School district board of trustees meeting Tuesday, April 14th.

At this time, we will go ahead and call the meeting to order.

Roll call.

Hearing we have quorum.

All right.

Moving on to agenda item number one, adoption of the agenda.

Do I have a uh this is an action item?

Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

Uh so moved.

All right.

Uh moved by trustee Barner, second by trustee Ramirez.

Any public comment?

Discussion.

Uh just a question for clarification with eight and nine.

Um are they good as is?

Could we switch them to be able to talk about um you know the RIF and how that might affect the budget, or should it does it make sense doing the budget before?

Answer.

Sure, please.

Uh you guys have a flexible budget or flexible agenda.

Your budget's not very flexible.

Okay, what do you do?

You can take them in anywhere you want.

All right.

So at this time, then I'll ask um superintendent Fuelin.

So there's not uh a specific reason to do the budget necessarily before the RIF.

I think the presentation on budget sort of segues into the RIF instead of the other way around.

So I I think it makes sense the way it is in terms of how we've planned it out.

That's all right.

Are you okay with that?

And then president, as as you guys go forward, I think it's worth noting that the budget is not an action item tonight.

It is just a discussion.

Okay.

And then I believe that if you have questions regarding that particular agenda item number nine, I believe that it would be um relevant to address them in agenda item number eight at that point.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Passes unanimously.

Agenda item number two is flag salute, and this is going to be presented by our newly appointed school board member, uh, Tina Satuki.

And before we move on to agenda item number three, I would like to welcome our newly appointed school board member.

Welcome.

Moving on to agenda item number three.

This is student superintendent's report for information only.

Superintendent Fueling.

Thank you, President Walt.

Um, you stole my thunder a little bit, but trustee Statuki, welcome to welcome to the board.

Um hope everyone enjoyed spring break.

I am uh grateful to uh the crew of Artemis 2 and NASA for making all that really interesting stuff happen over spring break.

Um it was great to have some time to actually uh watch some of the the amazing things going on on the uh dark side of the moon.

Um so I have a couple uh several things here that are very date specific.

Most of this I believe is all um in your packets, but just a couple things I wanted to point out.

So um first next Wednesday, we have our last community connections formerly community PLC event of the year on uh it's Wednesday, April 22nd at 6 p.m.

in the Carson High Library.

Um the meeting will really be kind of a um I would say just a soft conversation regarding what is upcoming for this document.

So you have the the district's strategic plan, um, the goal for next year.

One of the big things that's gonna be happening is a reboot refresh of this document.

Um this was approved by the school board in September of 2023, so about three years ago.

Um, and it and is really kind of the the guiding light in terms of what I take it as the this encompasses all of the board the board's priorities, all of those things that I need to be thinking about, we need to be thinking about in the district when we're having difficult conversations or you know, with questions are being asked out in the community or in the schools.

This is a document I rely on a lot.

Um, it is extremely comprehensive.

There is a little bit of everything in here.

And I think that's it's just an important example of we want so much for our schools, right?

We want so much for our kids.

But um, so we're we're looking at a little bit of a soft conversation around this and um talking about what is uh what is to come next year because that will be for the four um I would say minimum of four community connections events next year.

We will schedule for, but just depending on how we're pacing on putting together a new document that will um hopefully be bringing to you by June of 2027, so that we have a new plan going forward.

Um Tuesday, April 21st, we have our employee of the year uh recognition event that will be at the Bulldog Theater just down the way here at 6 p.m.

Umward to another fun night.

It was excellent last year and and uh special recognition from last year to a very raucous crowd from Fremont Elementary School.

And uh hopefully the it's it's a bit of it should be a bit of a challenge.

We'll see.

We'll see how uh all the schools are represented.

Um3th is biker walk to school day with our friends at Safe Routes to Schools.

They are sponsoring this in the the Quad County area.

So that will that's kind of a fun fun thing if it makes me walk if I participate, and my wife would say that's a good thing.

Um Thursday, April 16th.

Um, the middle schools are gonna be hosting their culinary battle.

Um I'm not sure if there's a better name than that, but the culinary programs between Eagle Valley and Carson Middle are gonna be um not throwing utensils at each other, but it's food, they're making food and trying to uh make the best meal.

So if you're interested in in that, let me know, and we'll make sure to get you get you in.

Umgratulations to Carson High School's FFA students.

They recently participated in the Nevada State Convention, um, winning several categories and uh special recognition to Mr.

Josh Billings, who is recognized as the star administrator for the event.

So that was really nice.

And that is all I have tonight.

Right, thank you.

Moving on to agenda item number four, board reports.

Board member comments.

This is for information only.

Do we have a representative here from Carson High School?

Baseball game.

Baseball game.

Yeah.

Um he's excused.

Uh, do we have a representative here from Carson uh High Silver Campus?

I will be providing the report.

All right, thank you.

Okay, Trustee Ramirez from Dr.

Molden.

Uh she um reminds us that the JAG team is currently in Las Vegas at the JAG Career Association event.

Um, their JAG specialist, Mrs.

Kelly Stokes, is super supporting the following students as they represent the Silver Campus and compete against JAG teams across the state of Nevada.

Uh senior Margarita Anthony Lagoon, uh, Senior Elijah Santa Cruz, senior Addy Painter, and junior Serenity Moore.

And then on Tuesday, April 21st, or MP8, um, the owner of the Happy Outlet will be on campus to share what it takes to be an electrician and what possibilities students have to obtain work experience with them.

And then on Wednesday, April 22nd, the Silver Campus will be hosting 36 eighth grade students and their parents from both middle schools to tour the campus while it is in session, as well as to join them for brunch.

Uh, since that day is an early release day, they will be on campus from 9 to 11 a.m.

And they're super excited to have them join them.

And that concludes the report from Silver Campus.

All right, great.

Uh, would you like to continue with your or well?

I'm sorry, we're gonna come back to you.

We're gonna go ahead and do the NASB update first.

Uh Trustee Varner, do we have an update?

Uh no, we don't.

Uh the only thing is um the upcoming training in April 25th uh down in Las Vegas, which I don't believe anybody from the board is going to be able to attend.

And that's the only update they had.

Okay, great, thank you.

Then we'll go ahead and continue then with school reports, and we'll start with um Trustee Ramirez.

Okay, from Mark Twain.

Um, from Mrs.

Crookshinks, uh, she would like to celebrate the attendance at parent conferences.

It was very nice to be able to visit with all of the families and gave them update progress on student learning.

They also introduced Pamola, an app for family engagement through reading for K through two.

They would also like to celebrate the students over half the school uh purchase the directed painting activity for the end of the quarter award.

Students earn this by being safe, kind, respectful, and responsible, and saving their hot feathers.

They are focused on providing engaging experiences for the students in the hog store rather than trinkets.

The students seem to be responding well and thoroughly enjoy the event.

Many thanks to all the teachers on staff who taught the drawing and manage all of the classes to make this possible.

All right, all right, thank you.

Um Trusty Robert.

Yes, from Fremont.

Uh tonight is their steam night, and I'm really sad to miss that.

Sounds like they're gonna have a planetarium and everything, so perfect with what all the events were recently.

And then tomorrow morning at 7 30, there's a PTA meeting, and parents, you have a Zoom option in your parent square to join that.

And then just thank you so much.

They really appreciate all the participation that they had in their parent teacher conferences.

All right, great, thanks.

Trusty Peterson.

All right.

Um, I did not get uh report act from the high school, but I do have just a couple random bits that I can um put out for them.

They have their academic letter ceremony coming up.

Um it's next Monday at 6 30 to 7 30.

I assume it'll be kind of open house style, like it's been um the last few times.

Um so kids who have earned that academic letter for having strong performance in that way will be there.

Um let's see.

They also um Kyle Allen, he's um on the leadership for the high school.

I know we all received this invite today, but I wanted to mention um, because it's a cool opportunity.

Um he is one of the state conference chairs for the Nevada Association of Student Councils and Carson High for the first time, it's been 20 years since they have hosted, but they are hosting the state conference for high school student council's um opening ceremonies are this Thursday, so it'll be a I know they have been working so hard to get ready for this.

If you see Monsters Inc.

stuff all over the high school, that's why.

Um, but they're really excited to host um all the schools in the state, all the school boards, um student council boards from the state.

Um so uh the opening ceremonies for that is is this Thursday to get that kicked off.

And then for CLICR.

Um Principal Prior says we start SBAC testing on the 16th with fifth grade, uh, fifth grade science.

Next week we're gonna continue with the ELA and math for grades three through five.

Super excited to show all that we've learned and have worked so hard on all year.

Our C the group pirates are ready and excited about the incentives that they can earn.

Fifth graders are extremely excited because they've never had a pajama day during their time at SeaLooker.

They are trying really hard to earn one after the SPAC testing.

Um just wait till high school.

Every day can be pajama day.

Good.

That's good.

Um the PTO also had their first bingo night on Thursday.

Uh it was a great night.

So I was again, I was disappointed not attend.

Thursdays are a rough one for me, but um sounds like it was successful, so that's great.

Um, the community and businesses supported it well.

Great, thank you.

Just keiner.

Yes, I have uh one for Borderwork Bray.

Uh Principal Raketa wanted everyone to know the starting their SBAC training or testing, I'm sorry, on Thursday.

It would run through May 1st.

And then on Friday, they have Border Bray night at the ACES Ball field, where their second through fifth grade choir will be performing at the national anthem.

Uh Principal Raketa wanted everybody to know that if you wanted to attend the game, consider buying the tickets from them through them, which will help support the school.

And they also have a link to purchase the tickets, and it can be found on Parent Square, or people can call the school for more information.

So that's my report for boardwork, but I have one for Fritz also.

First of all Brown would like to thank their busy parents who took the time out of their busy day to come by and shake the shake their hands with the child's teacher, their child's teachers.

And to see the progress our child made throughout the year.

This coming Thursday, Fritz will begin their SPEC testing also.

This year they are saying, step back, SPAC.

We got this.

So I kind of like that.

And then they're asking the parents to please help prepare their students by making sure they get a good night's sleep.

Share some words of encouragement with them before they go to school, and give them a big hug as they're out the door on the way to school.

And then this Saturday, the Fritz Chair choir, the choir will be performing the national anthem also at the ACES ball game.

And the first pitch is at 4 05 p.m.

So that's my report.

That's awesome.

And then we also read that they did very well with Archery.

So congratulations.

I think they placed third in the state.

And then they also had one uh one student who qualified for state.

Awesome.

That's great.

In Utah, I think they're going to Utah.

Great, thank you.

Um, yes, and so then I have um a report from Miss Virgil from Empire Elementary School.

Empire is amping up their SBA up for their SBAC testing this week with a fun raffle where students can earn tickets to win the opportunity to throw pies at Miss Virgil and Mr.

Bingham if they work hard on their testing.

So good luck with that.

Uh yeah.

So and then on May 8th, they will um will be our their final STEM tank expedition, which I believe we've all um got invitations for that as well, so hopefully we can attend, with the community members giving feedback on student projects in STEM Fiesta that evening for families.

So I wish you all very luck with that.

And then I just wanted to mention um so uh trustee Sistuki, we all have schools that were assigned at the beginning of January, and then we check in with the principals to get a report so we can highlight their celebrations, things that they're doing.

So after this meeting, we'll work at um getting you a school or two as well.

So then you can get those reports.

It's a great way to keep in touch with the schools.

Thank you.

All right, if that's all the announcements, we'll close agenda item number four and move on to agenda item number five.

Do we have any association reports?

And this is for discussion only.

Good evening, President Walt, Superintendent Fueling, trustees.

Uh, I am Brian Wallace, president of OCEA.

I would like to first welcome our newest board member, OCA and its members appreciate your willingness to serve as a trustee in the best school district in Nevada.

So welcome aboard.

I want to speak today about the proposal to reduce or eliminate social worker positions in our district per the tentative budget being presented this evening.

This decision comes at a time when our ending fund balance has actually increased.

That matters.

It tells us we are not in an immediate financial crisis that requires cutting critical student support services.

We have the financial stability, and with that comes the responsibility to make thoughtful student-centered decisions.

The stability is there due to the partnership of all three labor unions and the district, continuing working to ensure that we remain student-centered when it comes to our finances.

Right now, our district is unique.

We are the only district that has successfully filled all social worker positions.

This is a social worker for our students at every site.

This is not something to take lightly.

Many districts have struggled to recruit and retain these professionals.

We built something that is working well for our students and our community, and our budget should reflect that.

If this tentative budget were to move forward, the impact will not disappear.

It simply shifts.

More responsibility will fall on our community partners who are already stretched thin.

They cannot replace the daily on-campus support that school social workers provide to our students.

This means slower response times, less access for students, and more gaps in mental health care for our students.

We also need to take into consideration the impact on our MTSS system.

Social workers are essential at tier two and tier three levels.

They help address the behaviors, the mental health, the attendance, and the family engagements that teachers need support with and our administrators.

Removing them weakens the entire system and puts more pressure on every single district employee who are already managing significant demands.

Once these professionals leave, it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild this team as we have seen statewide with the other school districts.

Finally, timing matters.

The Nevada legislature meets in less than a year.

Funding structures and priorities could change, making pardon me, the making permanent cuts now, months before a legislative session is most likely premature, especially in light of an increased ending fund balance that now that was not necessarily planned for.

So the question becomes why act now?

We do not need to act now.

When I came to this table in 2007, 2008, during the start of the recession, this is a similar speech and message I passed on to the board members then.

We moved forward with a reduction in force at that time.

We lost approximately five to six really great educators and then turned around and tried to rehire them after they had already left us.

We were able to rehire one.

We let good employees go because we moved prematurely.

We have the financial ability to pause and wait.

We have the ability to lobby at the next legislative session together and see what our efforts will bring.

Most importantly, we have the funds to protect services that directly support our most vulnerable students.

OCA urges you to hold off on these reductions proposed within the tentative budget.

Maintain the positions we have and preserve preserve the system that is proving to work.

We can then revisit this conversation when we have a clear financial and legislative guidance after the 2027 session.

Our students need the support today and next year, not uncertainty.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, that closes agenda item number five.

We'll move on to agenda item number six.

This is for public comment.

This is for public comment that are on for items that are not action items on the agenda.

Um I do have.

I believe the four that I have here are all for the um budget, which would then be appropriate to have now because it is not an action item.

The budget is only a discussion item, so I will call you up as as we receive those.

Okay.

Um first though, Renee, did we have public comment by email?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you, President Walt.

Um, I had uh email that was received electronically from the following people.

Jessica Wright, uh Luca Litka, and Matthew Johnson.

Uh copies of their emails were provided to the trustees and will be included in the permanent record.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

So we'll go ahead and uh start with Sherry Scafodi.

Scaffidi.

All right.

Are you ready?

President Walt and trustees, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

For the record, my name is Sherry Scaffidi.

I am an intervention paraprofessional at Fremont Elementary School.

Nevada consistently ranks in the bottom half of all school districts in the country.

Depending on the survey, it may be even lower.

As an interventionist, I work with students at all grade levels, K through five, who are not up to grade level.

This year, the combined number of students I work with is approximately 30.

Some of these students are lacking, excuse me, in basic math, while others are lacking in ELA.

I work with first grade students that do not know letter sounds.

The second grade students I work with cannot read C V C words, such as let bus, MAT, etc.

The third and fourth grade students I work with cannot add two two-digit numbers correctly.

By eliminating the paraprofessionals, these students will not get the one-on-one individual attention, support, and instructions they need to be successful in their academic endeavors.

Cutting the number of power professionals or eliminating them altogether would be very detrimental to our students in the Carson City School District.

As these young people will be the leaders of our state and country, they deserve the best education we can give them.

I firmly believe our power of professionals play an integral part of their education.

I implore you for the sake of our school-aged children to find an alternative means to meet the budget requirements so you do not have to reduce the number of intervention paraprofessionals we have who are helping our students.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Uh Kaylee Young.

Nope, any mic.

Just uh press the button, make sure that it turns green, state your name for the record.

Hi, I'm Kaylee Young.

Um board members.

My name is Kayleigh Young, and I'm the parent of a nonverbal child on the spectrum in this district.

I'm here tonight to pro because of the proposed cuts to paraprofessionals and social workers are not just budget decisions, but they determine whether students like my son can access public education at all.

My son relies on a paraprofessional every single day.

Without that one-on-one support, he cannot communicate his needs.

He's at risk for safety concerns, and he can not successfully participate in school.

Removing that support does not reduce services, it completely removes his access to education completely.

Many of us choose to raise our children here in Carson City because of the good sense of community we have here, because we believed schools would support all children, not just some.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Steven Rivera.

Good evening.

Paraprofessionals aren't optional supports for him.

They are what making communication and safety possible every single day.

Cutting these positions doesn't just reduce services, it takes away his access to an education.

Please don't balance the budget on the backs of students like mine, my son.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then uh April Pacheco Kaylee, hi.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my voice tonight.

My name is April Pacheco.

I'm a licensed social worker here in the community.

Since starting my career a few years ago, I've had the opportunity to work alongside these school social workers as a contractor.

My role contains meeting with students who have been identified at the tier three level, requiring crisis intervention.

As someone coming in as a complete stranger to these students and having to talk to them about such a sensitive subject, possibly one of the worst times of their lives, it's difficult to say the least.

After disclosing their thoughts of suicide.

However, when I arrive, the student is de-escalated and engages in answering the hard questions.

I have noticed the work that the school social workers put in to prepare the students to meet with me.

They knew that they know the student's favorite calming toy, their favorite spot in the classroom, and what self self-soothing activity works best for them.

I want to ask who is going to know how to meet these students where they are at and provide them with this level of support and attentiveness if our school social workers are no longer present.

As someone who intervenes when a student is in crisis, there is a potential for the student to require a higher level of care, meaning hospitalization.

When this occurs, the school social workers have been nothing but supportive and helpful in this process as I explain what hospitalization looks like to both the student and the parent.

Who will be able or have the time to do this for these students and parents who ask the hard questions about hospitalization and how the student will transition back into school?

This school year, the school social workers have taken on the task of screening students for suicide risk, creating safety plans, and referring them to a higher level of care if it's needed.

With this new change, I haven't responded to a single call this year.

If they were to be removed from the school district, I can only imagine how this would impact teachers, nurses, and the contractors you will have in place when a student is in crisis.

As someone from the outside, I obviously do not know the plan for the contractors that will be put in place.

But but to put these suicide assessments into perspective, I wanted to give you a glimpse into how much time these assessments take alone.

Almost every day last year, I was responding to at least one or two calls.

Each of these calls can take between one to three hours, depending on student engagement, parental involvement, and involving other parties if a student requires hospitalization or a legal hold.

With that being said, I want to ask will your contractors have the time to respond in these situations.

In conclusion, removing school social workers does nothing but but put students at risk, at risk for engaging in risky behaviors, at risk for developing unhealthy relationships, at risk for normalizing negative thinking patterns and behaviors, and at risk for not speaking up when they need help.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have any additional public comment?

Ms.

President.

Before you move on to further public comment, I would like to take the opportunity to remind all participants in the meeting that public comment is a time for the public to voice their opinions, uh, but everybody must remain respectful, both of the speakers, um, the board, and everybody else.

There's uh there's decorum that's required here.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I have to say that I possibly out of the please excuse me.

Hold on, one moment, please.

Could you please Tom Gibbons?

Thank you.

And I I appreciate you folks listening because it's probably a little different than what you're gonna hear from everybody else.

First of all, I'm not as prepared as a lot of these folks are, but I am a taxpayer.

I've been in this in lovely city since 1972.

I have had a wonderful practice.

I have uh I'm very disappointed, I have to say, with our total educational system.

That starts not only with Nevada.

You don't need to focus on um Carson City, but we're ranked when I graduated, we're ranked from ninth, eighth in the world now down to 25th.

And unfortunately, the state of Nevada is now around 45th out of 50 states.

So I uh I am very disappointed with the uh the entire educational system.

And as a taxpayer, I realize not so much, and the reason I'm here today is not only because I love our community, and I practiced here for uh in my profession for 50 years.

There are one or two on this board I have a lot of respect for.

And I don't mean I disrespect the others, but I can tell you that I am uh looking at this as my tax as a taxpayer and seeing that basically two-thirds of what I pay in taxes in the close in my case, it's about eight thousand dollars a year to pay for basically debt that our communities have picked up because we cannot pay our bills.

Now I realize that's a consideration, but when I drive down King Street, and I do see the fact that we're looking for uh uh substitute teachers, and I look at the Nevada appeal and the issue, which shows, and I know I heard a presentation regarding social workers, and I take a look at the picture, and I'm seeing someone that I have.

If this was a social worker, first of all, when I went to high school and college, I didn't have a social worker because we didn't need them.

It's a different time.

I realize that.

I know we're getting down to the very end on this, but I can tell you as a taxpayer, I spend the money we do on taking care of debt without being responsible for it, is very frustrating.

And I realize I appreciate it because what you do, because you're volunteering your time, and as I said, I have a lot of respect for that, but I do have a lot of frustration with the educational system.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Is there any additional public comment?

Thank you.

All right.

Hearing none, we'll close uh close public comment agenda item number six.

Moving on to agenda item number, sorry, to agenda item number seven.

This is an annual report for Carson Middle School, Eagle Valley Middle School, and Carson High School on programs, supports for students in celebrations.

This is discussion only, and it is presented by Principal Amy Robinson, Principal Gina Hoppe, and Principal Dan Karstens.

Welcome.

Okay.

Thank you for uh having us here tonight.

I'm Amy Robinson, principal at Carson Middle School.

And I'm Gina Hoppe, principal at Eagle Valley.

Thank you.

Dan Karsten's principal at Carson High.

So we're going to start with the middle schools and then move to our high school.

We're starting with so we did this based on our school performance plan or our school improvement plan.

And there are three.

Will you do the next slide?

Thank you.

It's not kidding.

So there are three parts to the school performance plan that and we set goals every year.

Yes.

Thank you, Ray.

Thanks, Renee.

I'm going to get this all figured out, I promise.

I put I saw her there on purpose.

So there are three parts that we set goals.

We look at data and set goals for our our school based on student success, adult learning culture, and connectedness.

So we thought that would be the best way to present kind of where we are in our school, each of our schools based on each of those areas.

So for student success.

We utilize SBAC data and map data as our to measure that along with benchmark data and kind of daily assessments, but those are our big assessments that we utilize to measure those.

And then in order to meet our student success goals, everything that we do is based in our multi-tiered system of support.

So we do a lot of work at the tier one level that affects all children.

So some of the things that we utilize on both campuses, we really work on those high engagement instructional strategies with all of our teachers.

We use a lot of our early release days to work on those strategies.

We use we focus on our high quality English language development and for our English language learners and it fully implementing our proficiency scales and our common assessments at both sites.

So we work together to create those and work together to implement those.

We use avid instructional strategies across the board.

And we use other programs like Exact Path and I Ready to fill in some of the gaps for our kids.

And our then we move to tier two for some of our kiddos who need extra support.

We have intervention classes at each of our sites.

Teacher recommendation, and they receive extra support in both math and reading, starting in sixth grade, and we do a lot of communication with fifth grade to get to identify those kids who need help so we can continue that help as they move up.

And then we communicate again with the high school as they move on to high school.

And we do this through our MTSS process.

So we're always looking at kids and what they need.

We have a credit recovery classes for kids who are credit deficient as they're moving into high school because our middle schoolers are earning credits to go to high school.

We have an interventionist who works with small groups and kind of runs our intervention program.

So she also pulls small groups.

Like if they're coming back maybe from opportunity school and they need kind of an easier integration into the the full school day.

And our tier three intents.

So for kids who some of our kiddos who need really intense, we have some some pretty low readers.

Um we have two teachers trained in Orton Gillingham literacy, the literacy program.

So they work very specifically with those kids to try to build those those reading skills, and they work with do some math interventions too on more of an individual basis with the really struggling kids.

And as we move into next year, we're we're excited about the new calendar because we're we're kind of really primed to move into utilizing that time for our PLCs for our professional learning communities.

And now to be able to have a really good structured time that gives them enough time to work weekly together and even cross-site.

Um, I think we'll be it's gonna it'll be really good for our professional learning communities and so that our teachers can start to you not just start but really dig into utilizing um data on the fly, you know, as it's coming in and and be able to structure their instruct their instruction based on that data that real in real time.

Uh this is a summary of our oh, we have you first.

You go ahead.

We thought we switched that slide.

Um, so for Eagle Valley, um we are looking at our reading and our language achievement, and as you can see at the top there, um, we combined the reading and language together, and then you can see the um approximate percentage of showing proficiency in math at the bottom there.

We also did a comparison to last year where we were at, um, and all of the percentages are pretty close in achievement and showing proficiency.

Uh so this is Carson Middle Schools map data.

Um, so this school, so if you look at um the they're broken apart into the the graphs, our reading language and then math.

And our goal is to have all green and blue, so we're not there, but that the on the map, if the theory is if the kids are about the 61st percentile, maybe a little bit above that, they're on track to show proficiency on the SBAC.

Um, it's not an exact correlation, but it does give us an idea of of where our kids are.

Um, so currently about 40% are showing proficiency in reading and language.

Um last year that was at 39% at the same time this of the year, and 24% are approaching proficiency.

So if we can get those kids kind of over the hump, that would you know help with with our proficiency level and math.

39% are showing proficiency, and 20% are approaching the the proficiency.

Okay, the next part of our school improvement plan is the adult learning, which is our professional learning for staff.

And for both Eagle Valley and Carson Middle, we did a lot of tier one instructional strategies this year, making sure that there was a strong foundation and framework for our campuses.

Um, having that PLC process, the consistency of it.

So we very much appreciate the work that was done for the calendar because then we will have time to look at data and curriculum and instruction on a consistent weekly basis.

And um, like Amy once Amy was saying that that will really help our teachers and hopefully we see some strong improvements in our map data that we just shared with you.

Connectedness is the third part of our school improvement plan, and this has a lot to do with um how we are connecting with our community, um, our families, our staff, um, and our students, so how we are supporting them.

And it this work cannot be done by alone.

It takes a lot of people to make this happen.

And MTSS is a big part of that.

Um, we've done a lot of work over the years to support academics and behaviors and attendance and support the students with incentive programs and rewards and supports and all the things that we put in place for them so that those they can feel successful.

Um, the the parent outreach opportunities both for Carson Middle and Eagle Valley.

We have opportunities for families to come into the building.

We share data with them, we get them involved, help them with their student success, all of those things.

So this we uh pulled from the last three.

So including this year, uh the same time, about the same time in the year, the number of events that have occurred.

Um so disregard for school rules actually encompasses a lot of different things.

There are lots of things in that category, uh, anything from um just inappropriate behavior or language to a technology violation to uh dress code violations, so that kind of encompasses a lot.

Um disrespect and insubordination, you can kind of see the patterns there.

Um we have administrative investigations, uh fights, physical aggression.

Um we've hovered kind of at the same spot.

Um and then instigating and promotion of fighting looks it's down a little bit.

Um bullying cases have increased a little bit.

Um a lot of this depends too on who's logging in, who I mean, there's a lot of subjectivity in how you deal with a situation and how you name it.

So um a lot, so some differences are hard, you know, they are accounted for just by different people handling the situation and the and considering it different types of infractions.

Um tobacco violations, uh like nick would be like a nicotine vape, um, has stayed about the same.

Uh possession of THC, disturbance of school.

We've had four incidents this year, um interference with instruction 34.

There are a lot of other categories as well, but these are kind of the the main ones.

And I won't read the entire list to you, but I would just say that a lot of work goes into MTSS to support all of this and the small groups that we run, either the counselors work on or our social worker runs.

Um so we do try to identify themes within our behavior data so that we can support that with small group work.

Um, and I would just say that um having a new administration team at my site, uh, we're also just working on that consistency with the data and how we are logging this information and um keeping track of uh the behaviors that are happening at our site.

Before we move on, I do have a question.

Sure.

Um if you can go back to that last slide.

Disregard for school rules.

Um it's gone up about a hundred instance this year.

Can you explain why is it being better enforced or the kids just not uh or acting acting up?

You know, I don't I don't see the kids acting up more.

I I do think um my team.

So I've been lucky in this year.

I had the same team that started that for two years in a row, and I think they're just more streamlined in how we're we're handling kids.

And so it it means that that many more were logged in the system.

Um I don't necessarily think I I have a sense of more calm uh on on our campus.

Like I don't, it's not quite as we always used to say it was like pretty active campus.

I I feel like it's not quite as active.

Um, but it it seems calmer, and even like our fights and physical aggression, they're not as uh violent as they have been in the past.

Like I feel like there's just a stronger sense of calm on the campus.

And I I feel like that maybe the and and it is data is data, right?

You look at it and think, well, why why?

Because it doesn't feel like we've had so many more.

Um, but it really could just be we're just better at getting it documented, um, or more just more we're out there more and able to handle more of the situations too that are happening.

Thank you.

Trusty trustees to oh, sorry.

No, I just had one more.

I'm sorry.

Sure.

What is disturbance of school?

I know you just had yeah, disturbance of school is a biggie.

So um, and and again, it it's kind of a logging thing.

So that's kids who disturb school can be cited by the sheriff's department.

So it it's it can it's generally pretty extreme, like a student who um is causing a very large disturbance, like maybe in the office, just not we can't get them quite under control, and they're just continually causing a disturbance.

So that is a citable offense.

Um so we take those pretty seriously.

So yeah, the so we have had a couple of those.

Sometimes it's a kid who just is struggling with controlling themselves, but um, and other times it might be just a kid who decided to hop down the hall and and poke into classrooms and and disturb the learning of other kids.

So sometimes it's a fight too.

Sometimes a fight might cause a disturbance, and so that child might be cited with a disturbance of school that caused a large disturbance.

Thank you.

Um I just have a question, and I'm fairly new to this role, uh, obviously, but is there a like does a district have like a discipline guidebook that every school should be consistently logging these incidents that are very well described and scripted, so there is not an inconsistency with the data?

Yes, there is, and and so it's just that there are so many options that it's oft sometimes it's just kind of relies on the just um like bullying sometimes is you do we call this bullying, or is this a mutual conflict?

Or you know, and it and it just kind of depends on and and then like Gina has some newer people who are learning to to log the incidents, but yes, the school district has a there's there are definitions for them.

And this is not the entire list, these are just like the major list of behaviors.

So, yes, we have even under the bullying category.

I want to say that there are six different ones that we choose from.

So it is a consistency practice that we continuously work on in our deans and our VPs do have regular monthly meetings, and so they also talk about that during those meetings.

Yes.

I I thought that was a shoot in the background.

I was like, oh no, okay.

Okay.

Um so for um our other um enrollment and uh some other data pieces for you.

So chronic absenteeism is a big one, and so you can see our percentages there for the last three years.

And then we also logged our tardies, which um having the e securely or the pass system that we have, the securely pass system has really helped with that.

And um I I just want to give it up to Jeremy Lewis and um even my VP, Lois Lineah, that they've done a lot of work to tackle the tardies.

Um, and so they've used that system, the e-haul pass system that we have for our school to reduce the number of tardies and and track that data.

Um, so that's worked out really well to help um see that data piece lowering.

And it looks huge when you look at the tardy day data, like the 9,000.

Um, but when you think about that's for every class every day, and we've got 800 kids.

So I mean, even if if every kid were tardy once, that's gonna be 800 tardies.

So um it it looks like a big number, but it we've really decreased it.

Uh and that system has helped us a lot um in decreasing that number.

And that counts like kids, there's kind of a difference between kids who come late to school versus kids who are just tardy getting to the next class.

Um so we've seen a huge decrease in in just kids not being tardy to the next class, get there and be ready to learn.

What is the time for a tardy?

We have a four-minute passing.

So then what marks them tardy uh if they walk in after the bell.

So we and we do now um we've started to distinguish between we have kind of tardy well, tardy and then really tardy.

Um so that we can see, you know, do we have kids who are just scooting in after the bell, or are they I think it's called too tardy or something?

I don't know.

Um, and then or kids who are like you know, 15 minutes, like what's going so we can start to to break that data down to see do we have kids to are lingering and kind of hanging out, or are they just scooting in too late?

We have a lot of it, it's their social time.

So they they love to walk their friend to class and then they just don't quite make it.

We do um music in the halls during our passing, so is a four-minute passing.

So the for the the first three minutes we play music, and then the music goes off and they have one minute to get to class.

So that's been very helpful too.

Um, because it signals to them, oops got to get to class.

And they do, they start scooting wherever they are in the building.

They they don't always judge their time well, but but they try.

So yeah.

Any questions about this data?

I do have a question.

So these day data is for the fall semester or up to date.

Up to date.

Up to date.

Yeah.

And that's year to year.

So starting with two years ago and then last year and then this year.

Uh I have a follow-up on that.

What do you um would you be able to explain or even insight on why you think the chronic absenteeism rate is declining?

Which is a good thing.

Great.

It work.

But why what do you have any insight?

Well, we do a lot of work in that area and our goal, we have a lot of different things that we do to help with attendance.

Um, one is that connectedness piece that Gina was talking about, just trying to get parents in the building and um educating them about even just educating them about the state law that they're supposed to be there 90% of the year.

Um, so we do a lot of that.

I send a lot of email, you know, parent squares about that.

I send a letter home with their report cards about that, um, because that's also a gr a promotion requirement.

Um and we even try to that engaging classroom that you know, not so much online.

We've tried to move a little bit away from using the Chromebooks so much to where they kind of have to be, you got to be there in class to get your instruction.

Um, and that Chromebook is a good tool, but it's not your whole education.

So, because we had a lot after COVID of my kids just gonna stay online, they're just gonna do this week online, and and thinking that that was okay, and that that's kind of the the new status quo.

So we had to kind of re-educate people that that does that doesn't work.

You need to be here in school and in class.

Okay.

They also have a program called Check and Connect.

Um, it's through the MTSS process where a lot of our staff members have been trained, and it's like a mentoring program to help with students that are chronically absent.

So they have then kind of like a buddy system where their mentor checks in with them and looks for them on a regular, you know, a daily basis, and they they're tracking their attendance, but more of like a one-on-one.

So that also helps.

And so then the social workers um how much do they work with this component with the parent engagement component?

Are they part of the team that works with the parents?

Yes.

Yes.

To what extent?

So to from what I was just saying with the check and connect, they have been trained with that mentoring program.

They are also part of my social worker is part of the MTSS team, um, works with students one-on-one, but then also works with families.

Yes, it like in a bigger picture.

Are they connecting with families?

Yes, they absolutely are.

Um, and they work a lot with kids who maybe have anxiety about coming to school, so that they would do more specific things with those kind with those kids.

We have student support teams as well, and so we have counselors, social workers, admin on those teams, teachers, and then we invite the parents in to come and meet with us, and then we talk about concerns that way as well.

Hopefully, that answers your questions.

That attendance data is something we look at as part of that MTSS team.

We look at behavior, we look at attendance, and we look at academics all together.

So that is a piece.

And the district has uh SARB also where like our extreme cases we can um get some outside support as well.

Serve on thus our meeting, so I know what you're talking about.

Okay, another piece of information that was asked to provide.

So here's some information for both of our sites as to where we are currently standing for next year.

Um, so current with my current staff right now thinking about possible hiring or what's gonna happen next year, we're not sure, but um, I have currently I have two science teachers who are critical need, so those positions technically would um be open because those are on a year-to-year basis.

Um I have a PE teacher who's retiring an ESL teacher who's retiring, and I currently have one English uh position vacant.

Um, it's filled by a long-term sub currently.

Any questions about that?

Okay.

All right.

So here's a long list of things that we are doing to support the connectedness, and I won't read the entire thing to save time.

Um, but I will just say that both of our schools are using an SEL program, a social emotional learning curriculum.

It's called second step.

Uh, so both of our sites are using that um program.

Um, and a lot of positive things that are happening at both of our sites, just looking at this list.

Just looking at this list.

Even we we both do announcements for our buildings.

And today I was recording the announcements with one of our teachers because our students will be going to UNR on the 27th and the 28th for a tour.

And so we're trying to get the students excited about that.

And it's just a lot of fun things happening at both of our sites.

We have stole we stole that idea, and we now do a VIP, very important people lunch.

And that has been a huge success to get parents and families in the building.

And just a lot of different things on this list that I think are positives and celebrations for both of our sites.

Which is funny that we we call them PBIS, because even the kids call them that, which is silly.

Because we should have a catchy name, but that's what that's what they call them.

They probably don't even know what they're saying.

But those are the points that they earn for good behavior, and then they can buy things from a store.

And they the things that they can buy range from funny little trinkety things to lunch with a teacher or picking the songs for the day.

Ice cream sandwiches.

Picking picking the songs, you know, that the kids listen to when they go to class and all kinds of different things.

We try to find fun, engaging free things.

So that's nice.

I think so.

So at the for tiers two and three levels so for the kids who need extra support.

Um, some of the things that we do under for connectedness is just more intense assistance and intervention for those kids.

We do those student study teams where we we bring the parent in, meet with them, come up with a and what we're doing there is looking at the whole student and trying to figure out a good way to support them to be successful.

Um we do those for academics, we do them for behavior, attendance.

We can for any reason, but it involves the parents in the process and gives everybody kind of a job to do to help to support the student.

Um we have the school attendance review board for kids who are extreme cases of of attendance or chronically absent.

We have small focus groups that are our counselors and social workers run.

Um we're currently at at Carson Middle, we have our in-school suspension room.

So for kids who maybe had a behavior, usually it's for behavior that they're in in-school suspension.

Um and traditionally it's been, you know, you're in there and you're gonna do work and it's just kind of a quiet place, but we're we're revamping it to be more um learning about the right kind of behavior and pro-social behaviors.

So really integrating that uh into that program.

So we we're lucky we have a really great teacher in there.

So she's excited to do it, and she makes great connections with kids.

So I think it's gonna work well.

And we we partner with juvenile probation in that process.

So they come in and do small groups with those kids.

Um, and our school resource officers having them on site is very uh helpful, um, very helpful to us.

Um, and we do uh our counseling on site for some kids at the tier three level, like therapy for those kids.

Um, our district intervention and assistance team, the diet team has been really helpful in when we have a kiddo that we we we're kind of like we've exhausted, we we're out of tools in our toolbox.

What else can we do?

Um, we refer them to the Diet team and we all sit around and there's community partners and um we come up with better ways to support them and just different kinds of support.

So it's been really helpful to have that team.

And these are our celebrations.

So some great things that have been happening, the continuate continuation of our intervention classes.

Um they we're really seeing a decrease in the number of students who are credit deficient.

Um, and I really believe that's due to our interventions classes and starting those early.

So starting those in sixth grade so that they have that opportunity for those kiddos who are struggling.

We started a cheer team this year at Carson Middle School, so that's been a really positive um just really positive for just getting families in the building.

It's just it increased our our attendance at games and the and the kids are having a lot of fun with that.

So Sheila Story did that, and it's been really great.

Um our walkthrough observation data.

So we do a lot of just observe observing classrooms.

We uh have an instructional framework that we want all teachers following, and so we follow up with that with walkthroughs, and we're able to to look at that.

So we've seen it uh an increase in student-centered activities, which is our goal and hide that high engagement in the classroom.

Um revamping our in-school uh suspension room to be more restorative and social emotional based.

We have a new greenhouse on our site, so that's exciting.

Um it's not quite up and running yet, but we're we're almost there.

So hopefully by next year we'll be able to start out with it.

And utilizing the the diet and MTSS tiers, all tiers, um, and tier two and three, especially for our struggling kids has been a celebration, and just really diving into that and getting that going and and running strong has been good.

And then for my celebrations, I would just say I'm happy to still be smiling in April in my first year at Eagle Valley.

So I would say the first bullet point there is a huge celebration, just creating uh foundation together with my staff, and um, you know, just the work that we've done this year has been um it's been great.

So very happy to be there.

And then down there at the the last two bullet points, I just want to recognize those two things.

Um yeah, our sustainability team.

Uh our hoop house is still going.

We have an ag class.

Um, and so all of that work is still being done.

Uh in fact, they replaced the roof on the hoop house this year, and um just a lot of um staff members are in there doing the work, and uh Amy Riddle does a lot of the work out there, and she keeps that hoop house running and gets those kids out there.

She has the her green biz kids out there doing a lot of the gardening, and and so she I just want to honor her for that work and and then the last one we had our college and career day on April 1st, and we had 40 different.

I have to look at my information here, 40 different community businesses and organizations that came into the building, and it was incredible.

So uh Caitlin O'Lachlin, one of our CTE teachers, she organized that.

She was the mastermind behind it, but she had a handful of teachers who also helped support her with that.

And then in addition to that, I mean, the entire staff got the students prepared for that um event, and uh all of the students, it was well received, they were all incredibly engaged.

Uh 80% of the students found uh the a career that they had not considered before.

Um, so that we we had done a survey afterwards, and that was the data that we received, and that they really wanted to learn more about the careers, um, but also just walking around and seeing them so engaged, and then speaking with the you know, the businesses and the the people that came, the community partners that were there, the organizations, even Carson High had some students that were there.

Um, and they were just so pleased with how engaged our students were and how mature they acted.

And so anyway, we already have plans for next year that we're working on that, and uh so that was that was a huge event.

It was really exciting.

So thank you to the board members who did come.

Thank you very much.

And then uh my last celebration, which is not on there since this was my first year, my celebration is I got to work with Amy this year, and Amy is leaving us, but that's one of my celebrations that's not up there.

So I just want to say thank you to her and her mentoring uh for this year.

So that's it.

And I apologize because I did not get your email until like now.

So um that's okay.

I think I said what I wanted.

You did.

Yeah, okay, perfect.

This was good.

So okay.

So she had shared knowing that Mr.

Clapham, uh Tristy Clapham wouldn't be here.

She shared her EVMS report, and I did not get it in time.

So I was going to share it, but you're it's okay.

All right.

Yeah, you've heard enough from me tonight.

It's okay.

Well, great, thank you for that.

Um I I think it would pre be appropriate to maybe start with questions for the middle school if there's any questions, highlights.

Um, so then we're not you know, going and then we'll go on to the high school's uh annual report.

So there are any questions, we'll go ahead and start with Trusty Varner for the principals at the middle.

I I really don't have a question, but uh just thank you for your guys' hard work.

Uh I was able to be one of the trustees who attended your career day and uh along with uh Michelle and Lupe.

I was very impressed.

It was very well organized.

The kids were very well behaved, very interested, very engaged.

And I thought it was a terrific event.

And so I would like to thank you for uh all the everybody's hard work uh putting that thing together.

It was uh in my opinion, a great event.

Thank you.

Yes, Joseph Peterson.

Uh I was actually gonna mention something about that too.

Um you had uh said that you were uh impressed with the kids and um that they were engaged, but I want to point out um I was talking to Miss Lenahan about the preparation for that, and um that she said obviously the kids all were walking around with bingo cards that they could get checked off of if they visited the right booths or bingo cards the right word, but passports passports it um, but they also had cards that they had prepared um for with questions and that they had bounced those questions off of peers ahead of time so that their peers could say that question isn't very detailed, you can maybe add asking about this.

And so they had that um opportunity to practice the engagement so that when they were in the gym with strangers that were I don't know, unfamiliar adults, they already had had those conversations with peers, so it was a lot easier to engage in that way.

And so um the preparation that puts on that kind of event is huge, but I think also the preparation that prepares the kids for that event was such an important part, and so kudos to making sure that that um was on the list leading into that as well.

But um presentation as a whole, thank you very much.

Umiddle school.

Um as a kid, I I when people what do you want to be when you grow up?

I always wanted to be a middle school science teacher.

And people would say, You are crazy, middle school eat you alive.

That is the scariest age of kids.

And um, you guys are there and you are thriving, and you are ensuring that these kids have an environment to to grow in and shine in and as well and to feel like their um their space is protected and that that they have ownership over it and and that they want to grow roots and and be a part of the community of their middle school.

So thank you for all the ways that you ensure that happens.

And um, I don't have any questions, just thanks for what you do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We can go back to our vacancy slide if you'd like us to.

And I will say, yes, it did take a lot of work from the entire staff.

There were videos on like how to do a proper handshake and how to ask questions.

And then I was talking with Caitlin today, and she said the stacks of like shout-outs are like this thick for each person who came, like all the community members that came.

So the students were, you know, just so excited to have them there.

It was it was a fun day.

Yes.

Thank you.

No questions, just thank you guys for all that you do, and it's really fun to hear the good things because a lot of time we get bombarded with the negative side, and so it's really fun to see all the things that you're doing to you know, engage the kids and help them want to be there and want to learn and everything.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, I echo my colleagues.

Thank you so much.

I can honestly tell you that the college and career day was just phenomenal.

Um, over the weekend I met with the family and I was telling the parents about it, and then one of the kids was very, very quiet.

And when she heard me say that, she's like, Oh, yeah, she goes, that was super fun.

She goes, I really enjoyed it.

So it was a huge impact that you did to all the students in there, including the quiet ones.

And then um, I also heard good things about the cheerleading team, uh, Amy.

So fabulous work there.

I think it's wonderful to introduce the kids to you know, um, get involved in in sports and um making those connections, you know, that will get them excited about being in school, and hopefully they will follow that in going into high school.

Yeah, I think it's a good thing.

So both of you, thank you so much for your work.

Thank you.

Trustees Tatis.

You'll get it, you'll get it.

My maiden name was Suzuki, so my married name is Tatuki.

So it kind of Suzuki's tattoo if it helps you remember when I that's fine.

When I was an English teacher, my students are like, you should have hyphenated it.

It would have been so cool.

Um, I'm gonna I'm gonna start off by saying I'm a little partial to Eagle Valley because it's right down the street from my house, and I love when the marching band kids come out and they march down the street, and I'll go stand outside because I work from home and clap, and they're like, they're probably like, who is this crazy lady clapping at us as they walk down the street?

Um and I'm kind of sad that I wasn't completely in the role on April 1st.

Um, my my day job, one of them is the um the executive director for the Nevada Association of Career and Technical Education.

So we represent teachers and counselors and administrators across Nevada supporting CTE, and I will look forward to supporting you in putting on another program next year in whatever way I could help you do that.

So wonderful, thank you.

And you're welcome there anytime, neighbor.

Come on over.

You can march with them if you'd like.

I'm sure Mr.

Braille will allow it.

Now they might know who the crazy other laughs.

Okay.

All right.

Great.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, thank you for the pr uh presentation and thank you for the many years you've given to Carson City School District.

Thank you.

Um yeah, so I know and friends for a while.

So you will be missed.

And congratulations on your retirement.

I hope you enjoy the next chapter.

So uh, but thank you.

Thank you guys for the presentation, and thank you for adding the request that I added.

I know we get the packet late, and so by adding the information, I greatly appreciate the time that it might have taken outside of already having one done.

So I appreciate you doing that.

And congratulations for you know moving the pendulum on many items.

You know, you guys are doing great work.

Um, you know, a lot of times we are we hear so much about the negative, but you know, you guys showed right here in your statistics that you're doing some wonderful things and you are moving that pendulum.

So I really hope that the public sees that.

I hope they're watching.

I hope it's maybe reiterated in a news article, maybe, but just putting it out there.

Um, but no, and I you know appreciate the hard work that everybody is putting in into this because I think education is getting harder to be an educator.

Um because we're looked at we received an email today, I think that was very insightful that um, you know, shows that you know, educators, especially you know, coming moving forward and in schools are being asked to do a whole lot more than just educate.

So uh so what you're doing is greatly appreciated.

You might not feel that every day, but please know that everybody on this board here appreciates what you do.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

All right.

So we'll and thank you, Mr.

Karstins, for your patience.

We'll start with Carson High.

Yeah, it's always nice to hear what's uh going on at the middle school.

Thank you guys very much.

All right, it works.

Thank you.

I thought I was gonna be like I feel like we've been here quite a bit this year.

We've uh presented on AP, we've presented on CTE or CT is coming up.

Um we've talked a lot about their PLC processes, and so I I didn't hit on that stuff as much as I probably usually would.

Um I was trying to cut it down from the number of slides last year as well.

So uh and then Molly throws us for a loop and uh asks 37 questions, I think 37, something like I count at 37.

So anyway.

Um our annual report.

So I did want to just this is our AP, these are our AP teachers.

Um what I what I want to point out is we keep getting better and better results with AP.

More students taking AP exams, uh, more students taking classes, more students passing.

And it's really as a result of this group of educators here.

Um I I do believe that we invest in our people in our human resources.

And uh when you invest in your in your people, then you're you're gonna get those results.

And so when we have those trainings and we make sure that they go to those trainings to specifically deliver that curriculum, the AP curriculum that is probably the most rigorous curriculum that there is, um, probably rivaled by by IB.

Um, but uh the AP curriculum is hands down, one of the toughest things.

And these kids, these teachers prepare these kids for college and beyond.

Um, and so I just wanted to make sure I took my hat hat off, even though I don't have one on.

Um, but to to this group of educators, they are um in in all ways phenomenal.

So um, so yeah.

Uh next thing jump start by the numbers again.

Um, it is another uh program that we have that we offer at Carson High that some students go the AP route, some students go the jumpstart route.

Uh we have another good strong group of kids.

Um if you look at that 80, I I look at the 80% jumpstart classes that received in A or B program GPAs 3.2.

Um that's it's it just continues to get better and better.

Um, students that received at least some college credit via jump start, any sort of college credit that you can get um is uh is gonna be positive for these kids.

Uh and and I do appreciate our district uh continuing to support our students um in taking those jumpstart classes.

Uh I did want to do a little demographic of it as well.

Um jumpstart demographics up there between male female um versus the the high school demographics is very similar.

Um the uh jumpstart demographics from 24, 25, 25, 26, 26, 27.

And I know that we are continuing to try to have um trying to mirror it as much as we can to uh our demographics of the school uh for our newly accepted uh cohort for next year.

Our Hispanic population did go down.

However, when I looked at the data behind that, there was only one, I think there was a total of five or six total students that were qualified for jump start that were denied admission because we we have to keep it at a certain number.

Um and and so within that, I believe I do believe there was one Hispanic student and four Caucasian and one uh mixed race.

So we are continuing to try to even out those numbers.

Um it doesn't always happen every single year, um, but they do have to meet the requirements of uh of that program and with at least a 2.5 GPA.

That's not what we look for, that's the minimum.

Um and if there are students that have that higher GPA, then we uh we usually go with them as well.

So, but that's kind of the uh the background of those.

Uh career and technical education, we continue like the uh the data that we got from last year, CTE, uh 98.1% grad rate for CTE.

Um you look at the industry recognized credentials, 617 increase of over 50 credentials from the previous year.

Um there, and there is an explanation down there, the uh the losing those 30 students for the participated in career readiness career training.

I can't remember where it is up there, but it's somewhere, somewhere.

Um, but again, if you look at the earned certificate of skill attainment for it goes from 148 to 342.

So our CTE programs are very robust, they're doing very well.

Um we usually have a lot of points on our um star rating from our CTE program.

And uh they just do a uh fantastic job uh in there.

Uh we always have our deans do a little update.

Um so if you if you look at our discipline data, and ever since we started focusing in so two years ago to last year to this year, if you look at that data, and if you look at the focus that we we had it, we had an extremely strong focus on cell phones this year.

And it was it is so rare that you see one in a classroom, it's so rare that you see one in a hallway.

Do you still see them every now and again?

But for the most part, you you're not seeing them.

And if you look at fighting, reduced it 66% compared to two years ago and 51% compared to last year.

I mean, I think we're down into the maybe into the teens this year for fighting for whole for the whole year.

What do you credit that to that reduction?

Well, a lot of a lot of times uh what students want to see is a show.

And if they have their phones, then they can show the show.

If they don't have their phones, there's no bravado.

So that's I I do attribute it a lot to the cell phones.

Sometimes we'll have a fight, and usually people will crowd around.

I'm saying that never happens, but typically you see people crowd around with phones.

You don't get the big crowds as much as you used to.

And so that's that's a big thing.

What's that?

Say, do you think the restroom change has impacted that?

The restroom change has probably impacted it as well.

Um, I I would I would venture to say, but but even from two years ago, but even if you look from last year, last year we had the restroom change also, and we still reduced it by 51%, which is pretty substantial.

Even our ISS and OSS numbers, last year we reduced them quite a bit, but this year ISS reduced by 32% and OSS by 42%.

And that's our out of school and in-school suspension rates.

Um so yeah, it the disciplined data has shown to be paying off when we are consistent in focusing in on certain aspects that we can control.

And that that's what we're trying to do is focus on the things that we can control and that will have the biggest effect on learning and the climate and culture of the building.

Next year we know that we have a tardy problem.

We know that there's that, you know, they my middle school colleagues talked about tardy and then extreme tardy is what we're calling it.

Is uh that's that's our word that we're using.

And and we're gonna be working with uh um Dr.

Medina uh to make sure that we have that code.

And that way, because if you just look at TARDIS, it's just too much.

There's only so many of us that can that can address that.

But if we go to the extreme tardiness, then we can really filter it down to the students that are that we can really make a difference with.

So that's that's gonna be the focus uh for next year.

MTSS, and one of the things that I know that our our good president was talking about was what are some of the the MTSS systems or the interventions that are really working.

Um first off, I I do want to look at the tier one and and Kaplan.

Um that prepared students for the ACT.

There were students that took it seriously and students that did not.

And and you have that no matter no matter where you go.

Um, but if you look at that little graph up there, um the lowest usage compared to the highest usage of Kaplan, you can see the uh the average, the average scores.

Um, and so for English, it's a two-point difference, science 2.2, reading is almost a two-point difference, math was not as much, but still over a half a point difference.

And so the students that took advantage of that that took it seriously, that had the highest usage rates, and that's what we looked at was the usage rates for um like first quartile to fourth quartile, right?

You broke them into four groups, and we compared the highest usage to the lowest usage, and that's where we got our numbers from.

So it did make a difference.

Um is it gonna make as as as much of a difference as we want?

We probably still want uh still still want something bigger.

And so we're looking at some some different options for for next year.

Um quick question.

So, how do you identify students who should be using Kaplan or is it just on the other?

Every single junior should be using it.

Should that that's what we set out to do is every single junior should be engaged in using this ACT prep program.

So that was that was the goal.

Um did, some didn't.

Yeah.

Um so and one of the one of the things that I do want to point out is again, uh, when when talking about uh an intervention that works, and this is something that we piloted this year.

I had one of my um TOSAs pilot a uh behavior academy during our intervention time.

And what she did is she took 10 of the most at-risk students or under supported, if you may, um, and like with attendance, academics, behaviors, and so one of the first um one so basically they came to her during the intervention time, and there's only 10, 10 of those students.

The goal is to build connections with those kids to make it so that they have a caring adult that uh that it that is going to be in their corner, their advocate.

And you do behavioral type lessons.

What are the social and academic behaviors that we expect?

And that comes from our um our lead.

I didn't put it in the in the slideshow, but uh our lead acronym, our behavior matrix and everything.

So a lot of our um behavior academies come from that.

It's lead is listen with intent, engage with purpose, act with integrity, and develop with character.

So that's what the lead acronym stands for, and that's where we get our behavior academies from.

And so they'll go through some lessons, um, and it's Mrs.

Ramirez, uh, Brenda Ramirez, my attendance interventionist.

And she engaged with these students, and uh, one of the um success criterias was the attendance component, just in that B8, and B8 is uh is our intervention time.

It's been the one that's that we've struggled with the most with attendance, and we've identified it and we're we're making adjustments and corrections to it.

Um, but she measured attendance between February 9th and March 25th.

Typically, these students might show up once a week, you never know.

Um, but between that time frame of about a month and a half, the success criteria was less than or equal to two absences.

Six out of the 10 kids had less than or equal to two absences during that whole time, that month and a half.

Another three kids had three.

And so nine out of the 10 had not had three or fewer absences in that month and a half.

So we did something right.

Um we're gonna expand that program next year within our intervention time because it did show to work with those at risk or underrepresented students or under-supported students that uh that we that we see.

So we're going through the process of identifying 50 to 70 incoming freshmen that we'll we'll be working with our middle schools on, um, 30 to 50 um incoming sophomores, and we'll have uh we'll identify teachers, some of our TOSAs, counselors, special education teachers to kind of team and do that.

The max class size will be 10 during our intervention time for that, and they will be in it for uh for a semester at least.

And if they meet the success criteria, they can come out and go to a regular intervention class.

But the philosophy is is before you can deal with the skill, you have to deal with the will.

Um, and a lot of these kids sometimes they they just don't know how to do school for lack of a better word.

And uh that's what we're trying to help them learn first before we can teach them reading, writing, arithmetic.

So those are those are the goals.

And it's really yeah, it's it should it should make a dent in uh in some of our attendance issues and our tardiness.

Um and our uh deans have also been working out of the hallways.

We got roller desks for everybody, and that's kind of how we do our uh cell phone rounds.

Everybody has a section of the school in the morning, we go through and we check in with teachers and kids.

And so every single admin is in classrooms every single morning of uh of the school year.

And uh so now with uh with just expanding things, our deans have taken upon themselves to work out of the hallways now.

Um they have at least one in that upstairs hallway going into those classrooms that um, and it's really making a difference for students getting to class.

So um we are doing some different things, trying some different things because yes, we we do know that we have um an attendance issue.

And so we're we're taking those steps, both in the intervention time and physically being with students even during during class time in the hallways um quite a bit more attendance trends.

These are not things that I'm overly proud of, but again, we needed to uh make sure that they're up there.

Uh enrollment numbers last year um 2260 this year, 2173 is what our numbers look like.

Uh it's down about 3.8%.

Some of those students, and I think this is just main campus, it doesn't include silver campus.

Um absences.

We actually have an in an improvement in our number of absences.

And so that's every class period every day.

So again, when you and also when you look at it, it's eight periods, it's not seven periods like a lot of classes are.

Um, and so you actually look at that, and it's a 9.3% improvement.

You know, it's not that great to have 24.8 absences per student, but that's why we are working through these different interventions that uh that we've piloted and that we've identified to fully implement in the 26-27 school year.

Um tardies.

So last year, tardies were uh that many, and this year they're uh a little bit more.

But again, well, what we have to understand with that is last year it was based on a seven period day.

This year it's based on an eight period day.

Um the intervention period is our most difficult period to manage.

Um so again, that's why we are putting in these pilot programs.

Um, and uh some of our teachers have also been implementing a tracker system where students are tracking their um grades their attendance, setting goals, action steps, and determining where they need to go during our intervention period.

So as we came out of the testing season from um ECT, we kind of shifted into some different things to to figure out okay, what is really gonna work for next year.

And a lot of these students have been engaging with the goal setting, tracking their attendance, tracking their grades, knowing what they need to do, and having an action plan and a teacher there to help them through that action plan.

So again, chronic absenteeism, perfect with perfect attendance.

We have 118 students more than last year with perfect attendance.

And so it's almost like the at-risk kids are getting more at risk, and the ones that are perfect attendance are getting more there too.

And so it's an interest interesting conundrum for us.

And so, but again, that's why we're trying to focus in on these.

So of course.

Just a quick question.

Back when I was a principal pre-COVID, they used to um prevent students from getting their high school or their driver's license, right?

Based on attendance.

Did they get rid of that?

No, we still do that.

Okay.

And some kids just don't get their and they and they don't park on campus, they park down Robinson.

So there's there's loopholes everywhere.

And a lot, I mean, there's only so many sheriffs' deputies out there.

And so, but yeah, they that's still a thing.

And when kids actually do want to get their driver's license, then they come in and they improve their intends.

And so yeah, it's it's helped some of our kids.

Celebrations, uh, student leadership, our Nevada Association Student Council is hosting the leadership conference this weekend.

That is some pretty exciting stuff.

And yeah, um, sorry I didn't get you something this week.

I'm yeah, anyway.

It happens.

But it's gonna be a great event.

I would highly encourage people to at least check it out.

Uh Kyle Allen is our student body president, and I'm sure you guys have all met Kyle at one time or another.

He's a pretty phenomenal student.

So uh students continue to be recognized through CTSOs, prestigious college admissions, um, excellence in activities and athletics.

Um PLC work, um our teams are continuing to work through that PLC cycle, where part of that cycle is to look at their CFA data, um, identify student learning, and then um engage in adult learning as well.

So again, the PLC process for us is two two-fold students learning, adults learning.

And when you look at student data and tie that into the instructional strategies that they used, that's when everybody wins.

Um again, AP jumpstart and CTE data, as I've said before, um, it's still still doing great.

Um, and again, the MTSS work that we're engaging in, we are piloting things right now that um we are gonna be fully implementing for the 26-27 school year.

And I know I didn't put the staffing up there.

Um our culinary teachers, she is retiring.

Um, graphic design teacher is leaving after this year.

We had two math teachers retire, a science teacher retire.

Um English teacher is is leaving.

So there's there's six or seven, and but you know, we don't know if we're gonna get people, we don't, and and we've identified um where our where our reductions are coming from as well.

So um, but those are those the ones that I kind of mentioned were ones that uh um that we'll need to um start start getting as soon as we can.

Well, then in the reason I asked that question um to be included was you know the next agenda item.

No, after that as well.

And so um, you know, I I mean I think um us and board, you know, as his board members, it's important for us to know vacancies, how it would affect the school if not the schools, if not filled.

Um, because I think it's you know very important to all of us that you know the education and we get the people in where we need the people to be.

So thank you.

Well, we'll go ahead and start with questions if you want to start.

Questions, comments.

It's okay if you don't.

Yeah.

Well, I've had the opportunity to work with Mr.

Karstens before, um, doing some data on their AP and dual credit and seeing a lot of their impressive results.

And it's just been moving in the positive direction of the last few years.

So big supporter of that.

Thank you.

Hey, thank you.

Trustee Rumiers.

I also commend you for all the programs that you are you have going on for the for all our students.

And I really appreciate that you are looking into helping those students that are in need of learning how to be a student.

I mean, I think that is a huge um component to getting the students to get on the right track.

So thank you for for doing that.

Yeah, and and it is something that we are trying to implement during our summer school time as well, some behavior academies for our incoming freshmen.

So they'll they'll get a start in summer school this year.

That was pretty much my same comments, just echoing uh Lupe and not letting those kids just kind of fall by the wayside, just really pulling them in and figure out how to help them kind of in life, and these four years go fast, and then it's it's life.

And so that's great that you're helping them learn how to learn and and be a student because that'll go a long way once they really do get out.

So thank you.

Thank you.

On the celebrations under students, you said you had CTSOs.

What is it, CTSO?

Career, career and technical student organizations.

So they're the clubs that go with our CTE programs.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, like FFA um uh AJ mentioned FFA, that goes along with our ag.

Okay.

Ag Science and AgMEC.

Thanks.

On your jumpstart program, um, how many seniors are due to graduate this year with their degree?

Oh I don't know.

I was wondering with their with their associates.

Yes.

Yeah, it's it's usually yeah, it's usually right around the 30, the 30 mark, because some of them we do year one um we do year year first year seniors also, and I don't think they can quite get to the associates, but the the cohort of 30 that's a two-year program, they usually get get through and and it's usually right around 30 students.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

All right.

So um with the jump start as well, um is you well know in the community may or may not, but the school district pays for 100% of the student.

And at this time, yes.

Yes, at this time, and not a lot of school districts do that.

And I don't um expect you to answer if you don't feel like, but the question would be do you feel as though the participation or the enrollment of jump start would move the pendulum drastically?

Not so much if we decided to do a 50-50 or a 7030, you know, and not have the school district pay 100% of the cost.

Yeah, no, and and we just we just had that uh conversation this morning.

We met with uh our WNC um people um discussed a lot about money and everything.

And um no, I mean, we didn't make any decisions moving forward or anything, and I don't know how it would work out.

I know that we look at uh free and reduced lunch numbers versus full payment also, and you know, that there's ideas in there.

Um and I know it's it's a big chunk of money, it's a huge chunk of money.

Um, and so it's it and and we're not getting any more.

And what we saw today is that yeah, they're their costs are going up.

So, you know, there's certain things that could happen, may happen, may not.

I I don't know, right?

I'm I'm not in charge of that budget.

And so we just uh and I'm glad that Mr.

Bringhurst back there is is in charge of that budget, and you know, I'm in charge of my school budget, and it's it's still good.

It just brings up um, and we'll discuss it in the next agenda item, but we're up here working on you know, making sure that we're doing the best that we can financially that's not going to affect student facing.

Yeah, and I know that this is one that isn't student-facing, and so I just didn't know what the um consequences would be if we chose not to do 100%.

No, and I and I know that.

And I and I know when Tasha was in the in the chief academic officer role, her the basically what she would talk about was if we had those kids in school, the amount of money that those kids generate, you may have to have another teacher or two.

So instead of paying that money to WNC, we would probably have to hire a couple more teachers to be able to um work with those students in the school.

And so and so that that was that was kind of the trade-off.

Is it is it an ex an exact trade-off?

I I don't know if it's an exact trade-off, but that that was the philosophy behind it.

And I can, and I appreciate that, but then that brings in the enrollment decline as well.

So our enrollment continues to decline.

So, you know, then are we with those students just filled out?

But however, that might be for another another day.

Um the other question that I had though is I know when I um and I was trying to think, rack my brain, because it's been a it's been a while since I've been in the classroom, but with the tardies, it would be like a certain amount of time where it would be like the first 10 minutes, right?

Is tardy after that, then you're sent to the office because then it's no longer tardy, you're to the office because you are I don't know what we ever thought they were, but it's like go to the office because you've missed class.

So I guess any of you could address this.

What happened to that?

Because is it my understanding that this extreme tardy is what up until five minutes before class ends, 10 minutes before class ends?

No, it is.

If you show up to class, yeah, and we get more time.

We also do a uh truant on campus, so if they were gone like most of the class, and that just helps us track like how long they were tardy.

We want kids in classrooms, so we don't just say go to the office, but we the teacher then will write a referral that hey, this kid was super tardy, so extreme time, it's like 10.

We could ask Jeremy Lewis.

How many were how many minutes for super tardy?

Between after five and before uh long is the period?

51.

51.

Okay.

And after that we count them as truant, but truant on campus.

Um trying to distinguish between a kid that's sitting at home truant versus a student who's at on our site somewhere.

Okay.

Um just helping us divide that data up to see, yeah, because there's a difference between the student who's hiding in the bathroom versus the or wandering the halls versus the one who's just was uh you know, a minute late.

But how because then I would look at this and say, and this is just coming from mine, you know.

So when even when a student was 10 minutes tardy, one it's disruptive, two, it creates more work for the teacher, yeah, to try to catch that student up.

So then if the student is 40 minutes tardy or whatever the case may be, um I just yeah, I can't imagine what that does then to a classroom.

Yeah, if if you yeah, and I mean you're looking like, yeah, you're right.

It does, yeah.

Okay.

I was just gonna say I've I've done research on this for other projects and many, many districts across the country, actually, not even just in the state, it's a percentage of minutes you miss per class period.

So if you miss more than 50% of the class period, if you have a 50-51 minute class, if you miss 26 minutes, it's considered an absence, which then becomes a whole other issue, other problem because you're already battling chronic absenteeism.

But if you look at at the data nationwide, most of them do it based on a percentage of class period time missed.

Yeah, because the biggest the biggest thing with it though is we know some of them, but usually when it gets entered in, it's still gets entered in as tardy.

Right.

And so when you can filter it, and we have a lot of kids, and it's a small percentage that are extreme tardy, right?

Yeah, yeah.

It it is the same ones, and so when we can filter it better, and that's that is our plan for for the future with with our behavior academies and the things that we're getting into place, but when we can filter it better, then we're gonna be able to address it better.

Um, well, I applaud you for the behavioral academy.

I I think that was very creative and innovative.

Um, and so I really appreciate you adding that in because I think it's something to celebrate, um, especially at the success, you know, that it is as well.

So and thank you again.

Oh, yes.

And well, I have another question.

So, in regards to the enrollment uh for jumpstart, um do you know or are you able to share with us these?

Um, I know that initially the program was supposed to be targeted to help um students in l in in the low income uh category, to your knowledge, is that still the case, or are we even taking that under consideration?

I I do think we we take it under consideration.

Um like I was saying before, we had so for next year's um cohort.

We have a total of four students that were denied.

Do I don't know their demographic their their uh financial situation?

Um but having only four that were denied the cohort because we had sixty-three accepted.

Um but that was that was basically the number that we were that we were oh 52, sorry.

Um 52 students were accepted.

Um eight of them were disqualified through GPA grade in math or attendance, and so they have to have us those are those those three things.

Um but then when they do the selection process, they look at the whole child.

Yeah.

It's unlike you met with WNC this morning.

Yes.

Uh do you know what rate increase they're talking about for tuition?

Yes.

Yeah, it and we I can't remember the exact number from this.

They they have it posted to their to their site what the um what the rates are, both for dual enrollment and the jump start.

Is it uh small increase, a significant increase?

If if you got it up there.

It's because I sent it to them today.

Yes, uh, Brandon Bringhurst, chief academic officer for the record.

Yes, we met this morning together with representatives from the high school, myself and representatives from uh WNC and talked about a lot of these things, how our students are doing, most importantly, the success that our students are or aren't having, and and any changes we need to make in order to better address those to make sure our students have the most success possible.

So there are rate increases, and the rate increases are driven by uh the Nevada system of higher education.

WNC is not setting those wit rate increases, right?

They're subject to those increases that are um given to them.

And there's a couple of different types of fees that we pay.

Um depending on who teaches the class, where the class is taught at, are we paying by course or are we paying by credit hour?

Um so I won't go into all of those details, but I could tell you like the the per course cost if those are being taught by our staff.

Um, that in 2425 we were paying 75 dollars per course.

Um this year we're paying 100 per course that continues to go up.

The what they have projected out is through the 28-29 school year, and it'll go up to 118 dollars and fifty cents per course.

Um so that um that cost is increasing, has increased and will continue to increase.

And so we are certainly looking at um how we how we fund that and what might need to change uh in the future with that.

Um so the per credit cost is also going up.

It was 85, it's currently 87.50.

Um, and in 2029, it will be up to 99 uh per credit.

Again, it kind of uh varies depending on the type of course that's being taken.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right, anything further?

All right, well, thank you very much for your time and your presentations and um congratulations.

Yes, and at this time we will close agenda item number seven.

We're going to take a 10 minute recess before we get into the fun part.

All right.

We're going to move on to agenda item number eight.

Presentation discussion on the tentative budget for the Carson City School District for fiscal year twenty twenty-six, twenty twenty-seven.

This is for discussion only.

Hopefully, with a lot of input that we've received from the board over the year.

And as we've been kind of putting this together, this gives you a chance to to look like what to get a good first look at what the final budget would look like in late May when we approve that.

And then our deadline to provide this to the Department of Taxation is tomorrow.

So I'm glad we're getting this done today.

Our date for that this year is going to be May 28th, coincides with our board meeting and falls within uh statute for what we need to do.

And then after that, we provide a copy of the final budget uh by taxation and to the county clerk by June 8th.

And then just fast forward into the the end of this year, December is when we can amend that final budget once we know a lot.

We've have solid data where the final budget is is based more off of projections.

We know a lot where our enrollment is, where our staffing is, and we can amend that budget as needed uh on the last day of the calendar year.

So those are kind of some important important dates and where we're at with this cycle.

It was just seems like it was just yesterday that we were amending the final budget of December for this fiscal year.

Um, and now here we are again.

So a little bit of information of how we put our budget together.

Um one of my favorite definitions of budgeting is describing described as fulfilling infinite needs with finite resources.

That's definitely where we're at and filling that a little more this year than we have in the past.

Um, and our budget has been we do the best with all the information we have available to us.

So, you know, our our uh tentative budget has more projection um in it than uh depending on it.

Is it and that varies between an off year and a legislative year?

This is an off year, so we have a little bit more data and a little less projection.

However, it's a uh built out a lot of assumptions.

Um we have always been conservative in building this budget.

And uh the reason of that that that's treated us very well as a district.

Um, our ending and unending fund balance is very healthy, and I feel that's uh uh in part because we do use a lot of conservatism in our in building our budget.

Um, how that works with revenue.

We in the case of revenue, we're gonna use the uh lower amount.

In the case of expenditures, we're gonna use the greater amount to have that that buffer of conservatism built in there.

Reasons for that is that to reduce our risk of definite spending deficit spending, it also greatly reduced our risk of budget violations.

And uh one factor of that is our budgets often show a deficit budget, even though when it's all said and done, we don't always end up with a deficit spending when the budget year is over.

So, any questions up to this point?

All righty, Mr.

Fueling has a little bit of breakdown of some of our staffing costs.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Winward.

Um so one of the things I I wanted to do, and I guess maybe we're we're jumping ahead.

So the the budget that is presented as tentative tonight, and again, it's it's really important to understand that you are not approving the budget.

We are not asking you to approve the budget tonight.

Um it has a budgeted deficit.

We have been able to drop that to just over three million dollars.

Um, it's like 3.025 seven something in that range.

It's a it's just over two three million dollars.

Um and in that process, uh, which gets us closer to um what I believe is is the board's goal.

Um the the significant changes in that um have been in the previous presentations.

Um, there hasn't been much definition around what was happening with the nutrition fund.

The nutrition fund is important because um next year there is going to have to be a transfer from the general fund to the nutrition fund to cover costs.

Um we had initially expected that to be over $900,000 based on which is much higher than historical um based on some some work and nutrition is a very um confusing fund, especially in the post-COVID world, um, with some of the changes that have happened and how federal reimbursements come in, but our our estimates on that have come down to close to right now around $600,000.

So that's a pretty significant reduction.

The other um significant reduction that has been is proposed in this tentative budget is not buying two new school buses for next year.

So that's about half a million dollars.

Um the reason for that is we have recently been awarded a grant that is going to be bringing in four new electric buses at no at no cost.

Sorry.

And so I know this board heard a presentation back in the fall about how we we need to do more with replacing our bus fleet because our bus fleet is aging.

The average age, I think is like 20 years.

It's like I think she said it was a 2005 bus.

However, this year we have replaced two of our special education buses.

We have purchased three new full like transportation big you know, 84 CETAR buses.

And did we have two more?

Or was that it?

I thought there was two more.

Okay.

So five all together altogether.

I thought there were more for some reason.

Um, but point being that there have been some um uh I guess significant gains, and this board um really helped with with some adjustments to how we spend our capital funding dollars, um, allowed us to purchase those those three buses.

So then going into next year, we would have four new electric buses coming in.

So really nine new buses in in less than well, say 12 to 18 months, depending on when delivery can happen.

Um so I think there's been some significant gains.

And so I I don't I don't believe it is absolutely necessary to um keep uh that half a million dollars in the budget for um bus new buses at this time.

So with with some of those significant adjustments, um this tentative budget is it it includes generally all of the reductions we talked about in contracting costs, especially in special education, that is included.

All of the um proposed reductions in staffing that we have looked at are included, except for um in the initial budget conversation, we were talking about reducing um 12 um social worker positions, six of those positions positions have now been added back into the budget.

So even with adding those costs in those people back in the current budget, again, the deficit is down to about three, just shade over three million dollars.

So what you have here then is a breakdown of where our staffing costs lie, and and and this has been a big question.

I know many of the board members have reached out, the the term student facing has come up several times in conversations about where our costs are.

Um, and I want to point out or just make note with this, one of one of the things during the state of the district um presentation, which was I think the second meeting in January, um one of the things I pointed out, and I point it out every year, but I I think made some more effort to point it out this time is that when you're looking at the costs of administration, when you're looking at the cost of of leadership as it is represented on the Nevada Report Card website, and again, that is a not our website, they're not our numbers, but when you look at that, we have um spending on leadership in the district at something like 5.7%, and that is well below any other district that is is represented in the state.

So in terms of uh again, just to think about we're talking about student-facing positions, some oftentimes leadership may not be, especially if they're at the district level, but our leadership costs are well below any district in the state.

Okay.

So when you look at where we are in the current fiscal year, and this is going to look at that kind of statistic, but it in a little bit of a different way, but I think it's still important.

So on the left, you have the current fiscal year.

This is the the school year we're in we're in right now.

And then based on the tentative budget that you have in front of you tonight, what what is the adjustment happening to where our staffing costs lie?

And I I guess bigger picture, staffing costs are really really, really important to this entire discussion and to any budget discussion for a school district, because something like 85% of all of our costs are staff.

We are a people intensive industry.

So when you look at where our costs are currently in the, and this is just the general fund.

And on the next slide, I'm gonna expand on that a little bit.

But in the general fund, 87.5% of our staffing costs are in our schools.

So in when I that is I I think literally inclusive of everybody in a school.

Okay, so that is including our custodial staff that that is including all of our paraprofessional staff, that is including all of our teaching staff, that is including our our um uh administer school administrators, so principals, vice principals, deans, everybody who is actually in a school student facing.

And so that is 87.5% of our staffing budget in the general fund.

12.5% is what's left.

Um and and the way I've approached this for these next couple slides, I've included transportation in other.

Um I don't know if that's right or wrong, but they're not in the school.

Are they student facing?

Absolutely, but they're not in the school.

So I think that's just something to keep in mind.

I I don't know that there's a right or wrong way to present this, but I I just want to make make that clear.

So of that 12.5%, two point uh 2.3 is transportation, 2.6 is operations.

So that's everyone in our operations um department, grounds department, um, maintenance department, and in our warehouse.

We have a small central warehouse if if you if you weren't aware, it's uh next to Carson Middle on the other side of Carson Middle School.

So that is 2.6% of our staffing costs, and then you go down to the district costs.

So this is fiscal services, everything related to accounting, payroll, budgeting, all that sort of thing, HR, all of the things that HR is responsible for with a district of close to a thousand employees, IT, which manages about 11,000 devices in the district for us, education services, so everything Mr.

Under Mr.

Bringhurst's um responsibility, um safety services, so risk risk management um and and tech support under there are PIO and my office.

So if you think about this is effectively the district office, and this is uh PDC, the professional development center.

It's on if you haven't, it's 604 East Muster, it's on um on Master Street.

So that is 7.7% of the costs in the current year of all of our general fund staffing costs.

You move that to fiscal year 27.

So that again is the tentative budget that you have presented in front of you.

With the changes that are happening, the percentage of our staffing costs that are in the schools goes up to 88.5%.

What is in other goes down to 11.5%.

Transportation ticks up, and that's there's a real there's no change in the expected staffing there, it's just because of a function of how the numbers work.

Umperations, there are um is a reduction there, that goes down, and then there's more reductions at the district level, mostly because of well, in in both of the previous presentations and listed here in the executive summary, and what will be in this presentation in a couple slides is all of the district positions that are being reduced.

The point being that while there are not as many in uh total positions being reduced at the district level, the entire size of the district level is not that great.

And so by even reducing 11 positions, that is an enormous chunk out of the the district level.

Next slide, please.

So then this slide looks at I'm calling this PCFP funded.

Um it's not really the correct term to use, but most of these funds are considered PCFP funds.

PCFP is pupil centered funding plan, that's the state model.

It it is inclusive now of more funds.

Um the one fund that really isn't a part of it is nutrition, but I have included that here.

So this is looking at the general fund, our English learner fund, our gate fund, our at-risk fund, our special education fund, and our nutrition fund.

And so in the current year, 88.8% of our staffing costs are in the schools, 11.2 are not.

When you look at the tentative budget, which is again in front of you tonight, it is now 89.5 percent in the schools and 10.5 percent that is not in the schools.

Um the there's something else I was gonna say about that.

So what one of the important things to note with this is that in each of these additional funds, they're they're overwhelmingly student facing.

So that's why when you're looking at um when you add these in and then you're looking at what's happening for for next or even this year the percentage for the the amount of staffing costs that are in our schools actually goes up when you're looking at it this way for the current year.

And then it goes up even more for next year.

And again that reflects that the the cuts at the district level um as a as a percentage of the total number of people at the district level are actually significant more significant than what we're seeing in the schools.

So that's a lot right there are there any questions about any of that and and so actually one other thing I want to point out is so I I don't know like I I've gone through lots of training around this kind of thing over 15 years of of doing this kind of work.

I don't actually know what um like how this compares necessarily I would welcome a comparison to other districts around us because I got to believe that the those numbers on the school side and the other side on the school side is higher and on the other side is lower than any other district in Nevada.

And because I I don't like this is not these are not numbers that are reported this is not on the Nevada report card.

So I I did some research with a friend called chat GPT because I I don't know where else to find anything.

Yes and like don't look down upon me I just I don't really know where to look for this but I I asked you know if if you're looking at um the the costs within a school district and how you how they could be broken down as like being in the school versus not being in the school what is a range of percentages that you would expect to see and the what it came back with is 12 to 20% and it was a very thoughtful response at 20% it would say that you you are a very district driven district I guess in terms of um having the level of staffing and resources to really offer a pretty significant amount of support to your to your schools um balance was considered 15 lean was considered 12 and at the lean stage I asked because I had already come up with these numbers and I said well what if it's closer to 10 and it said well you're you're getting leaner it doesn't mean you can't do it but it you need to pay attention to your schools and listen to your basically listen to your principals because it's potent there's potentially going to be some pain points because there is not as much support coming down to them.

So I I say that in what when I'm looking at 10.5% I mean I I'm confident in all the the people that I'm working with but I I feel like that's stretching a bit in terms of like I mean to the point that this is sort of like a pilot we're we're seeing what what this is going to look like next year if the if this is around where the budget we we end up with and sorry I kind of cut off I had asked if there were questions before so maybe we'll stop here and ask questions.

It's not necessarily a question but coming from a district that was all of the the principals our LEAs were given our budget and the district was by law because they decided they were going to break up our district so you probably know which district I'm talking about they were going to spend 12% on the district staff and 88% was supposed to come to our school from that 88% in budget I had to pay for my own buses.

So transportation was part of my 88% I had to pay for utilities out of my 88% I had to pay for um grounds so my landscaper came out of my 88%.

Because by law, that's how they broke up the large school district by telling them exactly what those percentages have to be.

And when I had to pay my, like we made them break down our utility bills, and I was telling my custodians, turn the lights off, switch the bet the light bulbs out.

Like as a building principal, that was my job was to try and save every single dollar.

Um, because it was coming out of my budget and how many teachers I could pay for or how many counselors I could pay for to pay for my social worker.

The only thing that didn't come out of my budget was my special education teacher.

Because that was federally funded.

Every other position on my campus had to come from my supposed 88%.

Thank you.

And and I I think what's it's a you make a really good point.

I like trying to compare this apples to apples is really difficult because there's such nuance in every district about what the expectations are.

Um and I do know that in your district, you did have to had to pay your utility costs, and I tell that to my principals, and they've never liked that idea.

So um, hey, but if we can do questions like at the end, because I think we can this might go around and around.

So uh we have a lot left.

Can you go to the next slide, please?

Okay.

So again, listen listening the uh positions that have been um previously shown proposed for proposed for reduction with some modification.

And so to be clear, these positions may be currently vacant.

They may be vacant at year end due to retirement or resignation.

They may be vacant at year end because they're filled by staff on a one-year contract as critical labor shortage, because that's a year-by-year thing.

Or they are positions that may require reduction.

And and again, just to emphasize our goal is to minimize reductions, but then also in in every case, try if we can to find a place for people to go if a position is going to be reduced.

If you can go to the next slide.

So the way the way this is set up is again just l listing the positions, and these are not new.

You've basically seen these numbers two other times.

The the one thing that was um requested just to add a little more clarity, um, and that is in the number in parentheses to the right, is how many of the of those positions are currently vacant, just to kind of give you a sense of I guess impact, I I think is is fair to say.

So again, they're under the the district level, n none of those are different than what you've seen.

Um under other programs.

Um there are two nutrition service positions included in here.

Um those are actually both expected to be retirements, so but they're not vacant right now.

Um then at the schools, again, these are these are the same numbers that we've we've shared previously.

Um so I I don't the I don't think there should be any surprises here.

Um, and again, based on some of the adjustments we've made on on some of the costs for next year, um, six of those social worker positions have been added back in.

And I think next slide is then yours.

All right, so hopefully that gives you a little bit more um uh idea of of where we sit percentage-wise based off our staffing, how that's affected in the general fund and those PCFP funds.

Um again, back to kind of the budget, the way this has been built.

This includes those proposed uh position reductions that we just discussed and have been at a at previous uh board meetings.

We have removed the half million dollars of a transportation bus purchase.

We feel we're able to do that because the great strides we've made in in updating the fleet and and having grant funds available to purchase four new electric buses, which um on a side note, um technology has come a long way in the two years since we've purchased the last ones.

Um and then this general fund does include that nutrition fund transfer of about 600,000.

Um and the way the the PCFP funding works for that, they average four years rolling on what that transfer is.

So we're gonna kind of be double penalized for the next little bit because for the last couple of years we haven't had transfers to the nutrition fund.

So that's going to factor into this.

So we'll see the the funding that's made available to us for nutrition to dip for a couple of years before it equalizes again.

So that's where that $600,000 uh transfer is a little bit larger than I'd like to see it, but the reality is that's probably gonna be where things need to be to operate according to all the guidelines that we need to.

However, we're working to see if there's any which way we can reduce that uh as we continue into the final budget.

And then our site budgets are flat in this budget.

Um there's been discussion about reducing those.

Those have been flat for the last four or five years with no reduction or no increases at all where we've seen very high numbers of inflation.

So they've already kind of naturally been reduced where we've kept them the same number and not made any adjustments for inflation, and our sites have done very well to work with their uh finite resources and their infinite needs.

So things that may that may affect this um you know, as we learn more about uh staff resignations, retirements, we'll continue to factor those into staffing costs and any potential non-staffing costs that uh that we may change, need to change in the budget over the next year.

Or excuse me, next month between now and the final.

Um so as you recall from our previous board meetings, uh, you're hoping for us to get the deficit down to two or three million as presented here tonight.

That deficit is 3.02 million, so like 21,000 over 3 million.

Um as an illustration, um, our total general fund expenditures for the FI26 December budget, the amended budget is 85.3 million.

Uh in this budget, they're 83.1.

So there's a reduction there of 2.2 million.

Um this includes in the in the special education fund a reduction of of contractor costs based off of, and again, with with special education, um, we have to be very careful that we don't reduce the level of services beyond where we're supposed to.

We want to make sure that we're still taking care of all the needs and taking care of our kiddos, uh, but we do have less students, and we've been able to to whittle down some of the contractor costs and the services that have been provided by them in this tentative budget, and that's approximately 500,000.

Uh which again, that would flow through the the transfer projected to the special education fund is lower based off of that.

So things that may change between now and the next budget.

Uh I would expect minute changes in the general fund, um, and unless we get extreme guidance from the board.

Uh same with special education fund, those have been we've got a lot of projection and and and information put into those to feel that they're those are pretty good.

Same with our PCFP funds.

Um we may see if there's any difference in funding that we expect to see, we may see some positions slide back and forth between the general fund and those.

Uh again, keep in mind the general fund is the most uh or is the least restrictive fund.

So we can pay for a position out of the general fund that we could also pay out of EL fund or gate fund or at risk, but we couldn't just take any position out of the general fund and pay for it out of those.

Uh we don't expect much change for state and federal grants for budgeting purposes.

And again, those are self-augmenting as if the changes of an amount awards that we get, then we would fact would change those throughout the year.

If there is a large sum of grant money that comes available that we could use to pay for positions, um that would not require us to add additional positions, then we would take that into account and and could affect the general fund.

We're not expecting any change for our local grants, gifts and donations or student activities.

Those are pretty static from uh the uh tentative to the final budget.

And our bond and capital projects, um, we're just got it starting to get a lot of bids for our summer projects coming in, and we'll have a lot more data by the final budget, and those will be updated to reflect that.

Um nutrition services not expecting much change, but we are continuing to analyze any which way we can save funding uh to reduce the transfer from the general fund to cover those services there.

And we don't expect any changes in our proprietary funds, which is our workers' comp and uh health insurance fund.

Um anything else that might change is any input that we receive from the board and guidance on and how you wish us to proceed.

So any questions?

Um before we get into questions, I do want to um disclose um very carefully here.

Um I'd like to disclose that I have a family member that is a uh district employee and affected by the um by the board.

It's no different than any other employee.

So I have been advised that it's not a conflict, but I wanted to disclose for transparency.

Are there any other disclosures?

Yeah, I also have one.

Um my wife had three small contracts with the district this last year or this current year.

No sign contracts for next year, but there may be one or two small contracts that she'd be involved with.

I'd also like to disclose that on the um contracts for next year, I'm listed as having a contract for consulting services, but I am not in a contract with the Carson City School District for the next year.

That was a completion of January 2026.

So that can be removed.

Thank you.

All right.

So with that, um, thank you very much.

We'll go ahead and start with questions.

Um first and foremost, so I I want to um thank the board for um putting so much effort into this budget.

I know you've all spent a great amount of time um listening to the constituents, working with our superintendent, um, you know, addressing your questions with me, and I want everybody to know that the board has spent a great amount of time.

I think this is one of the first years where I've been involved that so much time from every board member has been put forward with this budget.

So I greatly appreciate your time on that as well.

So we'll go ahead and start um with.

Did you want to start, Trusty Varner?

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and start at the other end.

Would you like to start?

Do you have any questions?

Uh Trustee Statusi.

Suzuki Statuki.

You can just call me Tina, yeah.

I just had a a question um because again, especially when we're looking at not just this budget, but future budgets with the reducement and enrollment um not just um applicable to Carson City, but to school districts across the country, right?

With the redu reduction in enrollment, um, you know, like my dang kids won't have kids, right?

I don't have any grandkids, so don't have any kids going to school.

Um I'm just curious as to um I'd like to I'd like to be able to see a breakdown by building facility as in cost per pupil per uh building um to see um what schools are are uh receiving more money per per student for funding.

I know we have one really small uh school um that I'd like to see how much money is spent to educate each one of those students as opposed to maybe an elementary school student or a middle school student, um, especially as we're making uh decisions um potentially in the future of even having to close down facilities, right?

We know that um districts across Nevada are are closing down schools, and that might be something that has to that Carson City has to think about in the future, um, especially as we have few and fewer um kids enrolling.

So I'd like to see a per pupil cost breakdown per school so we can kind of take a look at um how those funds are being used.

Thank you, Trustee Satuki.

Um yeah, we we can certainly provide that for you.

I think um the the reality is that as um you know we we have not made significant staffing adjustments over the past number of years.

Um I I would argue that um the enormous increase in funding we got from the state three years ago to where we are now after 30 years of really bad funding really um there I keep telling people I think there's uh some kind of psychological impact to anyone who's in the especially in the world of budgeting because after such a long period of time to have such an enormous increase.

I I think um you know we knew we could do some really good things and we could add some good people and and give some great you know wage increases, but it kind of lulls you into thinking like gosh, if it was that big, I don't I don't think they're gonna do something that big again, but boy, it looks like they're serious about trying to do better.

That didn't happen.

And and and so that's a really hard thing.

So I I think you know, we weren't necessarily reducing staffing levels, even if our student population was dropping.

And so you I think what you'll see in that is um that the you know cost per student within that school within schools generally has increased a little bit simply because class sizes overall have been dropping slightly because of the drop in population.

But we can get that information.

Well, and just to clarify, like I want to say the differences between the schools themselves, right?

So not an overall cost per pupil being spent.

I think we have that I'd like to see what this school is compared to this school compared to this school and whether or not there's an inequality as to where we're placing our funds that have the most impact to the most students.

Understood really quick before we do questions as well because I don't know if this would um help you all as well but can you turn to page two of the tentative budget.

So within your presentation you had mentioned that it was you brought the deficit the deficit spending down to three million but on page two it states four but are you adding then the million of the constituency.

Yes I apologize I should have used the term the structural deficit which is what we typically present in our budgets um you reduce that million of of the contingency fund which again we don't spend that unless we come before the board and say hey it's a break glass in case of emergency we need to open the you know we need to break that and use that so that is not included in the deficit um it's been uh at least a decade I believe since any of contingency fund funds have been spent okay but then I've also had a question about the general fund ending balance I thought that was going to be higher than the nine million so in the in the tentative you kind of have so it it would include everything that we budgeted for this year and in the event that we don't spend all of that that would that's not included in here so everything that's budgeted for this year and in the 10 of the budget lowers that so in the last couple of years where we've had a deficit uh budget but actually had a surplus that amounts not factored in until we have our our financials audited and and then we adjust that so that does appear lower than you would think where you know as we were discussing out at a couple months ago our any fund balance was 18 million but then with the FY25 budget or excuse me if I 26 budget brings that down and then this budget brings that down even further so you have two budget years of of deficit in there budgeted amounts not actual amounts.

But what would we be saying if it's not 18 million what would it roundabout be approximately sorry can you can you ask that again so at the last couple meetings we were told it with the audit we would have then a balance of 18 million.

Right.

Okay if it's not that what is it going to be so that's a good question.

So if you think if we're just looking at the current year.

So in the current year we're saying the opening fund balance is 18 million dollars the the but the budgeted deficit in the December budget that was approved I I think was around four million dollars but then it's also adding in a million dollars for contingency again with it they always they make you include that contingency number so it actually drives it up or like to five million.

So that's where you see the 18 million going down to this very top number 13 million.

So it's just it's it's take it's assuming we're we're spending the entire amount um that was budgeted this last year plus that contingency amount so it would drop it.

So that drops it five million and then here from 13 million it's now reducing it by that four million dollar number that you you pointed out President Wall and so that's what brings it down to nine million.

And so the question is kind of the where where do things land this year um I I would right now it it's hard to we're gonna be when do we cut off purchasing is it like in two weeks or something like that.

Yeah.

So district purchasing will be cut off here in the next two weeks and we'll be able to get a sense of where we really land I I wouldn't be surprised um it and based on kind of where things are looking right now if it ends up being around a reduction of about two million dollars not not the four million plus that was approved for the budget for this year.

So then that would be say um then like six uh seventeen it'd be make that 13 million dollar number to start 17 million or sorry sixteen million dollars right so we're we're coming in under budget basically but that's um does that make sense am I saying that right yeah okay I just want to make sure yeah so you kind of have the culmination of of two years in there at once so and again keep in mind this this current year we kind of had that plan spend down of about two million so even though our budgets have typically had a deficit budget and we've come out positive this year we we're not expecting that so that starting at 18 million and then as budgeted if you look on page eight of the or 13 of the budget there's the estimated current year ending column and that shows you where we where we're budgeted to end and again as we get as we get close to the end of this number feeling pretty confident that that we're not we're gonna be much higher than 13 million.

17 it'd be make that 13 million dollar number to start 17 million or sorry sixteen million dollars right so we're we're coming in under budget basically but that's um does that make sense am I saying that right yeah okay I just want to make sure yeah so you kind of have the culmination of of two years in there at once so and again keep in mind this this current year we kind of had that plan spend down of about two million so even though our budgets have typically had a deficit budget and we've come out positive this year we we're not expecting that so that starting at 18 million and then as budgeted if you look on page eight of the or 13 of the budget there's the estimated current year ending column and that shows you where we where we're budgeted to end and again as we get as we get close to the end of this number feeling pretty confident that we're not we're gonna be much higher than 13 million it's gonna be somewhere between the 15 to 15 to 16 million and then but that doesn't show in the start of this budget because we can only go off of hey we think we're gonna end at 13 million that becomes our starting point for the tentative budget and then that that typically gets adjusted during the December budget when we say hey we actually did have some uh you know all of our vacancy savings um we didn't use all of everything that we budgeted so our our beginning fund balance is much higher than we thought okay but the reason I bring this up is because during um the association um announcements it was brought that you know we are looking healthy and in all honesty though if you're looking at this going we're going from 13 million down to nine how long is that gonna last because then in the next year we're gonna go down further and the next year we're gonna go down even further because enrollment is not going up we're not seeing any more new revenue we're seeing less revenue and so um it's it's concerning because I just I don't think that this is healthy but I'm not gonna I'm we're gonna move on.

Okay we're gonna move on for Molly.

All right so uh if I may it's healthy because we have this option it's not like hey we have zero ending fund balance and we have to make drastic reductions right now.

Um we've been very uh like as you look at those positions those parentheses that had positions vacant instead of filling those years though this year we've opted to keep those vacant that's resulted in a little bit of savings and and in a kind of a trial run hey we've done we've done this for five months can we do this for another year so there's some savings there.

We have those options and and I I think that's where the associated president's coming from is we don't have the option we must cut so that's where his position's coming from and and let's be thoughtful from this instead of think that everything's coming to the end of the end of this fiscal year.

Because we do have some time and then there's options to see what comes forth on the legislature to see if now we're in that position to be a little more drastic or if there's been some funding that's come to take some of these positions that we've enjoyed for years that we hope to continue to enjoy.

Okay.

All right thank you trustee Ramirez thank you so um I want to start up by saying when we have gone to trainings the first thing that they remind us is that whenever we are in need of making a decision we need to keep them the student in mind of how we are going to serve their needs.

So um I am going to be very honest and I hope I don't offend anyone because I think that in a perfect world we recognize how valuable every position in in our district is to help our students but since we are on a budget deficit we recognize that we have to make some very difficult decisions and so um I am struggling with the idea of not having social workers and preprofessionals and teachers in the classrooms.

In addition to that the feedback that we've gotten and input that we have received from public comment from the from the district community from the community as a whole families organizations they remind us how important these positions are to our our student growth.

So I think it is um important that we listen to their concerns and I think that they have um very valuable concerns and it is only fair that we we take that under consideration that being said I want us to go back to the reduction report on the PowerPoint.

So the the teaching positions or that one right there okay so I do um I do see that some administrative or some positions in the district office are listed here.

And so that's one thing that I haven't hearing from people in the community that we really need to look at those positions and analyze which positions the district cannot function without.

And so that's that's my recommendation that we analyze the positions in the district office and and see which positions we cannot do without.

We cannot function without to meet the needs of our students.

Thank you, Chesse Ramirez, and and no offense taken.

So don't worry about it.

Thank you.

Um what what I what I would say is I I would heavily and I maybe I should have included this data.

Um not to say that any any position is you know without you know consideration, but I would go back to when you we're talking about district leadership positions.

Again, we we as a percentage of our budget, we are well under any other district in the state.

And and is in terms of again it like it that is maybe a little more apples to apples than some of the percentages we showed earlier because they're they're just looking at what what percentage of your people are either certified or non-certified administrators, and that that's an easy thing to pull so they they can look at those numbers.

Um and if that is any gauge for um I I think what has been active um trying to keep funds in our schools rather than putting them into more district office staff.

Like I I would love to have a a deputy superintendent that I could just send on errands and and and and do things, and and that's just not how we have operated, even with the huge influx of funds.

We didn't add a position like that.

Um so I I very much understand the concern um and the thought.

Um I from my side, I I would I would struggle with the idea of trying to reduce more of those, just given we are already lower than any district around.

But I I understand and I understand the concern.

I I think all of us, if if possible, would not want any of this, right?

I I hate all of this.

Um so it just it's it's difficult.

Um and the other maybe the other thing to add to, so we're we're looking at again some of these positions are vacant in total.

I think there's something like 46 positions we were looking at in the at the district level, there are 41 positions total.

And and so just the idea of the this the magnitude of how much we're actually looking at trying to adjust.

I don't even have enough people at the district level to you know if if I in an ideal world we wouldn't make any cuts in the school site at all, but it's there's there's not a way around having I think I feel like some impact, some impact there.

Right, thank you.

Um yes, thank you.

And we all recognize how uncomfortable it is to sit up here right now.

Um so I appreciate your your questions.

Uh trust you, Roberts.

All right, I have a few.

Um but yes, first of all, I hate this too.

Um and I didn't take any of it lightly, and so everything I have to say is just um, you know, I care about all the positions, and I just want to share everything that it has come to my mind or things that I've seen from other districts who are in the same position and and what they're looking at and ways to save money.

Um but first before I get into that, I do want to ask about this new Paloma app that the district has and where funding for that has come.

Sure.

Paloma and and just to be clear, we are talking about an application that is downloaded onto a phone, nothing else, because that name is used for some other drinks.

I just I just want to make sure that's not what we're sorry, maybe it's not commonly known.

Maybe I shouldn't know that.

Okay.

Um so Paloma, um, thank you for the question, Trustee Roberts.

Um Ploma, the the cost for that app, and it it's a it's an app really for um kindergarten through second grade um parents um to be able to kind of engage with some of the same um uh ELA literacy um type topics that they're they're having in their classes and to come home and be able to support them a little bit at home.

Um that that is entirely being paid for out of out of grand dollars um for this year.

We we don't um we we don't actually have a contract with with them.

This came on a little bit late.

Um and so we we want to see how it goes.

Like there's great data they share.

We want to see how it does for us.

Um and then if if there is um interest to continue it next year, um I mean it it's gonna be out of grant dollars is what it comes down to because it we wouldn't want it to impact any of this.

Okay, that's wonderful to know that it would be grant funded.

Um, because that was just concerning to think that maybe we were going into contract when we are looking at such a large deficit.

Um so thank you for that.

And um, I guess my other question with that is are we collecting our own data for that and how it's going?

I mean, I know it's got good data for other districts that have used it, but yeah.

Um so it it's it the the rollout hasn't um it's not that old.

So we we haven't actually collected any specific data yet.

I know from a usage standpoint, um we have at two of our schools almost 20% of our families have signed up.

Um they've downloaded the app, I guess, and they're um actively using it.

Um most of all of our schools are above 10%, but there's two that are doing a little bit better.

Shout out to CEO and Fremont if you're here.

Um as far as sort of like um outcome uh from it or like what the impact is, that's that's something that it's gonna take a little time to see, but we we will wanna analyze our own data.

And I don't know if I might say this wrong, but Mr.

Bringhurst can shake his head, but I I believe they um they help like analyze our our data as well, like so taking our actual data um and trying to help us understand like where there's impact because it's it's hard to show like specific causal, you know, if if all of a sudden our our ELA scores went through the roof, it we just introduced a new ELA curriculum this year.

Our teachers at our elementary teachers have put in an immense amount of work trying to make that happen, you know.

So, like what exactly is causing it?

I think that that might be a little harder to tease out, but but to the questions point, we certainly are gonna be looking at our own data to see the use.

Okay, because my other concern is it that it's just K through two, and so could that grant funding go to something that would um you know better serve a hot larger of our student population?

But um moving on from that.

I did have a question.

Um with the 12 intervention pair professionals, is that all of them at the elementary site that eliminates all of those pair professionals?

That's correct.

So so those positions um I I believe came on three three years ago.

Um with some of the influx and funding that we had.

It was something and and I I think really um we were seeing such a uh uh call it like learning loss.

That was kind of the term being thrown around, but the impact coming out of COVID.

And so that was kind of the bit like a part of the push is like where can we offer some more support at that time.

But yeah, that's those are there other paraprofessionals in the schools, these are just specific to intervention prof paraprofessionals.

That is correct.

And and I I that that's a really important clarification because I um the one of the public comments that happened earlier, I um clearly very concerned about their their their child and and understand that that I think the pair professionals that are helping um with their child or special education pair professionals, there's there's no reductions to to those.

So intervention pair professionals are very specific um to each elementary school having having two, but not related to special education services.

Okay, thank you.

Um just I kind of have notes all over, so let me just make sure.

Um, and then um my understanding with the budget workshops that we had been doing the past year um was to try and see where we could cut, you know, not student facing first, and I just feel like that's been presented a lot with student facing and um that maybe we were hoping to see where we could reduce costs um with contracts or different programs that we offer.

I know it's been talked a lot about um having families help pay for like jump start summer school um at least half the cost um rather than the district um covering the whole cost, and I just would like to see how that would impact I mean both the enrollment side as well as you know the budget.

I I think that um I I Mr.

Bringer and I already taught have already talked about that a bit in terms of I I think there's um there are there are clearly other places that we can continue to look.

Um and this is you know, this is kind of one iteration of of some of that as we get into next year, especially now that we know we have increasing tuition costs.

I I think it's just fair to look at that program.

I think it's fair to continue looking at um, I know you know, trusty wallet had um had concern with the with within special education, a lot of the contract costs, right?

That that we've had in there, and so that was a kind of the deep dive um this year and and pulling back half a million six hundred thousand dollars in um expected contract costs for next year.

So I I think I think to your point, I um I mean my my feel like the workshops were um supposed to bring some understanding and and to be completely honest, we we really have never done anything like that before.

There's so many funds, and there's so many different ways you can use them, and we've never really spent any time with the board going through that kind of information before.

And I know it's still a fire hose, even though we kind of split up split up fun by fund.

It's just a lot.

There's it it gets complicated.

So I I feel like um if anything, maybe to spur ideas of things to focus on and give us feedback.

And I feel like when we went through special ed, that contract piece was kind of part of the feedback.

So I I don't know that it was um was it impactful in in terms of how we're looking at this.

I would say yes.

Did it did it um and like based on the questions we would get about things?

Did it influence every single possible decision within all this?

Clearly not.

That that wasn't um wasn't entirely part of it.

Okay.

Yeah, I just really wanted to look at more of those opportunities rather than you know, staffing opportunities.

And um, you have on here like the gate fund.

I know not all schools offer gate.

I know it's a great program, but is that something that costs you know a significant amount, or what's our enrollment like in that, you know, just look at those kinds of things.

Sure.

And then my last thing, um, just echoing um trustee Statuki with um sorry Molly.

Um just with the do decreasing enrollment in some of the schools saying you know, their class sizes are pretty small, and just um what what would that look like to um possibly close a site and could we rent it out and make revenue off of that?

Um so I and and it it is a good point.

I I mean there's just you know it's kind of the the same reality.

We're talking about there's a reduction in the number of students in our schools, and and there is a reality to just if you have fewer students, you don't necessarily need as many teachers in the schools, right?

Take that another level higher.

If you don't have as many students in the schools, you may not need as many schools, right?

And so I I think that ultimately, like I I don't I don't know that um I I don't expect that we're making a change for next year, but I think we have to be looking at that in the near future with how quickly this enrollment does fall off.

Um again, we we are we're basically at enrollment level that we were in 1993, right?

And and so a lot has changed since then, and expectations have changed and all that, but there is just a plain reality to the number of bodies in a building and how many buildings do you need to fill those with those bodies.

All right, well, thank you.

That's everything I had.

All right.

Well, um, being this far down the line, a lot of the notes that I had have already been um touched on.

I also wanted to um like Tarcisa Thuki said with the one campus that is such a small portion of our students being funded um to see like how much that is practical for how long or what we can do to justify spending that much on such a small percentage.

Um so that got touched on a little bit.

I wanted to dig into pairs a little um and clarify also the difference of a one-on-one or interventionalists, uh a class assistant, like the variety of pairs, and this is only talking about the interventions, so and taking them all away.

Um got touched on um the district office also already got touched on.

Um, but um I wanted to within that um is does every um position and also I wanted to clarify you said there are currently 41 in the district office.

Sorry, between um district office and PDC.

Okay, so 41 current, and you are proposing to lose 18 of them.

Um I think it's 11.

Did I map it wrong?

One point of clarification, TOSAS.

Yeah.

So the TOSUS are put in the district, but are they not in the schools?

They well, they they are in the schools, but they are they're they are housed at PDC.

They're they're not in the schools all the time.

So that's so there's six six or sorry, I guess my math included uh just counting the vacancies.

Can you go back to sorry, go back?

Oh no, go forward, sorry.

One more.

So back so the in under the district heading, it's the the two admin assistant positions, the IT, the HR, the operations, and the sixth TOSIS.

Okay.

That's so just that top portion is the 41, not including the bottom.

Right, because like the the social worker positions, those are student facing special education or student facing nutrition services student facing, like they're they're in the schools with kids all the time.

So um do all of those positions that operate through the district office um work through the summer as well.

Um not no, not all of them.

Um like so, for example, the the TOSA positions, those are actually they're teaching positions, but they're on extended a little bit extended contracts because our teacher contract is 183 days.

Um for the admin assistant positions, I think those are year-round.

Um all the the director positions are year-round, like administrative staff, um fiscal and HR and IT are all year-round, because even IT they're going around the schools during the summer to get everything ready for the next year.

So I I say mo most of them are, but there are there are exceptions to it.

And those that are are are justified in being a full 12 month.

I think so.

I mean, we we have we have talked about um some of those positions and potentially reducing the number of days like for next year.

Um the impact isn't necessarily that significant, so I haven't really included that in here, but there are a few positions we have we have discussed, yeah.

Okay.

And then the last is um realistically.

Um this is I don't know, maybe this is for next agenda item, but like one of the the double-edged swords, a blessing and a curse of of our community is we are such a small community and everybody knows everybody and and only having the schools we have, it makes it so easy to be visible in all of them and and connected to everybody, which is great for building relationships, but then it's terrible for times like this where it's not like a giant district like Washoe or or um Clark where it's face looks these are these are faces that um people we know that will lose their position, and that is hard.

And um I know you've talked about not necessarily, even though let's say we're cutting um an elementary school teacher position, um, that it doesn't mean they have no job, it means that they could move into a vacancy somewhere else, and that that they won't necessarily be cut immediately, they will be offered a shift um in their work based on the holes we know about and the holes that we expect realistically, do we have an idea of how many people will truly not have a job at the end of these cuts?

Do we have an idea of how many people will truly not have a job at the end of these cuts?

So I believe within our teaching to purely teaching staff, so not just certain certified like teaching staff.

I think there is a pretty decent shot that everyone finds a place.

Um I I spent some time, I kind of expected that question at some point, and we and we we've been I mean we've talked about that in conversations, but actually trying to pencil out where there's um there is potential.

Um I think there is a good shot.

Um for most of the other positions.

I don't can you go to the next slide to the right possible, yeah.

For um basically what what remains um the for the intervention paraprofessional positions um potentially, but it wouldn't there's not a uh uh natural um shift necessarily.

There are other paraprofessional positions, but not that title.

Um so that there is potential there for the admin assistant positions.

Currently, I I don't um think there is one potential vacancy.

Um for the um social worker positions, there isn't a natural alternative.

Hopefully that's the level of detail you were looking for, even though it's not the answer you're hoping for.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Justin Varner.

Uh this is very hard, you know, to have to make these kind of decisions.

It's decisions that really none of us want to really make.

And I want to thank you.

I know that uh you and Spencer have put a lot of work in, and your administrative staff in uh being as thoughtful as you could about the uh cuts that we have to make or the riffs.

Unfortunately, I don't see an alternative in the perfect world to steal Luffy's word.

We wouldn't have to make any cuts, but we know that we're going to have to.

And I want to also thank you.

I had a lot of questions about the uh tentative budget, and I want to thank you for taking the time.

Uh I think I spent about four hours uh between two different meetings uh talking about the budget and different issues about surrounding it with you.

So thank you for that.

Um I do have a couple things as I looked through the contracts.

There's a couple that I don't see on there is edge of staff wasn't listed, and then Kaplan wasn't listed.

So is there a reason they weren't listed as one of the contractors or having a contract?

Again, for the tentative budget, this is def is uh it's pulled off of an old report that we used to do that hasn't always been all inclusive.

It's always been suffice for taxation for the tentative budget.

So we're working to get that to be a little bit more accurate to show a couple of those other contracts that are newer that might not have listed on there or that are are funded s out of a slightly different account code that didn't get caught in where this report grabs data to generate from.

Um I'm also curious about uh what the edge of staff costs was it cost in the district.

I don't actually know I I don't have uh exact numbers, but I believe year to date we're less in costs than we have been in the past.

And like so last year we were kind of a hybrid, we still had some substitutes.

We had edge of staff the year before where we did not have edge of staff at all.

At this point of the year, we're less in overall costs than we are in salary costs.

That's not taking in any account the benefit costs that that come along with that.

So and again, there's still I I wouldn't like to do some projections out on on what it would cost through the end of this year.

Um, but it's it's uh it's definitely either gonna be a break even or savings over previous funding.

And Justin Barners, we we can get those numbers too.

Okay, thank you.

Um also as I go through the contracts, um we have contracts for physical therapy, behavioral therapy, occupation therapy, intervention uh services.

Um it comes out to over 1.3 some million dollars.

What are those for?

I mean, and how many students are being served by those uh yeah, I guess those uh contracts.

Most of those without being able to research it based on the the types of services you're saying, most of those are for special education services.

Um that's where so in the in last it's sorry, in the in the current year's budget, I think we have two point three million 2.3 million budgeted in total for all of our special education contracts, and um working with Dr.

Lennox to go through really the the all of the needs that we have in the district and what is actually specifically needed to meet the requirements of IEPs and that sort of thing, that we can reduce I think I think in the end it was close to six hundred thousand dollars ultimately in those contract costs.

Um recognizing also and and this is really important that so meeting special education needs is not uh not a choice, right?

We we have to do that.

And so if we get new kids in next year that may require some more services that we may have thought we could reduce, we have to meet those services, and we have we just have to figure out how to make it work.

Um in the same respect, we know um that our um ASP numbers, so Dr.

Lennox kind of talked about this, they they are even though our total special education numbers are decreasing or our more significant needs are increasing.

Um so that that may cause us to have to look at our our staffing.

We may need to add a teacher potentially if you had a bunch of kids come in, we just we don't have a choice.

Um, but point being um uh some of those contracts that are listed, those I I'm certain almost all of those are are special education contracts, but many of those are being reduced for next year.

Okay, thank you.

Uh also um one of the big topics uh over the last several board meetings and a lot of public comment has been about the social workers.

And uh I'm glad that you were able to find some funds to keep some of them.

I had the opportunity to spend a couple hours with one of the social workers over at Fritz and observed what she was doing and the work she was doing, and uh I thought you know it was well worth it.

Uh unfortunately we're gonna have to let some of them go, I think.

I don't see where there's money to keep all 12, but uh I'm glad that it was at least some that we could keep.

But I do worry uh over the next special several budgets.

Um the information I'm getting through NASBY and our lobbyists there, it doesn't look like there's gonna be a lot more funding coming towards the schools in the next session at least.

So um we're gonna have to make further cuts, I would suppose, or reductions maybe.

So I worry about uh if we're gonna be able to keep those positions for the long term.

The the the one thing I would say and and I I think you're you're right.

I mean, I don't think any of us want to feel like we're kicking the can down the road.

That's not a not a good place to be.

Um one of the primary revenue sources that go into the educate the state education fund, um, the the biggest source is sales tax.

And um I I think a lot of the projections going into next year were were not good.

One of the interesting things is um with inflation creeping back up, that actually increases sales taxes revenues coming in just because prices are higher.

So it'll be interesting to see what happens with projections for revenues for next year simply because of some of that.

And that I'm not I'm not a fan of you know higher gas prices or anything like that, but it's just a reality that sales taxes are a big part of it.

Yeah.

Well, I I appreciate the work you guys are doing, and um like I said, it's it's very hard for us up here, and uh I can see the it you've struggled struggled with it.

And so I do appreciate the work you've done on it, and I think uh like I said once again that I think you've been very thoughtful about it, and uh I do appreciate the time that you've taken with me to go through the budget.

I had a lot more questions that you were able to um ask forward, so thank you.

All right.

Um so one uh just a I had asked whether or not and keep in mind any of these questions if you're unable to answer, just you know, this is discussion only.

If we can if I could be provided the answers before the actual budget, the final budget comes to us, I would appreciate that as well.

Okay, so one is um I did ask for because when we were doing the um presentations, you know, the budget workshops.

Um I asked whether or not when it came to the special education account, which contracts um if we could list out the contracts, because at that workshop we said please go back, cut some.

Do we know how many were cut for this budget?

I mean, like not I want to know dollar amount.

Uh straight from from the December to budget of this one, I've got a $500,000 reduction.

That's a very broad overall.

Um I haven't had a good chance to sit down with Dr.

Lennox and go specifically line by line, okay, which contracts are reduced.

Um that's that's her expertise, and I I would hate to get in the way of her good work there.

Um however, we will spend some time going over that before the final budget.

Because before you what concerns me is when we did the budget workshop, all of the budget workshops that we were provided, we you know, we received this, and we saw how much of the funding came out of the general fund.

Special education we didn't, and it wasn't until the last meeting that we learned that nine 9.2 million dollars of the special education fund um comes out of that's transferred from the general fund.

That concerns me.

So my first is then could we please look at what the district is obligated to do?

So I know that you state that you know there's with IEPs and whatever else, and like um Trustee Varner said how many million in contracts?

One point one point three something.

Yeah, 1.3 million in contracts.

If we're not obligated, I really think we need to put that under scrutiny and get rid of the contracts and get those positions back into the classroom, in all honesty.

So that would be my first um is that I really think that we need to look at that uh quite closely.

Did you have something to say before I went on?

Oh, I I was just gonna point out if in the the budget document, I know this is an absolute mess of numbers, but on page 35, that is the the special education fund.

Right.

Um if you go down in the in the right hand column as you go down, eventually you get to a number that's a flat 1.8 million.

Um it's about 10, 12 cells down.

The purchase services.

Yeah, and just to the left of that, it's 2.3 million.

That that represents the reduction in um what we expect contract costs need to be for next year.

So I I just I just wanted you to note like as far as what we have talked about, at least that that's where that's represented.

Okay.

I still um would encourage us to do better when it's a 9.2 million dollar transfer that goes in from the general fund.

I would ask that um we look into that and maybe do better.

All right.

The next one is when you identify the reductions, um, how many of these reductions are one-time adjustment uh adjustments and which represent ongoing like structural change.

Like we reduce like those contracts, right?

You say we reduced it by 500,000.

Right.

Is that a one-time or we're gonna continue like in all of these other reductions as well.

If I under if I understand, I I wouldn't at this point expect that we would reduce contracts by another 500,000 next year.

But I think in the in the same respect of what Dr.

Lennox has gone through this year, the expectation is to go through that same exercise next year to identify if there are opportunities.

I and and again, the reality may be for some reason they have to that I don't know, but that they have to go up.

But I I think the exercise at least of going through and looking at each individual student and what those needs are and making sure we're neat meeting the needs of the IEP, but not necessarily going well above that.

I I think that just has to be like a lot of these things, it just has to be a part of the conversation every year going forward, at least over the next, you know, as long as we have this enrollment issue, and if we're not getting more state funding for sure.

Okay.

Um if I may, I I think the anything salary based, those contracts are savings this year.

So that like what that 1.8 million for special ed contracts, we would expect that to be the FY28 number.

The one thing that is not is that $500,000 bus purchase.

That's kind of a stop gap.

We don't need that this year, but if that's the kind of thing that would come back in future years, unless we want to get our our bus fleet back into a dire straight situation.

That that's the only one out of there.

Everything else is is largely based off of where fewer students than we had in the past over the past four or five years, any benefit of the doubt for a student facing position, we've kept it.

And so now it's time to reduce those a little bit more drastically than maybe if we'd gotten rid of a few over the couple of years as as we've gone as we've reduced our student population over the last four or five years.

Okay.

All right.

And then within those workshops as well, we learned about different funds that were transfers, you know, that um the general fund had to supplement.

And so I would look at um like the at risk, the gifted and talented, the summer school, um and the nutrition fund.

Are we still going to be supplementing these funds from the general fund?

I I would expect some.

I I think our EL and our gate and our at risk fund.

I'd almost rather that you think of them almost part of the general fund.

Those are all largely salaries and all providing mostly teaching services.

Um to see a transfer there.

I mean, if we didn't want to see that transfer, we could move a position back to the general fund and fund it out of there, but they're all largely positions that are necessary to fulfill the educational needs of our students.

One thing one thing I would say is that um I I think there is room to rethink how we use some of those funds.

There, we we kind of established even before before this funding coming came in, um, especially in terms of like that at risk, like the our English learner needs are are kind of we there's certain needs we just we have to meet in terms of staffing, but with that risk, we kind of made we made a decision as to how we were going to use those funds.

And there is a substantial transfer there.

I I think there is room to at least reconsider how it could be reimagined how we are providing services to those students needing that, which could in turn reduce what that transfer is significantly potentially.

Yeah.

All right.

Um, yeah, so I would like to look into that as well.

Um, and then um because I would imagine then there it's going to be reoccurring.

I mean, it's continually reoccurring and not a one time at this point.

Okay.

All right.

And then um lastly, I just wanted to know um how were the staffing reductions returned uh determined?

Like how how what was your process?

So for the the teachings positions specifically, that that is really entirely based on ratios, and and um at the elementary level, we don't I mean the ratios are actually set by the state.

So you're looking at projected projected enrollments for next year and what is the number of staff you would need to be within those ratios or at least within the ballpark of those ratios.

Middle school and high school level, there are no requirements theoretically, you could have a bunch of classes of 50.

And of course, we'd have mutiny, and that's not where we would want to be.

Um but based on based on how um like the ratios of staffing, um it's if if you look at districts around us, our ratios tend to be rather low.

And so if you are if you increase those ratios a little bit, you can still have reasonably similar class sizes.

There still is going to be some kind of impact, but not an enormous impact necessarily.

Um the um then it came to like after that is you're you're really looking at some of the the bigger ticket items, I guess, in terms of programming.

And then you're also looking at where where are there already maybe vacancies that we can try to assign some things to somebody else.

I mean that and that's not real scientific, right?

Um but after going through all that, then it's still there are still some really big numbers that we're we're trying to to look at.

Um and so then as going through you know more recent additions in terms of um some of the intervention paraprofessional positions and how far we have come in establishing intervention systems in our schools.

Um that became an area that that we started looking at.

Um we had conversations with um several conversations with um our schools trying to get a sense of what you know what what potentially because it could because the numbers were so big, what potentially could we we look at um so um so intervention the 12 intervention paraprofessionals is intervention for behavioral in this case this kind of intervention is academic, it is academic.

Yeah, okay, okay.

Um because with that if you put a dollar amount to it, it whatever case.

I am just adamant that I do believe that more funding could be generated from um less the special education contracts to fill some of these positions, so we're not cutting.

However, that bless you.

Um yes, go ahead.

I just I might have missed it in a previous meeting, but I know we've talked about the jump start as well, right?

Passing off some of those costs to students um or to their families.

Does uh Carson City also pay for AP tests?

Because the foundation does.

The found they pay for all the exams for everybody?

No, not all of it, but it it at least dis for some kids, but otherwise discounted for many others.

Okay.

Yeah.

So they still pay, so students may pay part of the cost of an AP test unless they're like free and reduced launch, or okay.

Um okay, so those are the questions I had been before we do a recap.

Are there any additional questions that y'all generated?

Trustee Roberts?

Um, yeah, a couple with the contracts.

Um can you explain to me the difference between all these different um speech therapy services and like the speech pathologists that are in the schools?

Like why why do we have so many contracts for that when speech is offered?

So I I'll I'll give you my best explanation and then I'll talk to Christy, Dr.

Lannox too, and just to make sure.

But the there is there is a reality of we we cannot we don't have enough speech paths to necessarily provide all the services or even like the intensity maybe of services in some cases.

Um and so that that's where you will have some of those extra contracts that that do come in.

And even you'll have situations where we have a vacancy, right?

And so then there happen to be speech paths who are in the community that we can contract with to help help cover during those times.

Okay, thank you.

And then question I forgot to ask earlier.

Um, how much is our incentive for the early notice of retirement or resignation?

Uh $1,000 for up to 40, I think we said people.

And Mr.

Sadler, I think we had 29 this year.

Yeah.

So 29 actually took advantage of it.

Okay.

So not too much, but I just wondered what looking at cutting that down would look like, but a thousand's not really too much.

Really quick on the speech therapy though.

Yeah.

With all the different therapies that we offer, can some of that be that the student goes and uses their health insurance?

I mean, I know for physical therapy, if my child needed physical therapy, my health insurance would cover it.

Yeah.

Um speech therapy, um, because I did have three kids with clef flip and clefalut, they covered it.

Insurance covered it.

So I just don't understand why the school is taking on such burden.

And it could be didn't they add like being able to bill for Medicare?

Yeah, for some of the services that I mean, that's fairly recent the last couple of years that we could start they could start billing Medicare for some of those services.

So yeah, whether or not some of these other services could be added to that.

Yeah.

Sure.

Um so I I'm not an expert in the world of special ed, so I don't exactly know the answer to the question.

I I think ultimately we're not providing services if they are not in an IEP for a sofa.

Of some reason, if they're in the IEP, we're we're offering those services.

I I don't know exactly the circumstances of what our obligation is within that but we can get you that information.

Yeah that would be great.

Uh President Peterson did you or trusty Peterson did you have more um I did but what was it?

Oh for the the reduction in staffing um the teaching positions uh specifically because that's what's up here for the post-reduction that the sites um what do you have a process in mind for what that will look like and how that is decided is that something where you will like at the district level decide which schools need to take a hit and then leave it up to like the principal or is that all going to be dictated from the district office so at the at the elementary level um the because of the number of students being projected we know kind of what the the number of staff should be or would be for for next year potentially um so principals are are being made aware of if if they have um if they've been identified for a reduction um at the middle school level it actually um well I I don't I don't think there's actually like there are um I don't think there's actually going to be end up being a reduction at the middle school level because the the sh there's shifting that can likely occur um and I I think the high school level is about the same with that one's a little more complicated but um in in that case um like we would get feedback from the from the principals um as far as what they you know how they might want to adjust that um in terms of where people end up um that's a part of the the next item is allowing for directed transfer so we're trying to place people into positions um so that they that they do at least have a place and if they decide to apply for something else after the fact they can certainly do that but just trying to um get them to a home so it there's a couple things um and I don't know Mr.

Sadler if you want to come up but you know you you're looking at have you been waiting he did he shake his head wow wow um but as far as like how the decision is made um specifically Dan Sadler for the record uh so as far as like who gets impacted is that the an understanding of the question so there is pretty extensive statute and also language in the collective bargaining agreements that spells that out um so the the quick assumption is that it's just quickly jumps to the least senior and that is not the case um it's actually pretty complex as far as looking at first year probationary employees first and foremost like for certified staff and then you work through the evaluations and what those ratings have looked like and then you get to seniority um so it's not a I can't sit here right now and say well it's gonna impact this way and this way without going through those scenarios and looking at our staff now that's a helpful answer that it it's not an arbitrary it's not a decision it's more of a a formula kind of all right and then uh my only other thought is I wanted to just add my voice to what um president wall is addressing with the special education um there is so much that we cannot say no to as you know so much that we must fund and that we must provide for um and so I would agree that there are so many things that are are nice to have and helpful but at this point if they're not necessary to have I think we do need to look at at referring things out because there are resources in the community um it takes more work on the behalf of the families but um the same therapy that might be nice to have contracted and available during the school day can be scheduled and visited outside of the schools um and obviously that's not going to be the case for all things there are some that we have to um provide and we should we should provide but um when the trade off is offering nice to have services convenient services that are available elsewhere versus maintaining our teachers that's a hard one to to shift that priority trustee remarks could we also look at the SRO's positions to see if we are able to reduce um the amount of officers that we have on at the different schools that may be another area where we can look into SAP and okay so if there's no more I'm just gonna do a recap.

Could we also look at the SRO's positions to see if we are able to reduce um the amount of officers that we have on at the different schools?

That may be another area where we can look into SAPI.

Okay.

So if there's no more, I'm just gonna do a recap.

I took notes.

Um the final so before the final budget is presented to the school board, um, these are the concerns that we would um that we have addressed, and and hopefully I've captured them all.

Um definitely keep um social workers as many as we can.

Two, we need to look at the school operating equity, and if it is not equitable, we need to look at closing a site.

Three not paying 100% of jump start or summer school for um students.

Um we looked at cutting the contracts, and so we're looking at necessary um uh contracts only, what is the district obligated to provide, and whether some of those services that we are paying for now can actually be billed to health insurance or if the families are able to go get those services on their own using their health health insurance, and then possibly looking at Medicaid as a reimbursement as well.

Provide you've been asked also to provide the board with a comprehensive list of the vendors and the amounts before the next meeting, so we can take a look at that as well.

And then look at funds um look at funds oh receiving support from the general fund and see whether or not any of those funds um could be reduced and not be supported by the general fund as much.

And then the lastly is look at the necessity of all of the SRO's positions that we have.

Did I capture it all?

And the positions that the district can function without.

Yes, and then the positions that the district office might be able to function without or have a shared positions.

Is that it?

All right, thank you very much.

All right, if there's no further um discussion, we will close agenda item number eight and move on to agenda item number nine.

This is for possible action to auth authorize a superintendent to issue a notice of layoff due to a reduction in force RIF for certain classified and certified staff positions if necessary, including without limitation, social work positions, teachers, teachers on aside special assignment TOSA, administrative assistance, and intervention paraprofessionals due to financial constraints.

If approved, the board may also authorize staff to pursue voluntary or directed transfers of staff to fill vacancies as available.

This is for possible action presented by Superintendent Fueling.

Thank you, President Walt.

Um, and not to um extend this, I think longer than it needs to be after I think a good discussion around this.

So this item specifically grants the authority, us the authority to be in issuing reduction and force notifications to staff.

Um it's not uh again, I I don't like any of this, and it is unfortunate, but um, in terms of timing, it's really important because with May 1st is a deadline coming up to issue letters of intent specifically for especially for certified staff.

Um and and there is a process that you know HR needs to be meeting with people even before we get to that point and start having discussions about where people could potentially um land here and talk about the process and the possibilities and and future impacts um to them.

And so this is um trying to meet that statutory um deadline, but or before we get to that statutory deadline of May 1st, um this would allow us to begin having conversations uh with staff in this that are um subject to this happy to take any questions.

Um so then what we have um okay.

So I do have a question before we get started.

Is the possibility then with all of the recommendations that we provided to you to possibly look at before presenting us with the final budget?

If we approve this um agenda item as is, you could possibly then come back to us and say, hey, guess what?

We found by doing you know what whatever it might be with the recommendations, we were able to find 150,000 more, which would not bring us into a deficit any larger deficit spending, but we were able to find the 150, so we weren't we did not have to do as much as we said we wanted to do.

Right, we could effectively re recall um people if if those issues are these notices had been issued, yeah.

Or do the first and then not even have to issue them at all, right?

So go in and find you know, some um a couple hundred thousand of contracts that we are not obligated to do and before you actually, but if we give you this authority, you could come back and say I did not need to do all of those cuts.

Yeah, it is it is possible.

I I just the the timeline is is getting tight, so that's just but I understand that.

Okay, so at this time then um we'll go ahead and open it for questions.

Um Trustee Varner I don't have any questions.

I think uh during the budget uh hearing we pretty well discussed everything, so uh I don't have a question.

Trustee Peterson.

Uh same.

I feel like we hashed things out pretty heavily in the budget conversation.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Trustee Roberts.

Uh same, I think we got it all.

Did um we talk about billing Medicaid for this, and that's the plan, and what does that look like?

Yeah.

So thank you for for reminding me of that.

So Medicaid, yes, the plan is to we already bill Medicaid for a lot of special education services as as uh trustee brought up.

So that that that process is already started.

Um we we are fully on board with trying to expand that as much as possible, um, actually across multiple categories of employees.

Um the the reality is that the the reimbursements, and then we've gone back and verified this again just to be sure the reimbursements are nowhere near what we thought they were going to be, say four or five years ago, what we had initially been told.

Um, but there are there is um there is some reimbursement expected, and that is something that we we are expecting and and including in this conversation.

Okay, great.

And then I just echoing um President Walt with um trying to look at the budget reductions.

Um hopefully before you send out any notices.

I think that would I agree with you there.

Okay, thank you.

Trustee Ramirez?

So following up on Trustee Roberts, you will be able to bring us a list of any additional reductions before you send the budget.

Well sorry, I wouldn't I wouldn't be because we we don't have another board meeting.

That's what I thought.

Right.

So I would I wouldn't be I wouldn't be bringing it to you.

It's I mean I think it again in the bigger scheme of things, I I don't want any of these.

And and so if if there is some stone in in the world of contract or somewhere that we could potentially find another hundred, hundred and fifty thousand dollars in savings, we'll certainly take advantage of that and and make an appropriate move not to not to have to do any of this or something in this.

So if I'm not comfortable uh with these um but moving forward with these, I can refrain from from my vote, correct?

From voting.

No, you would need to vote, but you would be a no vote.

Correct.

Yes, uh sorry, yeah.

Yeah, all right, thank you.

Um trustee Statuski Close, that was close.

I have no questions, thank you.

Um yeah, so mine I already said was please try to find the money before.

Um, but I you know I understand the importance and of doing this as well.

So um at this time, then um, do I have a motion?

I'll make the motion.

I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees authorize the superintendent to issue notices of layoff due to res reduction in force RIF for certain classified and certified staff positions, if necessary, including without limitation, social worker positions, teachers, teachers on special assignment, TOSA, administrative assistance, and intervention professionals approval by the board also authorizes staff to pursue voluntary or direct transfers or transfers of staff to fill vacancies as available.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Motion by Trustee Varner, seconded by uh trustee Roberts.

We have public comment.

Good evening again, trustees.

Brian Wallace, president of OCA for the record.

Um, as Superintendent Feeling just pointed out, you are in a deadline crunch, unfortunately, due to the May One deadline for letters of intent.

So you're going to potentially uh lay off workers without being able to revisit any of this.

I know you have done your due diligence, but the association wants to caution you once again.

You cannot potentially undo this.

You're going to lose excellent staff.

You've spent all this time and effort to build it.

I understand your financial concerns because I will be shoulder to shoulder with you at the next legislative session, most likely, if I get my way with NSCA to reiterate all of this and to reiterate to $2 Joe down the street from us that you can't campaign on students' mental health, and you can't tout a hospital that we are potentially going to overfill by cutting staff that's addressing the needs of our students.

You heard from a contracted social worker where we stand today with our students and the success rates that we have.

Going back to the previous school board meeting, we continue to serve a message to the legislature.

We can keep limping along.

Let's just cut again.

Let's keep repeating the history instead of marching on the capital.

And anyone in the public right now that has these same concerns, it is going to take a march on this capital finally to drive this message home about being student-centered in the state of Nevada.

How we think or can tolerate or want to undo our hard work needs to finally be a line in that sand.

And I'll be the first to lead down there.

Thank you.

Carrie Prior, principal of Sea Lager Elementary School.

I I just want to thank you all.

Um truly, truly the last board meeting was emotionally exhausting, and I'm sure it was for you as well to listen to the public comment.

But what I appreciate so much about our board over all the years that I've been in Carson is that you do seek out the answers, you go to the buildings, you talk to the people who are in the trenches, and I thank you for doing that.

Mr.

Varner, I heard that you had gone over to Fritz, and I really appreciate that.

I know you all read a message that you received from my social worker, Miss Navidad from Stephanie.

Um, you've read my messages, you've listened, and and we're just so grateful.

I want to thank AJ and the financial team and the and the all the people at the district office who at least are acknowledging that we can bring back six social workers.

I think that's very important.

Um, so once again, I just want to thank you for listening and doing what's best for the schools.

Thank you.

Any additional when you start, please state your name for the record.

Uh my name is Patricia Hernandez Juarez for the record.

Um, I'm a school social worker over at Empire.

Um, I didn't even think I was gonna come up here and talk to you guys again.

Uh, because last time was really emotional.

Um, but I appreciate you guys like really um thinking about us and keeping six of us.

But you know, just uh I just couldn't sit there and not say anything, but please give us another chance, invest in us, give us one more year to prove to you that we can do this, and we're working really hard so we can make sure that we're gonna build Medicaid next year.

We can bill, we can make revenue for you guys.

We just are asking for a chance to invest in us because we have been grant funded.

We're just asking for one more year to give us a chance.

And you just heard Brian say he's worked he's gonna go there next year.

So I'm gonna be there.

I'm not gonna speak for the other social workers, but I'm gonna be there doing my part so we can advocate to keep us in the schools.

I it's been really hard to digest all of this.

Um I'm just asking to please give us a chance.

Please just give us one year to get everything together to work with our team.

You saw Stephanie's presentation that she emailed you guys, she had a layout how we're gonna take advantage of those PLCs to really get us going and to start really getting on the same page to bill Medicaid.

I'm asking you to please give us a shot, please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, board.

Um, Stephanie Navidad on record.

I did send you guys a presentation, it was 10 minutes long.

So if you didn't view it all, I feel like this is a great opportunity to please look at it.

I did do a layout.

We talked about Medicaid, I gave you guys reimbursement.

The money is good.

We're gonna continue to fight, we're gonna continue to make sure that we are getting the students in those two tier two levels, tier three levels by fixing our systems.

The layout for next year's PLC, that's gonna be really important, like that push to make sure that we're helping and being part of that solution.

Um, is what we were trying to show.

Like we're not we're asking just to help in that partnership, but I also want to highlight like the importance of every student.

Um, I know that we're advocating hard, and it's not just for us to keep our job, it's for the students.

I think of all the students I serve.

I think about next year when anniversaries come up, when things come up, like who is gonna be there for them.

So I'm really pushing hard and giving you guys different ideas, and I have more ideas if you guys want to hear them.

Um, but we really are asking just for one more year.

And I know right now we're at six, and I'm super grateful for that.

I don't know how you guys are gonna decide that or where they're gonna go, because I think that's super important to also consider.

Um, but I'm really hoping that you guys will look at the look at keeping all, you know, at secondary and at high school.

And I just want to say thank you for the opportunity.

And if you didn't look at that presentation, please take a look at it because I did highlight a lot of things that can help us into finding solutions as opposed to just asking for you guys to give us a shot with nothing that we're gonna offer.

We're gonna give it our all, and we try to do that this year, and so we really hope that we can find that way to keep all 12.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any additional?

All right, seeing none, put it up for a vote.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Opposed.

All right.

Uh motion passes.

Uh, please refect with the opposition from uh trustee Ramirez.

All right, um, closing agenda item number nine.

Moving on to agenda item number 10, discussion on proposed changes of Carson City School District Policy 505 assignment within the district, first reading for discussion only.

And this is presented by Brandon Ringhurst.

Molly, real quick.

Um, I did not uh get my voice out before for the A before moving on to the nay on that last item.

So um I'm just being responsible and on record now and being a yay on that vote.

But I hadn't, I had not voted when before you moved on to the base.

So just putting that on records, good evening, President Walt and members of the board.

Uh this is uh policy 505 for first reading.

Very brief presentation to give a little bit of background for this.

This uh is a change to what is called open enrollment, and it is required by assembly bill 533.

This is the summary uh statement of that assembly bill.

There are a couple of things to point out here that it requires that districts adopt a policy that authorizes students to attend school outside of their zoned school, and that it also requires the Department of Ed to establish a program toward grants of money for the purpose of providing transportation for those pupils.

Um, and we'll talk about some of those details as we go through this.

And so this will be replacing that variance procedure that uh or policy that was last updated in 2012.

So that's been in place for a long time and has been well utilized by our community.

One of the pieces that I wanted to show you is how our current variances play out.

So to read this chart, if you look on the left-hand side, I think it's your left, too.

Attendance zone that lists the the schools and this the zone that the student, the school that the students, students are zoned for.

And across the top there, you have the school that they are actually enrolled in.

So for instance, Borderwick Bray, the first school there, 400 students that are zoned for Borderwick are actually going to Borderwick.

But there are five students who are zoned for Borderwick and going to Empire, 18 to Fremont, so on and so forth.

So you can see that virtually every one of our schools has students attending them that are zoned for every other school.

The only exception that you'll see on this chart is uh Seelager Elementary, where there are no students from Fremont that are zoned for Fremont that are attending Sealager.

But you see a great deal of movement of our students.

And also I think that's all I'll say about that.

We also do out of district variances.

This policy does not change our out of district variance process.

So we receive students who are zoned for other districts, and we also have students in Carson City who choose to attend other districts.

And a brief breakdown of what that looks like for us over the last three years.

You can see that the number of students that come to Carson City School District from other districts exceeds the number of students that leave Carson City to go to our neighboring districts, which is great because as when they are enrolled here, we get the funding for them in Carson, even though they may be coming from one of our neighboring districts.

So that is a uh net gain for us.

So that's a little presentation to give a little bit of background on the this policy.

You'll see the changes in the policy highlighted there in red.

One of the keys to point out this policy does two things.

It does the it talks about how we establish attendance areas.

And we have made a couple of changes in there.

These are not changes that are required by AB 533, but as we reviewed this policy, some changes that we felt were warranted.

For instance, and as part of something that has been discussed here tonight.

Previously there was no language in here for rezoning schools based on declining enrollment or the potential closure of a school.

So I'm when this policy was written originally, uh, we were in a time of increasing enrollment, and we are now in a period of declining enrollment.

So we felt it was warranted to add that circumstance in there as well, that declining enrollment and potential closure of schools would also necessitate rezoning.

Most of the changes come in the section under the open enrollment procedures.

So the first step in our open enrollment procedures is to uh establish an open enrollment window, which will typically begin in January of each year.

Parents will submit a variance request to the district during that open enrollment window.

Some of the changes that are required the placement for students on those requesting those variances are really driven by space at the schools.

Before you move on, yes.

I do have a question.

Yep.

On the first paragraph of when you open the open enrollment window.

How long is it open?

Uh this the policy doesn't specifically specify how long it's open.

Um currently we uh accept variances as long as we have space available.

Um the those variances are accepted.

Um I think potentially adding some language in there about that we it opens in January and then it is open until the spaces are filled.

Something like that, maybe.

Okay.

How disruptive, though, is that in a school?

Well, um when we do that before the school year starts, it is not disruptive uh before the school year starts.

Once the school year opens, it can be more disruptive.

And we'll see there's some language in here um about the movement of students during the school year, where we limit that to one move during the year.

I should also say in this that this policy is based on the best information that we currently have from NDE with the guidance about how this should be crafted into policy.

Um it will need to be submitted to NDE to be graded on their rubric.

We don't yet have their rubric.

And so some of what we have here, we may be coming back to you to change some of that.

Depending on how you read the guidance from NDE, it may indicate that students can move around as much as they want during the school year.

Um what we have in here is to limit that to some extent because of how disruptive it can be, not just for the school, but for a student's learning.

Okay.

Um section three, it talks about the placement will be based really on two uh criteria.

The first one is space available at the school and grade level that's requested.

We have a little bit of a caveat there for our kindergarten because our kindergarten enrollment is obviously very difficult to predict.

And so we don't really know how many kindergartners we have until school starts, and we always have to leave enough space in those kindergarten classes for students who are zoned and live in that school zone.

So kindergarten looks a little bit different because of that.

The only other criteria that we use in uh determining if a variance should be granted is whether or not the student has been suspended for 10 or more days, expelled from school or deemed a habitual discipline concerns in the previous in that school year or the school year immediately preceding.

Those are the only two criteria that we can use to grant or deny variances is space, and then those uh behavior criteria that are mentioned there.

Now, the behavioral criteria was that by um uh the AB by legislation or something.

Okay.

That is by legislation.

So we can't add chronic absenteeism.

We used to have uh things like chronic absenteism in there, and that is no longer uh an allowed criteria under the legislation.

Um section number four talks about if if there are more requests to a particular school than what we have space for in that school.

The process that we go through to decide who uh gets those variances.

The first, we have some required priority students.

These would be students who are zoned for a school that this that NDE has rated as either a one or a two-star school, and they are wanting to go to a school that has a higher rating, so they would get first preference if there are more requests than we can accommodate at a particular school.

After that, then our next criteria would be some discretionary priorities, children of employees, siblings that are currently enrolled in the school.

And then after that, it would be a random lottery uh for any to fill any remaining spots.

Paragraph five, we base it on the space available and behavior.

We cannot specifically cannot consider things like athletic ability participation in extracurricular activities, disability status, English learner status, or the student's home address.

Once granted, that variance is in place for the duration of that until the student would graduate from that particular school level.

So for instance, if you get a variance in third grade, you don't need to renew that every year.

That is good until the end of fifth grade, which is the end of that uh that school.

Uh unless the student has is suspended for 10 or more days, expelled from school or deemed a habitual discipline concern.

And then there is that piece students can only transfer to a school outside of their attendant zone once during a school year.

So if I choose to do a variance from Sealager to Fremont, I can't do it from Fremont to Fritch and then Fritch to Borderwick all in the same school year.

You couldn't go back to the school you came from here.

You cannot, you can go back to the school that you came from.

You are always entitled to go to the school that you are that you live in that attendance zone.

Seven, uh we cannot assess any tuition or fees.

The students would still be responsible to pay the same fees that every student at that school pays, but there's no additional fees, like in order to get the variants, you have to pay a fee.

That does that is not allowed.

Next section talks about how we determine capacity.

Um AJ has been helping uh with this as well.

Mr.

Fueling has been helping with this because there's the criteria is based on what NDE considers an instructional space and the square footage within those instructional teaching spaces.

Things that are not considered instructional teaching spaces are listed there.

Uh gymnasium, theater, administrative offices, cafeteria, storage space.

Capacity calculations look at the number of teaching stations we have, the number of seats in each station.

That can include some criteria based on what is being taught and the grade level and the instructional model used at that station.

And then we use an occupancy calculation of one person per 40 square feet of instructional space, and that is uh directly from the legislation.

Um kindergarten capacity will consider that instructional space capacity and also the enrollment projections.

That again is a little bit of a carve out there for kindergarten because of how different that looks in particular.

Any questions about the capacity?

Next, um transportation assistance is something that is part of this legislation, and to be eligible for state funded transportation assistant, students need to meet two criteria.

First, they need to live in a school, they need to be zoned for a school that received one of the two lowest performance ratings as deemed by NDE.

So that would be schools that are deemed a one or a two-star school.

Only those students would be eligible for this transportation assistance.

And then the second criteria is those parents need to provide assigned attestation that the student has no other viable form of transportation in order to arrive at school and depart from school at the conclusion of the day.

If the funding from the state is insufficient to serve all of the applicants that meet those criteria, then assistance would first be awarded to students who are eligible based on those two criteria and who also qualify for free and reduced lunch or reduce or are identified as English learners, migrant students, McKinney Vento students, or students who are in foster care.

If the funding from the state is insufficient, and this is a grant that the state has set up for this for one year, um and we are working through the process of applying for that grant funding.

If that funding is insufficient, then no transportation assistance would be provided, and the parents would be responsible for that transportation.

So it is contingent on uh the funding coming from the state.

Really quick, do we know how much that is?

For the whole state, I believe that the budget that has been set aside is $7 million.

You don't know how much we'll get.

We don't know how much.

We have to apply still.

Yeah.

We're still in the process of that application process to see what we uh would get from that.

We will notify parents of the decision, written notification to the parent or legal guardian regarding the outcome of their application for a variance.

If it is denied, the notice will include the specific reason for that denial, and it could be appealed in writing to the superintendent or designee.

The decision of the superintendent or designee is final.

Um likewise, if a request for transportation is found ineligible, then um or if funding is unavailable, the district will provide information to the parents about other uh community options available to assist with transportation.

Really quick, then is the notification of decision is that just based on transportation denial and appeal or overall policy denial of or appeal of variant?

Great question.

It it is the overall variance request, whether that is uh granted or denied, um, they would receive um written notification of that and an opportunity to appeal.

All right, thank you so much.

Do we have any questions?

Uh go ahead, trust you Roberts.

Okay.

Um thanks for bringing up the absenteeism, President Walt.

I had that question as well.

Um with the kindergarten applications, will they when will they be notified?

Like should parents put a rec um, you know, register their kids at their zoned school as well so that they have that space or do and they're ready and prepared for them just in case that denial happens at the school they're hoping to go to.

Yeah, that's a great question.

And this year we are certainly running kind of behind in the process as parents are already registering for kindergarten, and we are just bringing this policy to you now.

And we've been waiting on some things with some clarification with NDE so that we could get to this point.

Um so for this year, what we have uh asked the principals to do with the variants the requests that they've received for kindergarten to hold on to those variance requests until we can get um our projections and our space available solidified, and then we'll be able to notify those parents and get them those requests for variants either granted or denied.

So at this point, they should fill out those requests for the school that they want to attend, and then we will go from there.

Okay, great.

And you can request the variants to go to a lower school, correct?

You just don't qualify for transition if you're that three or four star.

Correct.

You can request to go to any school.

Um it the transportation assistance only applies if you are at a one or two star school wanting to go to a uh three or four, three, four or five star school.

Right.

Okay.

Does that include the reimbursement for them driving their students?

Correct.

All transportation.

All transportation assistance is only available if you're coming from um those one or two-star schools.

And I should know, and I didn't mention this when we I was going through the summary.

There are two forms of transportation assistance.

It can be either uh district transportation that's provided or reimbursement to the parents at the state's determined rate.

Um, but the decision as to whether or not it is which form is a district decision.

The district will decide this is what we can do reimbursement or we can do bus.

It's not a parent choice.

We will determine which one of those works best for that based on bus routing and and all those other factors.

Okay.

And is that reimbursement option um state funded as well?

Or is that just okay.

Um do you know yet how this will impact the bus routes, the times?

Um do we have enough buses to cover that?

Is the state giving us more buses for that?

That's a great question.

Um we don't um we don't know for sure yet because we don't know how many students have requested, but in talking with transportation, we're really talking about students from two schools, or we only have two schools this year that would be in that one or two-star school status.

So it's a limited number of schools.

We already also provide a fair amount of transportation to students who qualify for that through McKinney Vento services.

So transportation believes that with two bus routes, we would be able to service our McKinney Vento students as well as service any students that need this type of transportation.

But again, that at this point is based on our best estimates, and we will know more once we see exactly um how many students are requesting this.

Okay.

And my last question on the notification of decision number one, um, it just says that you know the district will notify the parents or legal guardians.

Do you have um like a timeline of when you try to do that?

Hopefully plenty of time for them to Yeah.

Uh and and that's yes, plenty of time for them to make their uh decisions and arrangements.

We don't have a specific time listed there.

We could look at putting something in there, but part of it is that some of those, if you turn in your variants in January and we get some of those processed, but then we still have space and people are turning in their variance requests in May and then June.

So there won't be a specific date where all of them are notified because all of them don't come in at the same time.

Um but I'll look a little bit more at that and see if we can put some sort of a time frame around that.

Okay, I guess um because you said there's not really necessarily a deadline for when they need to get it turned in by.

Correct.

Because part of um Yeah, part of what the state is looking at is having us continually update our space available in our schools on a quarterly basis, even throughout the school year, which uh obviously is we're updating that on a quarterly basis throughout the school year, then that um allows for movement all the time.

I guess my concern then is if you're um you know, getting those first priority student variances, variance requests later than some of these others.

If you've already accepted this, but then those first priorities come in.

Do you have to adjust?

Do you think good question?

We'll look at that and see if we need to change uh and adjust some of our wording here.

Okay, thanks.

On that note, I would encourage you to possibly um publish, you know, the school capacities is there a way to put it on the website to publish like the uh capacity numbers at every school and possibly by grade levels.

Yeah, and that is that's part of the legislation, and so we will be doing we will be doing that.

Any other questions?

Uh Trustee Peterson.

Uh just some clarification in that transportation section, um, where the parents need to sign an attestation that they need to be bust.

Um you would that just be the one time like when they apply for the the variants to begin with?

Correct.

That would be when they apply for the variants.

Um now, and I think part of what should be noted there as well.

So let's say for instance, this this year um our we have like I said, we have two schools who qualify, which would be Mark Twain and Empire.

And so students may request that variance, may qualify for that transportation, but then if the following year Empire becomes a three type three star school, then they would no longer be eligible for that transportation assistance, even though they may continue with their variants to Sealager for three years.

Um if their zone school becomes a three-star school, then it no longer qualifies for transportation assistance.

Okay.

Um thank you.

And then just a curiosity question here, too.

Um still going with the transportation part um where it's talking about um if there's not sufficient, the first will be awarded.

And then the specific groups listed, um, free and reduced, English language learners, migrants, McKinney Vento, foster care.

Are those specific groups dictated to us, or did we choose that?

Those are dictated to us.

Okay.

Um and then the final would be um, is there a process for canceling?

Or do you just enroll in your home school?

You enroll in your home school.

Okay.

Um was this based on did we balance these off of um neighboring policies, or did we just wing it?

Oh, well, um that's a little bit of both.

Um we did uh get some guidance from NDE and ND shared with us um a neighboring district's um policy that they thought was pretty good.

And so we utilized that and modeled some of our work after that as well.

Um and Clark have been doing uh some version of this for some time.

It's not entirely clear if their version will need to change too in order to meet the um legislative requirements that that have come down.

Just garner?

No, I guess my question is who's the lucky person that gets to handle all this from the district.

We're not hiring anyone.

That would be obviously this could uh turn out to be kind of complicated.

It definitely could turn out to be very complicated.

Um, you know, it's the staff that we have.

It's uh you know, myself and uh Miss Gina Hines uh and Paige Kamara.

Um we all we work through a lot of the variances.

The campuses also um take uh a fair amount of that burden because that's where the parents show up to fill out the forms and and whatnot.

Um so it is a um a challenge.

And I think that's something worth noting as we've talked about budget.

There's a lot of um, you know managing a system like this takes people.

And so it's a requirement that we have something like this, but it does take people to manage it.

And it's people who already have full jobs.

I understand that.

Uh just one other question.

We don't know how the mileage reimbursement is going to be handled.

Um is it gonna be per mile?

Um but then yes we need to keep track of you didn't show up all five days so you shouldn't get paid for all five days which is why in many cases providing a bus may be a much better way to go because that other part of that managing who's getting reimbursed and how much now the schools are having to keep track of all that attendance in a different sort of way and now Mr Winward's department um needs to do a lot of work to make sure that people are getting reimbursed the right people are getting reimbursed for the right amount so that potentially becomes very cumbersome as well yeah all right thank you very much um seeing no further questions we're gonna go uh close agenda item number 10 and move on to agenda item number 11 this is discussion and possible action to approve the superintendent's goals for the 2026 calendar year this is an action item presented by superintendent fueling thank you president wall uh in front of you item 11 you have my goals in the interest of time do you have any questions and I believe we do but thank you very much for not reading them to us um so who start at this end start at the middle how would you like to all right we'll go ahead and start with trustee Roberts I think I have questions on this one but thank you all right very good Chester Ramirez just one suggestion I'm wondering if we are able to add some measurable outcomes to um uh goal number one um I know that you're focusing on on fine-tuning the uh MTSS but it is my understanding we already have that in place on all the schools correct yeah yeah it it to uh two different levels some some schools are absolutely dialed in some are still there's still some holes that that need to be um fine-tuned and and that's why I actually Renee actually asked me why did you leave the word expansion in there and then strike it out and because that that word was there and we're not looking to expand it it really is just um continuing to to really get a great extent fine-tuned so um I mean we we could certainly um I'm just wondering if we are able to align it with the strategic plan perhaps I know that you provide us with um uh measurable outcomes um when you bring us the the strategic plan on a quarterly basis um I don't know if we're a if we are able to tie uh tie that into that either on on A or B because I I notice on B also focuses on improve uh improve achievement so it says begin the district wide returning appeal C's to the PLC a work model for all schools supporting the professional teamwork of our staff to improve achievement for all students so I'm wondering if we can perhaps maybe tie that to the measureable outcomes that we have on the strategic plan.

Um I I think we can I'm sorry my brain is just not I know it's it's totally for every one of us I I'm I don't know that was just a suggestion I mean if everyone else feels the same you know it feels that it's all good I'm I'm okay with that but I just wanted to bring that up in case um everyone feels that we could add match role outcomes if everyone is okay with that we can go ahead and leave it as is no that was actually one of mine is um yeah so one of my concerns was what are the measurable indicators for the MTSS implementation and so I think that we need to and I believe it was trusty one of trustee Varners as well so I I guess it depends on the um exactly what you're looking for because so there's something called a uh TFI tiered fidelity inventory which gauges where our schools are and we for like for each school how far they have come in kind of becoming this ideal MTSS system in their schools um most of our elementary schools are in a great place our middle and high schools continue to improve so I I don't know if it is that kind of what you're looking for or if if there if it's a specific like um like student data point outcome I would need to go back and talk with um I I would talk with Christy and Brandon a bit I mean just in general like we believe this is gonna improve um you know proficiency scores and achievement but I I don't know if that's exactly the right data point to

So I I don't know if it is that kind of what you're looking for, or if if there if it's a specific like um like student data point outcome, I would need to go back and talk with um I I would talk with Christy and Brandon a bit.

I mean, just in general, like we believe this is gonna improve um you know proficiency scores and achievement.

But I I don't know if that's exactly the right data point to look at.

So I'm I'm not sure exactly what I myself didn't have any idea.

That's why I was just asking you as on that measurable, what were you thinking?

You know, how would we be able to measure your um that goal?

I truly like it in in my mind, so with a lot of the PLC work that is going to be happening, m MTSS and and the P PLC piece actually integrate very well.

Um we are steps ahead because we are so well developed on the MTSS side.

I think it's to me it's just getting it so that on that tiered fidelity inventory piece that we know that all of our systems are in place.

Is your mic on?

Yes, sorry.

Renee's standing up behind me and I think that's what it's for.

Um and so I I just say that in terms of i if we're gonna make this work, like you can do systems and they come and they go because nobody really does it to what it's supposed to be, and they don't stick with it.

And that's that's what I don't want with the MTSS that we are fully across the board.

We have this dialed in across all of our schools.

That to me is really important in terms of supporting a lot of that uh the larger PLC now rollout that happens because that in turn should lead to increased student achievement.

It's just it's not gonna happen next or necessarily happen next year.

So that's why I don't I don't know.

I I would feel more comfortable um saying like are we getting our systems absolutely dialed in and in place?

Like there's a lot of work in building the systems around the PLC piece as well.

Um I'm I was I was just gonna add to that because of the um comprehensive district needs assessment.

There's a section in there that's specific to MTSS and it it talks about the tier fidelity, and then you guys in person also do a we we in Carson also do a district um survey where there's actually scoring on there where you can um see growth and improvement over um when you go and assess the schools and talk to the people who are actually implementing it and then how you guys score yourselves or how we score ourselves as a district.

You could use that as a measure to measure growth across time.

So if you take a look at that, you've got data on it.

Okay.

Well, I guess I I can come back to you with that.

Okay.

Just an example of it.

This is would that be just for MTSS?

Okay.

All right.

Go ahead, uh Trusty Verner, sorry.

No, I I would like you to come back with something like that also, but um the one thing I noticed on these goals is that I didn't see anything relating to really improving student achievement.

And if that's what we're all about, right?

Sure.

So uh I'm wondering if there's some goal.

I don't think I'm ready to approve these goals.

So I'm wondering if there's some way to bring something back that would address student achievement that's measurable, that's uh achievable in in some kind of time frame.

Sure.

I I think so so one of the things I I don't want to say I struggle with, but um like within the again, I I lean heavily on the strategic plan.

Like to me, that that is always there and student achievement is is in there.

Um and to me, these are kind of the it and I should say and improving student achievement is always there.

And these are effectively things in some ways I think that are supposed to um you know support that in some way.

And so I I don't know if it I could certainly put something in here, but I it may be duplicative to to have it then also in the strategic plan.

I'm I'm happy to put something in.

I just I can let me think about it.

Yeah, you know, um and I appreciate that if you put in, but uh right now I'd like to see a little bit more work done on these and maybe some more input from the board.

Yeah, because um the other thing I had then too was um with a strategic plan, it just said facilitate school community um meetings to develop if there's a possibility then for you to put my like my milestones like um uh you know, for the new new plan between now and you know, kind of some uh timeline of some sort of of what you hope to accomplish.

So we have something to um evaluate on that end on progress, actually, because your evaluation says what progress has been made.

And then on the legislative one, um how will we as a board evaluate your progress through the legislative advocacy?

So it is you know, like fair and evidence-based.

I mean you could say the successes and how much money those are.

I was just gonna say that.

I was gonna say that, but I mean, it's one of those things like uh there are some things that um you know you're judging the level of quality on a specific data pointer outcome.

Um this is not necessarily something that lends itself to a metric in terms of like you know, how many hours did you spend working on this, right?

So I I think there's to me, there just has to be some recognition that this is really important to all of us, and I I feel like the whole declining enrollment thing is a is a real problem.

Like all the super superintendents are talking about it, that is gonna be a major part of our platform going into the session.

So I I don't know uh other than to say it's really important to me.

Um if it if it's not the kind of goal you're looking for, it's just I know it's gonna take a lot of time.

I'll I'll be the the president for the superintendents association next year because I'll be the third longest serving superintendent of the state, which makes no sense to me.

Um but it and so I'm excited about that, but it it's gonna increase the workload in terms of time at the legislative um session putting that time in.

So I no, I think we all agree that it's extremely important, and we've all discussed this at our retreat as well, how important it is as us as members to be to be there as well.

I mean to to be walking the the hallways as well, but we just want to make sure that when you go to do your progress and we go to rate you that it's fair, you know, and to do so, you know, there's gotta be some evidence to on that.

And so I think if um you know, in uh respect to time as well, we'll you have our input kind of looking at and then you'll bring it back to us.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Is that fair?

All right.

I think you could ask your friend Chat GPT probably.

Giving how we can make them measurable.

Yeah.

All right, thank you so much.

So we'll go ahead and bring that back.

Uh we'll you still need to call for public comment though.

Oh, do I have any public comment?

Because it is an action item.

All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and close agenda item number 11 and move on to 12.

This is the discussion and possible action to approve the superintendent's evaluation forum for the calendar year 2026.

This is an action item and it is uh presented um by me.

So I want to thank um uh trustee Ramirez and trustee Roberts.

Um so we met and we um I think we came up with a a nice superintendent evaluation, and it is an update.

So again, I thank you two for your time.

Um it was a pleasure working with you on this as well.

And um, so what you have in front of you is what we are um a lot of it is format changing, and then um the rating scale a little bit, so we have a rating scale, and please keep in mind before I go on, this has been presented to our superintendent, um, and he has um made comments and included some of his edits, and so at this time he um agrees with and is fine with the evaluation, correct?

One thing I thought of and changes nothing right now this year, is with the revamp of the strategic plan, because strategic plan is only it's mentioned one time in here, and it wasn't in the old one too.

Um, but I I struggle with how I'm being evaluated in my in my mind, like everything's about the strategic plan.

And so I I think for next year, once that's done, just some uh some thought about maybe adjusting something to reflect some more weight towards that, but nothing changes for right now.

Okay.

So what we did primarily is we combined, you know, if we saw that um two, you know, two um standards might have been able to be um consolidated, we did that.

We eliminated um some that were that he rated a four and a five consistently for the past three years.

So we went back three years of those evaluations, and if he rated a four and a five consistently, we uh we deleted those um to to condense it.

What else we did then is we took out a comment after each one, and so we were asked to comment after each one, which um what it does now is um one point two.

I I'm going to say drastically changed.

That that is a new one, and this has been um vetted through our superintendent as well, and so I think this one is um is a good one.

So then that's it, really.

I mean, we put some together, we deleted some, and we then made the comments one instead of after each standard itself, after each one, we did one at the very end, which is the comments, and which is overall rationale, areas of celebration, and areas of growth.

Um and then part two are the superintendent's goals.

These this is not the format, by the way.

These all you're approving tonight is the content and the rating scale, and then we will put it back to a format that is um that discuss how to do it.

Um the goal and attainment would be his three, um, the superintendent's three goals.

He would then fill in the goal progress, and then we would rate it.

Okay.

And then part three was added today, and that was um professional activities and contributions.

These are notable activities, contributions and uh accomplishments from the school year that we would consider uh we would wish to consider to evaluate the superintendent on.

Okay.

Are there any questions?

Trustee Roberts.

Yeah, just something I missed in all of our edits before.

Um on 4.1 on that second line builds trust and respect families.

Should that read builds trust and respect with families?

Yeah.

It just read funny when I okay.

And then part two, it's that same rating scale, right?

One to five, one being ineffective, five being exceptional.

Yes.

And I didn't see three yet, so hold on.

Come back.

Anybody I would just like to reflect that we did talk about the um addition of um the weed up testing for section one point two, uh section B.

And per um superintendent feelings input, um we are gonna hold up on that for now.

Um, did I understand you correctly?

I I was speaking with Dr.

Medina and he said there there's some new um sorry, new um like metric or or something that they're coming up with, and I I forget exactly something to do with um growth.

Yeah, sorry.

But um they they'll be working on it here over this next year, and then they're gonna introduce it.

So I I think that's gonna become a part of um the standard reporting that we have.

And so his suggestion w he said it would be a good one to use.

And so if you're okay with waiting, knowing that our English will be able to do that.

Some required require uh reporting that will be implemented.

I think that's why you're uh what what I recall you mentioned, and so we'll hold off on that for that purpose, but then next year we'll revisit it and we'll make sure that we include that in there.

Okay.

Any other questions, comments?

Go ahead, Trusty Farner.

We're approving the content, correct, but not the format.

Correct.

So if the format is finalized, is it gonna come back before the board so we can review that and approve the new formatting or what?

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, but we wanted to get this going so then he knows what he's being evaluated on.

So in a timely fashion, it will be there.

I think ultimately yeah, but we'll put it into like a Google form, you know, so it's online again.

So I yeah, but yeah, so there will be a change in the format.

Yeah, well, I just noticed, you know, like there's no date, uh, no name, no date, no page numbers, etc.

You know, yeah that would need to be included.

Yeah, because it will be in Google forms when we go.

Anyone else?

And this, I don't know if this is considered format, but grammatically, like there's sometimes there's comma usage, and it should be semicolons as a former English teacher.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Um, yes, you can bring you can give your um grammar uh corrections to Renee.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

We have yeah, we have missed laurel.

Oh, we didn't all right.

This is an action item.

And so um, do I have a motion to approve?

I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve the form as presented and discussed for completing the superintendent's annual evaluation for the 2026 calendar year.

Do I need to say with the couple edits we suggested?

Okay.

Uh second.

All right, so motion by trustee Roberts, second by trustee Ramirez public comment.

Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Hearing none, motion passes unanimously.

All right, we'll move on to agenda item number 13.

This is discussion of possible action to cancel the July 14th, 2026 school board meeting.

This is an action item presented by me.

And this is we normally um historically have always canceled um the first meeting in July because it would run so close to the 4th of July.

It doesn't now, however, um we are I am presenting that we cancel the meeting.

Um this is a great time for staff and others to take vacation.

So do I have any questions on the agenda item?

Comments?

All right.

Uh so let's uh do I have an act.

Uh do I have a motion?

Uh a motion that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees cancel July 14th, 2026 school board meeting.

Right.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right, motion by uh Trustee Peterson, seconded by Trustee Roberts.

All in favor, please say aye.

Opposed.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Public comment.

Seeing none.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Hearing none, motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Moving on to agenda item number 14.

This is approval of a consent agenda.

This is for possible action.

Do I have any comments?

Questions on the action item.

Seeing none, do I have a motion to approve?

So moved.

Uh second.

Second.

All right.

We have a motion by um trustee Varner.

Second by Trustee Peterson.

Public comment.

Seeing none.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Uh motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Moving on to agenda item number 15.

Did you all have time in to go over the informational item?

Can I clarify on the informational items?

So next Tuesday, the 21st, we have the uh employee of the year celebration, and we have canceled the following Tuesday's board meeting.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

We think you switched them around.

So yes, the next school board meeting will be April 22nd, and it will be here in the theater the following Tuesday.

We do not have a or 21st, sorry, and then the following we do not have a school board meeting.

That is a substitute.

Any other questions, comments, comments?

All right, seeing none.

Closing agenda item number 15, moving on to number 16.

Do we have a request for future agenda topics from the board?

Uh you brought up edges staff earlier, and I've been meaning to um request that since it's been about a year since we signed with them, I believe.

So at some point it would be nice to see how that went this year.

Okay.

That sounds good.

Trust me Varner.

I don't know if it needs to be the board meeting, but the uh information on edges staff, then uh numbers.

Okay.

Um and then also um you were absent, but I had asked that we get an update from the city regarding the growth and development and how the schools fit into the city's master plan.

If we could have somebody from the city present that, that would be great.

Um, also for the board, and I will keep this short.

Um, but yes, I believe it's time that we start looking at um some of our own policies, and so we will be um working on like the bylaws, the finance that can mean if you go on to the um school district's website, you will see policies, and there are some that um affect the school board.

So we will start with section number zero zero zero zero, which are the bylaws.

We'll move on to zero one zero zero, and then um, moving on to zero nine zero zero.

So we will be bringing working together to change those policies.

Anything else.