carson High School, we offer a variety of different opportunities for our students, and college board or AP programming is one of those, um, and it is very important to help students in preparing for college.

We as we look at our strategic planning, Power Carson City 2027, goal two really focuses in on this with curriculum that matters, and part of that is providing a rigorous curriculum, which AP is based on.

And our strategy 2.2.3 specifically calls out advanced placement classes and calls for us to increase the course offerings for students in these areas.

Beyond just offering more courses in AP STEAM and dual credit, we also want to increase the number of students taking those courses.

We don't want just more students taking the courses, we want them also passing the exams.

Um so those pass rates matter, and also the diversity of students taking and passing those exams.

So those are all things that we're gonna look at a little bit today.

This chart shows you five years of trend data on advanced placement at Carson High School, and really some pretty remarkable results here to highlight.

If you look in 21, 22, and 23, you'll see that the uh results, we see some upward trends, but it's really pretty up and down.

That first bar that you see, the dark uh bar is the number of students taking the test.

Then the blue bar gives us the number of exams they took.

The orange bar is those who scored a three or better, a three considered passing.

And then at the very top, it shows the percentage of the exams taken that scored a three or higher.

So as I mentioned, those first three years, 21, 22, 23, things are uh relatively flat, some improvement, but we see a significant change in 24 and 25, where we see growth in both of those years consecutively, and we see growth all across the board, both in the number of students taking tests, the number of tests taken, and the pass rate of those tests.

It truly is pretty remarkable to increase not only the number of students taking the test, but the pass rate of those students as well.

So if you go back to 2021, we had you know roughly 500 tests taken and a 55% pass rate.

Fast forward to 2025, we have over 700 tests taken and almost a 73% pass rate.

This is really tremendous work and really demonstrates that Carson City School District, K through 12, provides great opportunities for our students to excel in these rigorous classes at the high school level.

According to the college board in 2025, based on those tests passed, students earned up to over a half million dollars worth of college credits by passing these AP exams.

AP tests are a key indicator for us because they really are a great measure of college readiness for our students.

A couple of quotes here from research studies that have been done about AP exams.

And we often use the term college ready in things like our vision statement.

And AP is a great way to measure that, because as these quotes demonstrate, if students simply take these classes, even if they don't necessarily get that three or better, it's directly correlated with better outcomes for them in college.

So they do better that first year of college, and they have uh a much better chance of on time bachelor's degree attainment when they've taken these courses.

So getting more students into these classes truly matters.

I wanted to highlight some courses in particular where we are seeing some really strong results.

These four courses are all courses at the high school where there are 75 or more students taking the course and also maintaining a pass rate of 70% or better.

So you see that in English language and composition, English literature and composition, human geography, and pre-calculus.

Who is taking these classes matters as well.

This breaks down uh gender of the students taking the classes as well as the ethnicity of the students taking the classes.

And you can see over the same five year span that we are seeing increases in the number of students in the various uh demographic categories, which is definitely uh important to us.

We want to see those continue to increase and get to the point where they would mirror the demographics that we see in the high school as a whole.

This slide shows you the performance broken down by ethnicity.

So this is the number of students in each ethnic group who took and passed at least one of the AP tests.

Again, you see in court increases across the board.

Um the numbers are a little bit tricky when we have some of our uh student demographic groups that are really small numbers of total students.

But um you see some great improvements and increases here.

So then Bridget's gonna share with us a little bit about how we continue to move this work forward, what got us here and how we continue to move it forward.

So I'm Bridget Gordon.

I am the school counselor lead for the district as well as the active school counselor at Carson High, and I took over as the AP coordinator for the high school in 2023.

Um we've really really focused on closing an achievement gap.

That's something that our our last really three principals cared a lot about, and I care tremendously about.

Um we've really worked to expand our opportunities because essentially this is a like you said, a K-12 highway for students.

Like what these guys behind me are doing in their schools leads to the opportunities that leads to our success.

This is not a standalone high school situation.

So we've invested in the pre-AP program, things like that, and um, as well as these programs that these elementary schools are doing to push our students to think beyond.

Um, as we look forward, AP has expanded offerings that are more non-traditional AP courses that we would like to offer.

So there's a new AP business class that could be a standalone class for maybe students that have done a CTE pathway, as well as cybersecurity, which will also like connect some of our non-traditional students.

Um, to be an AP teacher, you have to go through really intensive training.

Um, it's very specific by college board, and this is why schools like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, right, um, or out-of-state schools look for AP over other opportunities, because they can compare our students from Carson City School District directly to a student from any school district in all of America.

It's a one-to-one correlation with that kid and their outcome for a university versus maybe a dual credit for some of these programs.

So having opportunities like AP cybersecurity allows a kid that might not have ever taken another AP course to take an AP course, which is my goal.

I want every student to leave Carson High with at least one opportunity for college credit.

This year, uh so you saw that first graph where our increase was really steady.

Um this year, like the current year we're in right now in May, we're gonna give um a thousand over a thousand tests, a thousand sixty-five tests to 753 students, which is which is a humongous increase even from last year.

Last year we had 412 unique students, and this year we have 753.

So that's that's a big growth.

Um classes like AP pre calculate pre-calculus have helped.

AP Spanish really helps because we can give that to students that maybe otherwise uh aren't taking other AP courses.

Um having our pre-AP programming um and our teacher training uh for our as a replacement for our honors courses has been really beneficial, both to dual credit and to AP because it gives very specific and aligned curriculum that these kids then have access to that's evidence-based that the goal is that they can like move into these higher level courses.

Um we really, really are targeting and supporting our students that are non-traditional AP course takers with these AP uh pre-AP programming as well, and working with the middle school.

So the middle schools are offering our pre-AP courses in the math um programming, and that has we've seen a huge outcome.

You can see that in our in our data.

Uh we uh we met with College Board recently when they were in the area.

Um so we were having discussion, AJ's involved about the opportunity to use PSAT for our ninth and tenth graders, um, which right now is a choice that students can take as 10th and 11th graders.

That's where the national merit comes from, things like that.

But it can show us the AP potential of our students.

If we could do it universally for all students, um it it would give us this opportunity to better target and support students that maybe um are on the cusp or hadn't thought about AP as an opportunity for them.

So that's kind of as we're looking forward where we're looking.

A classes like AP Psych have been a really big benefit to us as well as the standalone.

Um we when we started with AP psych, our past scores were not really great.

We targeted supports and intervention uh for that teacher, we gave him training.

He started doing national scoring for AP, which many of our teachers at Carson High do in their summers.

And because of that, we have two sections of you know AP Psych.

Our pass rate is competitive with the globe now.

Um, so really investing in our teachers has allowed for that achievement gap to start closing.

So we were able to finish in less than our one-hour time allotment.

And we can take any questions that you have.

All right, so no muffins are needed.

Um yeah, so we will um yeah, I'll go ahead and see if we have any trustees.

If you have any questions, we'll start down with trusty ramiers.

Um questions at this time.

I just want to say thank you.

Thank you for um and uh making sure that all students have the opportunity to recognize that they have what it takes, you know, to to be successful.

And so introducing them to just one class and recognizing them they they can do this type of work, I think it's really setting them up for success.

So thank you for doing that.

Trust you Roberts.

Uh no questions.

I was just gonna echo what Trusty Romera said.

I think that's really neat that you're offering um something for kids who otherwise maybe didn't think that was a possibility and just um seeing potential in them and boosting that confidence in themselves and be able to um look ahead to what their future could hold.

So thank you.

Trusty clever, trusty Peterson.

Uh another echo kind of um we spent a lot of time focusing on making sure to catch those who might fall behind.

Um, and so it's really great to see that we're not only um throwing out crumbs to those who are capable of soaring, but that we are really putting out a full menu for them to choose from if that's the path that they um would like.

And and um had you asked some of my children if they thought they were AP capable, um, they probably would have said no, they're not interested and not capable, but um to have counselors who say, No, I think you are, and to have teachers that recommend you should consider it, and then to be put in that seat and realize like, oh, wait a minute, I am kind of great at this is good.

So thank you for all the efforts and for the expansive um selection of courses that kids can take to SOAR.

Mr.

Uh no questions really, but uh thank you for waiting so long to make your presentation.

I know it's been a long night.

Uh but one thing that I did notice, which I'm glad to see is the student participation from the Hispanic and Latino community, it keeps increasing each year, which I think uh that's a good thing, and thank you for the efforts you put in on that area.

Great, thank you.

Um I do have a few questions, but do you can you state like which AP courses have grown um and which kind of remain um under enrolled?

Um we we don't we don't fly per AP classes that are underenrolled at the high school because um our teachers are such valuable resources.

So if if the class um the kids vote with their feet, right?

So if the class has less than um what is like you know, 20 or more, we don't we don't fly the class.

So all of our sections that we have right now are big.

I would say AP Psych.

Um that teacher has worked so hard to build that program, and truly it is it's huge now because of him, and it's it's non-traditional students in AP Psych.

Um AP pre-calculus, we now have two teachers teaching, and so that class is huge.

And that's that's primarily because um it used to be an honors class that now AP offers, and because we were one of the first districts in the nation to do it, we actually get pre-AP for free.

So we because anyways, we had a really great math teacher that took the lead in that.

So um AP precoc, we have you know, I think four sections.

Um AP bio this year was our first year bringing it back, and we have two sections because the kids have told us they needed it.

So um, but none of our AP classes are very small at all, actually.

I think AP literature, several sections are at like 32.

Um, so and then are there barriers that would prevent students from enrolling?

Not on our end so much.

Um I talk about the foundation.

Yeah, oh my gosh, did anyone say yes?

Yes, there is the foundation is the foundation helps us remove that biggest barrier as far as like placement into the classes.

No, like we we want students in them, so we will let them in.

Um AP comes with a cost, every test is a hundred dollars, um, which is a steal, like Mr.

Bringhurst said, if you're gonna get three college credits from it, um a hundred dollars for three college credits or AP pre-calculus actually gets you six college credits, and AP Spanish gets you nine.

That's a steal.

But for some of our students, that's a humongous barrier.

Um, even I was saying like when my student was a senior, he had five of those, plus he had college apps, right?

So it was a lot of money.

Um the last three, this is gonna be our third year.

Um, the Carson City Schools Foundation has stepped up to cut that cost tremendously.

I I don't I don't think you would have seen our growth numbers if the Carson City School Foundation hadn't stepped in.

Um so they remove it, they give kids the opportunity for scholarship, cut it in half.

Um they give us 25,000 this year to help with that because our cost for the school year is like 100,000 um that the students then you know cover most of.

And then last question do students have to um like uh stay within guidelines, so specifically, you know, to stay in AP or honors classes, you can only have five tardies, one absence.

I mean, is that something a criteria that the high school has for these students?

I would love that dream.

But no, I mean, we ask, we we really push them.

We push them to be accountable students.

We have parent meetings, school or um, but as it stands, we don't have like a specific policy, and really it's because I want them to take this opportunity so badly.

And I'd say some of the that accountability in those AP classes is very much a natural accountability.

Those classes move so fast and are so rigorous that students know I don't if I'm absent, I don't want to be sick on a day that I've got my AP classes, right?

Or whatever it is, I don't want to be absent or late because I know that curriculum is so rigorous and moves so quickly.

So there's kind of some uh some natural consequences there if they're if they don't meet those standards.

Yeah, all right.

I was just looking for something to help our absentees.

I know let's just keep going.

All right, well, thank you so much for your presentation again.

Thank you for staying so late.

We greatly appreciate it.

And uh congratulations on success.

All right, we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item number 10.

This is an informational update on the alternate standards program, ASP in the Carson City School District for discussion only.

And this is with Dr.

Christine Lennox.

Could you mic, please?

Thank you.

Sorry.

Renee would have had us.

Thank you.

Um, this is Dr.

Christine Lennox for the record, and I'm the director of student support services, and this is my assistant director, Sarah Santos.

Um I just want to thank President Waltz and the board for having us here this evening to share this information.

This is a wonderful program with our students, and um it's just one area of um special education that we are you know part of.

Okay, so tonight we're gonna review um the alternate standards program and the key initiatives.

So this program has come very far in the last um I would say 10, 20 years.

There's expectations for our students, there's belief in our students, and that's what makes it exciting.

There was a time where our students just kind of came to school, we might have just worked on comprehensive life skills, and we kind of set a track for them that really was limited.

So tonight we're gonna look at eligibility criteria, the Nevada alternate assessment, which is called the NOT, programming curriculum, developmental options, um, project achieve, which is a grant that we received in 2020, microenterprises, and then the next step, which is a transition program.

Okay.

So you might hear out in the state, um, other counties call it comprehensive life skills.

We call it alternate standards.

It's the same program.

Okay.

In 2019, we renamed our program from CLS to ASP to better represent the programming and the diverse abilities of the students that we serve in the alternate standards.

Okay.

Umigibility for this program is determined by several um components.

First, it's the NAC, okay.

To be in this program, um there has to have a consideration for a student's cognitive ability.

Okay.

This is measured by um individualized standard tests, and it needs to be two standard deviations below the mean.

So if we had a hundred students, it would be 70 or below, or even lower than that.

But that's that would be the starting point.

The other consideration is a student's adaptive skills.

And in this area, it has to be two concurrents.

So as you can see, things like communication skills, self-direction, self-care, health safety, home living, functional academic, social skills, leisure, and use of community work.

Those they would have to be two areas concurrent for them to be meet the NAC requirements.

Then it goes in to tell us other considerations before the age of 18.

It adversely affects the educational performance of the pupil.

Controlling factors, eligibility is not lack of instruction in reading, math, okay, um, English proficient.

So that the NAC defines the student's profile and a team meets to determine this.

So you have your school psych, a speech path, of course, the parents, a special ed teacher, is looking at the requirements and the testing from our psych to look at all this information for eligibility.

Okay.

Then we look at our alternate standards.

So not just any kid could participate in this program.

Okay.

So it is designed for students with significant cognitive disabilities.

It's aligned with alternate academic achievement standards.

Um it measures progress in core content areas, reading, reading, um, math, and science.

And it is required for all eligible students on alternate standards.

And they they do third through eighth, and then they take it again in 11th grade.

Okay.

And this test, we have the most amazing staff in these programs.

This test is recorded.

It is quite intense.

So as a teacher is doing this test, it is on video, and that's how it's scored.

It's not like just pen and paper.

So it is a lot goes into it when our staff is administering the NAW.

Okay.

These are the six questions to participate.

Okay, so every team who is considering a student to be on alternate programming, um, they have to qualify under IDEA.

Okay.

They have to have a call to cognitive and adaptive impact.

Um, they have a need for substantial support, a need for intensive instruction in various settings.

They have a need for substantial support, a need for intensive instruction in various settings.

It's not based on factors such as disability labels.

So just because maybe say you are health impaired, you're automatically going to qualify for this program.

It's on those other areas we just spoke about attendance, language background, prior performance.

And then we have to notify the parents the implications of this.

So what it is is a student who gets an adjusted diploma or an alternate diploma.

They they can go to a college like a two-year college or like Western Nevada.

They can't start at a university.

The other thing is federal aid.

So they can apply for federal aid if they have these diploma types.

Okay.

Sorry, they can or cannot.

Cannot.

Okay.

They're not, they don't qualify for them.

Okay.

These environments are structured environments.

There's individual supports and accommodation for the students.

So you know we have caseload limits for these classrooms.

It's 13 is max.

Okay.

So there's about 13 students in the classroom.

We support integration with general education.

There's vocational training and transitional services and collaboration with family and community is essential.

Okay.

We have district approved curriculum.

This is aligned to our standards.

They call them connectors.

So when this was being created, a team of us got together across the state, various professions, and we went in and we broke down the state standards as far as we could.

So I was fortunate to sit a little bit on the science, and then they realized there's a speech path that moved me to ELA.

That was a little bit more appropriate.

And we talked about how can we keep the essence of these standards?

And that's what we came up with, what they call the connectors for this.

The two curriculums that is approved by the district is attainment and unique learning.

Okay.

Again, it's determined by the IEP team on an individual basis and IEP goals.

We work on functional academics, reading, writing, math.

There's life skills such as daily daily living and communication, social and behavior skills.

We have community-based instruction and focus on post-secondary transition and readiness is the programming that we utilize for these students.

Before that, they pretty much had the option of an adjusted diploma.

This diploma is credit bearing.

These courses are aligned to the students' needs.

So they have social studies for two credits, arts, college and career, English.

It's 23 credits total to get this alternate diploma.

Okay.

Some of them are taking classes standalone that are probably in our ASP classroom.

Some kids push in and are in the Gen Ed class, and then they might get the curriculum broken down to their level, like maybe after instructions, those times.

It's a various way of how we provide this support.

But it's 23 credits to get the alternate diploma, all on alternate standards.

Okay.

And it is adapted.

It's for a student on an IP, and the team determines what the need is for that diploma.

Okay.

So Project Achieve is a grant we received in 2020 out of the Department of Ed, it's called Comprehensive Student Services, is their name, but it's our our resource for the state.

And it was designed to improve student outcomes for our students, like helping them to have good curriculum, good support, and training for our teachers.

So we're sure I say this right, but we um was on a team as a pilot with the Department of Ed.

We were with Pam Mims, Dr.

Pam Mims, and she is from Tennessee State University.

She was part of the team, and Brie Yemenis from Baylor.

So they would come here and train our teachers and our staff and helped us build this curriculum and an appropriate instruction for this diverse population that we serve.

It started in elementary school, Borderwick and Fritchworth first, and then we moved it into the middles in high school, this concept of high quality instruction for this population of students.

Okay.

It like I said, emphasizes coaching and professional development, including training in evidence-based instruction.

Um, it's implemented in inclusive practices through response training based of students' need, behavior interventions, um, instructional materials.

It also supports our crosswalk with an Alcott.

So if you walked in to like maybe do the NEPF, it wouldn't align with some of what these teachers do.

So the Alcott is a very nice tool that aligns up to give a more responsive picture for our teachers on what they're working on, those type of things.

Okay.

And again, it's um goes with the alternate diploma and adjusted curriculum.

So we've been, this is our sixth year with this grant.

Um, and it's just it's just been a really nice program to support these students.

Okay.

Another area that is just amazing.

I don't know if you've been there, but um, Carson High does some micro industry, and this is really important for kids for transition, and it kind of helps them make choices in like what their careers might be, learning skills.

So it's a school-based vocational training program done by our ASP teachers there.

They work on like kitchen safety, um skills in using a knife, food preparation, um, inventory and monitoring product dates, hygiene and dress code, laundry skills, um, time management skills through clocking in and out, financial literacy through banking activities, and they run this through like a coffee shop and sandwiches they sell to the teachers, and they work, you know, with um the health department to make sure it's up to what they need to do, but it's a really a hands-on approach for these students who are learning like maybe what they want to do, you know, out in a career or those type of things.

So they do a wonderful job.

Okay.

The next um program that we'll highlight is Next Step.

So, this is a program that we started.

I gosh, I want to say about 2015.

And these are for our 18 to 22-year-olds.

So once the student gets their alternate diploma and they're just hanging out, you know, we still have a lot of work we can still do with them.

So, this one is used to acquire skills and experience needed to have a job, to maintain employment, um, and be productive members of the community.

Um, the individuals program include job skills training, vocational exploration, hands-on work experience.

Okay, they receive transportation and travel, like how to use the JAC bus, how to get around Carson, recreational and leisure activities, like what is out there for them to do in the community, community-based instruction, independent living and self-advocacy.

Um, they work on student-led IEP participation, so they're the ones, you know, kind of leading their meeting, um, resumes, master's application, thank you letter cover letters, and they practice and interview preparation and training.

So it's they work on a lot.

They have a lot of time, you know, a few years that they can dial this in so they can go wherever they want to go.

These are our partners.

So Dieter and Voke Rehab, Northern Nevada Center for Independence Living, Rural Regional Center, Jack Transportation, the Treasurer's Office, Plato's Closet, Carson City School District has been amazing.

We have students who have left the program and went into a few jobs around Carson, and they are exceptional.

The staff work with them, and we're just so pleased that the district is able to support those students.

Um, we have another pilot program we're in.

It's called Transition Readiness Improvement Project.

This is for all our students on an IEP starting at 10, but it's called Nevada Trip.

And so our families were having these conversations about transition earlier.

What do you want to be at 10?

Like 10, maybe they want to be a doctor.

How can we have those conversations?

And this is an online, not product, but it's an online um program where families can go on and they can have a central hub for resources.

It's really nice.

This is our second or third year, second year in this pilot.

So it's with the state and all, and it's it's a wonderful program.

UNR has a program that I don't know that our students have participated in, but it's called Path Independence.

If we have students who want to go to college, they have a two-year certificate program.

They have to be able to read, I believe, at a fifth grade level, but they can go to UNR and be a student, and then they graduate with a certificate.

Um, it's just an option, which is wonderful because 10, 20 years ago, that wouldn't have been an option.

And then they participate in the transition summit that's more resources for our students.

Like, what do they want to do in their lives?

Where do they want to go?

And that summit helps them with that.

Okay.

Okay.

So we have the amazing teams, and I'll say that again.

The teams who work with these populations, we have teachers, paras, speech paths, OTPTs, behaviorists, principals.

They're amazing.

They believe in these kids and they help these kids get to where they need to go.

We believe in the potential of every one of our students, their ability to grow and achieve meaningful outcomes.

Our alternate STEM program is grounded in high expectations, purposeful instruction and collaboration with commitment to supporting each student and developing independence, reach their full potential and achieve meaningful life, lifelong out term out lifelong outcomes.

I apologize.

And whatever they want to move towards, we're there to help them.

And I don't know if you've been in the schools and seen some of the work.

Stop in the classrooms.

Okay.

Any questions?

I can yeah, we'll go ahead and start.

Trusty Varner, do you have any questions?

I do.

Thank you for the work you do in this.

I'm curious how many students you have total in the program.

So about 120.

There's 16 in the elementary.

Um 26 in middle, and then 36 at high school.

So it's about 120-ish.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Project Achieve grant.

When's the grant expire?

And what does it pay for?

So it actually expired last year, they extended it to this year.

The time period ran out.

And it just pays stipends for teachers and staff.

Like it does partial payment for staff.

I'm not sure exactly I can get it for you off the top of my head, but there is a little bit for you know to keep working through the training through the project.

Okay.

Any possibility it'll be extended again?

I don't know.

You know what?

They the the state is really good to us in our programming, and if we have a need, there's various grants and things I can apply for if we need it.

So this year they were able to continue it on with the funding they had.

So thank you.

Trustee Peterson.

Um sorry, I was making other notes.

Um my daughter was a peer mentor in the program for all four years of high school.

Um and has such a sweet spot for so much of the students that are part of the program.

And through her, um, I kind of got a window seat of a lot of what happens in that classroom.

And um, like you had mentioned coffee cart to um preparing food for Thanksgiving feast, um, shark tank, uh the friendship ball.

Um, I love how included and it's um we're not just giving them a place to be, we're giving them a place to thrive.

Yes, and to um be enriched.

And I love the peer mental program that they're not isolated, but that they have um typical, I don't know if that's the right word anymore, um, students to come in and and be there with them and support them.

And I think um it's not just good for the the students who are a part of of the um gosh, I was gonna call it CLS, the ASP ASP program.

Um, but for the students that have the opportunity and the exposure to go be a part of that, and um for the kids in the ASP program to be in the halls and to see their peer mentor and and to have a moment of of hellos and um feeling included.

I just I think this is such a great program to have for both sides of it for all sides of it.

Um so thank you for the efforts and for um ensuring that opportunity is there um regardless of ability.

Um I don't have any questions, just think I think it's great, and I appreciate what I've been able to see from it.

Thanks.

Um yes, I was really excited to hear about this.

I used to work um both at the elementary level and at like a next step type program with the 18 to 22 year olds.

So when I found out we had it in the district, it was really exciting, and I'm grateful that you brought it to us to help us understand it more and learn.

Um, I did have just one question with that next step program.

Um, is there a facility that they use, or do they come back to the actual high school and this?

We have the housed at students support services.

So being that they've graduated, you know, and working on those adult skills that we have them on a different campus.

Um, of course, you know, sometimes they'll go back and take a class or those, but it is specifically at our building, and then they go on the community.

Yeah.

Trust your mirror.

Um, just to be clear, on the um post high school transition program.

Do most of the students stay after they receive the diploma?

A lot do.

A lot will stay and continue on.

I I don't have a percent, but they're entitled to go till they're 22.

Um so they'll come and work on it.

Some families choose to maybe have them go into community employment.

But um, a lot of them will stay and some come to next step and some choose to continue on classes at the high school.

It's always up to the IEP team and what their programming looks like.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Thank you.

No, this is this is a wonderful program.

Thank you for all your work on that.

Yes, thank you very much for your presentation.

I just had one last what is the staffing ratio?

So it depends.

So teacher is 12 students to one teacher.

And then depending on needs of the students, because there's various needs in these programs, how many paras that we utilize.

Um, of course, your speech paths support the program, and you know, their caseloads up to 55 OTPTs, you know, they support the program as well.

So, you know, typically you could have um maybe a teacher in two to three pairs.

It just depends on the needs of our students for that.

Okay.

So always, you know, programming safety, health concerns um are more prevalent in these programs.

All right.

Great program.

My son was a mentor as well and loved it.

Yeah.

He did.

So I um no, I'm we're very fortunate.

Uh, the school district is to have the support of the state and be able to offer this.

So and thank you again for your presentation and thank you for hanging out with us this evening.

Thank you.

All right, so we'll go ahead and close agenda item number 10 and move on to agenda item number 11.

This is an informational update from the Carson City School District Elementary Schools on programs, supports for students and celebrations.

This is discussion only.

And with us if this evening, we um it does not look like we have Dr.

Ward, we have Mr.

Herzle instead.

Dan Brown, Carrie Pryor, Cheryl Riketta, Reagan Virgil, and Shalice Crookshanks.

So if you all would, you can bring additional chairs up, however, you're gonna do it.

But we sure we greatly appreciate y'all hanging out with us this evening.

Well, especially uh Principal Brown.

On his birthday.

Happy birthday.

Yeah, happy birthday.

Uh the uh unforgettable birthday.

Yeah, this is what you want to do on your birthday, I know.

But thank you for being here.

Had we known we would have brought you a cake.

All right.

Well, they stole my thunder, Dan.

I was gonna say happy birthday.

Um, so good evening, and thank you all for having us.

Um behalf of Carson City Sixth Elementary Schools, I'm Carrie Pryor, Principal of Sealager, and I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to share our collective progress and priorities.

Um tonight we're going to present six schools, big wins, next steps, a snapshot of where we are and where we're headed together.

Um, I'll begin with a brief overview of what we'll cover.

Um first our shared instructional focus and literacy, then we'll highlight each individual school success.

Um, finally, we'll reflect on what these successes mean to our students and outline our next steps.

So across all six schools, one of our biggest wins this year has been the implementation of consistent research-based literacy instruction through our new curriculum, CKLA.

This program, grounded in the science of reading, ensures that every student, regardless of which elementary school they attend, receives high quality aligned instruction.

CKLA is helping us build strong, confident readers by developing both foundational skills and background knowledge.

Our students are engaging in rigorous grade-level text, which not only improve reading proficiency, but also strengthen comprehension and critical thinking.

Just as importantly, the shared curriculum is strengthening um alignment across our schools.