Nevada Ed-Watch 10/14/2021

Clark County School District Board of Trustees 

What is the Board of Trustees & what are they responsible for? The CCSD Trustees are publicly elected decision-makers for the school district. They are responsible for providing oversight to the Superintendent and establishing District-wide policy. Trustees are accountable to work with their communities to improve student achievement.

Click here to learn more and see a list of current Trustees
Click here to find your Trustee District

How often does the Board of Trustees meet? Trustees meet twice per month (second and fourth Thursdays) at 5 pm both virtually and at the Edward A. Greer Education Center Board Room (2832 E Flamingo Rd, Las Vegas, NV 89121).

Click here for a full list of Trustees meetings and agendas
Click here to visit Hope For Nevada’s #NVEd Calendar

Can community members engage at Trustee meetings? Decision-making bodies benefit greatly from hearing public input and multiple perspectives. Currently, members of the public can submit comments on agenda and non-agenda items through email or voice recording. Public comment can be provided in person, via email, or via voice recording. Email comments should be submitted to Boardmtgcomments@nv.ccsd.net. To submit a voice recording on items listed on the meeting agenda, call 702-799-1166. Voice recorded public comment is limited to 1 minute 30 seconds.

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Clark County School District Board of Trustees Meeting

Click here to see the meeting agenda

What happened at this meeting?

Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items

Members of the public submitted public comment on agenda items regarding: 

• Concerns about the future of the FACES family engagement program and appreciation for the programming. 
• Concerns about the lack of support for teachers. 
• Concerns around excessive force by CCSD police and a request to eliminate the use of pepper spray in CCSD schools.
• Concerns around the CCSD trustee district redistricting process. 
• Concerns around the plan for sourcing substitute teachers. 
• Concerns around the district’s COVID-19 tracing policies and other COVID-19 mitigation and safety measures.
• Concerns around the Teachers Health Trust (THT) and issues educators have been having with the health insurance program. 

Click here to view written public comment on agendized action items submitted online.  

Consent Agenda Highlights:

• Approval to utilize funds from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER II) Fund to provide support to facilitate educator growth and positively impact student achievement utilizing the Urban Learning and Leadership Center. 
• Approval to contract with NWEA for the purchase of professional and technical services to provide support and services for school leadership teams and teachers in approximately 60 schools to promote the utilization of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Growth assessments. 
• Approval of 2021B Building Bond Resolution for the Improvement Project and 2021C Medium-Term Bond Resolution to finance all or a portion of the cost of acquiring, improving, and equipping school facilities of the Clark County School District, including transportation facilities and technology equipment. 

Consent agenda passed 7-0 with one trustee voting by phone with the revision of item 3.12 Purchasing Awards, item A deleted. 

Members of the public submitted public comment on these agenda items regarding:

• Concerns around the lack of support for educators. 
• Concerns and questions around the proposed solution and contract for sourcing substitute teachers. 
• Request for the district to release information regarding the discipline of students. 
• Questions around the drop in posted vacancies on the CCSD job board. 
• Appreciation for the offering of telehealth based mental health services for students. 

Trustees Discussed the Open Schools Open Doors Program Policy 

The below reference document, a contract between Clark County and the Clark County School District, was provided as background information on the discussions that occurred in 2019 between the CCSD Board of Trustees and Clark County Board of Commissioners regarding a proposed Open Schools Open Doors program. The purpose of the agreement is for shared use of school buildings and district facilities during non-school hours by members of the community.  This agenda item was proposed after community members expressed interest in revisiting it during Focus on the Future community input sessions. 

The following concerns were raised by trustees about the proposed agreement: safety, cost, personnel, risk of damages, CCSD’s liability, and how CCSD would interact with local municipalities. 

The trustees did not take action on this agenda item, but there was discussion about bringing back this agenda item at a later meeting. No timeline was determined for when to bring the agenda item back. 

Members of the public submitted public comment on this agenda item regarding:

• Concerns around the possible risk of damage to facilities and equipment if this policy is approved and the community begins utilizing district schools for programming. 
• Questions about how the district facilities will be utilized by the community and who will be responsible for maintaining district facilities (staffing concerns) for these community events. 

Click here to view the reference document. 

Click here to view written public comment on this agenda item submitted online. 

Trustees Approved the 2022 and 2023 CCSD Board of School Trustees Calendar of Board Meetings 

Click here and here to view the reference documents. 

Trustees Heard Presentation on Focus: 2024 Strategic Plan 

Aligned to pre-pandemic practices, CCSD staff provided an update to trustees on progress towards goals outlined in CCSD’s Focus: 2024 Strategic Plan.

Food Service: Foodservice participation was off target due to distance learning, however, the food service department did celebrate several accomplishments during the 2020-21 school year. The district operated 291 food distribution sites, increased production of meals on Friday in order to assist families with weekend nutrition, and served 2.2M meals. 

The food service department plans to utilize the following strategies to work to reach the priorities outlined in Focus: 2024: 

• Provide additional serving windows and lunch carts.
• Increase menu choices offered, eliminate low performing options, increase the frequency of popular options, and survey students on the taste and appearance of menu items. 
• Expand CEP implementation district wide by offering meals at no charge to all CCSD students for at least four years. 

Student Transportation: Transportation priorities outlined below were off target during the 2020-21 school year:  

• reduce the number of buses placed out-of-service 
• reduce service delays and
• reduce bus driver absenteeism to improve service to students and ensure full instructional minutes 

In order to work to meet the above transportation priorities outlined in Focus: 2024, the transportation department plans to implement the following strategies: 

• Continue to improve efficiency in routing and operations by consolidating some bus routes, collaborating with the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) to launch the “RTC Ride On” program, and adjust mid-year bell times. 
• Staff vacant mechanic positions and evaluate the pay range to ensure competitiveness.
• Continue to expand bus driver attendance initiatives and professional training and create new hire and retention incentives. 

The purchasing department was slightly off target in achieving their priorities during the 2020-21 school year

In order to meet the goals outlined in Focus:2024, the transportation department plans to implement the following strategies: 

• Work with Teaching and Learning Dept. to identify categories of instructional programs and services for potential competitive opportunities. 
• Push hard-to-bid items and services to compete with national purchasing cooperative and other government entity contracts.
• Leverage Ariba catalog system to implement mass catalog uploads from large suppliers and reduce manual line-by-line catalog entry where possible.  
• Identify catalog alternatives to customers ordering off-contract materials.
• Increase the catalog utilization by principals to lower costs.

The technology department dealt with issues in reducing the “on-hold” wait time for calls to User Support Help Desk but was able to provide effective and reliable network connectivity for schools and improve business process efficiency related to human capital management. 

In order to work to meet the above technology priorities outlined in Focus: 2024, the technology department plans to implement the following strategies: 

• Maintain proactive replacement of aging network infrastructure gear and enhanced network monitoring to identify network infrastructure that may be failing. 
• Evaluate call and ticket data to identify areas of need and adjust support resources to accommodate.
• Increase self-service ticket avoidance options and technology ticket creation alternatives to reduce call volume, hold time and wait time.  
• Reclassified technology leadership position to “Chief Information Officer” to better align with the needs of CCSD.

Members of the public submitted public comment on this agenda item regarding:

• Concerns about transportation issues, namely bus driver shortages and the partnership with RTC, cutting of programs such as FACES, technology issues, and lack of support for educators. 
• Questions around how current educators will be retained and future educators will be recruited. 
• Questions as to whether there will be changes made to the Focus 2024 plan in alignment with new challenges. 
• Appreciation for the district’s efforts to ensure students had access to food during distance learning. 

Click here to view the presentation. 

Trustees Discussed the Process for Trustee Redistricting, Including the Map Creation Process and Feedback Timeline 

Every 10 years, aligned to the release of new census data, CCSD must re-draw trustee election district boundary lines. The following limitations are defined in Nevada Law: Three factors that had to be considered in drawing the redistricting maps: 

• The current sitting trustee must be kept in their district. 
• Contiguous districts must be created, so that there are no breaks between districts. 
• The population must be balanced within 5% of the county wide average.  

CCSD staff have provided three potential scenarios for redrawing boundary lines for the community and trustees to react to and provide feedback on.  Trustees discussed the process for trustee redistricting, including how the current three maps were constructed, and whether the timeline for feedback can be expedited to allow for additional maps to be created and submitted to the trustees. 

The district shared that no consideration was given to contracting with an outside consultant to draw redistricting maps. CCSD legal counsel confirmed that the three maps created by the district have been vetted for legal compliance. 

Trustee suggestions and requests for redistricting maps included: 

• t the redistricting process allow for all students to attend high schools in the same district they attended elementary school. 
• the process for creating new maps (if there is one) needs to be a fair, equitable process where the community is heavily involved, but an excessive amount of maps do not need to be created.o Schedule additional community meetings  to provide more opportunities for members of the public to provide input. 

Following a community meeting on October 19th, trustees directed staff to incorporate public input into the drawing of two additional scenarios.  If necessary, an additional two community meetings will be scheduled in a centrally located area. 

Members of the public submitted public comment on this agenda item regarding:

• Concerns around how the three proposed redistricting maps were created. 
• Concerns about the lack of representation for certain communities, including the Latinx, AAPI, and black communities, in the drawing of the redistricting maps. 
• Request for additional redistricting maps to be drawn. 

Click here to view written public comment on this agenda item submitted online. 

Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items

Members of the public submitted public comment on non-agenda items regarding:

• Concerns around contract negotiations with the bargaining units and the district. 
• Concerns around violence among students. 
• Concerns around the district’s vaccine and mask policies. 

Click here to view written public comment on non-agenda items submitted online.