At this time, we will call the board workshop to order.

Item number one is roundtable discussion among board members and staff addressing the following topic for discussion only.

There will be no action.

This is a presentation and discussion regarding the use of artificial intelligence AI in the Carson City School District.

This will be presented to us by Mr.

Bringhurst.

Welcome.

Good evening, superintendent and board of trustees.

So for the workshop portion of the meeting today, we're going to highlight one AI tool in particular.

It's an AI tool called Write On.

As the name would imply, the focus of write on is helping students improve their writing skills.

Improving student writing is one of the things in education that has proven to be very challenging.

Students get better at writing by writing and getting feedback on that writing.

And that's just a very labor-intensive process for teachers to do.

If you can imagine, for instance, our secondary teachers who may have over a hundred students, and you ask each one of them to write a page, that's a hundred pages that you need to read and provide feedback on.

And that takes a lot of time to do that.

And so we earlier on in this in this last school year, we met with Perry, who uh will will be leading this presentation about this pro program that he was developing called Ride On, which really targeted that need of helping students improve their writing.

We started using it with a few teachers, and it's one of those things that a few teachers started using, and then their neighbors started seeing what they were doing and saying, that's really cool.

How do I get to use that?

And it started growing and growing from there, as opposed to sometimes we bring something to the district and we roll it out to the whole district.

This one we started very small, and it has naturally grown and continues to grow.

So we're excited about that because it demonstrates to us that those using it in the classroom are finding it to be an effective tool for our students.

And as a bonus, Perry is local here in the area, so we have a great partnership with him and opportunity to communicate and continue to develop the program and meet the needs of our students.

So I'll bring Perry up to take us through this.

For letting me come here to speak.

Thoughts about that as well.

So hopefully kind of talk about both write-on specifically and sort of thoughts about AI and education generally.

Um education, when you talk about it, begs like lots of questions, right?

Um, some of which go like what are the jobs of tomorrow?

Should we be teaching different skills?

Should we be teaching AI literacy?

Can AI help teachers lesson plan?

Right?

Like that's another thing that AI can potentially do.

How do we prevent cheating with AI?

Go talk to a high school English teacher.

Uh, this is really a top of mind.

Um, but for the purposes of today, because this is what I'm focused on with write-on, it's how might AI help kids learn.

I don't think any of these are more important than any of the others, but this is just what we're doing with write-on.

This has been my focus with write-on in the power over the past year.

I do want to just be candid about my honest truth about, and this is also why I started the company, is like when you, you know, I think there's a lot of folks that say like AI is gonna revolutionize education for the better, and we should rush to adopt these tools.

I do want to be candid, generally speaking, like AI has had mixed results, I would say when it's come to helping students learn, but I don't think that is, I think that's less to do with AI as a technology.

That's AI is a tool.

Um I think it has to do with how it's been rolled out and the choices that some, not this district are making around AI, and especially just throwing chatbots at kids.

Um, this is something I'm really this is what I think right on is addressing.

Um you give just a chat bot to a fourth grade kid, or you could expect it to ask the right questions, become a better thinker, and you give it to a high schooler.

Are they going to use it as a tool for learning, or are they gonna use it as a tool to bypass learning, right?

So these are these are the like just kind of the honest truth, but also I think this is what motivates me uh to to build something better.

And the question that I've been fixated on from I'd say a year before I even started this company in this business is you know, how do we integrate AI thoughtfully with emphasis on you know thoughtfully in order to help kids actually learn?

And over the course of my sort of journey figuring out what I was gonna build, I was talking with this principal in Reno that a bunch of people told me to talk with.

And he, you know, somebody who thinks a lot about AI education as well.

Um he's been going to you know certain conferences, and you know, something something rang the bell for me, which uh was like, oh, this is this is it, which is that the potential of AI can best be summed up in one word, which is feedback, right?

You could have the best teacher in the world if they have 25 kids in their class.

They can't give every student one-on-one feedback, sit with each kid and help them think through whatever subject is, whether it is with math, writer.

We can't, you can't they can't be a tutor to every single kid.

You can give a coach to every kid.

So when I think about what is the potential of AI if we do it really, really well, um, we roll really well for student learning, it's this.

And that's I was like, this is what I this is what I want to do.

Now I think the story, how this connects back.

Um, that wise principal is Brandon, who said Mars and Hurst at the time.

And so I think we had a really good conversation, and so when we came over here, he's like, hey, we should reconnect.

I'm gonna hear what you're up to.

And over the following six months, I started to build right on and into what it is today.

Um, you know, we could give feedback on math.

You give feedback on a lot of things.

Uh, I decided we decided to focus on writing to start with write on for a few reasons.

AI literally is like a writing machine.

Like that's what these things do.

They they write.

So that's a good reason.

And I thought, like, I want I think this will probably be good.

And in particular, writing is really important.

If to become a better writer, I think feedback is of especially outsized importance.

I think the way that you become a better writer, the most important thing oftentimes is I remember my parents used to do this for me, like I have an essay that write, you know, feedback in the margin, like fix this, improve that.

So it's extremely it's important everywhere, but I think it's especially important for writing.

And because of this, when I talked to teachers, they really struggled with teaching writing.

Uh, a common reframe I heard was, you know, I gave my kids an essay or paragraph, I spent 10 hours grading it.

We're giving feedback, detailed feedback, because I knew this would help my kids.

And but by the time they got it back, it was two days later, and they would just you know crumple it in their pocket, they wouldn't even read it, and like a little piece of them died.

I was like, I heard that so many times, like, we've got to do better than this.

There's got to be a better way.

Um, and so this is where I thought, like, this is a really could be a really thoughtful way to integrate.

In order to sort of figure out, like, yeah, I wanted this to be obviously a great product.

I sat with a lot of teachers as they they sat with students, and I just talked to them, like, what do you do?

And I think there were three themes that you'll see when I give the demo and Kayleigh talk about it as well.

The first is guiding the process.

You can't just throw a chop out in the corner and expect it to work.

You have to, in the case of writing, scaffolding, right?

You break it in if it's a paragraph, you write your topic sentence, your evidence, your conclusion, then you do revising, and then you do proofreading in that order, right?

You have to break things into steps into the writing process, right?

The second is focusing the feedback.

I see so many of these tools that just give this wall of feedback, and you ask a kid, like, what do you do with this?

And they don't know.

It has to be, can you use a better word here?

Can you do you need to capitalize this letter?

Might you introduce a stronger idea here?

You really have to be specific.

And the final thing is celebrate progress, right?

In person, you do this through you know a high five or a smile digitally, it's a little bit harder, but I think you'll see we we put a lot of work into making sure that kids understand that their writing is getting better and that we celebrate that, but we do it in a different way.

So I'm gonna show you a demo because I think it'll click when you see it, and maybe it'll provoke questions.

Um, it's really cool.

But before that, um, I'd love Kaylee to talk because you've been using it in the classroom for a while.

For a while.

Um, go ahead and sit and turn on the microphone.

Okay, hello everyone.

Um, my name is Kayleigh Davenport, and I'm the EL designee at uh Board of Wick Bray Elementary School.

Um Perry introduced this program to me, and I rolled it out and have been utilizing it with my EL population in in the classroom.

Um, and we have been getting incredible results with my students.

Um it gives them feedback immediately, you know, sentence by sentence, it'll it'll have them add more detail, it corrects, um, it corrects and helps them think through their thoughts.

You know, when when I'm working with another student one on one-on-one, this feedback is immediate.

It's you know, it's instant gratification, and it's taken their learning and their writing process just to wonderful heights.

It's it's absolutely expanded their minds with this program, and so I'm here to support Barry, and it's been I've been implementing it, and next year it's absolutely, I'm gonna continue with it, and yeah, it's been it's been great.

I've been able to see some fantastic results.

Awesome.

Thank you.

So now I'm gonna show you how it works.

I was gonna have you try it all yourselves.

And I I will send you a link so you can all write work on your paragraphs when you get home.

Uh but for now, I'm just gonna do it uh because it's we're on a hot spot, it's uh I just want to have one connection at a time.

So can you all see the monitor?

Over there, okay, cool.

Great.

So I've created an assignment for you all.

Um something I'm sure no opinions about.

Should cell phones be allowed in schools.

Um, uh, so I'm going to so I imagine I'm a student, this is my class, I go in, I start the assignment, I go full screen.

Why?

Because kids get distracted.

We make sure that they understand the prompt first.

So I want to walk you through because each design decision is like very much designed to help kids succeed.

So we make sure that they understand the prompt first.

Step one: write your topic sentence.

So this is a one paragraph assignment to be clear.

You can make it five paragraphs, one however long you want, you can write about whatever prompt you want, you can integrate it with your curriculum, you can do it supplementary, whatever you want to do, but this is the one for today.

So state your we also give instructions, state your opinion clearly on whether cell phone should or should not be allowed.

Wasn't the main position you want the reader to understand?

Does anybody want to give a an answer?

We'll type it in so you can see.

So I'm a student, I write, no, they shouldn't.

So star rethinks.

Hopefully the AI is not blocked.

Little ding.

You got one star.

We all we always like to get at least one star.

You get zero stars, not very motivating.

You notice that three will get you move you to the next step.

And we always start with positive feedback, kids don't get enough of it.

We're really specific, and we highlight the thing that's being given feedback on.

So nice start pair.

You made it clear which side you're on.

Strong topic sentence tells the reader exactly what the topic is and where you stand.

Can you expand this into a full sentence that mentions cell phones in schools?

So the reader knows right away what you're doing, right?

Which is I think what a good teacher would suggest of a kid.

No.

Try it again.

Great improvement.

Your topic sentence not clear, states your opinion and the topic.

Once the topic sentence is solid, we move on to the next step, giving your first reason, and on and on.

You go through, you write full paragraph, then you're asked to revise it to make sure structurally it makes sense or the sentences in the right order.

And then finally at the end, we do proofreading, and we do that that way because it's overwhelming for kids to do everything all at once.

So let's focus first on the ideas, then how we structure the ideas, and then finally, let's make sure you know the spelling is correct, your capitalization is right, there's no run-on sentences, comma splices, all that sort of stuff.

So by the end, we've walked the student through, they've been earning stars, they'll earn 24 stars going through eight steps, and they'll have a well composed paragraph.

Make sense.

Cool.

So any questions.

So it's the structure base, but does it proof-read, like spelling errors, grammars?

Are you getting to that?

Yes, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry, so just to be clear.

So this is something that it's interesting.

Is when I show it, you can actually get your three stars writing your topic sentence without the spelling errors, and that's actually with spelling errors.

That's actually by design.

So the idea is you're a exact, you're a fourth grader.

So with writing, there's this concept of cognitive load.

You are learning how to write a sentence correctly.

You're learning word choice.

You're learning how to structure a paragraph.

You're also usually if you're in class, you're writing about the context of what you're writing about.

So there's background knowledge that you may or may not be solid about.

You're you're right, you know, you're writing about government, but you may not know what democracy means.

Things like this.

So a student has a million things that they're thinking about.

So we want to make sure that we're doing as much as possible one thing at a time.

So when you're writing your topic sentence, let's just focus on stating a clear opinion.

Um, and then at the very end, the last step is well, there's sometimes a couple steps.

We're gonna fix your spelling, we're gonna fix we're gonna make sure kids.

I don't know, you're probably aware of this.

Like they don't realize they need to capitalize the first letter of a sentence anymore.

Texting is just throwing them.

So we we go through, make sure everything is cleaned up, but we we do that at that still their very last step.

So that you know, uh, because you already by then have all the ideas down in the right structure.

Does it auto-correct is what you're saying, or does it point out where they have to physically change it?

They have to change it.

And that's sort of a core principle of ours is that like we never, and this is like a very big strong differentiation point from I think most chat bots like we never give kids the answer, and you have to you get feedback and we make you change it, even if it's a little painful.

We want you to make those corrections.

That's when it's gonna be.

We know how autocorrect works.

Yeah, a lot of time we get a different word or.

Yeah.

One of the things that I would add in here too that I've seen as students are using this, when students really struggle with spelling and they submit something to the teacher, oftentimes it's hard for the teacher to even decipher what they said.

And so the student gets beat up about their spelling and doesn't really get any feedback on their ideas.

And the AI does a fantastic job of actually deciphering what the kid is saying when I, as a human have a tough time reading what they wrote because the spelling is so bad.

It's pretty impressive that it can do that and then give them that positive feedback and work on their ideas, and then they can get their spelling and their grammatical things later, right?

Especially some of our students who are EL or just learning the language, their spelling may be very rough.

Some of our students who are dyslexic, their spelling may be very rough.

And instead of continually being beat up about that, they're getting some good feedback and some good um growth in how they're structuring their writing first.

So now they're giving you context about how I got here and what this thing is and what it does, just to give you a sense of our work together so far.

Um in the summer uh and fall, I built and test it fortunately for you, not in the Carson School District.

I was in a couple of schools, just living in a few classrooms building it, and then by about I'd say November, the product was really, really good and ready to be used.

And so we started actually working together in January.

Um that's when we did our pilot, and next year we're gonna be rolling this out fully.

Um the impact so far at Carson, as Brennan said, this hasn't been a thing that we've pushed down on teachers.

This has been something that we've made available, and sort of the word has spread.

So far, 94 teachers have signed up.

Over 2,000 students have used the product, have used Redon.

And there have been 5600, over 5600 writing sessions, like paragraphs or essays that have been done on the product.

But I think the thing that I'm really proud of is that over 224,000 pieces of individual feedback, specific actionable feedback have been given that students have been able to take and then have been forced to revise.

And I think that's something that you know teachers are really thankful for because they couldn't possibly do that themselves.

Those ninety-four teachers, I think.

Our first meeting we had four teachers that started, and so that kind of shows, right?

It started with a really small number, and then they just saw and word spread, and more people wanted to uh to join in, which is great.

Those are the nut raw numbers.

Um, we did a at Mark Twain uh with the ESL teacher there, a 10-week sort of before an at like case study.

We did it right before the WIDA exam, which is you know for proficiency, um, there's 10 kids, um, and we we measured we wanted to measure two things qualitatively, do kids get like feel more confident about writing, do they enjoy it more?

And then do they get better, right?

Um, on confidence, we saw a 30% growth in just 10 weeks.

How confident are you that you know how to start your writing?

Um how much do you enjoy writing went up by 35%?

So, and I think with a lot of kids that's half the battle.

It's getting them to engage and getting them to feel confident writing and to start writing, and that that really helps.

But importantly, and I don't want to suggest that this is the only thing that they did, but um on the writing exams, their writing scores on on the WIDA went from an average of 3.5 for these kids to 5.1.

Seven of the kids exited.

Um, and while they improve across the boards, uh writing was their by far their biggest area of improvement.

Um so Amy, who's the teacher said, you know, holy cow, another fifth grade teacher said these kids are in the writing club, their writing is just soared.

Um, so we're seeing, I don't want to be clear, Amy's a great teacher, there's just 10 kids, there's a lot of factors, but it was very, very clear that in the 10 weeks writing every day using write on that their writing just massively improved.

And you could see an anecdotally, a lot of kids went from one long run-on sentence that's a paragraph, to like actually articulating a paragraph, writing their topic sentence, giving evidence, supporting evidence and concluding.

So for next year, um focus more targeted programs to get big improvements in short amount of time.

I think there's some good leverage points to get a lot of learning in a short amount of time, getting more teachers on board, integrating it into instruction, and more measurement of impact on writing quality and student engagement.

We want to prove it over longer horizons, moving S back scores, that it's like you know, really uh not just giving great feedback and that teachers see it, but that it's moving the needle on the things that matter.

Um I think the last thing that is just more of like a I don't know, some of the way I'm thinking about stuff.

I think you know you'll you'll hear a lot of stuff about AI in the in the class or otherwise, and when I see like these chat bots and stuff, you know, people think.

Remember when like you were like around when the internet was AOL?

Um, I feel that's sort of how I feel about like AI is just sort of chat bots, and we're we're really in the early days, and I think there's a lot of potential for frankly, hopefully maybe there'll be some slimy products, but hopefully there's a lot of potential, I think, for better, better products to merge for things to for us to move like beyond AOL when it comes to AI tools.

And that's kind of what motivates me is like I think we can build things more thoughtfully, and I'm really really grateful to have had the opportunity to do that in this district.

Perfect.

So one of the things that we wanted to do today is we talk about AI, there's a lot of different uses for AI, but we wanted to highlight one of the areas where we have it with students using it as a learning tool.

And write on is definitely um one of those areas where we're seeing some great um growth and improvement in students using it as a learning tool.

So we want to set this up and set it up as a workshop session for any questions that you guys have about what how Perry's set this up or about anything uh that we're doing with it in the district later in the board meeting.

There's a regular agenda item where we'll talk more about uh kind of the teacher um use of AI on the teacher side of things.

Yeah, yeah.

I only use chat.

I I when I use it, and I'll say like so when I when I use uh ChatGPT, I'll I'll say like fix my story or my paragraph or whatever, and it pops out this like amazing perfect thing.

So I have to I kind of have to dumb it down, like sound like me.

Yeah.

Me too.

How so when does when they're doing this, when does it when they keep getting like feedback, when is it good enough?

Is it gonna keep making them like frustrated to have to keep going, or is it like when does it become good enough?

Are they just gonna be like, gosh, this never ends?

Or like how do like what's what's the ending point for them?

What a great question.

This is like I put on my product geek hat because I've believe it or not, it's been like months test doing this problem.

The long story shorts like how this works is like we ask, you know, uh using like an API, we ask it to like give us the star rating to put to have it to move forward.

We there is sort of a clarity around like a mini rubric whenever we pass it that three is they've satisfied the instructions of so for a topic sentence, you'll see like a in uh it says state and opinion, whatever.

You should have done that, and we were not gonna move you and give you three stars if you haven't, if you completely haven't.

And this is also a big benefit of being a classroom tool.

You can raise a teacher, there's also a teacher interface you don't see.

They can see when kids are stuck and move over and help them, which is very, very important.

But we also do reward effort.

So we we actually have in the script, like if the kid has tried a bunch of times and has made improvement, move them forward.

We also have a skip button that I think it's after eight attempts, five, I think it's not actually five attempts.

If you've tried a bunch of times, you can skip and move on.

And that's sort of like an escape patch in case a kid is just really frustrated, lets them move on.

So the short the long story short is like high level, it's good enough, it doesn't have to be perfectly written, it has to just satisfy the instructions, which for an idea, like for a topic sentence, state it clearly.

For spelling, we are not gonna like you you need to spell things right.

Um, because it won't no matter what have satisfied it.

But if after a bunch of times we're like, are you sure this word's spelled right?

You sure, you could you know, raise your hand, get the teacher over and get it with them.

That's a great question.

It's super nuanced.

True.

Trustee clapping.

So I I just wanted to point out one of the things that really um what when we first met with Perry and he was explaining this product, one of the things that I think is the most important with what it is doing and providing is that it is not creating a student's voice to be like so that every kid is basically answering and talking in the same way.

It it is really the student's voice and just continuing to encourage them to grow on that.

And and to me, that was just really important.

Because I don't I don't want 25 kids in a classroom who all end up writing in the exact same style and the exact same tone.

I just I think that's such an important part of this product, too.

And I think in in some way, kind of related to the question of like what is that endpoint?

Well, it isn't the same for every single kid, right?

It they're continuing to kind of push in their own way in their own style, but at some point you have to have some kind of like what what is the end?

Have you satisfied certain criteria?

So that was just a really important thing for me when we first decided to move forward with this.

Well, um, clarifying question.

So, what I'm understanding though is like um how trusty Clapham said that you can put into chat GPT, here's my sentence, fix this, or rewrite this.

You can't really do that here, though, right?

It's it's going to move them on the way, but it's not actually rewriting it.

That and that's the exactly and that our sort of thesis is that like as a as grown-ups, I think that's acceptable to be like, can you rewrite this for me?

But if a kid it's acceptable because we know what good writing looks like because we were taught how to write.

My big worry is if kids are not taught how to write.

So a big core thing about how this is built is you have to do, we never tell you what to write.

The most we'll do is there's an I'm stuck button, we'll maybe give you a sentence stem, like how to start the sentence, but we'll never tell you what to write.

And this forces you, you have to write it yourself, and it's gonna give you a really specific thing to fix.

Um, you revise it and then you fix it.

So, and then the one thing I'd like to see though is the if it was a spelling error.

Okay, what does that look like then?

So it's a spelling error, does it strike it through the word and then give them the correct spelling, or how does that um I'd have to go all the way to the end, but it basically looks just like um uh let me give a first reason?

I don't know.

This is a pretty bad piece of evidence, but I just want to show you what it looks like for something else.

Okay.

So you'll see how it highlights the thing to fix.

So it'll just do exactly that for spelling.

And typically if there's five spelling errors, it'll highlight all five spelling errors and be like, do these words look right to you?

Um and then you you go and fix them and then you submit it.

But if they don't know how to spell it, how would they go and fix them?

Uh the second time we will get more specific.

So that's another thing.

So how this is sort of designed is like we'll give you a high level like or not high level, like specific thing, but like how might you make this better?

If the kid, if the student doesn't satisfy that, like doesn't solve it, we're gonna get a little bit more specific.

Okay.

Um also, and again, on sp on certain things, you know, student can also just raise their hand and ask the teacher.

But um we do we'll we'll progressively sort of guide them and get them closer to the spelling error or the spell the yeah, getting spelling right.

Just you oh, just east to teaching.

Well, I love this as a former English teacher.

One of the reasons I left the classroom is because I just got so exhausted giving feedback on my students' writing.

And to me, that's the most important thing when you're sitting in your English class, is can you write and express your ideas?

So I remember the like old school AI, I could my kids would use this program, and I'm sure it was based on AI, and it would correct like their spelling and tell them, but it never wasn't smart enough to check for content, right?

So they could get an A on a paper and not talk about anything on topic because the program wasn't able to do that.

So I love this.

I think this is gonna be um very helpful for our students.

Um, of course, my my question's always like, how much are we caught?

Is it costing us, right?

Which I'm sure we're gonna we're talking about later.

But to me, writing is probably the most important thing that we teach our students, um, whether it be you know on their phones or whether it be sending in a memo or whether it be evaluating an employee, right?

We have to be good communicators, so I appreciate it.

Thank you, that means a lot.

Thank you.

Trust your mirrors.

Trust your robber.

No questions, just echoing Statuki with I feel like you've thought of everything.

This is a great balance of helping guide them, but not doing it for them, which is so important.

Um, so just amazing thought and work on this.

Thank you so much.

Trust me, Clappin' then.

Is this in the high school as well?

As we go into next school year, it'll be open to all uh of the schools.

I think this year we had some high school usage.

A little bit.

I think it was most it was we'll make it available to everyone.

It was I would say disproportionately used by late elementary, middle, and ESL or Yale.

More than more than high school, but there was some use.

And then is it um just select teachers that are like, I want to put this in my classroom, or is this like, hey, show the kids how to use this, or is it what's how you do it?

Yeah, this year it has been like I said, a slow rollout, kind of an organic grassroots rollout, if you will.

Um and so it's kind of been word of mouth.

Um, we would put out uh some information early on and looked for some volunteers who are interested in coming.

It was a very small group that came and then it's spread from there.

As we go into next year, and the product has been further refined, and our our practices around it have been further refined.

Now we're ready to be able to say, okay, all teachers, here's a tool that you can use.

And I think it's important when we talk about this tool, and we'll talk about other AI tools later tonight.

It we really trust our teachers, our practitioners that are the experts in their craft.

And here's a tool, we're not going to uh mandate that you use it or mandate mandate that you use it a certain way.

We're gonna provide this tool for you.

And if the tool is actually good, you'll use it, right?

Because you see the value and the benefit of it.

So that's um how we look at rolling things forward.

A couple of the nice things that this does is teachers can really put in the rubric that they want.

It can be an AP level rubric that it'll give the students feedback on, as I'm sure trustee statuki trying to teach AP students, that's a lot of essays to write or to read and provide feedback on.

And the AP exam, like students have very specific things they've got to do.

This can give feedback on an AP exam level stuff.

It can also give feedback to a third grader on, you know, that's just trying to write a good sentence.

Um, and we've also at the elementary, I know we've talked with with you all um extensively about the elementary curriculum, the CKLA curriculum.

So we have uploaded a lot of the CKLA writing prompts into write-on so teachers can just select those prompts and rubrics that are there.

So we're really aligning the writing practice with the instructional materials that they're using as well.

Great, thank you.

Trustee Peterson.

Brandon, did you get to say what you I know before we started commenting our questions?

Oh, I were wondering.

I was gonna share some.

We had talked a little bit about the prompts it gives and what the teachers do.

And sometimes I think teachers with tools like this, some people might think, oh, well, okay, so what's the teacher gonna do?

Just give the kids an assignment on write-on, sit behind their desk, sip their coffee while they while write on does the work, right?

Um the teachers who have used it have said, actually, I'm up and busier than I am in other ways.

Um, and I because I get lots of questions, but the questions that I get from the students are more specific because they're getting very specific feedback.

And so instead of the students just saying, I don't get it, or I need help, the students are saying, I'm stuck on providing better evidence.

I've tried this, I've tried right.

So they're getting a lot better um, they're able to better understand their own writing process and ask better questions.

Another thing that I had not thought of until a teacher brought it to my attention is often if you are giving a short writing prompt in class, and you say, tell the students, okay, write write these three sentences on whatever, and then as you get that done, come and see me and I'll give you feedback.

The teacher's trying to give feedback right there in class instead of a long essay feedback, that's great, but the thing is the students who get the most feedback are your best writers because they finish those three sentences first and go up to the teacher and get more feedback.

Your most struggling students get the least amount of feedback.

Obviously, not an effective way to do it.

In this way, every student is getting feedback, not just the students that always want to raise their hand or the students that run up to the teacher because they've got something finished.

So that this gives feedback to everybody and enables the teachers or the students to ask better questions.

To me, is just evidence that it's really improving the thinking that our students are doing.

Thank you.

Um my question is um what you've walked us through so far, we're on step two, um, and it's it's guiding them.

First we're doing this, then we're doing this, now we're doing this.

Is this something that if students tried on their own to come up with all of it and then ran it through here?

Is there an option for that rather than having to build it through here every step of the way?

Can they take what they've written and ask for feedback?

Yes in this program.

Yeah, great question.

Um when you set up an assignment, you can you you add the prompt, and then you can set it up as scaffolded or unscaffolded, is what we call it.

If you do it unscaffolded, it's basically it's not gonna walk you through write your topic sentence, do this, do this.

It's gonna say write your draft, and then it's going to, but it's gonna still, so it'll do you know if the steps are drafting and then revising the proofreading, it'll still deal with the revising and the proofreading.

So you're still gonna be like it's still gonna look through the whole essay, think through the ideas and the structure, and then do the proofreading.

So, yes, um, it works either way.

Trustee partner.

It's it sounds like a great product, but I do have a question on your EL students.

Who are just coming in country say and don't speak any English.

How's that gonna assist them?

I know Kaylee, you you teach uh EAL, so maybe you've had experience with that.

Um, I I actually do thank you for addressing that.

Um I did have a student who was um very new to the country, and what we were doing is him and I were working together.

We were utilizing his um EL dictionary, and we were going through the process.

So he would utilize um, he would utilize Google Translate to help me express what it is that he was doing.

He was actually writing as well in Spanish.

He would take what he was trying to translate and put it into the system.

So he was getting it, he was discussing it in Word through Spanish.

He would translate it and then put it into the system.

So he was getting the cross-comparison with both of the languages, and then we were utilizing the Spanish dictionary to help him translate everything all the way through.

Um and then I also wanted to address that I didn't get to, and I'm so sorry, the data aspect of all of this.

So on the teacher side, when you get through all of these steps, and the student it gives you all of the stars and says, You are done, you've completed this.

From the teacher side, I can print out all of these.

It gives me every single one of the the feedbacks that all of the students had received.

Um, and then I get their final drafts, and what I was able to do was utilize those final drafts for their writing portfolios.

And so my students were actually they were able to see how their writing progressed through each one of these write-on stories that they were creating, and my students had the buy-in with that too.

They were all they were able to see their growth through their portfolios, which was pretty cool for them as well.

So thank you.

No, thank you.

I do have just probably one more.

Are there any other schools that are using this program right now?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

How many?

There's we're we're new to be clear.

Um, so I incubated this, we incubated this here.

I went to a conference in Southern California and we got a few dozen schools that are using it down there.

But this is a really like we're less than a year old, and this last year has really been focused on making sure the product works.

So it's pretty new.

Is it evidence-based then based upon what other companies are doing?

Um it's it's a good question.

I would say it's it's based on principles of writing.

So based in terms of evidence-based, yeah.

Like the ev every pretty much every design decision is based on whether it's I've talked to some of the preeminent professors who teach writing at one is at ASU, one is at Stanford.

I think you've integrated their feedback on everything from overall design to like what makes a good piece of feedback.

Turns out is it's a very interesting uh question, and so that's been iterated on.

We've incorporated the best practices from um books like the writing revolution that have been really prescriptive about how to write the rubrics or like how the steps are broken down.

We typically align that, for example, to like what the criteria for SPAC um try to incorporate similar wording, and we might even do that with some other writing rubrics.

So there's um whether that or research on cognitive load, research, like all that is baked baked into the product.

Um other companies I don't think do this well.

So I wanted to and also just anecdotally just working with just a lot of really great teachers and incorporating their feedback in the field and seeing how kids respond and and what works.

So it's it's it's a integrating both.

Um my question is I know this is an online web-based program, but it how compatible is it with like a cell phone?

Because I know a lot of students actually do their homework on a cell phone.

It's not really.

You gotta have a big screen.

You can work on a on a um tablet.

It works on a tablet.

Um, but yeah, it does not work on a phone.

It's something we're thinking about building, but given I think it's pretty common for students to do their work on, or at least they all have access to one.

So we would do it there.

Also cell phones also when it comes to spelling, like fixing a spelling.

I don't know.

So we may we may build that this year, but right now it's basically laptop and tablet only.

Uh I guess I ask you about how many schools are using it in any schools in Nevada right now using this program.

There are a couple schools in Washow that are using it.

Um, but that's it.

Well, thank you.

Uh, we appreciate your time.

It's a it looks like it's a great product.

Um, very glad to hear from somebody um that's using it here in Carson City School District.

So thank you for your time as well for coming.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thank you.

At this time we will go ahead and take a five minute recess and we'll see you at six o'clock.

Oh, yeah, I don't know.

This time we're going to go ahead and call.

Um, I need a motion to adopt to adopt the agenda.

Do I have a motion to adopt the agenda?

That was moved by who?

Oh, trustee Ramirez.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Second by Trustee Varner.

Board discussion.

Public comment.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Motion passes unanimously.

Item uh agenda item number two, flag salute.

This will be uh by Trustee Peterson.

Liberty and Justice.

Thank you.

Moving on to agenda item number three, superintendent's report.

This is for information only, uh Superintendent Fueling.

Uh thank you, President Walt.

Uh just uh enjoying a rather busy few weeks after school.

Normally this time of year, things start to slow down.

Um Mr.

Brighurst had other ideas, and he has been piling in all sorts of amazing opportunities to uh get our staff excited and learn a little bit more about uh a lot of the things that'll be rolling out next year.

So it's actually been uh uh great some great trainings and getting some great feedback from staff.

So very excited about that.

Otherwise, uh looking forward to uh 250th anniversary, which is not too far away.

So thank you.

That's all I have.

No, oh no, sorry.

We have guests.

I'm sorry, everyone.

Yeah, it has been a couple weeks.

Um so this evening we have uh sorry, Mr.

Renee.

We have some uh some folks new to the district that we are very excited to introduce to you all.

Um and we will start first.

We have our new transportation manager, Mr.

Brian Linford.

Brian, you want to come up here and just introduce yourself to the board and a little background on yourself?

Can you keep it under 20 minutes?

Okay.

And thought I was gonna be able to stay retired, eventually I became the director of transportation for Douglas County School District.

Yeah, for five and a half years, try to retire again.

And then um I had the opportunity to teach at Douglas High School as auto teacher.

So I did that for a few years and then last year I tried to retire for a third time.

And this opportunity, um, I saw this opportunity.

I thought, well, you know, I think I think I can make a difference.

I think I could um assist the transportation department and the and the school district and the students and the parents.

So anyway.

That's blue about me.

You have any questions for me?

Uh no, I don't have any questions, but welcome and we're happy to have you here in Carson City.

Thank you.

And I hope you do better than you have in retirement.

Yeah, thank you.

Um next, actually, I should just have our our new principals come up.

If I have Mr.

Mark Robinson who can come up and Jennifer Conme.

Mr.

Robinson is going to be our new principal at Carson Middle School.

Uh, coming here from far away, far far away lands.

And Jennifer Conme will be our new principal at Fremont Elementary School, coming from we'll just say far away lands, not far, far away.

Just over the hill.

So, um, Jennifer, if you want to start, just introduce yourself a little bit for the word.

Okay, well, good evening.

I'm excited to be here.

So I'm Jennifer Conme.

I am moving here from Southern California.

It's my 27th year in education.

I was an elementary school teacher for 16 years, and then um an assistant principal at a middle school for three years.

And then I've been an elementary principal for the last eight years.

I absolutely love it.

Education is my passion.

It's sort of who I am and where I find my happiness.

So I'm really excited to join the Fremont team.

I've been really lucky because I've had the opportunity to visit the school during my spring break.

So I got to meet staff, a few students, a couple parents.

So I'm looking forward to meeting everybody on a deeper level.

Relationships are important to me.

So that will be one of the first things that I will be doing, is being available to the whole school community.

I also got to go to the Avid conference recently.

And so I had an opportunity to really bond with some of the staff members.

Right off the bat, I can just see what amazing educators they are.

They're really dedicated to their school and their students, which makes me really excited because I can see their passion and their dedication, and that aligns with who I am and what I want to create at a school as well.

So I look forward to meeting the whole school community this upcoming summer fall, since we start in August.

And really truly just to be a part of Fremont School community and make sure kids have fun and love school.

That's that's my passion.

So it's nice to meet you all.

My name is Mark Robinson, and I'm coming to you from Austin, Texas.

I was fortunate enough to be able to retire after a 30 year career in public education in Texas.

The last nine were as uh the high school principal at Bowie High School, the largest high school in Austin, Texas.

Um before that, I was a middle school principal for six years at the uh at a one high school district just on the west side of Austin, Texas.

I was at Hudson Mid Middle School.

Really loved that school community, only left it for the opportunity that had to be a high school principal.

Um 15 years as a campus principal.

Uh I can say half of my career.

Um before that, I was a uh assistant principal in Lake Travis ISD.

I was a district administrator in Arlington, Texas.

I was kind of a classroom management specialist as uh like an instructional coach, but more on like the behavior management side.

Um I spent uh a couple years teaching high school social studies and um was uh eighth grade social studies teacher at an alternative school.

That was my first opportunity to be in public education, um, and so there I taught eighth grade social studies and social skills, just given the nature of the school.

Um I am thrilled to be able to be here in Carson City to continue to do the work that I love with the kids here, um, the families, the teachers, and just really contribute to the school community here in Carson.

I would like to also uh introduce my wife, Leah.

She just accepted a first grade teaching position at Mark Twain Elementary, and so we are really excited to be a part of this great district.

Thank you.

Uh well, thank you for coming this evening and introducing yourselves.

We greatly appreciate your time during the summer.

Um, and we welcome you.

Uh yes, I think you will find Carson City to be wonderful, and most importantly, you will find this school district to be the best.

So, thank you for for joining us.

Anybody else?

No, just uh welcome.

Uh, we're looking forward to working with each and every one of you.

And uh I know we'll see you before the board on on occasion.

Probably more than you'd like.

But uh thank you for uh all your past work.

You both have uh really good resumes, and I think that we probably did very well by you know pick you guys up and hire you for the positions you're in.

So just thank you for accepting the job I guess.

You guys are all filling deep shoes of of people who have been with us all three of you people who've been with us for a very long time and so change is exciting.

Excited to see you guys thrive here in Excel and welcome to the CCSD.

Well thank you and enjoy uh the your summer I don't know how much summer principals get but hey go it's almost over so hope you enjoyed it yes but thank you again and and we look forward to seeing you.

And that truly does conclude my report.

Are you sure we'll ask Renee that's all we have all right well thank you.

Um all right so we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item number four this is board report uh board member comments for information only do we have a NASBY a port report uh no not really uh everyone should have received their newsletter and so just go through that and uh there again we're just uh getting ready to gear up for the training in September and then the main conference in December that's all I have anybody else with any reports go ahead or we'll say um I have one from Miss Pryor at Al Sealager.

She said she wanted to make sure that our board knew um that the district leadership utilize the Nevada Department of Education district improvement grant to bring three professional learning opportunities to Carson City the first was a two-day leadership training provided by the Covey Institute for all administrators and aspiring administrators across the district the second third trainings focused on strengthening our understanding and implementation of collaborative teams key areas of learning included maintaining a focus on learning and results aligning our work around our district vision and mission and developing systems and processes that will support meaningful collaboration moving forward all focused on results student and adult learning these trainings were extremely beneficial as they prepare for the next year and their continued focus on improving student outcomes through dedicated collaboration time on Tuesdays.

They're excited to put their learning into action and build stronger systems that support both staff and student success so this is probably a shout out to Mr.

Bringhurst more than anybody else right you already got a shout out earlier but they really appreciated the training that they um received I don't have a report from the schools I did tell the principals that I would not bother them until sometime in August but I do want to um say thank you to Mr Chambers for inviting us to attend the adult graduate education graduation at NCC it was a very nice ceremony.

I I think we all you know are very proud of those students that took advantage of of that uh program.

And then I also want to uh say thank you to Planet Fitness uh for giving our students the opportunity to go work out for free uh during the summer I think it's extremely uh important to keep those um students busy and and it was very generous of them to welcome our students from age 14 through 18 to work out for free so kudos to to them for for um for doing that and and I think of for their partnership.

That's all right thank you.

Okay.

I just have one brief um I I'm agree I'm not bothering the schools for a little while, but I did have a mother um offer up to me.

She said, if you would like to have something kind of fun to report um this is a graduate who graduated last year, class of 25, Eleanor Romeo.

She with a congressional endorsement was accepted into the United States Merchant Marine Academy in New York, where she's training to be a military officer.

She also is one of our runners.

She was on our um a distance runner in track and a cross-country runner.

And each year, all athletes in their debut season in the entire college have an opportunity to be selected as the rookie of the year.

It's called the Julie Burke Rookie of the Year Award.

And Eleanor Romeo, out of all athletes, all female athletes in the entire freshman class was chosen as their rookie of the year for cross country and track specifically, but out of all athletes, she was selected.

So as a recent Carson High grad, her mom thought that we might like to know that our little birdies who have flown the nest are out there thriving and and still living up to what we know they can achieve.

Awesome.

Thank you for sharing.

I don't have a report, but that just goes to show that uh we have a lot of great kids that come through our school district, and we're proud of each and every one of them.

And uh also uh you mentioned the graduation for the adult ads in the prison.

That was a nice ceremony.

And it's good to see um the individuals who are not only younger but really older, I would say.

I can say that because I am older.

But anyway, uh to go ahead and finish their uh high school education.

And uh, you know, it's really a nice ceremony to see everybody that uh took the time and effort to do that.

So I'm glad that we had that program.

Great, thank you.

Um the only report I had is that we did have a um a joint meeting with open space advisory committee and the parks and rec commission as I sit um as a school board liaison as a commissioner on that.

Um we had presentations from um for the Silver Saddle Ranch.

We also had a presentation for the Nevada Starry Skies program, and um also about the Carson River Master Plan.

So they're starting Carson River Master Plan, which I think will be great as well.

All of that is posted on the Carson City website, but it also brought up there there's plenty um of opportunities that they're looking for still more student involvement.

Um I know we uh got involved with the park ranger program, but there's also um they would like to see more student involvement.

So I asked if we could, you know, possibly if they would reach out to you as well to get that, and then um the opportunities of them to possibly um set up some tables or something at back to school nights because there's so much going on with Parks and Rec in open space that I think it would be you know great that we if we can get the kids there, then we're gonna be able to get the parents there.

So I think if I've asked Greg Berglin to reach out to you as well as Jennifer Budge.

We also um had a presentation um on the budget, and um you all probably read that they did get the grant for Mills Park master plan, so that looks like it's gonna be moving forward, and we're extremely um fortunate that uh Congressman Amade uh backed that as well.

The one thing on my end, what I'd asked for is there they have a lot of projects going on, and they're going to be um adding lights to the tennis courts out at Centennial.

And I just mentioned that there is one youth sport that doesn't seem to have lighting, and that would be soccer, and so um, you know, if there's a possibility that they would look at possibly getting some lights out at um at Pete Livermore because those kids are playing soccer and then they see the softball lights going on and they're playing soccer in the desk.

So that was something that I had asked that if they could possibly um, you know, maybe move that up on their financial agenda a little bit to get, I think would be beneficial to our youth.

So that was all I had for Parks and R.

All right.

Um, all right, seeing no more.

Uh, we'll move on to agenda item number five association reports.

Do we have anybody from the association for discussion only seeing none?

Um, we'll move on to agenda item number six.

This is public comment.

I did not get any written uh names down.

Renee, did we have any public comment?

No, President Walt, there were no email public comments received.

All right, public comment in the room.

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

And this is a presentation of possible action to approve the renewal of our property casualty and insurance package with Nevada Public Agency insurance poll for a total program cost, including all pool services not to exceed one, thirty thousand two hundred and fifty-seven dollars and seven cents.

Self-insurance bond in an amount not to exceed six thousand in excess of workers' compensation policy with the star insurance company in an amount not to exceed 35,745.32 cents for the July 1st, 2026 through the June 30, 2027 is budget budgeted.

This is for possible action, and it's being presented by Ann Sear, Spencer Winward, Ryan Garvinta, and Wayne Carlson.

Thank you for joining us.

Good evening, President Walt, members of the board, members of the school community, and SEER for the record.

And you all have the coverage summary that was included in your board packets.

I'll go over some of the key highlights, and then if you have any questions for us, uh we can address those at that time.

So included in your coverage summary, you'll note that the blanket property coverage limit was increased from 300 million to 500 million.

That covers all of the public entities that are covered under the pools uh coverage form.

Uh the earthquake coverage was increased to 150 million.

And there was another change or cybersecurity risk coverage is now at 1 million per occurrence, up to 15 million aggregate for all pool members.

We also have included environmental liability coverage and student accident coverage.

The student accident coverage is something that is used periodically through our families who have students participating in athletic events or are injured in PE class or just have a slip and fall at school, and they are either underinsured or uninsured, and this coverage will drop in and provide some protection for those types of incidents.

As mentioned, the total cost of the program is at 1,030,257.07.

Last year the program cost was at 959,633.

So it's up about just a little over 7%.

This can be attributed primarily to an increase in the rateable exposures.

So the total member contribution is determined by applying a rate to the exposures.

So you know how big we are, right?

And the payroll did go up by about a little almost three million, went from uh 58 to 61.

Uh, and then the total insured property values went from 355,920.186 up to 428,963,903.

So property values, total insured property values increased by over 73 million dollars.

So that is really the most significant piece that led to that um increase.

Um but overall it's it's a very good uh outcome.

Towards the end of your packet, you'll see a uh review of the risk management benefits and services.

So I think most of you are familiar with with the pool and the benefit of the pools, uh, how this program is structured.

I'll just briefly touch on it in case you haven't heard about it at your NASBE programs, but this is not a traditional, you know, insurance program.

This is a municipal risk sharing program.

So all of the most of the municipalities in the state of Nevada participate in this program.

And that is done through signing an interlocal cooperation agreement.

This school district entered this program in 2010, so they have been a participating member of what is essentially like a co-op.

All of these public entities pool their resources together, and then they purchase insurance.

It's marketed as a group.

Schools nationwide are really struggling with coverages such as the sexual and molestation coverage or what we call SAM.

A lot of school districts no longer have that coverage, or they have very high deductibles.

The pool has been able to maintain that coverage over the years, and that's a really important component of your liability coverage.

So aside from the coverages, they also pool those resources and those funds to arrange for risk management services and programs that they provide to all of the members.

And you may, if you've been here at prior board meetings where we've been presented with risk management excellence recognition awards, those have been received several times through that committee.

Just recently, we received a risk management grant from the pool to fund the replacement of our camera system on all of our buses.

So those cameras were just recently installed over the past month, and that is a terrific benefit to us because the existing surveillance system on the buses was really at end of life and failing quite frequently.

So we're very grateful to have the opportunity to take advantage of that grant program.

The online safety training, we use that every year.

So we're very fortunate to be a member of this organization.

Is there anything that you would like to add, Spencer?

Or not at this time.

Okay.

But we do welcome any any questions the pool.

And I think he also had some little uh tokens that he would like to present.

Yes, thank you.

Yep.

For the record, Wayne, the executive director of the pool.

Um, want to brag on the district for a moment on one item, and that's the e-learning completion rate.

I'm sorry, can you get closer to the microphone?

The e-learning completion rate for the courses, uh, your folks took three thousand eight hundred and seventy-two courses and a completion rate of ninety-two percent.

So that's pretty pretty high percentage, and it's been consistent that way for a few years, so congratulations on that.

Um we are uh as a pool, and I was involved in the beginning of the pool, and we're at our 39th year.

We're also celebrating a sister program we have for work comp, which is 30 years.

So we made these uh medallions to recognize both programs, and around the edge of the coin is the values that we've embraced as a board as a membership, and so I will hand these out the appropriate way to all of you folks, and uh it's it's uh it's been very interesting because in 1985 I had to get the legislation passed to even enable risk sharing pools, because prior to that you would had to buy it from commercial insurance, and at the time, commercial insurance abandoned public entities dramatically, or if they were able to keep an account, the price went up almost tenfold in some cases.

So when we got the legislation passed, and then some of our brave counties signed on, and we grew from there, and we were successful with the cities and counties that were there from the beginning, and then some school districts started hearing about all the great things that cities and counties were getting and said, how about us?

So we had to go to the markets to convince them that school districts were an acceptable risk as well, and in 1997, we added uh quite a number of the school districts uh as members, and you guys came on as Ann said in 2010.

So it's been a successful program.

We have all the 15 uh rural school districts are participating in the program, and they are uh collectively getting the hazard vulnerability assessments uh assistance with uh updating their emergency op plans and uh the no before, which is an anti-fishing uh campaign.

It's not with a fishing rod, but with those hackers, and that's successful.

Um you guys have had fishing campaigns, and if you haven't, you probably didn't make a mistake.

If you made a mistake and clicked on one of those, you would have been sent to training, not to a hacker, so that's the importance of that.

We did have some challenges this year in the renewal, uh, because our cyber market uh decided to exit the cyber risk world, and so we had to go shopping to replace that.

We were successful in getting two proposals to uh replace that program, and so the membership collectively bears substantial amount of the risk out of our own self-insured funds, but we were able to get reinsurance on top of that, so that that was a successful uh endeavor.

Uh when we go to market, and I've just put some perspective in there for property, uh, you have almost 429 million of property values, which include your fleet, as well as all the buildings and contests.

We go to market collectively with almost 9 billion in values, so we have a clout in the market, and we've been in the Lloyd's market for 22 years, so they have had good experience with our members collectively, and uh, and because of that, we get very good terms even in when they're having difficult financial conditions and have to pass rate increases along.

So we were able to get a rate decrease.

So it kind of offset some of that property value increase that you had because we got the rate decrease, so that helped mitigate the costs for everyone.

And so that's an important part of it is establishing those long-term relationships.

And sometimes you have a bad year, and sometimes you have good years, and hopefully there's more good than bad so that we can keep the price stable.

So that's part of our objective in uh doing that.

So Anna's right.

We do offer a ton of services, and you guys take advantage of them.

And in fact, the fact that she sits on the enterprise risk management committee means that some of those services bubble up through that committee.

We have a human resource oversight committee, and they are about to finish up their model policies for all of our members, and they do them by type of entity.

So the school district policies are always a challenge because there's unique laws related to school districts, and they're about to finish those up.

Hopefully release them next week, if not sooner.

But they do that every year to keep them current.

So look forward to that bothering your HR department so that they have some guidance on updating any HR policies that are necessary.

So with that, I'll be quiet.

Well, thank you very much, and thank you for joining us this evening.

We'll go ahead and start with questions here with Trusty Varner.

Thank you very much.

Is that correct?

So rateable exposures?

Salaries is one of the tools that they use.

The biggest driver of that though is our property value.

Payroll uh reported to the pool last year was fifty-eight million, two hundred and fifty thousand two fifty-nine.

This year it was at sixty-one million two hundred and thirty-five six sixty-nine.

I was just wondering if it's based solely on salaries or the amount of people that we have employed.

Yeah.

So they have a way of uh calculating total payroll based on FTEs, so they take total hours and kind of work that into a number.

Because I was just thinking, you know, our salaries increase mainly because everybody got a pretty substantial pay raise, and we didn't bring a lot more people on, and uh, and then also uh thank you for that.

Uh who does the property evaluations or valuations?

Over this last year, and does somebody physically come out, or is it just every three years we have uh the pool sends a property a professional property appraisal firm out to boots on the ground and actually photograph and measure off and look at the buildings, and we have had um quite a bit of renovations and additions done in our buildings, so that also contributed.

But we also have to consider the inflation, the in the just the environment, the building costs have increased considerably uh during this cycle.

So, you know, they'll be appraised again in another three years, and if inflation on building costs and materials continues on this trend, you know, we could anticipate a similar type of adjustment.

If inflation remains steady and building costs do not increase in the way they have over the past two years.

Um we would still see uh an inflationary adjustment just for like a two percent per year adjustment, but this year that adjustment was um, you know, pretty it was um 20 percent, a little over 20 percent.

Was pretty serious.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering.

How how that came about.

Yeah.

And then uh I don't want to take up all the time, but I have one more question for Spencer.

Uh was this budgeted?

I mean, do we have in the budget already?

Yes, this was budgeted, we anticipated an increase.

Uh this amount does fall under the amount that we have budgeted for it.

Okay, thank you.

On that note though, did I miss how much of an increase was it?

It's about a 7% increase.

So as Mr.

Carlson was explaining, they did some good um the good work that they do, they're able to reduce the cost even though our property values went up.

So property values went up 20%, our overall cost from last year this year was about seven percent.

And the year previous to that it was I'm not gonna give you the percent, but seven thousand dollars total.

So it was it was near near equal last year and this year with that um the the appraisal that would that takes place.

Sometimes we'll see a larger jump on those years where data and additions we've had get to be a little bit more accurately represented in our property values.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

No, yes, go ahead.

Um I was just gonna ask, because it is um most of the increase was based on our property values.

If we had a building that was not being used efficiently and sold the building with the insurance go down, I would have saying three yes, because we're we would be reducing the amount of properties that we are insuring.

Trust your mirror, did you have a question?

Go ahead.

I wasn't sure that you were done.

Okay, so on um the page uh let's see.

How do I reference it?

Uh Nevada on the Nevada Public Agency Insurance pool coverage summary page.

Um, number four, it says exclusion that is specific to PFAS has been added.

What does PFAS stand for?

That's the plastics, what is sticks and plastics and the waters and the soils.

Got it.

Probably more of a concern to a water provider or municipality.

PFAS.

Thank you.

Is that all?

Okay.

So then I have a question too.

Do we look at um have we the facilities ever been evaluated for risk migration opportunities, you know, to reduce the future increase as we continue to see increase?

Do we look at that?

That kind of falls in the umbrella of the other uh services that they offer that and again they focus a lot more on the risk that we can control a lot of it, which is training our personnel.

Um that's where we have a lot more control and and um our facilities are part of that, and looking at things and saying, hey, here's a change that we need to make.

Uh generally those are recommendations that we make, but they typically don't have a real material effect on hey, if you make this change, we're going to reduce your premiums by this amount.

Any of those changes would have already come into place.

There's nothing that's gonna be uh a huge change that would make a material adjustment to our property values.

Most of what they can do is gonna be uh based off of employee behavior and our policy and those type of things that help drive us to be a more efficient um organization as we fulfill our main goal of educating students.

Okay, all right, thank you.

And then you mentioned the grant.

Um very excited.

Congratulations on that.

That's really um I think that's such a need.

So very exciting on that.

Was there um did we have to provide any match funding for that grant or was it 100% 25% match?

So our permission was around 42,000.

Okay, not too bad.

All right, thank you.

Um that's all the questions I had.

Oh, uh Trusty Varner.

Sorry.

What was our loss ratio last year?

I mean, our amount of losses that uh pool pack had to cover.

You have that way.

Uh I don't have the loss information here.

I'd have to go pull the records and take a look.

I believe it's been favorable.

Certainly has been favorable on the property because that's that's one of the key drivers of the rates for the members as a whole is what happens with the property losses.

Yeah, that's what I was curious to.

We hadn't heard of any major damage to your buildings or we haven't had any significant significant property losses, employees really, you know, accidents and stuff like that.

I haven't heard much about loss there, but okay.

Maybe we can get that.

Yeah, thank you.

Anyone else?

Well, again, thank you for your time.

Uh, we appreciate the work that you do for the school district.

Thanks.

Oops.

Oh my goodness.

Come on, can't we just move on?

I'm so sorry.

I know here's Richard.

Like, Polly, are we ready if you're sorry?

This is for possible action.

I'm sure you all didn't want to leave without this being uh voted on.

So do I have a motion to approve or do I have a motion, please?

State the motion.

I can go ahead and make a motion.

I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve as submitted the proposed renewal of property slash casualty insurance package with Nevada Public Agency Insurance Pool for a total program cost, including all pool services not to exceed 1, 30, 257.7 cents, self-insurance bond in an amount not to exceed $6,000.

An excess workers' compensation policy with Star Insurance Company and amount not to exceed $35,750, excuse me, $35,745.32 cents for July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2027 as budgeted.

Do I have a second?

I can't.

Alright, so motion made by Trustee Barner, seconded by Trustee Peterson.

Um do I have any board discussion?

Public comment.

Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Motion passes unanimously.

Now we can move on to item number eight.

Thank you.

I forgot to I forgot to mention also that uh Ryan Garaventa was unable to join us this evening as he is chaperoning a group of uh high school graduates from another school district, but he wanted to tell you all hello and sorry that he had to miss this year.

All right, well, thanks so much.

Appreciate it.

Okay, thank you.

All right, very nice.

Thank you.

All right.

So we'll move on to agenda item number eight.

This is a discussion of possible action to approve proposed changes to CCSD policy 260 recess policy.

This is for second reading.

This is a possible action and presented to us by Christy Perkins.

Good evening.

Good evening, President Walt, members of the board for the record.

Christy Perkins, Director of MTSS Engagement and Student Wellness.

We're here tonight for the second reading of policy 260 based on the feedback from the board and our school community.

There's a few slight changes to the policy that was reviewed two weeks ago, just to ensure alignment with the policy and the newly in stated regulation.

You'll see in the bottom paragraph, the word all was added in front of elementary students, so that wording is accurate across both documents.

Um in addition, after the opportunity for daily recess, we did add morning lunch and afternoon in the policy, which is again in alignment with the regulation.

Um those were the only two changes um from the last time I was here at the at the board meeting.

So can you um I don't have what our suggestions were for the changes, but were they all implemented?

The changes that we had asked for.

Yes, the changes that were discussed um for the regulation, those were added to the regulation, and I think I was able to incorporate all of those suggestions within the regulation.

All right, sorry about that.

Thank you.

We'll go ahead and start with Trustee Roberts.

All right, thank you so much.

It's looking wonderful.

I just have a question.

I don't know how this works.

So it uh, excuse me.

Um it notes the wellness policy two forty-five, but since we also have a regulation, do we need to add that as well?

That it follows um the goals outlined in the district's wellness policy, policy two forty five, as well as the regulation to 60.

Does that make sense?

Since we wrote up that new regulation, I don't think so.

Because it's the same policy and regulation, I think there's the expectation that they're that they go together.

This is what just details it out.

It's just it's kind of unique.

It's not extremely common to have policies or regulations referring to other policies and regulations, but in this case, it I think that's where we're pointing it out and making it more explicit.

Okay, great.

Um thank you for emailing that over to me with the changes.

Everything looked good.

I did have one.

Um we had crossed out intervention before, and that's still in there, so that's my only thing with that.

Everything else looked good to me, and then um I just wanted to clarify for the public because I know this came up a lot since the 45 minutes isn't spelled out in the policy, so there was a lot of concern that we were taking that away.

Um, so I just want to be clear that that's written out in the regulation.

They're still um being given that full time that they were previously before we reworded everything.

Yes, that is correct.

Okay, thank you.

And that was everything I had.

I just wanted to um share my appreciation for you and all of the outlooks that you had on this with it being situational and seeing all of the kids and the different perspectives, and um, it's hard for kids to regulate their emotions, and I'm glad to hear that we're seeing them in those moments, um, and helping them through that rather than taking it as a punishment because they shouldn't be you know losing that for some things they can't control and not always having the supports from home as well.

Um, and I just feel like this was very thoughtfully written out as well as listening to the public comments to our board comments, um, to uh including the admins.

And so I just really appreciate all of your work on this and all of the perspectives that you heard out.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Any other comments, questions?

All right, this is an action item.

Um, so do I have somebody who would like to make a motion?

I can make it all right.

I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approved June 23rd, 2026 as the revised date on policy 260 recess policy.

Thank you.

Do I have a second?

All right, so I have a motion from Trustee Roberts, second from trustee Tatuski, and then I will call for a all in favor or no discussion.

Goodness gracious.

Uh board discussion.

Seeing none.

Public comment.

Seeing none.

All in favor, please say aye.

Posed?

Hearing none, motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

All right, moving on to agenda item number nine.

This is discussion and possible action to approve renewal of agreement between Chartwells Food Service Management Consultant in the Carson City School District for from July 1, 2026 to June 30th, 2027, at a cost to the district of an administrative fee not to exceed 6,747 per month for 10 months and a management fee not to exceed.

Is that right?

10.9 cents.

Okay.

Per meal with funding to come from the national fund.

This is for possible action presented by Spence.

Oh wow.

Oh, nutrition fund.

This is for past possible action.

This is presented by Spencer Winward.

Thank you, Madam President.

Members of the board.

Um, I have just a brief presentation here that's got some nice vibrant vegetables on there.

I felt we're fitting for this.

Um, so again, so kind of how this process works is every five years, we go out to RFP, we select a company.

Based off that selection.

We can continue to work with them for the for the next five years before we have to repeat that RFP process.

We did that at the beginning of last year.

So this is would be starting year two of that five year period.

I believe in the executive summary I call it a contract.

I just want to clarify it's not technically a contract for five years.

It's that opportunity, and then we we have the base contract, and then we have this renewal amendment that comes up each year.

The first year is the contract, and then the following four years would be amendments one through four.

Um with each of these amendments, it kind of goes through a little bit of a process.

We have a committee at the district that uh kind of um that that uh Chartwells, our food service management, presents to has a chance for us to ask questions and see how we're performing.

Um, who renews that, and that happens uh a couple months prior to this meeting.

Uh also this amendment has to be approved by Nevada Department of Agriculture prior to your approval.

They have already given it their stamp of approval.

And then oh, sorry, I had to.

I'm having a moment myself today.

I had a different bullet item, but apparently I didn't press save before I sent it to Miss Renee.

That was just that that our committee looks at it, so and NDA has to approve it, our committee looks at it.

Our committee did recommend to continue with Chart Wells, and then uh my verbiage in here change this.

Um, I don't know if I got I am losing my mind today too.

I'm sorry about that.

So, yes, this would be year two of our five-year agreement of the renewal.

So continue on to the meat and potatoes, pun intended.

Um the price of this, uh I've got here what next year's proposed would be on the top line versus what this year's was, what last year's what was FY25, which was year five of our previous contract.

If you can look at the increases there, they've been pretty minimal and uh have gone right in line with what um inflation has been for uh food type products.

Um so Chartwells is used the West Region CPI inflation amount this year, that was 3.8%, and that's why you're seeing that increase from 10 and a half cents to 10.9 cents per mil, and the admin fee going from 6,500 to 6747 per month.

And I just want to clarify that's for 10 months of the year, the summer months they do not charge us that admin fee.

Um so the increases are right in line with kind of what we're seeing with what's going on in the world.

There's nothing major out there, nothing like, hey, we've got you locked in and we're gonna try and uh jump the price on you.

It's very reasonable for the services they provide and for the the real world market conditions that we're facing.

Any questions about their fees?

All righty, and I just want to talk.

This is definitely not an all-inclusive list, just a couple of items that I felt were kind of important to mention that come with our um arrangement that we have with Chart Wills.

Uh the first thing is they offer a price guarantee.

And so for fiscal year 27, if we don't have 28,000 of profit, then they will refund their uh admin and uh management fees.

So that that's kind of nice, and and they have some, you know, some skin in the game as they want to do well, because if we do well, then they're doing well, and it's it's a very beneficial for both parties in there.

Uh one of the other great things that comes from them is they're a very large organization and they are able to buy in bulk and really flex their buying power in a way that we wouldn't be able to on our own.

And uh we get a fair amount of product rebates uh or savings each month based off of the consumers consumables that we buy.

And that that would be essentially everything that you're gonna see on that lunch tray in front of kids, all those food items, paper products, those kind of things.

They have a very large team that's always out looking to get items for the best cost available.

Uh, just for an example, uh, from the May invoice I was looking at.

Uh our the product gross product costs were 110,000.

Uh after the rebates that Chartwells is able to secure, uh, that was a reduction of $27,000 dollars.

So our total cost there was $83,000.

You multiply that kind of by the nine months out of the year, and it's a very significant savings.

Um certainly, if we were out on our own, maybe we could achieve some of that, but not quite to the the power and the margins that Chartwells is able to do uh being the size of organization that they are.

And then also for for those fees, we have access to two full-time employees uh who help us out with nutrition management.

We've got a certified chef and also a dietitian who are always making sure that we are getting all of the necessities and requirements and following all of the guidelines for the Department of Agriculture and the USDA, so that we're running our program within the regulations and guidelines that we must follow, which are extensive.

And then also making sure that all the different dietary needs of all of our students who may have specific needs are being met.

So any questions?

But I shall wait.

We'll start here with Richard.

I don't have any uh questions, but uh I do want to say that uh I think Chart will spend a good partner for us, and uh I think we should continue.

That'd be my thank you.

Um just for clarification, um, on the packet we received on page three, it talks about what all we are subscribed to, um, lunch program, breakfast program, after school care snack, and summer food service.

Can you clarify?

Um I mean, obviously lunch and breakfast are uh easy, but what do the other two entail?

Uh the after school snack is they do provide some some of those to uh like the boys and girls club, and those that come through they they provide that and then we're compensated from them on that based off of their rates.

Uh they do a snack doesn't entail an entire meal based off of so like each snack they serve doesn't count for the 10 and uh 10.9 cents rebate.

Those are are kind of the the total amount on that and our um uh a la carte sales are all lumped together and then divided by an average meal price to get an average mill uh meal equivalent for those so those and the summer food service program is very limited.

That's just again providing um some limited meals to our summer school participants.

Um so on that the after school snack um that you're saying boys and girls club, do the students pay for those snacks, or we just get rid of those consumption?

Not sure that comes from the students or or if it's from a different organization.

Okay, I think it's through and and I again I don't know if it's the students pay boys and girls club may pay us.

I'm not sure exactly how that works, but there is uh we are compensated for that service provided.

Thank you.

Trusty claffle going down.

Trust you, remember.

Um so with with bringing up the summer school, did I not see though that we are doing a campaign to help fund summer?

So if they're covering it, why would we be doing a campaign to raise funds?

Oh, sorry.

Would you come up to the thank you?

Christy Perkins for the record.

Um we did this summer charge families for summer school services.

However, there are certain populations of students that we are unable to charge, such as our McKinney Vento students, our students in special education, and our EL students are funded in a different capacity.

So if they qualified for summer school, they were not charged.

And then other families who are not in one of those categories, um, that did they did have a fee for per credit that was recouped.

So that won't cover the whole cost of staffing, of course, that we have to provide to supervise the students and do the curriculum.

Um, and then they are just provided a snack, not a full meal.

Um it's just kind of a snack we work with our nutrition program to provide that throughout summer school, but it doesn't cover the whole cost of the program.

And what would be the whole cost of the program?

Would you say I think this would be a great opportunity to plug it out there?

The cost of the summer school program?

No, for the exactly I think we're kind of straight with the the general.

The nutrition uh the entire nutrition program or for summer school?

Summer food service program.

I didn't look at that breakdown exactly.

It's I want to say slightly over $20,000, but that is a I was gonna say right right around $20, I am my guess.

And so that's the campaign that we're seeing in the paper and all that Dan is posted, correct?

And some of that is we get federal reimbursement for.

Okay.

So it's not it's we unfortunately we can't afford just to do that out of the goodness of our hearts.

Right.

So that is structured in a way that we're able to get some federal reimbursement for that.

Okay.

So that that was that was that.

Okay.

Well, thank you for clarifying.

Yeah, thank you for bringing that up.

Um, and so this is looking at um do have we seen an increase or a decrease in participation in comparative years when it comes to the um lunch program?

We have seen a decrease year over year since we had universal free meals.

Okay, we have a budgeted and are anticipating a decrease for next year as well.

Okay, um, all right.

And then um, I think it was last year.

You know, we had gotten some comments about um the nutrition value that is offered at the breakfast and the lunch.

Um we had public comment when this came forward.

Do you know if that nutrition value has increased?

Have we done better?

I I know they're constantly looking at that.

I I would struggle to say that we are deficient in our nutrition value before.

Generally, what we have to do in in following all the guidelines of USDA is it's really easy to make a nutritious meal.

It's very difficult to make a nutritious meal that someone wants to eat.

Our nutrition team is always balancing that, making sure they're staying within the guidelines.

Um, and you know, doing the best they can to make something that that everyone wants to participate in.

And you know, you've got a lot of unique tastes.

You can make something that a lot of people are gonna like, and then a certain segment's not, and you can change it to that certain segment, and you'll always be rotating to to get that.

So they do a lot of data collection, they do a lot of sampling to to get meals and sauces out in front of the kids to have them try it, and the kids can vote and say yay or nay to see if they should work that into the regular menu rotation.

Okay, great.

So they do survey the students here and there.

Yeah, they do some on site programs at specific schools and uh collect a lot of user data.

Um, they can analyze a lot of times what goes in the garbage can and assess a lot from that as well.

All right, well, thank you.

Any other I do have a question for you.

Are you considering doing anything uh to um encourage parents to fill out that application?

Because I I hear that we are low on applications, correct?

We we are we do have some we're kind of game planning to see if there's a way that we can uh help people fill that out.

Uh aside from, I mean, we want to be careful that we don't overload them with information so that they just stop listening to it all together.

But we get a pretty good information campaign now through Parent Square at the beginning of the school year.

Um there's opportunities every time that if a student has a delinquent balance, there's reminders of hey, there's this service you can fill out this form, and you may be able to be competent or receive some uh assistance with your student lunches.

So you know, we we do kind of those blanket things district wide.

Some of the schools send some things out on their own, and then if there's a case where the student um if if they go and get a negative balance, then they're getting opportunities to fill out that paperwork as well.

Um we just sometimes some people choose not to.

So when you're saying fill out that form, is that to qualify for free and reduced lunch?

Yes.

Do we make sure that we do a concerted effort to let our families know that uh qualifying for free and reduced lunch isn't just for um reduced lunches, right?

Like part of that is them being eligible for reduced costs for jump start and AP exams and all these other costs that are associated with qualifying for free and reduced lunch.

We we don't, you know, just let them know it's just to get lunch.

I know we have kind of gotten that information out in the past.

We could maybe uh re revisit our efforts to let them know this is more about free and reduced lunch.

Oh yes, go ahead.

Uh you said you were anticipating another decrease this year.

Is that due to the universal free meals continuing?

I was under the impression they were ending, or is that from something else that you're thinking the decrease will?

Universal free ended a couple of years ago um we we had a couple of schools that were under a CPI designation so everyone ate for free and given their rotation and and the the economic levels of the schools we could no longer continue that so we have um I believe three elementaries that are coming off of the CPI CPE designation so uh just given our data from Carson Middle School this year that came off that designation we saw a decrease in participation there and so we're anticipating that at those other schools as well it'll be interesting to see if it's a similar ratio at the elementary level of secondary or not okay do you know which elementary schools are coming off.

I believe it's Fremont and Fritch and Warwick I'm pretty sure and and uh Elizabeth uh Martinez in our nutrition I know she was communicating with those schools um I I don't know if if she sent out information regarding the change that was going to be coming or the principals did but I know she was coordinating with them to get that information out and to encourage families to fill out the free and reduced applications then.

Okay great.

So then do we just have the is there just one school left on Mark Twain and Empire okay yeah they they there's something they're like combined in their application I don't exactly understand that but um I believe they still have two more years before uh they would be reassessed and taken to consideration.

But it's still important for them as well to fill out these forms.

Yeah and that's the difficult thing is if the kids are getting the lunch for free there's not a driver for them to do that.

Um so we'll we'll see we should see a few more people sign up for it at these schools that no longer are under the neat is the CEP designation getting free lunch but again it and it's just gonna take some time a lot of times it'll be a week or two into the school year the kid the parents will get a notice and like wait lunches aren't free and we see an uptick at that point.

We do our best to to reach out at back to school nights and let people know there's been information that have gone out to parents of these schools as well to let them know or at least to the principals and the principles of control that going to the parents that next year will be different.

Is it part of um is there anything mentioned when they have to do the enrollment you know the online enrollment and you have to update your information is anything on there.

I don't believe it is we're looking into the the possibility of including that I think that would be because every parent has to not that I remember and I've done mine I did not see I think that'd be a great opportunity since every parent has to be there as well as maybe back to school night I know you're filling out some other stuff.

I don't know if that can be a part of that or if that's just not what back for I don't believe it's a part of the online registration process.

I could I could be wrong but that certainly would make sense if we could attach it to that just as long as you're going through that and and just continuing to take advantage of these opportunities.

I know when there's um the beginning of the year and families are coming in to register like this is something that is regularly being offered to them and made aware of and I'm not exactly sure I'd say open house events but I but I do know that a lot of times nutrition will set up tables at some of these events to make sure they get applications out.

So I I think we we do a good job of getting out I think there's always room for improvement and trying to get that word out.

I just wanted to follow up because coming from my high school background we did a massive push every single year for our high school students and most of them never ate lunch on campus.

But they did not we wanted to make sure that they were well educated to know that it again not just like lower cost on AP tests and and things like that but even college admission right a lot of the colleges that they're applying for as a senior if they were designated as free and reduced lunch they didn't have to pay the eighty dollar application fee to apply for a college so really targeting our our high school population because a lot of times they are the ones that we assume they're not eating lunch so they're so we don't push that they're that they need to fill it out but really you know educating them to make sure that they know it's really important that they do uh if they qualify and letting our parents know that it is self-reported um income right they're not asking you to submit your W 2s or you know um income taxes from the previous year so just making sure we're giving our our families all the information they need about all the different uh benefits that come from if they uh qualify for our for being uh FRL.

There's a certain high school principal in the room that is taking note thank you any additional question all right this is for possible action do I have a motion anyone I'll make the motion I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve renewal of agreement between Compass Group Incorporated USA Chartwells Food Service Management Consultant and the Carson City School District from July 1st 2026 to June 30th 2027 at a cost of the district of an administrative fee not to exceed six thousand seven hundred and forty seven dollars per month for 10 months and a management fee not to exceed 0.1090 cents per meal with funding to come from the nutrition fund.

Do I have a second second it was like who's gonna press that button first we have a motion by Trustee Varner a second by trustee Satuki and um do we have board discuss or yeah board discussion seeing none public comment seeing none all in favor please say aye opposed hearing none motion passes unanimously thank you very much Spencer thank you and so we'll move on to agenda item number 10 this is for informational update on AI use in the Carson City School District this is for discussion only this is brought to us by Brandon Bringhurst and Superintendent Fueling.

Good evening Board of Trustees Brandon Bringer's chief academic officer for the record I also brought a couple of um star guests to help with the presentation today we have Dr.

Tanya Scott and uh principal Cheryl Macy that will be sharing some of the information as well.

So a little bit of an update and we talked about some of the AI use in our board workshop but wanted to update on some additional things that we are doing and this is really being guided by board policy 280 which was adopted a couple of years ago and drives the work that we're doing and as you all know AI is changing very quickly and our policy as adopted gives us some great flexibility to be able to respond to the changes of AI in a way that aligns with the policy and direction of the school district.

Within that policy a key component of that is empowering our instructors those that are working directly with students and seeing what they need and what works for our instructors and our students to improve learning for students a couple of key components in that policy also speak to student integrity the academic integrity that's so important the data security component as well as the ability for our staff and students to innovate in ways that align with the technology and the vision of the school district.

It's important, I think a key paradigm that we have here in Carson City school District is that our curriculum comes first.

AI is a tool that comes second.

Our foundation is grounded in the curriculum that we have worked very hard to develop and adopt resources that align with what our students need to know and be able to do.

We have been leveraging AI to not only help with student learning in ways like we discussed with Ride On, but also to focus on how we can gain real efficiency in our the work that our teachers are doing.

Teachers, the more time we can save teachers on some of the administrative paperwork tasks, the more time and energy they have for the work that where they do the real magic in working with our students directly.

Before we talk, we're going to talk about a few tools for that teacher use.

Some of you may be using that as parents, and see that our it's a tool to help our families read with their students in a way that is aligned with the curriculum and instruction that they are receiving in the classroom.

That's something that we started after the spring parent teacher conferences, and we've seen some good success with that so far.

Yeah, so as Brandon said, I think Pluma's a really good example of curriculum first.

And that is you can get any program that maybe has fun stories and kids will read at night and they get points and whatever.

But the fact that it is actually tied to what they are learning every single day in school is is an enormous benefit to them learning all of those skills and and that we are expecting of them.

For Paloma, I think in the first uh I think we are we looked at the data here at the end of the year, and I think it was something like 70, so we really are only rolled it out for I think seven weeks altogether, but 71% of our K through two kinder through second grade families had signed up for it.

And of that, I think 51% were using it at least three times a week.

That kind of engagement on anything we are rolling out to families and asking them is well above anything that we have ever seen.

Um we've received a lot of really good feedback from our principals who are getting it from their families, with very few exceptions.

So that's an exciting, exciting thing, and look forward to that next year.

Perfect.

Okay, so then as we look at the tools that we have available and are supporting and training our teachers on using these tools to help improve their work in preparation, improve how they're able to give feedback, improve just the behind the scenes work that they do.

It's important that we steer them towards tools that we think are both effective and are safe for them to use where we've got some uh digital security around that.

So we lean heavily on our Google Suite because the tools that we use there in Google have the same privacy protections that all of the other Google tools that we have.

So when we use that, unlike if you just use Chat GPT, what you do there kind of goes up into the great AI brain in the sky, right?

When we do things under our school Google account, that does not happen.

And so that data still stays secure.

One of those tools is a tool called Google Gemini, which is in many ways similar to a tool like ChatGPT, which is a great tool for helping uh to create uh documents, and actually, this slide presentation I created using Google Gemini.

So it's something that can help create things, and and do that in less time than you would be doing on your own.

We've spent a lot of time as a district developing a lot of curriculum documents.

I know you guys have heard a lot about our proficiency scales, common assessments, et cetera.

A tool like Google Gemini can refer to those and help build the additional tools that teachers need in a really quick manner.

Connected tool to that are what are called Google Gems, which you can basically train a gym to do a task that you need repeatedly.

If there's a task that you frequently do, you can set up this gem and give it instructions about what it needs to do, and then every time you need to do that task, you access it, and it will do that task for you.

And over time it learns kind of exactly what you want and how you want things to look.

And so it really can reduce the time that our teachers are spending to do this.

In the PLC training that was mentioned in the report by principal prior, part of that PLC training that we got, the trainer gave our teachers some tools to use Google Gemini and Gems to be able to create some of the things that you need in the PLC process, some common formative assessments, ways that it can create some real quick checks for understanding, ways that it can help to analyze the work that your students are doing.

So a lot of this work that in a PLC process sometimes takes that team days, weeks, months to work on together, AI can uh greatly reduce that time while doing it in a way that's aligned with what we want to accomplish with uh the PLC process.

The third Google tool that we use is what's called Notebook LM, and it is um different in that you essentially load into the notebook the brain that you want it to use.

So instead of it going out and finding things on the great worldwide web, it only queries what you tell it to query.

So, for instance, we have a notebook created that has board policies in it.

And so I got a question from Principal Macy about some things with policy and some things she wanted to do, and I was able to query my notebook and have a discussion with Notebook LM.

It showed me exact citations of board policy and how it related to the question that she asked, similar to what we're talking about with how we use AI.

I didn't just copy and paste that and send that to Principal Macy, but that needs to go through me as well, and that human input is an important part of it.

So then I take that and I use add to that my expertise and the vision that we have for Carson City School District, and then I'm able to get an answer that is thorough and aligned with what we need, and get that to principal in much quicker fashion.

Similarly, Notebook LM, if a teacher uploads here's the stuff for this unit, it'll create flashcards for kids.

It'll create an artificial podcast with two people, it sounds like two people that are talking back and forth to each other, and it's totally AI, but they're talking back and forth to each other about the unit that you loaded into it.

So it has some really cool tools and it limits what it creates to what you give to it.

So you have a lot more control over that and kind of eliminate some of the hallucinations that some can be a problem with AI.

I just want to add, I I think this is just an incredibly powerful tool as we've gotten to use it more with the past year and a half.

So in Brandon's example, you're loading that knowledge base.

Now, if you ask it a question, if I would ask Google Gemini, which is using the entire internet for its information, so why is the sky blue?

It will tell me why the sky is blue.

I can't tell you, but it would tell me there's science behind it.

Um, if I would ask this notebook that Brandon has created, why is the sky blue?

It would come back and say, I don't know.

Because the only thing it knows is the knowledge you give it.

So it's it's there are varying uses that I think are really interesting between those.

The next tool uh is outside of Google, and this is a tool called Magic School AI, and it is specifically designed, an AI tool designed for education.

Google is designed for lots of things, not just education.

This is a tool that we provide for our educators designed for education.

Dr.

Scott with our EL teachers has done a lot of work using this tool.

President Watt, members of the board.

I had the privilege this year of um going alongside the EL teachers as they participated in professional learning on Magic School, and then working with them as they used it to refine their practice and kind of streamline their workflow.

When we look at usage, you'll see that it's primarily being used for teach for lesson planning, and what that has come to look like for our teachers is that they're able to use the tool to differentiate for across the different like levels of language development.

So, for example, Magic School Interf, we can interface it with our digital, our online resources, and then we can see how it would be appropriate for students at a level two, a level three, and it does that for us as well as builds in um links to resources that we might access for students at that particular level.

So that's been really a game changer for our English learner teachers.

And another thing we've able to do in the role of the EL teacher is to use it as a tool for um teacher coaching and as teacher leadership, and um we were noticing that this in the tier one instruction, a lot of the student or the teachers were missing opportunities to embed opportunities for discourse, and we were able to, working with Magic School create a tool that would audit a lesson, an X existing lesson, and find places where you could recommend opportunities for students to engage in discourse.

So just kind of some capacity things that we're able to use this year.

You can see on this slide some of the usage of Magic School AI or what um it is being used for, and as was mentioned, uh instructional materials is a big part of that in the planning.

So this isn't necessarily used a lot for student-facing work, but a lot of teacher facing work.

Um this slide showing just the overall usage of it.

You could see there in September when we did training, it was a lot of usage, and then as teachers started using it on their own, you can see that dropped down from that intense training time, but steadily climbed towards the end of the year.

We obviously see a decline towards the end of the year because activities shift towards the end of the year, um, and we spend a lot of time on testing and other things of that sort.

So if you've heard or listened at all to or had discussions around the water cooler around AI, certainly part of those discussions have involved, well, kids are just using this to cheat.

And that is uh something that we are aware of that our policy even um contemplates and talks about the academic integrity, and uh Principal Macy has some details for us on how this is being attacked or addressed it at the high school.

President Walt, members of the board, for the record, my name is Cheryl Macy.

As of July 1st, I'll be principal of Carson High School.

Um, as you can imagine, it's really challenging to tackle academic integrity with AI because the technology moves so much faster than we do.

Um, by the time we have something in place, there is a new technology for students to use, but that's okay because at the root of all things, academic integrity is prevention.

That should be our focus.

And um, can you go to the next slide?

Um, an area where we've really worked on this is in summer school, summer school where kids get credits that they have um lost over the school year, they're doing those classes almost entirely online.

So we're seeing challenges with academic integrity in that setting.

So we have tried a few things this year.

One is we removed the Gemini extension.

And this is because if can you go back to the previous slide?

One of the things that we focus on with academic integrity is ensuring that teachers are using tools that they have available to them, like Go Guardian.

That's on that third bullet there, which is where teachers can see what kids are doing on their screens.

But if you can go to the next slide, thank you.

With the Gemini extension, it happened so quickly, teachers weren't able to see it.

So we removed the extension, students still have access to Gemini, just not through the Google extension.

So it's a little bit longer of a process and allows us to identify it.

We also are piloting in-seat classes for summer school this year, which is allowing us to see if that reduces the amount of academic integrity issues, and it works out really well because it aligns with our PLC work where we have identified essential learning targets and we're focusing on that.

It's not with all classes, it's with a few English math and one social studies class.

And then at the end of summer school, we're we'll review and reflect and see if that's maybe a better process going forward rather than relying on the online classes.

Next slide, please.

Moving forward, our staff has told us in a recent professional learning survey that they want training on how to prevent academic integrity issues.

And it's going to be a fairly deep training, but it's going to focus on things.

How do you structure your assignment to avoid cheating?

There is a ton of research that as long as you are clearly and frequently communicating your value of authentic work, it incidences of cheating go down in the classroom.

And clearly articulating for students when is it appropriate and when is it not?

For example, one teacher may not have a problem with a student using AI to generate ideas, but then maybe they want them to write the paper once they have the ideas.

Another teacher may want them to have the ideas, but maybe you can use AI to help you organize your thoughts.

So having that clarity on when it is and is not appropriate is important.

And of course, we need to teach our students not only how to use AI so that they're competitive when they leave our school system, but how do they use it effectively and how do they use it ethically?

And then we really need to ensure that staff, students, and families are aware of policy 280.

Yeah, that's it.

As uh we have worked with staff on AI, um, we have done some training.

We had an AI um work group in previous years that looked at some of this and some feedback that we got from them has been very important.

One of the pieces of the feedback was as was stated, yes, we want some training, but we don't want that training to take away our collaborative time that we have as a department because that collaborative time is very important.

So that's uh a critical critical component, not only as we move forward with AI training, but all of the training that we do, that we do that without disrupting the collaborative time that is so important for our teachers.

And that part of the feedback was also a couple of different pathways for that training.

We really look at AI and we can kind of clump it into two major areas.

One is just on the teacher side.

How do I as a teacher use this to do my work better and more efficiently?

And the other side is how do I use AI with students and and use it as a tool to help improve their learning?

And so as we move forward with training, training in both of those areas based on what the teachers see they need.

And then having real guardrails to make sure that we are both modeling and teaching our staff on uh how to use it appropriately to be in alignment with privacy regulations that we need to make sure that we are following.

I do.

I think that's a great question.

And that's an area that we uh as was with the previous discussion around uh free and reduced lunch, that parent communication is a challenge.

We sometimes load parents with a lot of communication, it just becomes white noise.

And uh, but we need to be careful that we're not missing and not sharing the information that we need to share.

I think this is an area that continues to evolve and change, and we need to make sure that we're doing a better job of strategically communicating around this policy and how we are strategically using AI.

Questions?

Go ahead.

Uh thank you guys.

Um I always enjoy your presentations.

Thank you.

They're very thorough.

The only question I really have is on the first slide, this says um we empower instructors to make informed decisions about the use of approved uh AI tools.

Uh, who approves the AI tools and how's that process work?

So we work that process closely with our IT department, and Raymond helps to um audit those tools and make sure that they are in alignment with the privacy laws and regulations that we need to follow.

So for instance, as we started to look at onboarding right on, that was a key part of that process.

Was Perry working with Raymond to make sure that everything in that system aligned with the policies and uh regulations that we have governing that?

Yeah.

Um, anyone else?

The only other question I have too is um as we continue and AI has more opportunities out there, you know.

I mean, every day there seems to be another one.

So we talk about today Paloma, we talked about um, I mean, all of these as well.

So my question is where in the budget are these?

So because I know like um we implemented um ploma in the middle of the year, um, the uh the one that we um heard earlier this evening was implemented as well.

So where in the line item is this all in the budget, just so we know that we're not exceeding.

Sure.

Um so Magic School uh like uh came on as a grant uh item a couple years back.

That was kind of soon after AI sort of started happening.

Um Paloma uh is being paid for uh through grants.

Um right on, I think is that through your.

Yeah, right on is through the ed services uh budget and um the magic school, uh it's as was mentioned started there with a grant, but has since moved into the education services um budget.

And and I think it's important too, because I I I very much see your point of you know, it is it we we don't want to be chasing the next shiny thing, right?

Because there's costs that start to add up with that.

But I I feel like um between when when Magic School came on board, we we really that was the only system we knew that was entirely protected in terms of privacy, like all these privacy laws that we have to abide by.

Um, there are many tools just built in there for teachers.

So that that is one that um seemingly has made sense to sustain because and how how much they will help support and build our own customized tools, which is what happened with um Dr.

Scott and the EL department.

Um it but it's uh then later we learned about uh Google with Gemini and Notebook LM because that's in the in the Google enterprise world, which we are a part of, those now also have um as of I think really just I think it was like seven or eight months ago, those are now um have the same privacy protections.

Ploma takes a bit of a different angle with it really being something about parents engaging with parents that we don't otherwise have, um, and and right on that very specific feedback focus um is something that I think it has been um executed incredibly well, although there are potentially opportunities within Magical School to do that sort of thing, um, even in Gemini, but uh I think this setup and getting kids excited about reading our uh writing is is kind of a different angle than just purely giving feedback.

Um he's kind of gamified it and made it made it fun.

So I feel like we we have a couple really good um like big AI systems that can do a lot.

We also have kind of strategically picked a few where I think we can really use some extra help and and hopefully see some bang for our buck.

Um but I don't expect that we're gonna be onboarding six new ones next year and six new ones after that.

Um ultimately there's only so much funds and there's only so much capacity to to learn and use these things.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

And then my next would be, you know, because um they're not consistent with all of the schools.

So I mean, when we introduce one, why do we only do it for one or two schools?

Like the write on is not with all of the schools.

I mean, why aren't we um implementing them like and sharing them with everybody and being consistent, I guess?

Yeah, it's just uh a question of capacity on the rollout.

When we roll something out that goes district wide, it takes a lot more um resources from support from a district level to um roll things out district-wide.

That's one of the things that we consider in do we want to start small or do we want to go across the board?

The other piece is there's a capacity level from the teachers and schools themselves, and we have some teachers and schools that are, hey, I am ready for this and I want to do this.

Uh, and others that if we say, hey, I need you to do this, they're like, I cannot do one more uh thing.

And so we want to be very strategic and make sure that we are providing, we're differentiating that support and resources uh for this teachers uh and the schools that are ready for that so that they can implement it appropriately, and it can um roll out in a more I think natural progression, and then we get a more integrated implementation of it as opposed to it coming uh from the district to everyone.

Did you have more?

Yeah, thank you.

This conversation dispersed a couple other questions for me.

If a new shiny object comes along, um, and we want to do that.

Are we on contract with the other tools we have in place, or is there for lack of a term?

I guess an escape clause.

If we wanted to get rid of one and use this new program, is there a ability to uh do that?

Yeah, we work to remain really flexible in that.

Things are changing quickly, and so we we don't um lock into long-term contracts.

Um, and I'll say we get, I get, and I'm sure Superintendent Fueling gets uh emails about new shiny objects daily.

There's lots of folks that are aggressively marketing their new things, and we really try and be really uh strategic, both to make sure that it's curriculum first, right?

It's what it's what students need.

Um, it's not just because it's new and fancy, but is it meeting a need that we have?

And do we have the capacity to onboard it both from a financial standpoint and just from a capacity of the organization standpoint?

So we also I work with Raymond in the IT department because he can show can give us a usage report of all of the different systems that we are paying for and what is and isn't being used.

So then if we think, hey, that we we're paying for this for everybody, but it's only being used by a small number, we can adjust those contracts accordingly so that we're we're paying for what we're actually using.

Okay, uh that's good.

That's what I want to know is there's some mechanism in there to do that, so yeah.

Thank you.

Did you spark any additional questions?

Go ahead.

Um, not a question so much, um, but uh from my childhood, the shiny new thing was just the internet in general, and that it was we were unleashed on it without any real restraint or guidance or um cautions, and I did way more exploring than I should have, and then the like our kids or my kids' generation, like social media was the big the shiny new thing unleashed, and with really no guidance and plenty of ways to get yourself into trouble.

And I feel like this is like the next shiny new thing, and AI is gonna be a part of our kids' lives in the future generations.

It's it's here and it's it's not gonna go away.

And so I really appreciate that this is something we can put in some guidance and teach kids how to use it properly, and maybe have learned from failures on the shiny stuff before it of the importance of the guidance and the learning and the understanding of its power and its risk, but also its benefit, um, as with any tool used as it's intended, it can be extremely beneficial.

And so I really appreciate the amount of effort that's going into ensuring that our kids learn um how to properly benefit from the tool that is being provided and cautioned against the ways it can be damaging.

So that is something that we can do to help keep the next generation safe and moving forward and um because again, this is where the world is going, and so to get our kids in it and understanding it and to become fluent with its benefits, I think is great.

So I appreciate how much effort is going into the different means and uses and safeguards that we have for it.

So just a thank you.

Thanks.

All right, I do have a question.

So the students will only have access to these platforms at the school, correct?

While they're in school, not at home.

So the plat it depends on the platform.

Um Paloma is intended to be used at home, so it is used at home.

Um Google Gemini, anybody can act, we don't anybody can access those if they've got uh access to Google.

So that's not restricted to uh within the school environment.

I'm trying to remember if right on I think they can access that at home too.

Yeah, so I don't uh so and magic school, well, magic school is mostly teacher-facing, so it it's available, and that's something we can't really control.

AI is available to kids.

What we can control, as uh Trustee Peterson mentioned, is that we and I think Principal Macy mentioned as well that we do a good job in trying to educate on the ethical use of these tools, because simply um eliminating access to them isn't really a reality.

I was just gonna add that the internet was new for her.

I think a calculus uh calculator with a graphing function was new to me.

So I just wanted to add that.

Well, and and that's where I I think it's important, and this has come up in a a couple of presentations I've been a part of that to think about our our students, especially our our youngest, say our kindergartners and and below, are never going to really remember a world that didn't have AI, didn't have social media, didn't have the internet.

Like that's just what the world is.

And so while there will certainly be bumps in the road and as we try to engage with this and figure this out, um it's it it's something that I don't, you know, we can't put our heads in the ground that we we have to deal with and do the best with it that we can.

So thanks that uh we have a lot of really smart people and and lots of uh great teachers trying to help us figure this out.

I was just gonna add that like I remember in high school when I took the SAT, we weren't allowed to use calculators, and my sister who was two years younger than me.

I'm gonna say two years older, but she's younger, you guys know that.

Um she gotta use a calculator when she took the SAT.

So it was and they all they all thought that was we're cheating, right?

Like I'm like, you're cheating on the SAT, that's why you should get a better mass score.

But it was a calculator.

Everybody thought everybody was gonna cheat.

So it's just every, you know, every couple years a new tool comes out and we have to adapt as educators on what we're gonna do to help our students use things ethically, responsibly.

All right, great.

Thank you guys.

Thank you for joining us this evening.

All right.

Um that was for discussion only, which moves us to agenda item number eleven.

This is discussion and possible action to adopt a resolution in support of INVEST.

Is that Invest?

Should I say Invest?

Invest uh 2027, a documenting created by Nevada superintendents outlining the need to improve student achievement in Nevada.

This is for possible action brought to us by Superintendent Fueling.

Thank you, President Walt.

Uh each well, I guess every two years, um, as we start preparing for the legislative session, the Nevada Association of School Superintendents um works to create a platform um of priorities going into the legislative session.

Uh this is this invest document I I believe has actually been around for almost 20 years now.

Um and we have learned over time to uh you know, less is more.

This used to be like a 20-page document, which for legislators who are reading endless things that that does not go over well.

Um but so the the superintendents work um and do some some brainstorming, some um uh kind of round tabling, trying to get through what what are those things going into this next session that we feel are the most important to support what we are doing in our schools.

And so um as a as a part of that, once that is developed, every um superintendent is going to their school board and asking for their support for this item.

Um that just helps kind of bring some more weight uh behind it.

Um NASB has already offered their um support for the document as well, which we we usually try to support each other as we go into the legislative session.

Um but here you have uh four general priorities, and I I won't get into um the nitty gritty details unless you have some questions, but I I think most of these at a high level will um will make sense.

I'll explain some.

So number one, increase in align education funding to ensure that resources match student needs.

Um you you may be aware, I I forget if I think we've talked about this maybe a little bit, maybe just in some of the email updates.

There is a lot of concern around one of the weighted funding funding categories at risk funding.

Um it is currently um it is currently derived inside of infinite campus.

We using 74 different factors that AI is like using to calculate if a child is at risk of not graduating high school or not, all the way down to kindergarten, it's making that decision.

And it's creating funding based off that potentially.

And so um w what that has created is enormous volatility in that funding stream, which is causing hu huge issues for we we haven't been as impacted, but Washo um and uh another one I can't think of the other district, have been severely impacted where they've tried to put together programs and they've come away.

Um so that is one of the the primary um concerns.

The other one is around declining enrollment, or then that's related to funding as well.

There were some changes in state law years back, um, that that was I think very reasonable with how it approached.

If there was declining enrollment, you got to use the prior year's enrollment, gave you some time to stabilize and make decisions, and then you'd you'd move on.

Now you kind of live the brunt of it immediately, and almost every district has that issue right now.

So that's become a bigger issue for us to deal with.

Um, refine SB 460 to more effectively and positively impact school operations um and student success.

SB 460 was the massive accountability bill that came out of the last session.

Um that made uh some pretty brought in some pretty draconian measures in terms of how uh schools and districts are um considered to be succeeding or failing, and what are some pretty substantial consequences coming out of that?

Um none of the the districts um or I should say all of the districts support modifying some of the language within that law.

Um and it is it's an enormous bill.

There's a lot in there, um, but I I think just in general, there are pieces within that bill that we all feel like can be improved and be a little less harsh in terms of um the punitive measures, which really reflect for a lot of us that we view this as a return of no child left behind back in 2001, which was looking at shutting down schools, firing people, a bunch of nonsense that didn't work, and so that's where we're hoping to kind of um make some changes there.

Uh number three, strengthen early literacy supports without harmful student retention requirements.

Um, I think everyone is probably heard about uh the read by grade three laws.

Um this is under current law if a student is not deemed um proficient, but actually proficient in this case is not proficient as far as how our school ratings are done, which is seems kind of silly.

Um, but that there is a threshold that the state uh school board has set um to deem if a if a child has reached the level where they can promote from third grade to fourth grade, otherwise they would they must be retained.

There are some good what are called good cause exemptions to that, but um there are fundamentally concerns about uh holding kids back.

It does not happen very often and for a lot of ways because of a lot of the research around uh the impact of holding kids back at grade level.

Um, but I think what everyone does agree that if we could offer more intensive interventions, K through three for all of those students and beyond that are struggling with reading, struggling with literacy, um, that if there were if there were funding to do more to give intense supports to them, that would be something we would be very, very much in favor of.

Um, the other thing is trying to get um the NCI system, the uh Nevada system of higher education to also bring the science of reading and instruction that we are now a lot of our folks have been trained.

Our new curriculum CKLA very much reflects, but none of that is being trained in our teacher training pipelines in the university system, which is a real problem.

So trying to bring that.

Um last thing, stabilizing and aligning, um, stabilized, align and expand pre-K funding structures.

Really, this is about the the expansion of pre-K, and one of the frustrating things about pre-K is that it ends up being a competitive grant, um, which doesn't uh it would make more sense to kind of have as a formula based on you know enrollment of your district, you get allocated a certain amount of funds.

Uh, instead, we're all fighting over funds um year to year.

So that's kind of a silly thing.

But ultimately we'd love it if everyone just had the funding to run full uh full pre-K access for all four year olds in the district.

So that's kind of the I guess a little bit of detail but uh high high level of our uh concerns and and kind of goals going into the session hopefully we can bring some improvement too so I'm happy to take any questions and otherwise would ask you to um support uh this platform.

Thank you.

I do have um a couple questions for number four when you said that um then it would um be like stabilized funding would this then eliminate the um the lateness of opening up for pre-K.

Would it?

Because I know that is so many parents have such an issue and it's all over asking when is pre-K going to open.

It would 100% okay stop that issue because if it's just a a formula of or it ultimately if it was just universal you got paid uh you know you received a certain amount of funding for every student that enrolled up to whatever level of capacity you could hold you would you would know your level of funding that would absolutely take care of that problem.

Yeah because I don't think um you know parents understand that the reason the school district doesn't open up the enrollment for pre-K is because we're waiting for the state to dictate how much funding we get and we normally don't even find out how much funding we get for pre-K until late May correct?

It it has varied over the years but this last year it it became I I think it almost went into June.

Yeah.

And so we had to we actually ended up making a choice to start get signing people up even before we knew just because we knew so many families were waiting.

Yeah and so it isn't the school district it's actually the the state um another question is refining number or SB 460 does that have anything to do with our star rating then the star rating of the schools yeah well and yeah there's actually a couple pieces to it but yeah it it does um sorry the school accountability system looking at the school accountability system um the star NSPF system and and rebooting that is is a part of it.

Also as a part of it is creating what is called a district performance framework.

So they're looking at creating not only we have a star system for each individual school but then for districts overall there will be some kind of ranking there are committee meetings going on right now over the past seven months about that.

Myself and uh Tate Ellis the superintendent from Eureka are going to be joining that group here starting in August I believe we've been asked to participate um but but yeah all of that sort of thing is is wrapped up in here.

So they they actually added another layer um by adding these like district level ratings versus just the school level ratings which are problematic in themselves.

Okay.

And I mean I've made it very known that I have an issue that attendance is um chronic absenteeism is attached to our star rating because we physically cannot go and get them and bring them to school is that being addressed in any of this.

I know it's at least being talked about what one of the adjustments that had been made just before this committee started was um recognizing uh not just the the total percentage of chronic absenteeism but also improvement because that that wasn't something that was taken into account so you have some schools that have you know 40% chronic absenteeism but if they go from 40 to 30, that's huge improvement but then under the under just a year ago they would still have gotten dinged for having horrible chronic absenteeism.

So but it they wanted to recognize me the right way.

I know this committee is a is looking at all of the different current factors and and trying to decide what to keep and what not to and if there's anything else to include.

Okay.

Because I think my issue is like I said we can't physically go get them but what are we don't have any um legal or the law enforcement doesn't either to make these parents um accountable for not getting their kids to school and that's where I think um I would like to see it totally taken out but that's a pipe dream okay any other questions yes um as far as attendance goes I know some of the talk has been um because chronic absenteeism is defined in a certain way um but the whole um calculation of seat time and whether or not seat time is actually a good measure of whether or not a student is making um adequate progress and being able to demonstrate competencies is a whole nother question you have students who may not need to attend school every day and can hit or make or or demonstrate proficiency in all those standards.

So seat time by itself to my opinion is kind of an arbitrary thing that should be looked at especially when you're dinging districts and schools for chronic absenteeism I appreciate all of these four items I think they're great um my only problem is every time especially every legislative session so much focus is placed on um early literacy children we we all want everyone to have equitable access especially to pre-K but there's not a lot of um attention placed on making sure that our high school students have equal access to dual credit opportunities industry recognized credentials so when we're asking for funding a lot of times we're focusing on pre-K and uh you know a few years ago we we got kindergarten right we didn't even have universal kindergarten until a few years ago um so I I appreciate these and I support these but I just wish somebody would take a look at making sure that there's um equitable opportunities across the board for all students to be able to participate in dual credit and get an IRC.

Can I I'm just clarifying in summary so these are the goals for the Nevada superintendents that you are intending to advocate these things when we go to legislature this year.

And so by us um taking action and approving it is that's just us showing our support that we agree that these are important goals.

It's you showing support that you think they're important.

Okay.

And is this something that we would anticipate in two years you guys would uh I'll be back.

Be asking for the next okay is there by our approval um is there an anticipated like what is our action and investment look like or is it just supporting you as you um I I think it's just showing uh solidarity with you know these things you know maybe they're not all the same level of priority for everyone here right um but that generally we we support um support this work I there's um there is opportunity for any of you and I would very much invite you I know uh talked with Lupe and Molly a bit about this but um coming up during the legislative session because there's gonna be I think last session um there were 119 bills related to education layers and layers and layers of more things to do um but but it's a it's a great opportunity to come up and and hear what is being said and have any opportunity to to speak on it so I would I would certainly encourage you and I I know just from my conversations there's an expectation to keep you abreast of when these things are coming up.

So there will be a lot Mary Prozinski who was superintendent here oh seven to or 2007 I think um she is our lobbyist for NAS and so she keeps us on top of that and I I will be um sharing with you a lot of the feedback she gets and the summaries she does from the from the sessions just so you're you're aware of that.

All right great thank you all right this is for possible action do I have a motion oh uh I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees adopt as submitted the resolution in support of the NVEST 2027 so I'm sorry uh motion by trustee Peterson seconded by trustee Ramirez uh board discussion public comment seeing none all in favor please say aye opposed motion passes unanimously thank you and I believe uh trustee Peterson and I need to sign up did you okay okay thank you all right thank you and moving on to agenda item number 12 this is discussion on proposed changes to the following objective policies of the Carson City School District Board of Trustees this is for first reading this is for discussion only and like I said this is us diving into the different policies and updating them so I did send this out um and asked for any uh edits doesn't mean that because you didn't or that you didn't have a chance that you didn't have any edits and then we won't be discussing them.

So how I would like to do this this is um for discussion only we'll do the same thing like we do on most policies we will suggest any changes edits additions the ones in in red um have been changed by um Renee and then we'll go one by one so um and of course I do have some edits and some additions so we'll start with um policy 101 philosophy of education and um we'll just kind of go round table if anybody had any please just jump in um and then I'll discuss what I had so did anybody have any comments edits to policy 101 all right so then if you will look at policy 101 I would like to add at the um the end of paragraph one so right now it says and selling in them and appreciation of this is a philosophy of education so we would get rid of and put the comma after society and put and preparing students to thrive in a rapidly changing technologically advanced and globally connected society.

What I noticed with all of these policies is that we um these policies need to be updated to where we are today in the digital world and technology world that we are in today um you know as you can see these were uh last revised in 2010 we don't address our um ct e and these policies we don't address AI as we did today so a lot of that um is what I looked at is the college and career and and workforce readiness the digital literacy so the updates in which I'm proposing a most of these will address that please keep in mind that I also um looked at the first the policy with our current um strategic plan and so um those the suggestions that I have would they do align with the strategic plan that we have now although we'll be changing that uh soon but they do align with that as well so again I would like to add at the very end of the first paragraph it would say and preparing students to thrive in a rap rapidly changing technologically advanced and globally connected society at the end of paragraph two I would like to add the district shall promote critical thinking digital leadership responsible use of technology innovation collaboration and civic engagement those are the two sentences that I would like to add to policy 101 not delete anything just add this and Renee I do have these sketched out okay uh so again, these are just discussion.

So if there's no discussion, nobody is against that.

We'll okay.

Can I ask you a quick question?

On that first paragraph, that last sentence.

Mm-hmm.

Did you say remove some of the last sentence or just add on?

I would I would be um.

Well, the and would just be moved to the um, boy, this is gonna be helpful.

Um, and would be so we would remove it after attitudes and put a comma, and then um after society, it would be comma and preparing.

So I'm just adding another prepositional phrase.

So well, that would be a terrible run-on sentence, but it would be, and that's why I may be looking at you then because yes.

But I'm just looking at the language, like equipping them with useful skills to me, that is very vague.

It's not specific.

What are we talking about about useful skills?

Are we talking about sewing on a button?

Are we talking about you know, changing oil?

Like it's it's very vague.

I don't know if I would include that, and wholesome attitudes.

Like who's to say what I think is wholesome is the same as what you think is wholesome.

Like I think that's that kind of language, useful skills and wholesome attitudes is a little outdated.

Outdated and yes, I mean, I would say like almost recognizing their needs and then cutting out the whole last part and and replacing your sentence with that last part.

Okay, so we're equipping them, you know, get rid of equipping all the way to society and replacing it with what you brought up.

Okay, thank you.

All right, that that I'm good with that.

Yes, and the is you will it sounds like you were from the 50s, right?

It was actually 1970.

Wholesome attitudes.

But yes, much of the much of all of this is outdated.

And um you can you look that yes, it was in there.

Okay, so we'll go ahead and do that.

Um I do have some before we move on on the very last paragraph.

The board accepts the responsibility for coordinating the available resources of home.

How do we do that?

I don't know.

Again, this is why we're addressing this.

I don't know.

Um the board is there.

Well, yeah.

When I read that, I thought, hmm.

What about something like for coordinating the partnership between home school and the community?

Some like we're responsible for trying to develop that partnership between the three of us.

Well, I think that I think that is one of our um other ones, I think.

Yeah, I think the partnership goes into our educational process goals, actually.

It's somewhere in there.

Yeah.

So we could just delete sentence.

So what I would suggest in um fairness of time as well, we'll we'll go ahead and propose deleting this, unless um we don't see it further in the other policies.

If we see it in further, we'll delay delete it, but if we don't, then we will change the language to for coordinating the partnership.

And um please write that down.

What else you said?

Okay.

Sorry, just the partnership between home, school, and the community, right?

Like between home, school, and the community.

Home.

Oh, I see it there.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, home and in a mutual effort to guide.

Okay.

All right.

So we'll move on to the next one.

Uh policy 102.

Before I um have my additions.

Did anyone else have any comments or additions to that?

Okay.

So what I added in is this is where I think this gives us the opportunity after everything listed.

I didn't see any change any deletions, you know, for physical emotional well-being, basic communication.

I left all of that in there.

However, I did add two new, if you'll call them sections.

One section would be did digital literacy and artificial intelligence readiness, and then another one would be college career and work for readiness, because we talk about that all around.

So after individual values and attitudes, we would add the um digital literacy and artificial intelligence readiness.

And what that would read is students shall develop the skills necessary to responsibly utilize technology, evaluate information sources, understand emerging technologies, and engage ethically with artificial intelligence tools.

That's what I got from tonight.

I would suggest um maybe instead of specifically pointing out AI, just you could say something about like um advanced techno advanced technology tools or I don't know if that's exactly right, but I'm just thinking, um, like I know everyone's talking about quantum computing, and that is like right around the corner, and that is going to even like supercharge it.

Like there's just always gonna be something.

So I don't know if you so in my description I say under uh merging technologies, so then it would be digital literacy and emergency in emerging technologies.

Would that be fine?

Emerging, emerging, okay.

I do have a a problem with the first paragraph.

Okay, hold on.

Give me a bit of a bit.

The first paragraph of the on the first that I want to do to go ahead.

It says each learner who has the potential and inner strength should strive to I'm like to me that's saying that some of our students don't have the potential inner strength.

So I would cut that part out and just say each learner should strive toward the ideal implicit and explicit in each goal.

Cut the who has a potential and inner strength.

We want it to apply to all of our students.

Okay, perfect.

All right, anybody else?

Okay, so then under so we have the description, and I'll get that to Renee for the dig digital literacy and um merging technologies.

So under the career, the college career and workforce readiness, it would say students shall graduate prepared for post-secondary education, career pathways, military service, entrepreneurship, or meaningful participation in the workforce.

We're fine with that.

It's not, it's me, me making it up.

Oh, I'm gonna put it at the end.

Yeah.

So I added two more sections, and so I would add those, and I just wanted to make sure that does align with our um uh strategic plan, but maybe um if you'll have staff read that before we bring it back.

Okay, all right.

Moving on to 103.

Oh, I did a lot.

Um, so this is the educational uh process goals.

We have a lot of goals.

Um, if you've read them, I don't know if you felt that any of them were outdated, but again, I think we have to add in technology in digital learning tools.

Um, so I wrote um one just while they were um effective integration of technology and digital learning tools to enhance instruction.

Would be added.

One would be added there, anybody because none of these address that, and so that's why I thought we need to bring these in as goals since we're making it um a very important part of our daily learning.

The other thing that wasn't addressed in this was um, you know, President Varner, you're um we're always asking for that data, you know, on we have the goals and then we want the data.

You know, like how do we know that MTSS is working?

How do we so I added another one that says data informed decision making to improve student achievement and educational outcomes?

Okay, that's all that I added.

Anybody else?

I have a problem with number four.

Okay, what do you have?

I would just um opportunities for teaching staff members and students to make recommendations.

I would remove the word teaching.

I think all staff members should be able to have input on improving the operations of our schools.

Okay, I like that.

Anyone else?

Um on five comprehensive guidance facilities and services for each student.

Um what is that specifically referring to?

I don't know.

What is number five?

Um I'm wondering if that is kind of older terminology for a counselor counseling department.

Guidance.

It definitely is maybe removing the word facilities though, because to me it almost sounds like you're having treatment centers for students rather than right we want to make sure that they have guidance services available to them but we don't send them off somewhere to get help.

Well I think it's like comprehensive facilities like schools that will accommodate their needs but I don't know that it needs to be there.

Comprehensive guidance services guidance services okay perfect anyone else Superintendent Feeling you had a question about the technology one yeah if you could just read the technology line you had.

So it says um so it would be number 10 and it would be um effective integration of technology and digital learning tools to enhance instruction it's just our computers and stuff that we have yeah all right and then uh number 11 would be data informed decision making to improve student achievement and educational outcomes okay and number nine yes go ahead sorry good can we change parents to families oh yes that was another thing that um uh trustee Ramirez mentioned um throughout as well that taking out parents and making it families yeah so sorry about that I missed that okay yeah okay all right moving on to um 104 so this one um I just had some things to add at the end but I wanted to make sure that um with all of the changes that that um have been since 1979 and then 2015 um I was gonna ask our legal counsel um if this 104 is legally compliant and you can maybe answer that otherwise but I will definitely review it for you and I'll let you know if there's any problem okay it's just because it's been a long time however if you'll um join me on page two of policy 104 um I didn't like that last sentence in that in the um first paragraph says to ignore such concern is morally wrong um economically wasteful and um socially dangerous so I just eliminated that and um just kind of put the district is committed to ensuring equitable educational opportunities and re and a respectful learning environment for all students and employees.

Okay.

And then there was another sentence at the end of paragraph the second paragraph there um where it says students with minority groups must be helped to establish their identity within their own group as well as the total society I took that out and said that the district shall promote an environment where every student is respected valued and supported in achieving their full potential.

Any others well I would just say on this policy it seems like it's awful long and wordy and I think it could be shortened up quite a bit uh so I think that we ought to look at uh maybe rewriting it and taking a lot of the verbiage out of here that is covered under the statute already okay and just say you'll be in the compliance with all the not all but name them you know that you're in compliance with those because this year it gets awful confusing to me and uh awful wordy.

Okay.

I was gonna suggest just making sure like it's aligned with the state board of education's discrimination policy and any because I'm sure these have all been updated.

I bet you the language would be appropriate.

Is that you or me?

Alright thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Moving on.

Yes, okay.

I I'm glad we're gonna do that, but I wanted to check in on in the middle of that very first paragraph, um, where it says activities as and provides equal access to the Boy Scouts.

See, I'm telling you it's very outdated.

Yeah.

We're on 104 paragraph one.

Oh, okay.

Well, our legal counsel will check into that.

All right, it makes sure that we are compliant.

Yeah.

I'll work on it.

All right, thank you.

Oh no, scouts.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, we're gonna go ahead and move on to um policy number 105, which is recognition of employee organization.

Um yeah, I don't I didn't really see anything.

I do have something on this.

All right.

On the last paragraph in the event that recognition is not obtained by the specific date of January 15th, blah, blah, blah.

The board of trustees uh will not consider giving recognition until the one year, fiscal year or the uh associations.

And I correct me if I'm wrong.

There was at least one occasion where they didn't meet the threshold with the amount of membership they had to be recognized, but we elected to go ahead and recognize them as a bargaining unit.

So do we need to change that language?

Will not consider giving recognition.

And if we're going to give them recognition if they don't have the requisite, oh I'll talk with Miss Russell about that paragraph.

I'm not not quite sure.

Umly on that one.

Um everything else has been changed in red.

Carson City School District Board of Trustees, and then in parentheses and quotations board.

Yeah, that one's missing on that one.

The board part of the board.

Okay, yep, board.

And then um next following, is that redundant?

It read weird to me.

Should it just be next or just following, or is it just me?

That thinks that's where you're just me, okay.

No, where are you?

No.

Oh, it's in the second paragraph as well as the last paragraph.

Employer, the last sentence.

Oh, where it says the contract for the next following fiscal year.

Fiscal year.

Should you say the following fiscal year?

Yeah, should I just say the next fiscal year or the following fiscal year instead of next following?

Yeah, okay.

Okay, so we'll say the following.

So it's in the second, yeah, paragraph and the the last paragraph.

Yeah.

Okay.

Awesome.

Okay.

Um any other all right, and then policy 106, uh parent involvement policy.

I was hoping to change that title to family and parent engagement policy to kind of mere um our strategic plan.

I would just check this one because I think the state board of education, I I'm looking at the language.

I think most of it was pulled from the state board of education has a parent involvement policy.

And I don't know if that's where we got this language and whether whether we want to look at aligning ours to what their okay policy was.

Yeah, I didn't look at that.

I just aligned it with trader with our strategic plan.

Okay, um, so on that, I didn't have any that was the uh the change there.

And then Molly, did you include the um recommendations that I send you via email?

Yeah, that's going on to page two.

Okay, section four.

Mm-hmm.

And if you want to go ahead and um you had section four and section five, if you wanted to address yours, you wanted to change SOT.

Okay, that's right.

And section four, um, after the um the first sentence, um, where it says support and assist assistance are sought, you wanted to change SOT to requested or solicited yeah and we'll ask the English teacher at the end I'm kind of we have the Nevada educator performance framework and there's an actual standard that educators are held accountable for for well welcoming families into the school I wonder if we need to look at aligning that language there but it's it's like welcoming them to be part of the the process or something to that effect.

Okay.

But if we don't find any on there which word would you recommend changing sot from uh to requested or solicited encouraged assistance are encouraged.

Lupe does that work trustee remember sorry requested or encouraged.

Encouraged so could we add highly encouraged because I feel like we need to make a stronger emphasis on the importance of engaging the parents that's why I was I like highly encouraged I think that's okay we can go with it encouraged and and again this request because requested almost makes it sound like it you have to do it and again you should have to do it but we don't want to be descriptive to our parents right like or not descriptive but yeah but again we'll look at um you'll send me that information that you want me to look at okay and then on five um I do think this read wrong where it says parents and and trustee Ramirez caught this parents are full partners in the decisions that affect children and families and we're thinking families should have been or trustee Ramirez was thinking families should have been their education are already talking about parents yeah parents but again if we're gonna change parents to families we'll um try to make that consistent the families are full of partners in the decisions that affect children I don't know in education maybe leave that as parents but I think in their education would be more appropriate.

Do you see the meaning of that the first sentence of five there is for the record the Nevada policy of parental involvement and family engagement pursuant to NRS 35.620.

Okay wait slow down on that NRS I want to pull our language from there.

But NRS what NRS 385 point six two zero all right so I'll take a look at that and then make sure that this aligns with that okay the problem I have with this is in order to enhance parental involvement six essential elements should be promoted.

What if there's only I mean it changes you have seven or you have eight I'm suggesting nine I have three more I'm not done yet.

There you go so maybe we don't get a number in there yeah so we would but I'll before we even do that we'll make sure it aligns with the statute.

Yeah I think that'd be a good way to go yeah so I didn't delete any but I did again add digital communication is another one and then um the six so it would be essential elements would be digital digital communication is one mental health and wellness because it's not addressed anywhere that would be another one that would be an essential elemental health wellness attendance and school connect connectedness is what that one would be.

Okay would read something like um the district shall utilize multiple communication methods, including electronic platforms to ensure families receive timely and accessible information.

Okay.

But again, we'll kind of put that on hold.

We'll bring it back um I think this is going to be have to be brought back again as a um uh discussion item.

Yeah.

And I'll make sure that it aligns with NRS and send it out to y'all.

Yeah.

Because what we've got to be careful about is we don't put some in here that we can't do.

Right.

Or somebody can come back and say you you had a policy that said you were going to do this and you never did it.

So I think we've got to be careful what goes in.

Yeah.

And so that's where a lot of what I did was was primarily um trying to align it with our current strategic plan.

Yeah.

Sorry, what did you say nine was?

You were oh nine.

Um with student success teams, but I kind of think and I'm not quite sure I want to add that in there.

But it was nine would be student success teams.

This would be families um shall be encouraged to participate in educational planning uh intervention strategies and um student support teams.

I thought of MTSS is trying to get that in there, but again, I'm gonna put all that on hold until we do NRS, but that was the the um student success team would be the MTSS because that's nowhere in here either, and so I'm just trying to get us up to date.

Okay, but I shall do some more reach research on that.

Um policy 107.

Um, and again, I think this would be legal counsel.

I didn't touch it.

I have nothing.

Um, because yeah, I did.

I I honestly think this um, but again, I think it needs to be updated because it is a section 504 on the rehabilitation act of nineteen seventy-three.

I'm not quite sure if all of that has been updated.

Yeah.

And there again, I think it could be shortened quite a bit.

Yeah.

Because the last time this was updated was 2015.

Okay.

So we'll bring it back for, yes.

Oh, so now you're gonna ask me which ones we're aligned on.

Okay.

Yeah, I think we'll bring them all back.

Okay.

Uh-huh.

Now I think okay.

All right.

So that was discussion only.

Um, so we shall move on then to um agenda item number 13.

This is approval of consent agenda.

This is for possible action.

Did everybody have a chance to review the consent agenda?

Do we have any questions?

Comments, all right.

Hearing none, I'll take a motion.

I move that the Carson City School District Board of Trustees approve the consent agenda as submitted.

Second.

All right.

So we have a motion from uh trustee Peterson, a second from uh trustee Roberts board discussion public comment.

Um seeing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

Hearing none, motion passes unanimously.

Moving on to agenda item number 14 of informational items for discussion only.

This uh no action will be taken.

Um we really didn't have much.

Does anybody have any questions?

Comments, okay.

Moving on to I do, I'm sorry.

I was wondering um uh how much in the future before we get some of the results back from the testing that this year and uh student achievement uh SAR ratings, etc.

We should have it by 2030.

I won't be here.

No, uh Brandon and I were just talking about this.

I think the expectation is maybe initial stuff the last week of June and otherwise the first week of July.

Um I d I don't know exactly how much that is.

I I don't think we'll be likely wouldn't be able to present on it until at least like August, maybe September, but I will at least have initial data we could share.

Otherwise, just internally.

I'd make that request and in August that we share that information.

Okay, all right, moving on to agenda item number 15.

This is a request for future agenda topics.

Oh, that was that was it's jumping over.

I thought so.

You looked at it too, Glenn.

That's all right.

Um, do we have any other future agenda topics?

Yes.

Um the policy changes and things that we're doing, if there's like a regulation that goes along with it, um, if we could get those together as we're making changes so that we can be sure they align.

Okay, it's easier to look at when we have that comparison.

Okay.

If that makes sense.

No regulations for this session that we just.