And start.

Um, so at this time we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order for the um Carson City School District Board of Trustees, and we have a quorum.

So we'll go ahead and start with agenda item number one.

This is adopted adoption of the agenda.

This is for a possible action.

Do I have a motion?

So moved.

Second.

Second.

Public comment.

Seeing none, all in favor or uh motion made by sorry.

Trustee Varner, seconded by trustee Roberts.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Great.

Motion passes unanimously.

Ms.

President, just for clarity, that was public comment on the agenda item only.

Correct.

Jeez.

Yeah, so this was public comment on the agenda item only.

Yep, sorry.

Alright, we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item number two, the flag salute by Trustee Varner.

Of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands.

Under the independent justice call.

Thank you.

Moving on to agenda item number three.

This is our superintendent's report for information only, Superintendent Fueling.

Thank you, President Walt.

The school year has concluded.

So you you could hear a collective cheer from uh students and maybe staff alike in some cases.

Um really uh just a great year.

Very exciting.

Um thank you to it it's it's been a year, and thank you to all of you for your support, um, support for our staff for support for our students throughout the school year.

Um it's been a very busy couple weeks with all the end of the year uh celebrations, um schools having their promotion ceremonies, just a lot of fun.

And I I know probably some of you will comment on this, but I'll just give a quick shout out to uh Carson High, their grad walkthroughs at the elementary schools was the most precious thing.

Um and the evening graduation ceremony um was fantastic by any account I'm aware of.

So uh thanks to everyone involved in making that happen.

Uh last two days we've spent up at the uh superintendent's conference up in Tao and doing a lot of good work talking about uh statewide policy um and uh I think hope for for better things and changes as the the legislative procession approaches.

Um so just uh a good good couple days talking with people around all around Nevada that are dealing with very similar issues in many cases, sometimes unique, but just uh a really good time and lots of good people trying to do good things for kids.

So that is all I have.

I do have a question uh regarding your conference.

Um because it was all this school districts through the state right.

Are all of the school districts seeing um decrease in enrollment?

With uh a few exceptions.

Some of the some of the really small remote rural districts have had an uptick.

It in those cases.

Oftentimes it's due to a single family moving into town.

Yeah.

Like Esmeralda County has 68 students for the whole school district, so that that can impact that.

Um all of the districts that are um I think say over a thousand students.

I believe all of them have declining enrollment.

The last district that was kind of the holdout was Lyon County.

There's been so much growth out in Lion County.

Still very affordable housing as you get further east.

But Lyon County actually did have a slight downtick this year, but Clark and Washoe overall certainly have nigh, us, Elko.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Are there any other trustee questions for Superintendent Fueling?

All right, thank you so much.

We'll go ahead and move on to agenda item number four.

This is board reports, board member comments for information only.

We'll start with NASBY update.

Trusty Varner, do you have NASBY update?

Yeah, just a small one.

Um, just a reminder the training that's going to be upcoming on September 5th.

That's on a Saturday.

It's going to be in Lovelock, Nevada.

Conference uh will cover governance training.

And it's going to be multi-level for newer people and people who've been on the board for a long period of time.

So it should uh have good training for everyone in every district.

Friday night prior.

There'll be a social and barbecue at the Marston House.

Apparently they have lots of antiques, and it's supposed to be a really cool place to visit.

And then newsletter should be coming out later this week or first part of next week.

And uh everybody's still working on the December conference getting that planned.

And that's all I have.

Great, thank you.

Do we have any school reports?

Oh, you do?

All right, let's go ahead and start.

All right, well, I had the pleasure of meeting with um Principal Hoppy at Eagle Valley Middle School yesterday.

Um, had a nice little chat, kind of a little introductory meeting.

I walked there from my house, so it was really awesome.

Um she said she just wanted to make sure that she um lets all of her parents and uh families know that um she appreciates all of the support they've had.

Um they had a lot of um participation in the end of the year promotion recognition, um, both the awards assembly and the promotion parade as she begins planning for future promotion events.

She'd love to hear any feedback we have to improve them.

A survey has actually been posted in Parent Square to collect thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations from this year's events to improve them for next year.

Um so she looks forward to getting a lot of um good feedback from her community.

She wants to make sure everybody saves the date for this back to school boot camp on August.

I can't believe you're saying back to school already, on August 13th.

Um, and she'll be sharing more information with her families throughout the summer.

And then she really wanted to thank her Eagle Valley staff for a great year.

And then this morning, I had the pleasure of going to Al Seeliger uh elementary school, met with their leadership team, took a nice little tour around the uh campus.

Um she said they've just like every school, been very, very busy, had a very successful field day that was organized by their PE teacher, Mr.

Race, uh, as well as the PTO.

Uh the event featured a community barbecue and a special opportunity for the students to see mules.

Um so one of their their community partners brought their mules to campus so the kids could could see them and play with them.

Um for the ACES baseball trip, their magnificent mates, as they call them.

Um, so those students who had really good attendance uh and behavior reports.

They took 123 of their students to go see the ACUs game in Reno.

I can't even imagine what it's like to corral 123 middle school kids, but um I'm impressed.

Uh, and then they had uh a lot of great participation from their pre-K their kinder and their fifth grade promotion, well attended by families, and um overall just had a great time celebrating all the successes of their students.

So, that's it.

Great, thank you.

From the Silver Campus, um Dr.

Molden uh would love to share that the Silver Campus was able to acknowledge the community partner this year.

They celebrated Stacy Rich, the operations director for the Nevada Builders Alliance.

Through Stacey's partnership.

She was able to secure a representatives from local trades and community services, such as a um Happy Outlet, Roper HVAC, Coastal Air, and the Nevada Department of Public Safety.

I also introduced her to Hope Sullivan, the director of community and economic division, and she is grateful that she was able to make the connection.

The students have had an opportunity of a lifetime to learn about different careers and opportunities within our community thanks to the partnership, the partnerships mentioned above.

She is very proud for all the support that they received from the community and can wait to get back.

I also wanted to thank Mrs.

Stokes for inviting me to interview the Jack students.

I can honestly tell you, we have some stellar students in that campus.

I met with a student who is very ambitious.

She wants to work on her real estate license and start selling homes, and then another student is ready to apply for jump starts.

So really really excited.

Another student wants to be a pilot.

So very, very impressive kids.

So I had a wonderful time speaking with them.

And like a superintendent mentioned, the graduation from Carson High was just incredible.

Parents that I spoke with were very, very happy and very pleased that they were able to actually see their students, you know, across the stage, and they're they're very appreciative for for the outstanding performance.

And I personally had not seen so many people gather here in Carson City with the exception of Nevada Day Parade.

So it was just magnificent.

And also the promotion events at Eagle Valley Middle School and Crossland Middle School, kudos to the principals and their staff.

They did a magnificent job.

So thank you.

All right, this is Dr.

Ward's final send-off.

She says, Fremont, wow, what an end to a fabulous fabulous year.

Our students, after the direction of our music teacher, Ashley Cousins, saying saying Bruno Mars, you can count on me and for good from Wicked in a surprise assembly in honor of my retirement.

It was spectacular, so very special.

I again want to thank our staff and students along with their families for not only a fabulous fabulous year, but a very special nine years at Fremont.

Fremont really is a special place.

And she sent out a really kind message on Parent Square as well and reminiscing on some of her favorite highlights and things.

And I just want to take a minute to publicly thank her for all she's done for my kids for Fremont and her encouragement and support in my role here on the board.

So thank you, Dr.

Ward, and best of luck.

No.

Not too much.

I have Carson Highs My School, and we were all a part of their biggest news in the last couple weeks.

That graduation on Friday evening, as it's been mentioned, very, very well attended, impressively well attended.

Some other highlights, Superintendent Feeling already mentioned the graduation walk where they got to go back to their elementary schools and parade through the halls.

At the end of that grad walk was a parade down Carson Street.

I got there about 20 minutes before the buses were supposed to be passing through, and it was really neat to see the diversity and people that came out to support that part of their celebration.

There was, I don't know if it was a homeschool group or maybe like a private kindergarten or something, but there was a collection of probably 20 young kids with their teachers that were going nuts about the buses, and they were grandparents and people came out of the legislature in their suits and ties just to be out there for it.

So that was really neat.

And when the buses finally did come, the amount of kids that were squeezed into each window so that they could have their faces out and see everybody and wave.

I was texting one of my friends.

I was like, I almost got emotional the the big dopey grands on those faces, like just from these kids that would normally look way too tough to get excited about something like that, but they were just all in and therefore.

And so I was really appreciative that the community showed up for that.

So thank you to anybody here or watching that that came out and made that a priority.

And thank you to Kendra Tuttle for uh organizing that.

I'm also on the committee for grad night.

So after Friday night, uh we bust about 100 kids up to Reno.

We went to Fly High where we partied way too long and got into bed about four o'clock the next morning.

Um but the kids had so much fun.

Um so kudos to the safe grad committee for um all the hard work on that, and for all our community sponsors who make that a free event that so many kids can attend.

Um I think we definitely found a winner in fly high.

Um usually kids, they kind of start trickling out a little bit early.

I mean, it helped that they couldn't leave on their own that we had to bust them on this one, but we had early buses that could leave, but um the majority of the kids stayed all the way to the very end, so that was really great.

And the only other note I have I didn't reach out to the school because I didn't want to bug them.

I kind of thought they were a little busy.

So these are just notes that I've picked up.

Um Carson Fire got to do a touch a truck event um with the um the special needs group.

I can never remember the right name for them.

Advanced adult.

What is it?

ASP alternate standards program.

Thank you.

Yes, the ASP kids um got to come out, and Carson Fire brought fire engines and they got to come in and an ambulance and see the engines and touch the trucks and get in the driver's seats and um so thank you, Carson Fire for um making that happen too.

We really appreciate the community that embraces our school.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

I don't have any uh from the schools because I didn't want to bug them either, but I was able to attend the French fifth grade graduation or promotion ceremony, and I gotta tell you it was very well done.

A lot, a lot of parents showed up and other family members.

I was just surprised at the how many people actually attended that event.

And the same with the Carson Middle School promotion ceremony.

Was a little bit warm in the gym, but there was a lot of people in there, very well attended, and I think uh they did a great job in their promotion ceremony also, and that's all I have.

Well, my excuse isn't because I didn't want to bug anybody.

My excuse is I totally forgot.

So I do not have a school report on that, so so sorry, Empire Elementary School, but Tuesday flu kind of came right in like a ton of bricks, and here we are.

So no, I do not have a school report either.

So sorry, so if I go to um just really want to thank the staff overall for a great year, it's um it it's so much work, but it's so much good work and just really uh appreciate everything that is has happened this year and wish everyone a very uh restful summer as they as they get away from the schools.

Yes, I second that.

Um yes, thank you to everyone for a successful year.

All right, we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item number five association reports.

Do we for discussion only?

Seeing none, we'll move on to agenda item number six.

This is public comment, and we do have um before we get there.

Do we have any public comment online?

Email.

Yes, President.

Well, thank you.

I had one um emailed public comment came in from Catherine Harding.

Uh that information was forwarded to the board and will be included in the permanent record.

All right, great, thank you.

All right, now it will be time for public comment.

And when you come up, if you could please make sure that you see the green light on the um microphone.

Yep, and then you will be given three minutes, and there's your clock.

Thank you so much.

Please state your name for the record.

My name is Mary Ann Giddens.

I am here tonight regarding proposed changes to the recess policy.

I am in support of leaving the recess policy as is with hard lines protecting the verbiage, which guarantees three 15-minute recesses per day.

I am completely against any policy change, which will reduce the amount of daily recess.

When the proposed revision to the policy was originally made on March 24th, it was to reduce recess time from 45 minutes to 30 minutes.

The recess proposal, which will be presented here later tonight, is attempting to eliminate the verbiage at least three 15-minute recesses per day, morning, during lunch, and afternoon.

The policy proposal only states that students will be given the opportunity for daily recess, but does not call out how many minutes.

Why would this verbiage be removed?

Additionally, since the initial reading, a recess regulation has now been created and will also be presented tonight.

This proposed regulation calls out 45 minutes of daily recess.

However, it is unclear how those 45 minutes will be implemented, at the discretion of whom, and are these guaranteed minutes in each school day.

Why do the proposed policy and regulation not share the same verbiage?

If they are being updated and revised, isn't the intention to ensure that they are in complete alignment?

Based upon the research I've done, it indicates that if CCSD policy and regulation do not align, then the policy would be implemented because the regulation is subordinate to the policy.

And in this case, that would mean that the kids are only guaranteed daily recess, but no actual definition of what that means and how many minutes.

Even if I'm mistaken in my statement, the policy and the regulation should be in alignment, and that is the whole purpose behind making the change to the regulation and the policy as demonstrated in the presentation on March 24th.

I feel that these policies and regulations are being carefully worded to make it appear as though all will remain the same, but I cannot help out the very but call out the very clear omission of the actual number of recess minutes in the proposed policy.

Why?

And by clear omission, I mean the verbiage has strike through lines.

The proposed regulation also states that recess shall not be withheld for academic performance, punitive reasons, or as a whole class disciplinary consequence.

And I can personally provide you with examples to tell you that this is not true and is not happening.

Studies have repeatedly shown the value of recess.

Why is this even up for discussion?

Why are we continuously making decisions that negatively impact the ones who have the least power?

The kids.

We spend so much time tallying attendance and test scores.

And while academics do matter, if our goal is well-rounded youth, so do the other things.

We are the adults in the room, and I'm asking you to stand up and take care of the kids.

It feels like such a small request, and I'm disheartened that this topic even requires such a fight.

Please protect and guarantee the recess minutes.

It's continually noted that there's a decline in enrollment, and the decisions that are pure small, like recess, matter to people making those decisions on whether to keep their kids in the district.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, but please respect the three minutes.

Any additional public comment?

All right, seeing none, we'll move on to agenda item number seven.

This is discussion and presentation on the secondary school school Spanish AP, Spanish psychology, and AP psychology curriculum materials to be adopted for the 2026-2027 school year, is budgeted not to exceed 150,000 for discussion only.

This is brought to us by Mr.

Brandon Bringhurst, Linda Fields, and Rhonda Wallace.

Thank you for joining us.

Good evening, Board of Trustees and Superintendent Fueling.

It's good to be here.

My name is Brandon Bringer's chief academic Officer.

We're discussing the adoption of new textbook materials for our Spanish programs, grades 6 through 12, as well as our psychology program at the high school.

It's been a process working through this adoption together with the teachers and the coordinators.

So I have with me this evening, Rhonda Wallace and Linda Fields, two of our curriculum coordinators that we'll share with you a little bit more about the process and the adoption.

Thank you.

I always mess that thing up too.

Good evening.

I'm Rhonda Wallace.

I am the coordinator for computer science, actually, all the electives, world languages, and um, oh my gosh, you guys, I hate talking in front of you.

Anyway, I was in charge of the Spanish.

And so, first of all, um, the reason that we were looking at adoption is because the current curriculum resources that we have are expiring this month.

And also, in addition, the AP Spanish exam is changing.

Um, there's some significant changes coming up.

So that was the reason that we were looking at adopting things for the Spanish exam, which was the major driving force behind it.

I wanted to show you guys what the old requirements were and what these new ones are going to be coming up.

So as you can see, the multiple choice questions, there will be fewer of them, but they will be expected to interpret audio, text, and images through multiple choice questions.

The free response, I feel like is the biggest because in the past they only had to write an email, write um a presentational persuasive essay, and then answer five prompts.

But now they're going to have to actually create a presentation on a project.

They are going to have to present that in Spanish, they're gonna have to answer four questions in regards to that particular presentation, and they're gonna have to write an argumentative essay in Spanish.

So the free response portion of it is significantly more difficult.

So we felt it was important to also have those supporting levels of Spanish actually work up to that higher um rigor that's going to be expected.

So as the adoption team got together, we obviously followed the NDE requirements for adopting new materials, and NDE requires you to have look at all the resources that they have already pre-approved.

So, in other words, they go ahead and say, okay, this particular company has this product, this product, and this product that meets all the standards that we require here in Nevada.

So from that pre-approved list, you can see the particular companies that had those skills.

Send gauge, Vista Higher Learning, which most people call VHL, Wayside, Savas, and Carnegie slash EMC.

Carnegie is the only one that we never got a response from, so we did not have the opportunity to review their materials.

We reached out, um, Paige Camaro reached out, I reached out, Paige reached out a second time, I got online for them and filled out a little find our rep thing on their website.

We never heard back.

So obviously we did not.

I have linked in this um thing, panel reviews.

I didn't know if you guys wanted to see them, so I linked them there just in case.

They're kind of extensive.

It's our um rubric that everybody filled out as they were reviewing each of the products.

So I put them there in case you guys want to look at it later.

Um, but I know we don't have very much time here, so but it's there for you to look at.

We ended up choosing um for Spanish 1A 1B, which is middle school, uh, Spanish one, Spanish two, and honors three, the Encontros from VHL.

We decided to stay with the Galleria, but the 2025 version for our heritage one and two.

Um, the total cost for those will be uh one, I don't want to say that loud large number out loud, but it's 120,000, 40 forty dollars and sixty four cents.

For the AP, however, Wayside was the only company that was revamping their AP textbooks to align with um the new AP exam.

So I don't have an example of that book for you.

I only have an online version that um we can send out to you guys if you would like to look at it because it's actually being printed right now but we have an advanced online version if you guys would like to see it I thought I had linked it here as well but I don't see the little blue stuff so I must have forgotten to do that.

And then the AP will be 8,04921 okay the textbook committee I what I did is I just sort of summarized the reasons why the committee decided to go with VHL and Wayside.

So they felt like VHL had the best resources which include activities, visuals, audios the way that they had lined up the sequence of the skills so that they build on each other so that vertical alignment was a lot better.

And the rigor was higher which obviously with that those new rigorous expectations for the AP exam we really need that for building up to that.

They the vocab and the grammar were actually integrated not like separate so it wasn't like the teacher had to teach grammar and then they teach vocab and then they teach the writing and the reading it's all integrated together so that was really nice.

They also loved that the choices and their options for different units um which they call challenges in the VHL they were they were broken down into smaller chunks so that they could be presented to the students in smaller chunks.

So again that sequence of skill is working best because of the with the vertical alignment up to AP because they can bring it down a smaller get the kids right get the knowledge to them and then build on it with the next small chunk and then build on it with the next small chunk rather than this big huge giant thing right and then the kids kind of get lost sometimes halfway through it.

So they really enjoyed that sorry and there was a lot more opportunities for the argumentative writing which obviously as I already said is one of those new requirements for the AP exam and there's lots of options for projects for students to do in Spanish in the VHL which again is a great thing to that vertical alignment to the AP exam.

Obviously I think the wayside is a I already said she chose it because it was the only one that was coming out with an updated to go along with the AP exam.

So that was her reasoning behind that.

And that was really fast because I talk really fast.

Is there any questions?

Yeah I do.

Okay but I think this is more for um Mr.

Bringhurst okay where it says not to exceed 15000 is that for all three that is yes the A the psychology as well as the Spanish and AP psychology as well and AP psychology as well.

So all three curriculums are not going to exceed 1500 that's correct.

So what is included in that 150 textbooks only digital licensing teaching materials.

So all of that so the uh textbooks the teacher materials um we were able especially on the Spanish side to really take a close look at what the teachers have and what the teachers want to use from that um so our original quote was significantly higher than that our original quote was over 2000 for the Spanish alone but uh working together with the with Rhonda and the world language chair at Carson High we were able to um streamline exactly what they will truly need for those classes and and our current quote includes all of those items.

And for how many years our adoption I think we did a six year for uh the Spanish so sorry mine covered all three but go ahead and we'll start yeah go ahead I just have a question um I notice on the AP psych and I know you guys haven't done the presentation yet it looks like it's a class class set for the most part, right?

And then they'll have access to online.

But the cost for the Spanish, like how many students are currently enrolled in those Spanish classes?

Is this like a take-home textbook for each of them or a digital copy for each of them you know they will all oh sorry, they will all have digital access.

Um, but it's also workbooks for Spanish for the writing.

And there's it's a class set for textbooks.

So it's really a lot of it is like the consumables that are gonna go with it that you'll have to report.

Yes, cost will be that.

Okay, yeah.

So that means then on that note, then so it's not to exceed 150,000 this year, but if they're consumable, then is it going to be an ongoing cost year after year for six years?

No, it's the consumables that they'll they will get and continue to be able to like I don't know how to explain it.

They will get them.

Go ahead.

The subscription includes the consumables for the duration of the six years.

Yeah, so it's not it's not an ongoing cost each year.

It's just this initial purchase, and then we will get those consumables each year after that.

Great, thank you.

Uh-huh.

Any additional questions?

Go ahead.

Is there a cap on those consumables like uh a certain limit of students that if we meet it, we risk it?

Yeah, we we certainly could uh if the um enrollment in the Spanish classes goes up significantly uh within our six-year time frame, there may be a scenario where we need to then purchase additional textbooks that we or workbooks um beyond what we have.

But given the historical information that we have, and and the department chair there at the high school is very good and has a great um sense of where we've been at historically.

So we're confident with the numbers that we have, although if that changes, we can certainly uh can go back to the vendor and get additional workbooks as needed because our commitment is obviously to make sure that the students have those resources that they need in order to be successful, and that's a big part of the reason for this adoption, like Rhonda explained that uh with a higher with changes in what they're expected to do at the end.

We wanted to make sure that we're aligning not just that AP level, but to build up to that, we need to make sure we're aligned starting in seventh grade with that build-up.

Okay, that was I was gonna ask too um initially you had said at the high school level, and then you just mentioned seventh grade.

So on this sheet um that I was looking through, it mentions eight different Spanish classes, one A, one B, uh Heritage, one, two, AP, three honors, so many.

Are those all at the high school level, or does that include the middle school?

So what we're looking at is maybe span eight or seven grades.

Yeah, so Spanish one A and one B are offered at the middle school.

Um so that's students start that in seventh grade, and then by taking one A and one B at the middle school, then they're prepared to move into Spanish two when they get to the high school.

And the world language department has really done a great job of vertically aligning that all the way from seventh grade at both of the middle schools to be aligned with what they're doing at the high school all the way up to uh the AP level.

Go ahead.

The psychology workbooks and everything, that's just high school, is that correct?

Psychology is only high school, yes.

And then I'm just curious the hundred and fifty thousand dollars is budgeted.

Was that this year's budget or the upcoming budget?

So the um because the purchase of these books will include purchase of physical books, we need to have those books um received before the end of the fiscal year.

We won't have time to get them received before the end of the fiscal year, so they will be purchased out of neck next year's budget, and it's part of the education services budget um that we'll be using to make that purchase.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Um, do you uh so what I'm understanding is you are not anticipating any ongoing annual costs in the next, correct?

Correct, not an ongoing annual cost.

Um of the challenges currently with the way textbooks are structured because a lot of our textbooks are not only print but also digital, is those digital licenses expire, and then you you have to renew, right?

If if everything is just print, you can keep the print for as long as you want.

Um, but the digital licenses expire.

These won't expire for six years, so we'll have that for six years, but we have each year um we have a series of different subject areas and grade levels whose texts are expiring.

Um, so we attack those one year at a time, depending on what we have expiring, and if there have been any changes that have been made in the expectations for curriculum.

Great, thank you for answering all those.

Yeah.

We'll go ahead and go on to the next one.

And then this is the interest.

Good evening.

My name is Linda Fields, and I support the K-12 Social Studies curriculum here for Carson City School District.

And I'm here to present on the textbook adoption for AP psychology and regular psychology courses.

So like Spanish, the last adoption was in 2019.

And at that time, only one purchase of classroom texts, AP text.

And it was the Meyer Psychology for the AP course third edition.

And all of the sections, including the regular psychology sections, used the same textbook.

The original textbook adoption was at 6200 approximately, or $6,223.

The current number of uh course sections have increased.

Um prior to 2019, there was only one section of AP.

Now they have two sections of AP with four full courses of regular psychology.

So the adoption that we were looking at for was twofold.

One, we'll get into is about how the AP psychology has changed and how we need to meet those instructional needs.

But it was also really about those students and those four sections of psychology and meeting their instructional needs in terms of providing them a better resource instructional material for them to access the learning.

So again, um the AP psychology course examination and instructional framework, it changed back in 2024, 2025.

And so uh the it went from nine units to five units.

Some of the uh content curriculum is similar, it's been updated, but now there's a separate separate mental health unit that's been added.

So being able to navigate with the current text that be able to follows the year-long curriculum for AP psychology will be a huge lift.

Um, likewise, too, some of the content knowledge is out of date, especially with regards to mental health.

Uh, there's some added information on the content themes such as stress and and some of those areas of social psychology.

Um, and then too, really that that that two-pronged was really that the students that's enrolled in the psychology course, um, Carson High is um really been wonderful in recruiting more students, more diverse learners, and so in an effort to meet those instructional needs of those diverse learners, we went to look for a text that uh wasn't necessarily written at a high college level, but the one that was just more accessible accessible versus visual organization readability and sentence structure.

Um there are no Nevada academic content standards for the area of psychology.

So for that reason, the process through NDE and their new index, they have an NBAX tool now for a review.

That part was waived, and so we just continue to follow the Carson City School District testbook textbook adoption process.

So we convened a committee, we re uh we reviewed five textbooks with the Bedford Williams and the BFW Spedford Friedman and Williams, and then Nat GeoSengage.

Both of the AP texts are both on the AP College Board recommended texts as well as the NDE list, but from prior editions.

However, NDE does not have any recommended text for regular psychology.

So for that reason, we sort of took it along the lines of a new textbook adoption.

And then two, though our rubber work included uh we looked really very closely at the content validity of the five units, and then two readability, diversity, organization, ethics, and additional instructional resources.

And so based on those selections, based on the two texts that you see before you, and I encourage you to really look at the regular psychology text.

Um the reason being is it's actually a really like if you're a textbook nerd, I know some of you are, it's an incredible textbook, you guys like like, and I'm telling you, it's just like compared to the AP.

If you spend time looking at the two psychology texts, they're just it's it's just it's amazing.

It's straightforward the way it's written is just amazing.

So the two that we did adopt was the Meyer Psychology for the AP course, fourth edition.

Again, we previously had the third edition.

What's nice about this is this is updated exactly for the uh the new current AP assessment.

Um and again, the the rubric rating was 35 out of 36.

Uh, like the contability was there.

The other piece is the scientific practices that are embedded throughout the text.

It does a really good job of modeling how those science practices apply to the content.

And then um the second was also a BFW at 2025 thinking about psychology, and this one is written expressly for high school students, and so it wasn't initially on our radar, but when if you take a look at it, it's written much more straightforward.

Um, the infographics are amazing.

Um, the statistics, the introduction to the statistics part is just it's so readable and understandable for students.

So they can make some really good correlations of what they're learning in statistics and their algebra classes, and it's just a really like I encourage you guys to take it home.

You know, no one will be using it until August.

So, um, but yeah, so those are the two courses that the the textbooks that we chose.

So we really in the interest of fiscal uh you know what could we do with what the little we could is that we are doing the same thing with the 40 hardcover textbooks at approximately 6,700, and then the teachers' edition.

We also purchased, or we were gonna purchase, but we got for free was the test bank for Meyer's psychology for the AP course.

You'll notice in the AP course that we did not purchase any online license licenses, and that's because the bulk of the work that the students do, those resources directly come from College Board.

So it's mostly done very strictly along the resources that what college board offers.

However, if you look at the thinking about psychology, is that we do order the 40 textbooks, which is 30 plus 10, so there's that extra 10 in case books get lost, but we do uh we we would like to purchase the 20 cheap online student licenses, and those for students who um who benefit from text to speech, whose students perhaps that could be on IEPs, um, students identified as English language learners or other students that are perhaps struggling readers that would be able to benefit from those online licenses, and again, that sub cost is 6,091.

So uh psychology and AP psychology is relatively inexpensive coming in at $13,146.32 cents.

Hey, Jesse.

All right, thank you.

And love the enthusiasm over textbooks.

Um, it's a good textbook, right?

No, the statistics, even if you just look at the statistics, it's amazing.

But yeah.

Uh no, we we surely appreciate the adoption committee reviewing it and bringing it to the board.

Um, so thank you all for your time and and um again your enthusiasm over textbooks.

Do we have any questions on that end?

Go ahead.

Uh hopefully a super easy one.

Um, on the sheet where it tells which textbooks you guys have selected.

Um, for AP, it's fourth edition published in 24.

For standard psychology, it's fifth edition, standard or published in 25.

Are those the most current editions that they have?

That is correct.

And if you know, to go back if we were to look at the review of the SINGAGE curriculum, it was back at 2019, 2022, and so Sengage really just hasn't caught up.

Um, and so, and then two, what's nice about this is this additional separate mental health unit.

Um, and what's the what's beautiful about the regular psychology is they call it the five pillars of psychology versus units, right?

So the AP text is really designed for AP, and so it in that design that was the biggest issues between the not geosengage that and BFW is just what's used.

It's used in Washo, it's used in Douglas.

I would like to brag just a little bit that both the WASHO and Douglas are using the second edition BFW AP, and they don't have a regular psychology text, so I that could help a little bit more to like, you know, so yeah.

All right, do they update pretty often?

Like in our is this a six-year as well?

Yes, and the subscription for the online is six years.

So, yeah, and we got and I I get too, I would just like to honor the work that Paige Comrade does for the school district.

She gets a lot of free stuff for us.

So if you I was impressed at how much for such a small adoption, we were able to get both teachers' edition free.

We were able to get the AP test bank for free.

So I just at this time would like to take that time to honor her for all of her work that she does on behalf of the students in Carson City School District.

Thank you.

So, question I have that, because six years kind of seems like a long time, right?

So, how do you evaluate whether or not you know the materials or the new textbooks improve the outcomes?

And then if they don't, how long do you give it?

You know, how much time do you give it to where you look and say, okay, maybe this wasn't the best choice.

So going back to the AP cycle, right?

So we're not, so there's there's things that are outside of our influence.

For example, when college board updates AP exams.

Um, and so in this case, and sometimes AP exams, like we just looked at in Spanish, for example, right?

Where we know where the updates are coming, um, that currently, you know, the the practitioner, Mr.

How he's able to work with the existing textbook that he has, but it's literally falling apart.

So I mean, I know they're being used, so they're falling apart.

So that so it really we're sort of at the at the six years license.

What we will have is a guarantee that that, especially for the psychology students.

Because remember, the six year license is only for a regular psychology class, their their curriculum isn't dependent upon the whims of college board.

So I like I feel very comfortable with the six year same thing too.

Like as we move to renew the online licenses for like US history or world history, same thing that those standards we know aren't going to radically change.

Um, and then two, it's the more that we're utilizing our um instructional technology with you know magic school AI and no notebook LM that we're that interface between having that online license and student accessibility, we're really coming to more of a forehead.

So I think that I don't know what the cycles are for college board.

I don't have that information, but I mean they're not the last time, you know, third edition was 19, 2019.

So I'm assuming then 24 25, you're looking at a five, six year renewal.

If I could add a little bit more of the uh your question is more general, not just with AP psychology, but but uh textbook adoptions in general.

One of the reasons that we tend to go towards a five to six year adoption is the longer the longer contract we sign, the better rate that we get.

When we go year by year, it is significantly more expensive.

It depends on on the text and the publisher, but it but the year to year is significantly more expensive.

So it's a balance of going longer gets us a better rate, but then it also ties us into something for longer, and we do need to be agile enough to change if that adoption isn't getting us the results that we want.

As um Ms.

Fields explained, we when the outcome changes or the the exam that we're working towards changes, then that's something that would certainly precipitate us taking a hard look at it.

The other thing that we do to evaluate when it's time to adopt an entirely new curriculum, is really some input from our teachers.

So there's a variety of curriculums that we've talked with the teachers about this this year, um, and they in some cases, and she referenced some of the other social studies courses where the teachers are very happy with what they currently have, and so we're choosing to extend licenses as opposed to go through a full new adoption.

That's helpful because every time you adopt, there's a whole new learning curve for the teachers.

If what we have is working, we don't want to put that stress on the system.

Um it also really kind of depends on where that particular content area is.

For instance, our high school math, algebra one, algebra two, and geometry was technically due for adoption this year.

But they are super engaged right now in their PLC work and really identifying their essential standards.

They wanted to get that work done first so that they could use that to help them evaluate their next textbook.

So we're pushing that off a little bit because of where they're at.

So we've tried to be really intentional in working with each content area.

What is working for them and when are they ready to adopt?

Uh can we push things off a little bit, especially given some of our financial constraints that we have right now?

We don't want to just adopt things just because um, you know, it's been five years, so let's adopt something new.

If it's been five years, but what we have is still working well, then there's no need to adopt something new, or it's maybe been five years, but where we're at with our curriculum development, we need another year so that we can properly vet.

Then we're giving it that time to do so.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Do we have any additional comments questions?

All right.

Well, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Yes, all right.

All right, we'll go ahead and close agenda item number seven and move on to agenda item number eight.

This is for discussion on proposed changes to the CCSD policy two sixty recess.

Okay.

We'll wait here.

All right, sorry about that.

So agenda item number eight is discussion on proposed changes to Carson City School District policy.

260 recess policy.

This is for first reading for discussion only, brought to us by Christy Perkins.

But I do want to mention, due to the fact that it was brought up public comment, the fact that this was brought to us by trustee Roberts, who noticed within the current policy that recess should not be considered a child's personal, should be considered a child's personal time and should not be withheld for academic and punitive reasons, and it was being done so when she had noticed within her child's school, and this is why it is brought being brought forward for discussion for that reason.

Good evening, Christy Perkins, Director of MTSS Engagement and Student Wellness for the School District.

Tonight we will be looking at policy 260.

We would like to take some time to update this policy as it hasn't been updated in the last 10 years.

And some things have changed in schools in the last 10 years, and we wanted to make sure it was uh better aligned with our current practices and our MTSS framework.

Um we saw that the pol you see the policy there in front of you.

We're just making a few um suggested changes there.

It was getting a bit long in the policy, so we were we have separated that into a regulation, which will be our next agenda item.

So the policy there, the only real changes there is uh the board of trustees now referred to as the board.

Um and we've added recess is a foundational tier one part of development and is in alignment with the goals outlined in our district wellness policy, policy 245.

In addition, there are some strikeouts in the policy proposed that are um as I said aligned and addressed in the regulation that we'll discuss next.

And at the end there, um, the opportunity elementary students will be given the opportunity for daily recess during the regular school day.

Questions on the policy at this time?

Well, actually, we're gonna do both, okay.

Um, because we do, um, I think there was, you know, speaking with a um there was concern aboard with board members that the policy doesn't align with the regulations, and so we would like to be able to do them both together.

So we're gonna be for the public, we will be doing agenda item number eight and number nine together.

Okay.

So at this time, did you want to go ahead and go into the regulation and then we'll go on with the questions if you don't mind?

Thank you.

Absolutely.

The regulation um regulation number 260 is a first reading proposal for a new regular regulation to support the policy.

Um, as you see there, we have uh all elementary students shall have daily access to safe supervised and developmentally appropriate recess.

Our first is our district commitment to our students in the district.

We know that recess supports the whole child, physical, social, emotional, and behavioral development.

It reinforces positive behavior expectations, which is clearly aligned with our MTSS and PBIS frameworks that are adopted in our school district.

Recess includes unstructured play opportunities, and that is our commitment as a district.

It provides inclusive opportunities for all students to engage in play and social development, and provide safe environmental conditions and well-maintained playground equipments, and we understand the importance of recess daily in our schools and how important that is for development, and that is our district commitments to our community.

The district will also provide training for staff on MTSS and PBIS practices during recess.

We will have active supervision strategies in place.

So recess is safe, and it will be inclusive and structured play facilitation.

Recess, of course, will be supervised by trained staff who is actively promoting safe, inclusive and respectful play, actively monitoring and engaging with students, reinforcing positive behavior, intervening early and teaching appropriate social skills, ensuring that all students are included and supported.

Students with disabilities shall have equitable access to recess, accommodations and supports that are needed shall be provided, and recess environments shall be inclusive and accessible for all.

Here you'll see that all elementary students will receive 45 minutes of daily recess.

Recess shall be considered a protective universal tier one support.

And of course, just a quick note tier one is all students receive tier one.

That's all students.

It shall not be withheld for academic performance, punitive reasons, or as a whole class disciplinary consequence.

On the back side there, we we know there are times when behavioral concerns may arise within the school district that is requiring the student is need of additional tier two or tier three interventions or additional supports.

15 minutes or more of recess may be used to provide a research-based intervention strategy, which could be included but not limited to the following examples.

Reteaching the expectation, providing a restorative practice, or using a logical instruction based consequence.

For those students who then, which is a few, some students might need even additional supports beyond maybe a one-time event, a tier two targeted support, could be something like a structured play group or fix facilitated activities during the recess time, social skills, instructions and coaching during that time, a check-in-checkout system with a with a trusted adult connected to safe and respectful recess behavior, or even as the district, our commitment to increasing adult support or monitoring if needed for particular students.

Then there are tier three intensive supports.

This is very few students in our district who may need an individualized behavior or support plan, which is integrated into their recess time.

That could be alternative or modified recess environment if necessary as part of a very specific plan.

You might have direct adult facilitation or support.

We do have some students in our district who might need a one-on-one adult during that recess time to keep all students, including themselves safe.

And that would of course be in coordination with their IEP, their behavior plan, their parents, counseling support, social workers, those types of supports would be provided as needed and of course communicated to the family.

With updates to this proposed regulation, it would be in alignment with our Carson City School District Wellness Policy, which does indicate we provide 30 minutes of physical activity for students.

So this is an addition 45 minutes, keeping it as the policy was previously, our MTSS framework, and our positive behavior intervention and support plan, which is all part of our restorative discipline plan that is submitted to the state and approved annually by the school board.

Great, thank you.

Um I just wanted to comment though, the reason we could do both of these agenda items together is because they are both for discussion only.

They are not for action.

So we're gonna go ahead and start with questions, and since this was um trustee Roberts' request as an agenda item, we'll go ahead and start with you.

If you don't mind, yeah, that's fine, thank you.

Um yes, so as uh President Waltz mentioned, just to give a little context, um, getting lots of reports not only at my kids' school but schools across the district that this 45 minutes wasn't being honored.

Uh, a lot of whole group punishment was happening for uh one or two children's behaviors, and so I felt it was important to stand up for these kiddos and really have their recess protected.

So that is why this was brought forward, and I appreciate some of these changes that you made from our MERCH presentation that we didn't get to fully hear from you, but we had the information and we sent you some feedback.

So thank you.

Um, one thing that I did want to point out that I appreciate was adding that it shouldn't be taken for that whole class disciplinary consequence.

So thank you for adding that.

And then also just for clarification of um for the public, the policy and the regulation go together just because it's not necessarily the exact verbiage in each one.

These both stand, they must be followed together.

Thank you.

And so my questions, I'll start with the policy here.

At the the last paragraph, elementary students will be given an opportunity for daily recess during the regular school day.

Um I really like the wording before where it was that morning lunch and afternoon, just so that's more specified.

Um because if you've got that 11 o'clock lunch hour, that is a really long time to go from lunch to the end of the day without getting a break.

I just felt it's important to specify that that needs to be a you know regularly scheduled breaks throughout the day, morning, lunch, and afternoon.

And then moving on to the regulation.

Can I have a point of clarification on that?

Um, so you were referring to the policy just right now, correct?

Right now, yeah, I that was on the policy on that last paragraph.

And so you would like to keep it.

I would like to keep that wording of morning lunch and afternoon and not have it not change it to the daily.

Yes.

And then on the regulation, um, let's see.

I want to start.

I'll start on the second page.

That um when behavioral concerns arise, they're at the top, 15 or more minutes of recess, maybe used to provide a research-based intervention.

Um I don't love that.

Um, I think if something needs to happen that it should be used in the afternoon recess time, which would only be 15 minutes, not 15 minutes or more, if that makes sense.

I feel like it's giving a little too much for teachers to be able to take away from these kids because 15 minutes is one recess, and if it's 15 minutes or more, they could be losing, you know, some of their lunch now or some of their morning, and it's just that's too much.

Um I feel like it should be limited to that afternoon recess time, uh, and also what does that look like?

Is that them staying inside and missing out on their recess, or they're losing their autonomy of recess time where they are still going out, they're getting that fresh air, they're getting movement, but maybe they lose their playground privileges.

They need to play on the black top or the field, or they're losing their you don't get to play soccer today because for whatever reason, yeah.

So that can be situational based on the student and what is happening in the classroom.

I will give an example.

A student, let's say, has having a rough morning, um, being aggressive within the classroom, and in eight minutes, recess is starting.

Does that student need a break?

Absolutely.

It would it be safe at that moment to say, okay, go ahead and go out and play and have a you know, free time when you've maybe just been physically aggressive towards your peers.

No, that would not be safe for that child or the other children in that classroom.

So I hear what you're saying about maybe saving that to the afternoon, but that doesn't always work with alignment of behavior.

Um we might have a student that 8 35 has is having a rough go, and we don't want to wait um developmentally until 2 30 to provide that intervention.

It would not be responsive to maybe what is going on in that classroom.

So I think there is some flexibility there, the way it is worded that it is situational.

Now there are students who maybe are having a rough morning, and we know that what is helpful for that child is to go outside and take a walk with a peer or hang out on the blacktop, but maybe as you suggested, you know, today you're not playing soccer because you were not using the equipment safely, and you're kicking the soccer ball at someone.

Um so today you're gonna lose your soccer privilege, but you're still gonna go outside.

So there is some flexibility in that option.

If it becomes an ongoing behavior where this is a daily event with a child really struggling with safe um choices, that's where we then might move to that tier two level where it is a more structured recess.

It might have more adult support provided.

We still then would provide that daily recess, but we might say, okay, we need the social worker out here during the midday recess because that is when this student is struggling.

That's a really unstructured time in the cafeteria, and maybe that's too much for some children.

So some flexibility, 15 minutes, the or more we added for those kind of really extreme scenarios.

We do have times when students become highly dysregulated, and it does not seem reasonable to just say go out and play.

There are situational, of course, the administration in that severe of a case, the administrator would be in contact with the family.

If we have a situation where a student is flipping desks and destroying a classroom and we're having to evacuate a classroom, um, the administrator would be in contact with the family or the IEP team and the plan, and we would be looking at that situationally.

We wanted to add that or more because there are days where we might say today is not a day you're going to be going to an unstructured recess with communication with the family with part of a plan.

That's very rare.

That is not the exception the norm by any means, but there are times when that is happening in our schools, as all of us are aware, we've seen an increase sometimes in mental health concerns, behavioral concerns since this policy was last written in 2016.

We do have some different scenarios going on in our schools.

Okay, so then just for clarification, it's not to take away their recess time, it's just to have it more structured.

Yes, and the way the previous policy was written was very restrictive to our administrative staff that they could never remove recess, which there are behavioral times that it is unsafe for all children to send a student to recess.

That is not what we want to do.

We know the importance of recess daily recess that break, that fresh air, that movement.

We we value that, and that needs to happen every day.

But there are scenarios where administrators were quite frustrated that the student was having a very difficult day right before recess time and then go out, went out to play, which also can look as a reward to those students who've been impacted by maybe aggressive or physical behavior.

Well, why do they get to come out here and play when they just you know punched me or whatever the scenario may be?

Um, so we wanted to update that policy so situationally the principal could be in communication with the family and say, rough morning, instead of going out right now for recess, we're gonna go play basketball together and we're gonna try to calm down and whatever the plan is for that individual student, so it's more individualized.

Okay.

Um I just wanted to be clear on that because in the first paragraph, um, talking about recess contributes to physical health, social emotional development, behavioral regulation.

So if we're talking about recess is going to help behaviors, I just want to make sure that in their behavior moment you're still giving them that opportunity for the movement and for the break and everything.

So that wanted to make sure those two things aligned.

Um, so then at the bottom paragraph, since I had said I wanted to change that on the policy to morning lunch and afternoon recess.

I think maybe um switching that bottom paragraph on the regulation as well.

All elementary students will receive three recesses daily, totaling 45 minutes, or three races as morning, lunch, and afternoon.

I don't know how you want to word that, but point of care clarification.

Yes, okay.

So elementary, you on the policy you would like for it to read.

Elementary students will be given the opportunity of three daily recesses or or morning, lunch, and afternoon recesses.

Equate to 45 minutes.

That equates to 45 minutes, yeah.

Because on here it just says and regulation to align with each other.

Then is that correct?

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Um and then the other thing that I had sent in my email to you was just wondering about bumping that up to 20 minute recesses for the kids rather than 15.

And I looked at that because the middle and high schools are shorter days than the elementary school.

And the elementary schools are our youngest learners, middle and high school, they have a break every hour or so as they change classes, then they have their lunch hour.

They have more break time.

They have about an hour of break time at those schools, and our youngest learners are short of that, and they're in school longer.

Their day is very rigorous.

You can ask the teachers, this new curriculum is great, but it is intense and they're feeling it.

Um even as they're, you know, going through the hallways to go to their specials and whatnot, go to lunch, it's it's straight lines, arms are folded or to your side, zip lips, like there's not a lot of time for recess is their movement.

Um so I just wanted to ask you your thoughts on going up to a three 20-minute recesses a day.

Um, so the thought I have on that is um in March.

I know that was a long night, and maybe the presentation was many months ago, many things have happened since then.

Um I just will remind the board that we are the only district that still has mandatory PE for our elementary students as part of our schedule.

All elementary students, we have a certified full-time PE teacher at the school, and they still one of their specials is PE, which is very rare in the state of Nevada for elementary.

I know that does not supplement recess, that is a different time, but weekly they are also engaging in an additional 30 minutes of a structured activity with a full-time teacher doing movement, learning games, cooperative skills, and getting that movement for specials.

So, extending this recess to even more than the 45 minutes.

If we did look at that option, our day is already longer than other surrounding districts.

That would add additional minutes to our day when we try to fit in all the curriculum pieces that are required of us as the state requires.

Um I think it would be very difficult to schedule with our nutrition policy how many minutes we have to provide for lunch, how much time we have to provide for movement after lunch, it's very specific and outlined by the state, and we have the luxury of still having those full-time PE teachers.

I think it would be very hard to schedule for our for our administrative staff.

I don't know that they could fit all those things in in one day with all the moving parts and the staffing.

Um I just don't know that it would be possible at this time without extending the day even further than it is, which I know is not something we have an appetite for at this time.

Thank you for addressing that.

And then last um highlight, I did like the updated to um just saying the 45 minutes of recess rather than specifying it needs to be 15, 15, 15, because I do know some of the schools have made their lunch recess a little longer and doing 20 and doing a shorter afternoon with the 10 minutes.

So I appreciate that change.

So they have a little bit more autonomy on giving those kids that extra time at lunch.

Our principals appreciated that change as well, the autonomy because they would like morning, you also have to serve breakfast.

You also have kids being dropped off at different times, and if they're getting there early, they do have some movement time built in there.

If you're riding the bus, you might your bus is dropped, you know.

So they liked um having the flexibility of keeping the 45, but it's they could extend the lunchtime recess.

They might have a a quick recess at the end of the day.

Um, but on a day the children went to PE, they might say, okay, now your lunch recess is really long because you're gonna go to PE right after lunch or something.

So they really enjoyed that flexibility of 15 15 15.

It seemed to work as a better option um to make sure every child is getting daily 45 minutes in some somewhere in the day.

Great, thank you.

That's all I have.

So just um my just point on there was just specifying that it should be three morning, lunch, and afternoon.

On that note, though, I want to specify too that it doesn't that it doesn't start until the start of school.

So when that morning, you know, when buses drop off, that does not count as a recess.

Correct, it does not count into our 45 minutes.

However, many students and families take advantage of that morning time and opportunity that the playgrounds are opened at some of our schools, most of our schools, and there yes, so it is not part of our 45 minutes, but there is that time too.

Okay, thank you.

Alright, additional questions.

We'll start here with Trusty Varner.

Do you have any?

Yes, thank you for your work on this.

If you could explain to the public why you made the policy shorter, more concise.

But maybe just for the public.

So when they look at this and that you've taken a lot of things out and put into the regulation, maybe your thoughts or reasoning behind that.

Yes, and so working with Ms.

Roberts and you know the input of the community that we received, we thought some things needed to be addressed more clearly, such as not withholding recess, not using it as a universal um uh consequence or prevention, and it was getting very long in a policy, and we you know, we looked at our other practices we have in the district, and our policies are pretty concise and short, and then our regulation can really expand on some of those topics.

We thought that was a better fit for this as there was some new things we wanted to add, particularly around behavior, MTSS, not using it as a whole school consequence, and it once we added that all into the policy, it was just too much verbiage and too long.

So we thought this would help um dividing it out to be more clear in our regulation.

Yeah, that is the trend, and thank you for doing that.

Um, also just so it's really clear to the public, we're not taking away any recess from any child.

Correct.

We are not taking away any recess.

We understand the importance of recess in elementary school, K pre-K5.

Um, still is at 45 minutes a day, but as I discussed, there are situations when students may need more support so that all students are safe during that recess time.

We might need more adults.

We we strongly believe students need access to recess throughout their day and scheduled appropriately so it breaks up the curriculum.

We know there's a lot of research that shows how important it is.

So we are not removing recess for any student, we are keeping it at 45 minutes a day, just giving those principals and teachers working with their principals and the parents to for those very specific situations where it may need to look different for some students because not all students always have the exact same school day, right?

They might have a different need in their day, and also one of the reasons for a shorter policy statement is that it's easier to change a regulation if something changes that way you don't have to go back and change the policy all the time.

So then I just have a couple other quick things.

Uh Rebecca, you had a lot of good questions, thank you.

Yeah, you uh touched upon a lot of stuff that's uh anyway, thank you.

Uh I would suggest that in the recess regulation, under where you have the first set of bullet points, uh the second bullet point down is reinforces positive behavior expectation expectations aligned with MTSS and PBIS.

I would suggest that uh you spell that multi-tier system of support, and you have uh PBS kind of spelled out later on the policy, but I'd do that right at the first.

Okay, I can do that.

And just for the for the record, PBIS is positive behavior intervention and supports, right?

Um I'm also in favor of not making uh policy so restrictive that it takes away some of the um behaviors, not behaviors, but uh actions that teachers can take to control behaviors in the classroom.

So I'm glad there's some flexibility in that.

I also uh witnessed this firsthand about how some child was being his recess was not taken away, but he was being accompanied by an adult, and they were walking the track, he was outside getting exercise, but during that period of time, there was discussions ongoing about his behavior and uh other ways to improve.

So I thought that was a good way to handle things too.

He was outside getting the exercise, fresh air, but yet uh the teacher was able to uh communicate her expectations.

So I think that's really about all I have.

Thank you.

Jesse Peterson.

I'm still kind of a swirling pool of thought right now, but um, touching on what Trusty Barner said.

Um, for example, a staff member walking, someone who needs to still move, but maybe needs to be excluded from play.

Who is expected to be the staff member?

Like, do we have specific people like dog eared for those responsibilities?

We do.

At times we have our noon duties, we have our interventionist, we have instructional coaches, we have our social workers, thankfully, um, that will be at our elementary sites.

It might be the vice principal, it might be the principal, it might be a c a partner teacher, um, it might be an older peer.

It might be, hey, today you're gonna go to fourth grade recess because we need you to buddy up with this guy and you get along great with this kid.

Um, we schools are very creative in how they make this work without their day.

It might be the specials teacher, the PE teacher.

Um, and it's really it can't be individualized, but we do have those things in place.

Recess is also pretty important for that classroom teacher, right?

Even though sometimes they are on duty with their students, sometimes that's part of their quick reset break, getting ready for the next section.

So there aren't teachers who really they don't love smoke days and snow days when you're inside all day is tough for our teaching staff as well and our paras.

We have a lot of support to support um that safe, you know, restructure or reteaching if needed.

Okay.

Um is there ever a situation where you envision a tier two or tier three intervention looking like a child sitting on a chair in the office just being excluded and being still?

Yes.

Not as a long-term tier two intervention as an immediate response to a behavior, yes, but that would not be part of a tier two plan.

We would never say, okay, the intervention we're gonna do for the next six weeks is you're gonna sit in this chair every day at recess.

Absolutely not.

On a situational, like the example I gave earlier, you had a really rough morning, you were physically aggressive, you have not earned this first recess this morning, and instead you're going to be in here with me in the office for today, and we're gonna call mom and we're gonna, you know, let her know what happened this morning, perhaps.

But that would not be part of an intervention plan as a long-term intervention that we would provide to a student as part.

If you're in tier two or tier three, that's very formalized.

We'd create the plan as a team.

The parent is part of that plan, they are communicated and a part of that team, and that may not be the intervention we select.

We might know, oh no, this we're not ever taking away recess for this tier two kiddo, but we're gonna do um a totally different intervention.

So no, I don't see it as a long-term.

I would see that as like a once one-off.

Are the the tier two and tier three responses on a kid who is already designated as a two or three student, it's not like a um a reactive, like your behavior, I'm putting you in a two now, you need to go have these.

Is it a kid who's already previously?

Yes, and part of that MTSS process already been notified.

We have a state letter that goes out, and we would create then a plan as a community of what will work for this student.

I'll give you an example at Fritch.

Um, we have a some of our tier two students last year.

Um, were working with Miss Sidon, the school social worker, during their afternoon recess.

She was doing growth garden, which has a very specific curriculum, Cope to Thrive, about making safe choices, respectful choices.

They were gardening, they were doing that, and the parents were part of that plan of during this time.

I want my child to be participating because we were seeing really great um strides forward in appropriate behavior, making friendships, making safe choices.

Their recess was a little more structured, but we was in collaboration with the family.

So then at the bottom of these back on the bottom of the regulation where it specifies that if you are a tier one, you will not have this recess withheld.

So they will be guaranteed that 45 minute, hopefully separated into three sections as we've requested.

So if you're a tier one, you are at zero risk of having that recess revoked for a punitive or uh a reparative restorative.

For punitive, no, you'd yes, you it's a tier one recess.

You forgot your homework today.

That's punitive in our minds, a destructive or unsafe behavior, you might lose your recess for that day, but that is not an intervention, that is a response to what is going on in that moment.

What percentage, if you know, um would you estimate of our elementary kids are in that tier one?

100% of students are tier one, not out of tier one.

Oh, not out of tier one.

Um, well, we have the idea with the tiered system is that students can flow in between tier one, tier two, tier three back to tier two, um, but we do have to collect some data and you know see what's going on there.

District wide, we probably have about 10, 12 percent of students who are tier three and have specific behavior goals.

Um, and that's really this would be focused on students with behavior, not academic.

We have more students who have tiered supports for academics, but around this policy, it would be more for our students who are really working on very specific behavior, building social skills, safe play.

Um, so it is not hundreds of children by any means, um, it's usually students who um are on a very specific IEP plan and maybe behavior, a behavior goal is part of that IEP plan, and that's more likely where we would see this where it's not just a once, you know, really rough day.

Um that would be more of our students who are struggling with making safe choices regularly, um, and likely are already on an IEP.

Okay.

I'm trying to trying to embrace this.

I like admittedly I'm very defensive of this and and feel protective, and I've had four kids through, and and they've been a part of like trusty Roberts, where they've been whole class discipline for the behavior actions of a couple, and and so and and I used to be daily in the office at one of the elementary schools for several years, and and would see that kid sitting on a chair being excluded, and so I'm trying to um like I'm devil's advocating a little in my brain, like on the pros and the cons, and and trying to find balance um for how I how I can embrace this.

And so I appreciate you um letting me ask some good digging questions.

Um, I'm sure I will have more, but I look forward to hearing some of the questions of uh the rest of the board, but I just want to echo my support of what Tracy Roberts had said about the importance of that three being specified.

Uh, even as adults in an eight-hour work day, we have three very distinct.

We get two fifteen's and an hour for lunch.

Um, kids need that wiggle, like we've discussed so much in this policy, how essential that is, and so um, I think anything that risks the structure of that being not kept as um needed outbreaks.

I think is it's important to keep that broken up.

I don't know if I'm making sense.

Sorry, it's still swirling.

Thank you.

Trustee Clappa.

Trustee Ramirez.

So going back to the second page on the regulation, um, where it says, when behavioral concerns arise that may require the students, is the student is in need of a tier two or tier three intervention.

And then it says 15 or more minutes.

Uh rhizes may be used to provide a research-based intervention/slash strategy based on what I just heard on um the question the trustee Peterson asked: we're not using these for intervention.

Can we omit the word intervention and just leave strategy?

Since they're going to be using a research-based strategy to work with that student.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then another question.

If I heard you correctly, you mentioned that on the policy.

That aligns with policy 245.

Any would be, if I heard you correctly, it was referencing the 45 minute recess.

Did I uh did I hear you correctly?

That it aligns with so it aligns with our district wellness policy, which we we have to have a wellness policy.

We don't have to have a recess policy or regulation, but we do have to have a wellness policy.

So that's 245, correct?

245, which um in our wellness policy, our adopted board wellness policy says 30 minutes of movement, and then that is the policy.

So this is uh the recess policy that we're putting in place is still at the 45 in surplus of our adopted wellness policy.

So I may have pulled an old one because I did not see that unless I did not read it properly, but I did not see the 30-minute uh list in the wellness policy.

The policy two forty-five.

Okay, we'll take a just double check on that, please.

Sure, thank you.

Other than that, everything is uh thank you for for all these work and for answering all our questions.

Trustees Tsuki.

I really don't have any questions.

I do like the the um stipulation that they get a break three times.

I would say coming from a high school that you could not count the four-minute passing period uh at a high school going rushing through the hallways at Carson High School as being any break whatsoever.

Um, in a high school, your students are you get a half hour lunch, and that's lunch and your your break time, so um they don't they don't get any more rest or relaxation and I'm just assuming because we have the shortness of the policy language and then the more extensive regulation language that that kind of just aligns to our Nevada revised statutes or quite short, and then our Nevada Administrative Code, that's where we actually delineate all of the details to enforce the NRS.

So I can see how that's aligned to keep your policy short with the details in the regulations.

All right, great.

Um, thank you.

So a few questions and comments on my end.

So, one, um, I just want to reiterate if it hasn't.

I understand that the policy is going to be shorter than the regulation, but please ensure that the policy aligns with the regulation.

So the language that's in the regulation is the same language that is in the policy, and I know we addressed it for the last paragraph where it says, you know, the elementary students will be given the opportunity for um the daily recess, and we chose to suggest um that it be all elementary students will receive 45 minutes of daily recess.

So you would change I'm sorry, the last paragraph and the policy to align with what is um addressed in the last paragraph on the first page of the regulation.

So I do think it's important that the policy and the regulation align, you know, for confusion and so that there isn't different language.

Um, and then I don't know if you address this, but who decides when a recess is used for tier two or tier three?

Um, I'm not even gonna call it intervention because we're calling it a strategy, correct?

All right, is that the teacher, the administrator, the counselor, the MTSS team?

Who is that?

I think it's a combination of things.

So in a situation where I'll keep going back to the same really poor example where student is maybe physically aggressive in the morning.

The teacher is going to most likely reach out to their site administrator and say this child is being very destructive in my class.

I need additional support.

In that scenario, the admin is most likely going to might have to remove recess that day because they're going to be dealing with maybe a behavior consequence for that.

If it is a becoming an ongoing pattern, and this is happening four times a week in this first grade classroom, let's say, then that would become the site MTSS team who is going to say we need more supports for this student every day.

They're having a really rough day, they're we're having to evacuate the room.

We would then know that we need to put a tier two plan into place for behavior specific.

That would include the family, the classroom teacher, the site administrator, maybe an interventionist that they have at their site, the school social worker, a whole team.

And we would look at what's triggering this behavior.

Is the student eating breakfast?

Are they coming to school late every day and they're upset when they get out of the vehicle?

We would look at the whole scenario, and then we would develop a plan that the family is a part of developing that plan, and we would put strategies and interventions in place to hopefully decrease that unwanted behavior, with the goal of maybe it's not removing recess at all, that but that could be an option when developing that plan.

But that would that's a more much more structured time, and it's not just your tier two today or tier three tomorrow.

No, you are a tier one student, all students are tier one.

If your child is becoming a tier two for behavior, the community is a part of that plan, your family's a part of that plan, and the whole school team is a piece of building that plan and implementing the plan.

Then we do collect data, our plan is working.

We we give the student a snack every day at 9.05, and the student has not had a behavior event in eight days.

And so now we've, you know, our plan, let's keep doing it.

It's being successful, and you're earning more recess safe, you're playing appropriately with your peers, and our intervention was uh safe and successful.

Okay.

Um, and then so at that time when a strategy is being implemented, the parents are notified right away.

Yes, okay.

As as soon as safely possible, the or the workings of a school going on, and if it's happening during a lunch recess, um and there's behavior at times the administrator might have to intervene and then make sure everyone is where they need to be, and you know, call that family or notify that family as soon as physically possible.

Um, but it it is usually quite immediate in some of these more extreme scenarios.

Just something going through my head right now.

There isn't a way that we can require those parents to come and be part of that strategy, is there?

Um I think it can be part of the intervention plan.

We we can be again pretty creative when we say, you know, um, we want to try this strategy, will this work for your students?

Are you gonna have a quick snack with them before you know?

So I I think parents, yes, are of course a part of our plans in our community, and we want to welcome them into what will work for your child so they can be the most successful possible.

Great.

I think that's great.

Um, also I think on um page two, I would like to see where it says when a and I don't know where you would be in the first paragraph, but when a behavioral concerns arise that may that may require a student, you know, in need of tier two or tier three intervention, somewhere that who is implementing this strategy is a trained staff.

I'm not quite sure what training we give to you know the recess supervisors, what kind of training that they receive and how often, and I think it would be important that it is a trained staff, you know, it's not a um substitute teacher just because that's on my mind for the next gen item, but you know that it is somebody that is is trained.

So if we could add something in that regulation that it is going to be by trained staff, I would appreciate that.

Okay.

No, I really um, you know, before we close this agenda item, are there yes?

Go ahead, trustee Roberts.

Any follow-ups?

Yeah, I did have a few follow-ups.

Um I appreciate the trained staff that you just brought up, um, as well as anyone who's out there, not necessarily even for the tier ones, just you know, this is coming out, this is new, so making sure that those volunteers that come in or those lunch duty aides are aware as well.

Because I know a lot of the time um there were reports of them taking recess away a lot of the time from kids making them sit on the wall the whole recess because they ran across the blacktop and the blacktop is a no-run zone, etc.

Um, so training all staff would be really good.

Um, and then when you say losing recess, um you're not talking about that long term, that's that's situational.

It might be lost that day because that behavior happened right before recess, but then there's a plan in place to make their recess safe.

And the goal is to get them out of that intervention or that strategy, excuse me, strategy quickly, not this long term for the year you've lost, correct?

For six weeks you've lost or whatever.

The goal is to get them out quickly.

Um, and then one thing I forgot to mention, I think I sent it in my email to you.

Um, but you brought up the snow days or smoke days or there was that fire that started and the kids had to stay in for safety reasons um at Fremont.

So on those types of days, can we add something in here that they are still getting that allotted time that if they have to stay in for that recess, they're doing those brain breaks or that free time because I know that some of those times they have lost that recess and they continue on with the curriculum.

So if we could add something about those types of scenarios, that would be great.

And then also I forgot to thank the public for all the comments that they sent in back in March and for coming in in person.

Um it's just I really appreciate when the public voices their opinions and um takes the time to do that and helps us see things from all perspectives.

So thank you very much.

All right, um, yeah, so thank you, Trusty Roberts, for bringing this to our attention and um thank you for working on this as well.

I know it's not something that we necessarily have to have, but um, I appreciate that the board feels as passionate in how important it is for for our students.

So I appreciate everybody's time on this because it just shows that we have a very diverse board thinking in all different directions.

So I can really appreciate everybody's time on this.

All right.

Having no more questions, we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item number 10 informational update on edgy staff, substitute staffing services in the Carson City School District for discussion only.

This is brought to us by uh Mr.

Sadler and is on our agenda is a request of Trustee Varner.

Thank you, Madam President.

Members of the board, give me just a second, I'll open this up here.

All right, so we have um been in partnership with Edu Staff just over one calendar year now, um, and I'm gonna go through all of the information that we have uh here to share with you tonight.

Um just kind of a strategic shift in perspective as I've been going through this that you know when we looked at partnering with edge staff and we considered a few different um partners before we did partner with edge staff, we were having significant shortfalls with staffing our substitutes and covering classrooms, which was also contributing to teacher burnout and having to cover on their prep periods.

That was a very big part of the conversation on why we looked at this partnership.

And so um what I'll be sharing with you here tonight really the the sub-shortage is not the primary issue.

Um the the partnership that we have forged with the just staff has largely solved access to substitutes, and I'll again I'll share that information here in just a minute.

Um, but really our our biggest challenge with the data that we've looked at this year is managing high volume absences.

So we'll get into that as well.

But I know the million dollar question here literally million dollar question um is what is this costing us?

And so when we started having conversations about this partnership, we really wanted it to be cost neutral.

And it was also very difficult to predict what that would look like exactly because it's not comparing apples to apples.

Um when we look at different data sets.

Um, so even in this data here, uh there's a couple things that I'll point out, but the highlight here for this year, you can see that our total expenditures for covering substitutes, and this also includes any in-house sub coverage from a teacher on a prep period, was 1.634 and 130, which is down from last school year considerably, also lower than two school years ago and just a little bit higher than it was three years ago.

So just let that sink in for a second.

So when a teacher covers another class on their prep because we didn't have a sub or or any other multitude of reasons why they needed to cover a class.

So that yellow part of the box you can see in comparison to last year, which we spent 133,000 on in-house sub coverage, went down to 49,235 as part of that overall expenditure.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

So related to that in-house coverage.

So that was something it came up as a question, probably before COVID, just how how much were we using our own people internally to cover for absences?

So buying out preps or spreading out elementary classrooms.

So we've been tracking this for some time.

That in my earlier years going around and having listening sessions around at the schools, especially for those schools that were really struggling with absences and not being able to find coverage.

Teachers don't have to go on their prep to cover a classroom.

And one of the primary complaints I had was how often they were being asked to do that.

And some actually saying that I just refuse.

I'm giving up my prep every single day because I'm going into cover for other other people when there's absences because we can't find a sub.

So to me, as much as I'm I'm happy about the blue, I'm actually much happier about the yellow because that has taken a lot of pressure off our staff in the schools having to give up their prep periods or having kids spread out in elementary classrooms and putting additional workload on our folks.

I just wanted to point that out.

That's been an issue that's come up for me for a number of years, and so I was really excited to see this number.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Can I jump in though on that?

So because it's what I've heard though, too, is that TOSIS have been asked and have been put into classrooms for does this include them?

If a TOSA covered, they have a prep period and would also be compensated for that.

So they would be in the yellow.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Um what does a sub make?

Or get paid per day, and what do we pay an edge of staff for every sub that uh they put in the classroom?

A daily substitute in Carson City School District working for edge of staff gets paid 150 dollars a day, and there's a 26% markup for our edge of staff.

In this number, one of the things that you don't see that is built into that is also uh so like if you look at fiscal year 23, that number represents the the pay that we gave to our substitute teachers, it includes long-term subs, it includes the payroll taxes, I would call them, all the liabilities we have as a district as far as like workers' comp and additional things that we need to pay as employee employers, and then when we get into fiscal year 24 and 25, what you see what uh what I should say is you don't see it in that blue, but it's represented in the number is we start also adding a PERS cost for long-term substitutes, which was required starting, I want to say it was January 24 when it actually implemented.

And so that wasn't the driver for the conversation with EduStaff.

It was really like we need help.

And when I get to the data of what that represents in other ways, you'll see some of the other value here.

Um but it becomes extra value for the district in that when we have long-term subs now that are employed by EduStaff, we're not also required to pay that PERS for those individuals.

Do you know offhand how much we pay EduStaff per year for this last year?

How much we pay to EduStaff?

Well, I know we pay them 26% on top of the 150 dollars a day, but over the year period of time, do you know what that amounted to?

That's this number here.

1.584895 covers all of our substitute.

I'm talking about just what we pay edu.

If I'm thinking of this correctly, if I would take 26% of this number, that's what I think with that.

Yeah, because it's a it's a 26% mark up.

So, yeah, we'll let the the money guys speak here.

I see as good as uh good evening.

Just did some quick calculations.

This uh might not be right down to the penny, but of that 1.5 million, I believe about 440,000 of that is the fees that go to edge of staff, their gross cost.

Keep in mind that they also take care of our unemployment, workers' comp, social security, other taxes out of that amount paid to them.

So that's their gross amount not net to them.

Hold on.

If we if you don't mind, Trusty Barno, we're gonna go ahead and let you finish your presentation because he and I are both just going back and forth, and you'll never finish.

So go ahead and finish that.

Go ahead.

I thought that might happen, but but I I want I also wanted to get this out front because that's that's a big part of this conversation.

But there is a lot to celebrate in this as well.

So uh this is just a different look at that prep coverage as far as uh the amount of occurrences that we had when we needed to cover prep periods.

So again, this year being fiscal year 26 representing that dollar amount of 49,235 dollars.

You can see that it was down to 1100 instances or occurrences where we had to do that in-house coverage last year, over 3,000, the year before that, 3,600, and the year before that, 3200.

So uh huge celebration here in really allowing our teachers to focus on their planning and doing their jobs as instructors in the schools, and also with our administrators to be able to focus on running their buildings in ways other than just trying to figure out how to cover preps.

So really the the return on investment here is in addition to covering all those in-house subs, um, our fill rates have gone up significantly.

Uh, over the previous three years, we were between 67 and 82 percent uh as as like our highest months being 82 percent fill rates, meaning like we still had 18% of our positions that were vacant and not filled with a substitute teacher.

This year we averaged ninety-four point one percent, which is amazing.

Um rate growth for one year, so approximately I mean, if you just easy math on that, 94 out of every 100 of our teacher absences has been covered this year.

Um, and I really credit Heather Smith and EduStaff and their entire team and the work that they've done.

And this graph represents really the talent pipeline and the total pool that we have.

So when we started with EduStaff on the left side of this graph, you see there at the top, we had 94 substitute teachers on our books as substitute teachers in Carson City School District.

Of those 94, 68 of them actually worked during the school year.

And you can see that as we moved through this, so that was last very late last spring when we started.

As we moved through this school year in April, one calendar year after we started, we had 226 substitute teachers on the books.

And of that 226, we had 130 that we're working on a regular basis.

So that talent pool has gotten much deeper, which has made things a lot more accessible for our teachers, which helps keep the school up and running in students learning.

Absence trends, the first slide I showed you that like really getting subs is not the issue anymore.

It's kind of switched to we're having a lot of absences.

Some of that we there's not much we can do about it.

This represents historical data that we pulled out of our accounting system just to say, well, how many absences have we had to fill year by year so that we could compare apples to apples, and and there's not a significant difference here.

It's been pretty well the same with a little bit of a bump last year.

This number is actually data that we pulled out of uh Red Rover and working with EduStaff, and it shows the data is a little bit more than just daily subs.

So this this data may not represent like when we have we've had super subs and long-term subs in there.

This is just teacher absences, whereas this data also includes uh super subs and long-term subs.

So again, not apples to apples on those two slides, but for last school year.

Again, when we started with edu staff there, beginning of last school year, August, September.

Look at those fill rates down to 60%, 68%, 77%.

We did really well in May, 90.4%.

That was our first month with EduStaff last year.

And then you can see through this year that uh we did not have one month, that we were under 90% as a district average.

But you see that there's a lot more data there for this year, a lot more need.

And so I started taking a look at what are the primary drivers of that, and you know, our employees have days afforded to them.

We have by statute and agreement, 15 sick days for certified staff, um, personal leave days, there's family sick leave.

Of course, we have school business that covers a lot of different things.

So there's no judgment in this whatsoever.

This is just data and and what we're looking at and what we need to cover.

It's a lot of days.

But overall, 60% of our daily sub demand is based on sick leave requests.

Um just a little bit of a breakdown by site.

Our highest fill rates, Fritch Elementary School, 98.8%, Siegel 98.4, Mark Twain, 96.3, and kudos to those administrators.

It's not a competition, but you know, they just really go above and beyond and make those substitute teachers feel comfortable, make sure that they touch base with them when they're in their schools.

I've heard that there's some gift cards, you know, given away on Fridays if you're subbing in certain sites, like just doing nice little things.

Um, our highest pressure sites, no surprise there being our our largest campuses.

Um, Carson Middle School is not on this slide here, they were very close, a little bit above uh Eagle Valley, but Carson High School 88.4, Eagle Valley 86.7, and Silver Campus 84, which again going back to our historical data is still above where we were last year and in previous years.

So that's not a negative number, but it is something that we want to take a closer look at.

Fill rates by weekday, no surprise here, Fridays and Mondays are our hardest days for us to fill.

But very interesting when we look at the lead time and how this uh really helps us out or helps edu staff get the positions filled.

If you have three days notice of putting that in, so most of our school business requests, things like that, we know ahead of time, teacher puts the request in.

If there's three days or more of notice, 97.3% fill rate.

Whereas if it's the same day, like you wake up and you're not feeling great, you put that sub-request in last minute, that drops down to 74% as far as the fill rate goes.

And some of those are unavoidable.

So again, there's no judgment in this, it's data, but certainly something we want to try to respond to.

Let's see edge staff shared some feedback they surveyed our substitutes this year and overall very satisfied we did have a few of our substitutes who were kind of grumpy about switching over to edge of staff and having to fill out an application and felt like they shouldn't have to do that but that they're a different employer and we we definitely uh supported them through that process a lot of them stayed with us and have been doing great and a couple decided that they didn't want to continue to sub initially and came back and some just didn't come back at all but as you can see the numbers again going from 90 to over 200 we're we're thriving with the the substitutes that we have edge staff does some really good training for the substitute teachers that was not previously taking place as well that can also make people a little grumpy if they have to do training and they'll have to do it again next year that is a company policy for edge staff but there's a lot of support and and really trying to make sure that the individuals who are substituting can continue with the lesson plans that are provided and and keep those educational services moving forward even though a teacher might be out for the day.

So 4.12 out of five is overall satisfactory you can see specific strengths welcoming school cultures and support from local faculty challenges not a surprise here student behavior management especially for substitute that can be a challenge and classroom technology like that's something that we can do something about next year and making sure that if a teacher's leaving lesson plans that involve technology that there's very specific guidance for the substitute to be able to use that technology in the classroom making sure we have access um just a couple next steps and recommendations for next year we have discussed and already made the decision that we won't be bringing super subs back to every campus that'll be a little bit of a cost saving super subs was something we put in place when we were really struggling and we said hey we're gonna we know we're gonna need to have coverage today so let's just put somebody who reports to the site every day and they can fill the gaps when we have absences.

We've relied on those people they've been magnificent over the years but we're at a position where we don't really have the same need anymore.

Our fill rates are way up we have more people who are working as substitutes there may be some needs individual sites depending on the programming and and kind of take that on a case by case basis but we have communicated with EduStaff and those super subs that we will not be offering those positions for next year.

And that really that's a celebration to to the system and the work that's that's going on.

Targeted secondary marketing again our our highest need schools as far as the rates for filled sub positions go being Eagle Valley and Carson High School and we've asked EduStaff to just target those specific sites with some marketing and see what we can do to get people to want to pick those positions up.

Entry efficiency incentivizing earlier absence reporting is just an idea and and that doesn't have to be monetary incentive but just different ways like if you you know you know you're gonna be out and you get that in there some way to to recognize the the extra efforts there for that communication and same with incentivizing incentivizing teacher attendance so just things to consider as next steps for next year.

So there's a lot of data there a lot of information and I won't entertain any questions that you have at this time.

Yes thank you since this was brought to us by trustee varner we'll go ahead and start with him.

I asked my main questions but I'm looking at your last page here incentivize teacher attendance financial slash structural incentives.

What do you mean by financial?

I know what you mean, but I mean how would that look?

Yeah.

Well, I think it's just something to look at.

There's some districts that say, hey, if you don't use X amount of days, then you can you know get it an incentive at the end of the year.

Like we'll pay you for some of your sick days because you didn't use them.

Um and that's an incentive and that if it's done the right way costs less than putting subs in the classroom for to cover those days.

Um so that's an example, and that's not a specific recommendation saying do that one, but uh ideas to take a look at.

Okay.

And then uh if we look at the contracts, uh edgy staff is 1.3 million dollar contract.

Is that right?

Yeah, so in the budget, you had um, you know, that we just passed last meeting for FY2526.

Um it said that we paid edgy edgy staff 1.3 million, and now in the proposed in the budget that we just um passed for FY 2627, their contract is for 1.1 million.

That was based off our best data at the time to Spencer Winter for the record, by the way, of what we budget.

Um obviously, if if we go through the year and we know we're gonna go more than that, um, that could be higher.

We are anticipating some lower costs where we don't have those super subs as well.

Um it might not equate exactly to that, but that's the kind of thing that we monitor come the time that we roll around with the December budget, we may need to make an adjustment to that and and bolster that from other budgeted funds.

So my question is is when it was presented to us um last year.

Am I missing something when it was presented and it was going to be cost neutral and now it's 1.1 million?

Uh what am I doing?

So it if we weren't spending that 1.1 million towards edge staff, we'd be putting that to subs.

Okay, so what were we putting towards to subs prior to edgy staff?

So we had funding budgeted in our salaries and benefits categories because they went to our substitutes who are our employees.

We've now shifted that budget from our salaries and benefits to contracted services, because that same amount that we were paying in subs, which uh looking at at Mr.

Saddler's data here, you know, we're we're slightly less this year than we were last year.

So had we been paying this amount, and and if we cal uh calculated that out, it might actually be a little bit more once we put all of our benefits costs in there than what we did pay this year to edge of staff.

And I mean, I'm really trying to understand this, so please I mean don't take this defensively or anything, but okay.

So if I'm reading this correctly, FY25, we did not have edgy staff.

They came in right at the very end of the year.

Okay.

So let's go ahead and go with FY24.

We did not have edgy staff.

Correct.

And we put 1.6 million into substitutes.

Correct, substitutes and our own teachers missed preps.

Okay.

And so then now we're looking at FY27, or you know, FY2627, putting 1.1 million totally incompletely.

So we're looking at a $500,000 savings.

Is that correct?

I I couldn't say that no, that I think we're gonna stick to that one point one million cap.

As we adjust our budget, I suspect that would be higher.

I I don't know that we could really look at hey, we have cost savings, but I think we can look at, hey, we've we've transitioned our system to where we have higher fill rates, we have happier employees because they're not missing their preps all the time, and that really didn't cost us any more because if you compare FY24 to this year, essentially the same cost, even though in FY 24 it went out our our door at salaries and benefits in FY26, it went out our door as contractor costs.

And then again, you know, 72% of that went directly into the subs pockets, and the rest of it covered their benefits and the cost for edge of staff services.

Okay, and so the 26% that we're excuse me, 28%, I apologize to edgy staff, yeah.

So for example, we pay as substitute $150 dollars, edge staff bills us $189 dollars.

Okay, okay, so this now I'm getting in.

So within that 1.1 million to edgy staff, are we still paying out the door for substitutes?

No.

That one the money that goes to substitutes is included in that 1.1 million, all right.

All right, so even we have budgeted that amount, but our our budgeted salary and benefits costs where our sub costs used to live have been reduced.

So that's where it really becomes cost neutral, essentially shifted the category where that's budgeted.

So you see that 1.1 million that you wouldn't have seen in FY24.

And but in FY24, your salaries and benefits costs overall, specifically in the general fund, would have been 1.1 million higher.

Is that I hope I'm making sense?

Oh, because all I just want to know is in the proposed 1.1 million dollars, is that all of the substitute costs inclusive in that 1.1 million?

Yes.

That's all I thank you.

And Dan Sadler for the record.

The other thing that we don't know yet for next year is what are our vacancies going to look like.

Like we're still active hiring season, right?

So the data for this year and last year up here represent well, all of these years actually represent the cost of long-term subs being intermingled into that cost.

If we end up with no teacher vacancies, which would be amazing, um, then there will be a lower cost because we won't have long-term subs mixed into those costs.

Sorry, go ahead, Mr.

Barner, if you had more.

Sorry.

No, I appreciate the information.

Um what I was looking at is I know that uh the possibility exists that next year we may find ourselves in another situation like we did this year where we had to make reductions.

And so what you know, as we go through this next year, I'm gonna be looking for any place that may be able to be reduced.

And that's why I kind of want to get a handle on how much we're paying, how much it's costing us, and if there's any room for possible reductions in the future, and so uh thank you for the information.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

And and I think when we're putting this data together, like I said, it represents things that you don't see there, and one of those things, like let's just say, yeah, times get harder, budget, and we gotta look at things and we say okay.

Well, we're not doing edu staff, we're gonna do just our own subs.

There will be if you have anybody who's in a long-term position, then that PERS cost gets included.

So they're they're this data, I think really shows us that we're in a really good spot with edgy staff, and and there might be even additional cost savings moving forward.

Certainly, as you look at the budget, there's gonna be things you need to to look closely at, but it but it's kind of like forecasting like okay, what do we think we're gonna have for vacancies next year?

And the more people we have in long-term subpositions, I think the more risk there is for the district because of that.

What is it 36.5%?

PERS cost added to those long-term subs.

Yeah.

For example, Spencer went over the record again.

That $150 that we pay to the sub, and then with the overhead is $189 for edge of staff.

If in the case where that were uh PERS uh purseable position, that $150 that we pay to the sub with our benefits cost included would be $280.

So it to revert away from edge of staff likely would not result in cost savings.

Um I just have one and I don't think it's a hard question, hopefully.

Um on the page where there's a yellow straight line and then the blue straight line where you're showing uh substitute talent pipeline expansion.

Yes, okay.

So the blue line is people who have actually applied with edge of staff and who are currently in the pool available to be hired, but only the yellow line are the people that actually say yes, I'll accept.

Is there any cost?

So like current as of April, there's almost a hundred additional people in that pool that aren't even accepting assignments.

Correct.

Does that 100 people have a cost to us of any sort?

No.

That's it.

Thanks.

That was an easy one.

I won't complicate it.

Justy Clapham.

No, trust you Roberts.

Trust you Ramirez.

Just to do correct.

I do.

Only because um a couple of things you mentioned about um giving um incentivizing teachers' attendance, right?

Like if I'm looking at the Nevada report card, I don't have the data from 25-26 school year, but 24 25 or uh Carson's average daily attendance of their teachers was almost 1.3% um higher than the state average.

I'm not saying maybe the state average is wonky because for some reason all of a sudden they got better, but um so our average daily attendance of our teachers in person is not as good as what the state average is, and that costs us more money, right?

When our teachers aren't coming, like if our teachers all came, we we wouldn't be spending 1.1 million dollars.

So I I kind of understand that.

Um so I'd kind of like to I don't have the data from 25, 26, but I'd like to see like our average daily attendance for our staff compared to maybe the state or even our local or neighboring districts would be kind of interesting to pull just because I couldn't find it on a better report card, it's not current so um and then um also on incentivizing.

I don't know, I probably should look at the teacher contract, but do we have a buyout um incentivize incentive program?

So like I know, like when I left Clark County, if I had a hundred and seventy sick days, then I could buy out an extra year for PERS and retire a year earlier, then do we have that in cursing as far as that?

Yeah, for employees who've been with the district for 10 years or more is the way the language is currently worded, and there's different percentages uh as far as how many how much you get based on your daily rate of pay.

It's a reduced amount, it's not your full daily rate of pay for sick leave, up to 200 days.

Okay, so it's it's directly correlated to their their sick leave that they've accumulated.

So there is a little bit of incentive if they stay around.

Yeah, on the back end.

And then the only other thing I would be curious about because I I saw that um there's a substitute satisfaction rating, which is awesome, right?

Because I don't know if there's a harder job on the planet than being a substitute teacher.

Um, but I'd like to um even see like do we ever survey our staff to ask them the quality of the subs we're getting from edu staff or just in general, right?

Like I'd like to kind of I used to do that as a building principal every year to determine which subs I'd allow back in my building the next year.

So do we do a district survey of our staff?

Um we haven't, no, but that's a good idea.

I think that would be good feedback to get.

Um and I'm I'm thinking back as we talked with edge of staff, I don't think they sent their survey to our employees, it was just to the edge the edge staff employees, but uh we could certainly think it'd be good feedback.

Absolutely, yeah.

Um, and interesting with the with the data, um I do have more data available and broken down in different ways.

Um we I just put it through the filter of like chronic absenteeism for students and and I I have to be cautious in even mentioning this because I said no judgment, this is data.

Um, so I'll I'll say the same precursor here that it's no judgment, but we had over 100 teachers that would be considered chronic absentees if they were students based on their attendance rates.

So I'm gonna say again, no judgment, it's a data point, but something we need to address.

That's an interesting point to point out.

Thank you for that.

Um yes, because in the end at the end of the day as well, it's important to point out that when we are continually looking at deficit spending, and we get, you know, the um the bargaining units to come up.

I mean, there would be something to be said, you know, that if we didn't have this cost, it would be saving us money as well.

Okay, I do have another question.

Oh, go ahead.

I just want to follow up with what uh Mr.

Fueling said, because I know um that that yellow number of 50,000 is very impressive because as a building principal, I know the first half hour of every day, at least my poor office manager spent her first half hour every morning trying to cover classes, right?

Trying to get people to sell their preps and because we didn't have enough subs in such a large district that it was it was exhausting for her.

There were days when we had like 23 teachers out, and of course I had a hundred and twenty teachers, but to find twenty-three teachers to cover, right, was was crazy, and it did it burnt them out and made them exhausted and you know and half the time my admin were in classrooms and I had to go cover classrooms a couple times and not that I shouldn't do that as a building principal it's a good thing to do but um those unexpected or unanticipated benefits that like I just think my office manager would have loved this because she wouldn't have wasted so much time of her own trying to cover classes.

Great thank you.

So if I just a points of clarification we are no longer going to be doing super subs.

Correct?

Not for every site.

It'll be case by case we've had some conversations about like for instance sites that have ASP classrooms and we ran into a couple situations this year where we didn't have anybody to cover and and I think it's really important in those specific situations that the adult who's coming to cover the classroom knows a little bit about the kids and the way things work there and that the kids know the the adults too so there might be benefit to considering um some limited super subs for sites as of right now the conversation has been no we're not doing super subs at all.

I just think that's still on the table based on whatever the need ends up looking like that could be.

And then long-term substitutes I might have missed this are they still edgy staff?

They are okay so long term subs are okay thank you.

And so then one just a follow up of the request then is if if it is possible if we could get feedback from teachers and site administrators on what um they think of edgy staff um and you know improvements if there are any improvements to have that would be be something and then I would like to be able to see this if we can get an update um maybe through half the year um you know maybe December ish if we could do an update on that as well um that would be great.

And then um excuse me one second can you clarify what you'd like to update on specifically just so it's on the record because I won't be here next year.

So um yeah just we'll get that on the right how dare you yeah um no just the trends not so much edgy staff so similar data but just an update okay yeah just kind of this the trends as well as we're embarking into you know another agenda um another budget season you know it would be nice to kind of see what the trends are okay um on that if we could do like side by side comparisons like you did here that would be great if we could do that maybe in December that'd be great.

You know one I hate to bring this up in a public meeting but I am.

So my son became a substitute in the winter and just as a point it took him forever to get um not because he wasn't filing his paperwork but the response time and then get trained and his training got postponed and then it got postponed again and here I am going come on get on that get on that work kids start yes get to work get to work it on that app I and he's like mom I I'm not cleared I'm not cleared I don't know what's going on and so um I don't know if that's something you can address with edgy staff that if they if the one individual that they have training if they don't have a backup on that end as well and then the other thing too is he would literally be on there and so when we say that we are having to use any money to fill on site I would be I'm taken back because there were days that he would see it and he would click and it was gone.

And so then and nothing would come up and so I don't know when they if they ever turn off that app app at a certain time, and then it has to get filled by site.

Yeah, I that's a good question.

I I believe if if he was seeing it, that would be like typically a vacancy that's then picked up last minute because the internal sub coverage is usually kind of piecemeal.

Uh it it this year, there were very few instances where okay, we have nobody here all hands on deck and really kind of just backfilling it like the way that it was previously.

I mean it it still happened, but to a much lesser extent.

A lot of these coverages are like fifth and sixth period, you know, in the afternoon, something that our edge staff uh substitutes aren't picking up because it's not a full day, perhaps.

So but do they turn it off at a certain time in the morning?

It's constantly.

So like if somebody called in 10 minutes before the day, it would still come up through edgy staff.

If they put if the employee puts it into Red Rover, that's what indicates to that that's where substitutes go in and pick the job up.

So EduStaff doesn't actually do any part of that.

It's the employee who requests the substitute coverage through Red Rover.

That's the software that handles it, that that's the substitutes have access to that request and can pick them up.

All right, great.

Thank you.

Any additional questions?

I just have a quick question just because you brought it up about getting cleared.

I'm assuming everyone in edu staff has to have the sub-license.

So part of the clearance might be not that I want to throw anyone under the bus, but the state background check, right?

That they're waiting for the background check to come back.

Yeah, that there are people like they cannot work as a substitute teachers until they have that license secured.

Um, there is a small amount of paperwork that people need to get completed and and then a uh drug screening as well.

So sometimes that holds things up for scheduling, but all right.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much for your presentation.

I appreciate you coming.

Uh agenda item number 11 discussion possible action to approve the main uh metrics for measuring the superintendent's goals for 2026 calendar year.

This is for possible action with superintendent fueling in the hot seat.

Thank you, President Walt.

Um, so I uh at a previous meeting um we uh the board approved superintendent goals for the year.

Um, but asked that it come back with um again kind of what what it what are the outcome um if you want to call metrics, but what are the outcomes that we're looking for for success.

I tried to um I I got a little help to uh talk through some of these, um, but also tried to find some things that were really a little more concrete, I think, that I I am hopeful um that the board will uh agree that they would be worthy um here.

So um under 1A, um one of the things in conversations with um uh Mr.

Bringhurst and Mrs.

Perkins talking about um the I'm sorry, uh the MTSS um rollout.

And again, we we have come so far with this.

What one of the things that um we are really interested in is we've you know we've this has been going on for years um and it's taken it an enormous lift to get to where we are, but getting to a point where now um we can actually track the interventions across school sites that are occurring, um, so that we can start gathering information on their success, what what is working, what is not working, um, what is actually being implemented.

And so within within infinite campus, we have a a specific tab, an MTSS tab where that sort of information is entered and tracked.

Um that has started rolling out, but there is still a lot of work to get that to become the um to have it become consistently used both on the academic side and on the behavioral side.

And so as that has that has slowly started rolling out this year, um, but the goal would be and again, um it's kind of hard to think about this, and I realize we're late into 2026 already, but these goals are calendar year goals, so we're really talking about something that by December of 2026, I can come back to you and report on.

So basically within the first semester next year that we have at each of our elementary schools that they are fully utilizing this tracking system so that we can start looking back at the interventions that are in place and look to their success or level of success, I guess, in terms of uh intervening with our kids uh getting tier two or treat tier three level support, um, which will be incredibly beneficial for us and across our schools.

Cause if there's certain practices that are being more effective, that is information that can be shared and then can be shared amongst the schools.

Um, and if certain practices we find are generally not effective, we know that potentially we eliminate those from consideration at all because we're just not seeing that um being helpful.

So to me, this is this is a a it is a very needed step and significant step in refining this and getting better at it.

And so I think I feel like this is a step, it's a it's a you know it's kind of a yes or no in terms of uh gauging success, but it but it is something that we are gonna be actively working on next year, and hopefully at the the goal is that by the end of the first semester, that at least at the elementary schools where we we have come really far with our MTSS systems that we would have this in place to consistently be able to review how we are using these um interventions and again their their success.

Um getting down to B, one B, um, and this is going back to the PLC work that Mr.

Bringhurst is going to be leading district wide.

One of the things that he has done is, and again, this is now gonna be rolling out here over the first semester, um, he has put out a survey um this baseline PLC perception survey.

So this is a survey of staff asking them basically their their current experience with PLCs, um, the types of activities that are happening during PLCs, the types of questions that are being asked within PLCs, and how their perception of how well this is being done at this point.

That same survey is going to be happening again as we get toward the end of the first semester next year.

Um, so the one thing to note with this, because if I were you, I would be saying, well, if you're doing this this like pre-survey and a post-survey, wouldn't the goal really to be to see that the perceptions have improved that people feel like they're doing a better job at it.

And the answer is yes, sort of.

Um, and the reason is, and this actually came up in in the initial um implementation of MTSS.

I've talked about this tiered fidelity inventory, and and that is sort of a perception too of how we are implementing interventions across the different district, different tier two, tier three interventions.

Um, one of the things that happened, we noticed with that data, and our friends at UNR said you'll expect to see this, is that when that survey was first given, um our staff generally thought that a lot of these things were already happening, as they learn as we surveyed later and they learned what it really is supposed to look like, they their scores actually dropped.

Like they basically were saying actually we're not doing a lot of these things, because as they started understanding what these interventions look like and how they're supposed to happen, they realized that while we're not really doing this stuff later, it did start coming back as we recognize what these interventions look like.

We knew that we were actually doing them.

It was just in that initial kind of uh perception of it.

Um we thought we were doing it later to really learn that, you know, kind of.

And so with this, I think I just I don't want to go out and say that it's absolutely going to increase because I I don't as we have staff learning more about what PLC should look like, this initial survey happening in the spring, and then a survey in this first some at the end of the first semester next year, um, people may think there's some things that they're doing well, and as they learn more about it, realize we're we're doing okay, right?

We're maybe we're not as high as we thought we were.

But the I think the important point being that we are collecting that data, and it's something that we can report back on.

Um, and I think Mr.

Bringhurst as he is leading this work will really be able to share that information with our principals and just with our teams to show like we are learning.

Like I think it's effectively almost if it goes down to some extent, like we're really learning what this work is.

So it's not necessarily a bad thing if it goes down, but at least we'll have that data.

But I think in the same way that we have this tiered fidelity inventory for MTSS, even if it goes down, we would expect in the long run that we would expect that to swing back up as people are becoming comfortable with the vocabulary vocabulary, comfortable with the activities happening within those PLCs.

For the full alignment piece, again, that that's really a long-term goal.

Um I don't really want to say we expect student achievement to improve by two percent per year, um, growth to go up four percent per year.

Like, I don't know what that exactly that's going to look like.

I think in the bigger picture, we just want to see that everything is improving.

I don't know what the percentage is, but that we're seeing increased achievement, better student growth, better behavior, I guess, downswing in behavior data ultimately.

Um, under the strategic plan, um, again, this just trying to get something that's a little more concrete, and and quite honestly, I I don't know exactly what this looks like, and I think until we get into our um our first meeting and seeing how we progress through it as it's being facilitated.

Um, but those community connections events normally we would have two in the fall and two in the spring.

So I believe we'll have at least two meetings, and and hopefully um hopefully we would be able to bring back at least an initial draft of where we are with the strategic plan, what that might look like.

I have a feeling that we're actually gonna have more than two meetings because there's gonna be a lot of work and data um to get through and a lot of conversations to get through.

Um, but I think at least as a gauge that something is happening, if that's really the goal, that knowing that there will be these kind of meetings going on, and I'm I'm hoping even by December, not again, it's a being a draft, but having a draft of a potential strategic plan coming back to you.

Again, I I don't I don't see the next version of the strategic plan looking like the current version, it it is a robust all-inclusive document.

Um, and again, the the trend that we're we're seeing nationwide is really trying to slim that thing down to what are those most important points and not necessarily getting into all the nitty gritty detail of every one of them, but trying to stay high level um high level with those big focus points for districts that they are working on.

For the legislative advoc advocacy, we talked a little bit about this last time.

Um, and again, it is you have to remember we're talking about reviewing these December of this year, um, not after the school year or after the legislative session.

And so the legislative session doesn't even start until 2027.

So, to me, um, what I think would be a good starting point is we're a good starting point for the legislative piece is we are hoping to put together a bill draft request.

Um that bill draft at every school district is given one bill draft request if they like, except for Clark and Washo get two because they're more important um than the rest.

Um but to bring a bill draft request to you, that is something that you actually have to approve.

It's not just something that I I can come up with or we can come up with, but so you'll actually have um we'll be having a conversation about it's something that you would take action on.

So it'd be very clear to you that this is happening.

Um, and I think really that kind of sets us up like this is action towards advocacy in the legislative session, um, and it just kind of sets up like that that's a good.

I think we have to have the bill draft.

If you approve it, I believe we have to have it into LCB by October.

So it's likely something that we're talking about in September.

It's either October or November, we have to have it to LCB.

Um, but so it's something that's visible, we're talking about publicly.

Um, and so I I think as like an initial step in terms of legislative advocacy, um, that that would be a good goal, and it's something that's a it's a concrete outcome that you can point to that we've we're we're making progress, we're trying to do something, and then that will set up going into 2027.

Um I would expect legislative advocacy to continue into 2027 as a as a new superintendent goal, but the um desired outcome or metric how we're trying to measure success would likely look different at that point.

So the goal was to try to again get make some of this a little more concrete.

Um, and something that is easy to see.

Um, some of you hopefully will be a part of some of this, especially with uh the strategic plan piece.

Um but something that's easy to point to, and like, yes, this is this is what we want to see moving in the right direction.

Um so that that's what I got at this point.

And I would if if you have any um, I can always bring up Mr.

Bringhurst.

Okay.

Well, I do have a question.

So we're looking the language that we would be um moving on, approving is in the red.

Oh, correct.

That's a good clarification, yeah.

Sorry, okay.

So you've changed no black.

The black is strike through, it's the red that we're going to do.

Yeah, except for except for in 1A, there was a request to change because I I had the word um, can't remember what the word was in 1A.

It was um, but we we changed it to like continued improvement or improvement of these systems.

There was something else um that was there, but the the board had asked that I change that.

So I put that new word in there.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, do we have any questions?

All right, go ahead.

Uh trusty remember.

No, or trustee Roberts.

Did you have one question, Ruben?

Okay, okay, sorry.

Uh yeah, thank you.

It's um a little more.

Um easy to have something to look at what we're what we should be looking for as you report again.

Um I just wanted to I really like the um 1A that consistent support when moving between schools, I think that's really important, especially I know you've brought it up before that that does happen a lot in this district.

So thank you for your attention to that.

Um, and then as far as a bill draft, um, this is a conversation for another time, so just a yes or no, but do you have ideas on what you're looking at presenting?

I'd take that as a yes.

That's smile.

We've I will say um there are many things that that we would uh that you've considered okay.

Yeah, and I've never been a part of that before.

Does as that um strictly within the school district, you reach out to families to staff to see what kinds of things they're looking for change on, or how does that work?

Sure.

Uh so one one of the things that um so I I would say generally um we are we are looking from our own experience and conversations in the schools more so as to like what what the reality is on the ground, um, and either coming up with an idea for something that we could think we think might be a benefit, and so the example I would use of that, um, not the last session, but the prior session, it was right after I started in this role, we brought a bill draft.

Um, and the idea was, sorry, there's a little fly here.

Um, uh the idea was something we call it was called uh innovation districts.

Um and really this was sort of taken from the state of Texas where they do this, and and really what it was is districts um can apply to the state education agency.

So basically like NDE here, but the Texas Education Agency, you could apply to the Texas Education Agency to be relieved of some laws, uh, if you had a good reason is what it what it comes down to.

So just for example, in in Texas, or let's say in Nevada, like we have our class, there's class size ratios at the elementary level were required to hit if for some reason we thought there was this great benefit to increasing the cap on fifth grade from 25 to 30.

I don't know why, and please I'm not saying to do that, but but in in Texas, districts can um they can apply to do that sort of thing, as long as they have a justification for what it is, and if the state education agency approves it, then they effectively can violate the law because they've gone through this process.

And so we tried we tried bringing that here, um, wasn't very well received, and so it died.

Um but so it's a process we we've we have um gone through before.

Um, but again, it it's something that really it's something that you have to approve before I I bring it there.

Um the other side of that then is if if there is an existing law, like that's the idea of like trying to um add something to provide benefit, you can also potentially say, Look, we really don't like this, we just we want to get rid of this law, or we you know we want to modify it because it's too onerous, too cumbersome.

It's we we think it's detrimental to what our schools are doing.

So you can kind of you know, just if you're trying to improve the system in some way.

Yeah, so on um on this strategic plan, um your goal number two.

Is it possible to add five uh five-year strategic plan?

It is a five year strategic plan that we're gonna be working on, correct?

So thank you, Trustee Romers.

It's a good question.

Um and historically, um the first strategic plan this district created, I believe was in 20 wait, it was either 2012 or 2007 going into like through 2012.

So a five-year strategic plan was historically what we've had.

Um working with sorry, with um some of these uh district.

We had that conference back in the fall where these other districts came to us.

Um, and what I've learned with some of these other high-performing districts across the country is that they're actually um moving more towards tenure plans, but but allowing for some um flexibility within that.

So for example, if if there was something that you know, we said, you know, this is the vision for 2020 or 2036, let's say, because it's 10 years down the road, and there's something that we we really value, um, but we get six years down the road, and and you know, something changes, and maybe that um isn't as much of priority anymore as something else that the board has been discussing, the board has been talking about, and and allowing for that to effectively take its place or maybe be added in addition to so it's just right now I think we view strategic plans as like these concrete documents once they're created.

Um, but I I think just due to the nature of how things change.

They're doing what we're seeing is longer strategic plans, but allowing for some flexibility within that.

So I I would say I would ask not to put the five year in there, although it very well may end up being a five-year in the end.

The other thing that you and I talked about the idea of perhaps including on one A, the um a measurable outcome on data from a year prior on the tier one, tier two, and tier three to identify if our numbers then tier two and three are increasing or decreasing.

Is that possible for you to add?

Um are the two premature.

It will be possible once we have this sort of collection process in place.

Then it will become really easy to compare that over time.

I mean, ultimately, we would like to see the the need for tier two and tier three interventions to decrease because on the tier one side, just the base side of everything we do is just that good.

Um I don't think tier two, tier three necessarily ever goes to zero, but but we by being by doing this, we will be able to start giving you that kind of information.

And actually, if I could to um Trusty Roberts brought up the the benefit of um being able to be consistent uh across schools when kids do move interventions.

This is actually too if kids decide, you know, if their family moves up to Reno, this kind of information actually can be shared with Washoe County schools as well.

So I mean in the end, we're trying to support kids, right?

Where wherever they are, and so they can actually see them what are the kind of inform interventions that this kid um has or has been put in place to support this kiddo, what's worked, what hasn't worked for them.

So that's really good information for them in the end too to be able to share with other districts if if they do move.

Trustee Clapham.

Justin Pierce, Justin Funner.

Thank you for bringing these goals forward and getting some kind of measurement if you meet them or not.

Now, on the end when the legislative C.

I think you're selling itself a little bit short just by saying that you're going to make a bill draft request because I know that being president of NAS, you're gonna be highly involved in the legislative matters.

So I think you know that's a good point.

I think that uh you could expound upon.

Uh then uh just was wondering, I think I touched upon it as doesn't matter what the bill draft is, but you've already covered that, so thank you.

Uh going back up to uh paragraph B, and this is just a minor thing, but uh where it's in red baseline PLC perception survey to be completed by staff.

Uh I would just say, but in spring 2026.

And then uh when you talk about in the late fall 2026 to gauge impressions of how PLC work is impacting attending, impacting attending to students' needs and learning.

Um, do you see any kind of data that would be brought forward to show how it's really impacting?

Because if you just do a survey, people can say it's working great when it when it's not.

I'm gonna phone a friend here to help help me out a little bit.

Um, always glad to hear from him.

Yeah, well, and and Mr.

Bringers is and his friends have have developed this survey, but it but again we we will certainly be able to report back on what the data is.

Um and again, there there is there is some concern of I I don't know that the data will actually get better between this spring and next fall, but at least we now have the data so that as we get more comfortable with the PLC work happening, hopefully people will see the the benefit of that.

So I don't know if you wanna Yeah, Brandon Bringhurst for the record.

So um I echo what uh Superintendent Fuelink has said.

We have started gathering this baseline data, which is uh I think going to be incredibly helpful for us.

Um we do anticipate that with some of those questions we would probably see a drop, and that drop um we anticipate being a result of them better understanding the definition of what we're truly uh trying to achieve in a PLC.

We'll explain that a little bit more as we get there.

Some of those questions, kind of depending on how those questions are worded, we would like to see an increase in them.

Um I would add to that additionally, we will be meeting on the 22nd and 23rd, um, putting together what what we call a guiding coalition that will be working on the PLC process, and part of that guiding co the work of that guiding coalition will be putting together a timeline of implementation.

And so with that timeline of implementation, we'll have some better metrics and better data to look at and say, well, here was our timeline of impl implementation, similar to what we've done with the MTSS process over the years, and we want to get to benchmark one by this time and benchmark two by this time.

We'll be able to share that with you.

So that's a timeline that we'll be developing this summer as we work with uh a trainer on the PLC process and get together a group of our administrators and teachers that will be part of that uh part of part of guiding that work.

I think the other piece that we'll that we intend to bring forward to you in that uh time frame with that data is to share with you.

If you remember we had some wonderful discussions about our school calendar that we're going into for this uh next school year, and we are super excited about it, but you all rightly asked, are we going to what are we going to be measuring to see if this calendar is making an impact?

And so this PLC implementation timeline as well as the perception survey data that we'll be bringing to you will be part of what we'll be looking at to see um is the calendar having the desired outcomes.

And I'm glad you're looking at that because one of my concerns, I think concerns of the board was the PLC as part of that calendar is if they're going to be used properly or correctly, because in the past I think the information we received said that they were not consistently used uh properly, I guess for like a better term.

Right, and that's so that definitely is part of what we want to be measuring is um you know a good measure is if I as a teacher feel like this collaborative time is helping me be a better teacher, right?

Um and we can get a lot more sophisticated than that, and we will be more sophisticated in that in some of our questions.

But at the bottom line, I I trust our practitioners, and if our practitioners are saying this collaborative time and this professional development time that we have is helping me deliver better instruction.

I think that's very uh I think that's valid data for us to consider.

Yeah, a couple of us sat through some of the PLCs and I don't know if it was because we were there, but uh they seem like they're being used effectively and uh that's what I like to see across the board, you know.

So thank you.

Uh just one other real quick thing.

I'm sorry.

Uh on the strategic plan.

I'm wondering, you know, we want if we're looking at a 10-year strategic plan, five to ten years, we want it to be the best that we can do for that period of time.

And I hate to spend money, you know that.

But is there is there any idea that we may be able to use a facilitator to help us through that process because I think that may be beneficial.

Thank you, Trustee Barner.

Um we we have talked about it.

We're gonna be um here coming later into this month, really talking about what this looks like going into um into the fall as we start having those meetings.

I I think it's entirely uh possible and I almost likely that we would use someone and that that that cost would be born out of out of my budget.

So I I have money set um that we can use for that if necessary.

Um I think we we just we need to do some more planning about what this looks like next year.

We um the the meeting we had in late spring um that uh Mr.

Bringhurst really helped lead with me, I think was really informative for us in terms of um getting some really good feedback from families about what they want out of schools.

Um, and so we're we're gonna be going back just to talk about that and start trying to plot out what this um will look like.

And it it may be that that really having sort of a third-party facilitator helping that process would really help move it along.

I think it'd be beneficial.

Uh thank you.

That's all I have.

All right, um, great.

Thank you.

Um mine have been addressed, and so I am ready for a motion, unless there's any follow-up questions.

Right.

Okay, so this is an action item.

Do I have a motion to approve?

I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve the metrics for the measuring for measuring the superintendent's goals for the 2026 calendar year.

Do I have a second second?

I miss that.

Who's seconded?

Okay, sorry, my head was down.

You all sound the same.

Alright, so we have a motion by uh trustee clapping, second by trustee Peterson.

Is there public comment?

Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Moving on to agenda item number 12.

This is discussion and possible action to cancel the November 24th, 2026 and the December 22nd, 2026 school board meetings.

This is for possible action and presented by me.

Um November is Thanksgiving, December is Christmas.

So who wants to be here those weeks?

Any questions?

Oh, I do have a motion to approve.

We'll make the motion, yes.

Please make your motion.

Sorry.

I'll make the motion.

Uh I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees cancel the November 24th, 2026, and December 22, 2026 school board meetings.

Do I have a second?

So I have a motion by Trustee Varner, a second by Trustee Ramirez.

Public comment.

Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Opposed.

All right.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

We have agenda item number 13.

This is approval of the consent agenda.

This is for possible action.

Um have you all reviewed it?

All right, do I have a motion to approve?

So move.

So move.

All right.

So I have a motion, I have a motion by uh Trustee Clapham, a second by Trustee Roberts.

Do I have public comment?

Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Number 14 is informational items.

This is for discussion only.

No action will be taken.

Did you all have any questions, comments?

Seeing none, we'll move on to agenda item number 15.

This is a request for future agenda items.

Do we have any?

Yes.

Um, I would um because we've talked about attendance, uh, staff attendance, and we've talked about PLC, especially as it uh deals with the strategic plan, um, having a history with uh staff not participating in PLCs, right?

Taking the time off, or you're scheduling their doctor's appointments on there.

I would love to um see how we're going to track next year with the new calendar having this PLC time built in.

Are we tracking the attendance and participation of the staff?

Because we know that there's you know situations where we have low attendance.

Okay.

Yes.

Trustee excuse me, trustee.

Would you would you actually like that as an agenda item, or would you like us like say as as we get into the semester just to be able to report back on what we're seeing maybe somewhere down the line?

I I guess I can I say both, because I I would like to see how your your plan would be that you are gonna track it next year, just to say this is how we're gonna track it, and then give us like status occasionally on are they really participating uh, you know, in PLC because we have dedicated time in the school year for it.

Uh that is great, yes.

Yes, I would I would like to see that plan pro possibly if we can get that before the school year starts, and then possibly do like maybe a quarterly update on that.

Okay, sounds great.

Um any others?

Alright, so then I do.

Um why do you guys always gasp over there?

Um, so and you may all know how this works, but I don't.

So it was in our budget uh in our packet, and it's the transfer report.

And so I you know, there seems to be a large amount uh transferred, and I'm just not knowledgeable on that.

So if we could get agenda item just to teach us, maybe just me, the large budget transfer explanation report.

Um, because there was like one point seven million transferred, and I I just don't understand that.

So if I can get that, that would be great.

Um yes, I think that's it.

Anyone else?

Seeing none, meeting is adjourned.

Thank you very much.