The Washoe County School District Board of Trustees in its most recent meeting took up issues ranging from the approval of changes to its own board policies to the adoption of a new anti-discrimination resolution that vows to “create a system-wide commitment to creating an unbiased, inclusive and anti-racist society through education.”
This Is Reno ran a separate report on the anti-racism policy, which when introduced by district Chief Strategies Officer Paul LaMarca was described as the result of “raw” and “recent” but not new events in this country.
“We are here, why?” he asked. “Part of it is in the past year, just before COVID and through COVID, as a nation, we’ve witnessed several incidences that likely were influenced by racial prejudice that led to the killing of several individuals and the injury of another individual.
“Our district espouses that it welcomes and includes all individuals, and so this might be an important next step in fulfilling that obligation,” LaMarca said prior to giving the presentation, which specifically mentioned the recent killings of Black Americans, including Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.
The board also heard its regular COVID-19 update, as well as a report on the Debbie Smith Career and Technical Education Facility and reports on how the district is meeting the goals set forth in its strategic plan.
Board policy changes recommended
In a June meeting, the board discussed the possible suspension of a board policy that governs how board policies are made, as the board was considering policies concerning the hiring of then new superintendent Kristen McNeill, who was appointed to that position in April after serving as interim superintendent. The board wanted to be able to consider and propose amendments to policies concerning the hiring and evaluation of the superintendent without having to first gain approval from its board policy committee.
The board at the time said, “given the state of emergency of the COVID-19 virus,” suspension of policy 9070 would “maintain the best interests of … students, families, communities and staff.”
Recommended changes to the 9000 series of board policies were requested of McNeill earlier this year. The changes that were put before the trustees do not materially alter the rules governing the board and do not seek to suspend its requirement of sending proposals through the board policy committee. Rather, the changes streamline and make more uniform the language in the policies. Now that these changes have been recommended, they’ll go through a 13-day public review and comment period. Should this review lead to significant changes as a result of public feedback, the proposed revisions will go through another 13-day public review and comment period.
The Debbie Smith Career and Technical Education Academy
Board members heard a presentation on plans for the new Debbie Smith Career and Technical Education (CTE) Academy. The academy, which will include the Hug High School Campus, is slated to open in 2023 after Hug moves its operations in 2022 to the new school being constructed at the site of the old Wildcreek Golf Course.
The Debbie Smith CTE Academy is planned to offer career and technical education, including engineering and robotics, health sciences and medicine, human services, business, natural resources and skilled trades. These programs will allow students to take courses in a variety of areas.
The new CTE academy will join the district’s Academy of Arts, Careers and Technology (AACT), which offers four-year high school programs with the opportunity to earn college credits and certifications in areas ranging from business and communications to culinary arts, education, engineering, medicine, natural resources and animal sciences.
WCSD schools offer academies in areas that include Damonte Ranch High School’s Performing Arts Center, which focuses on theater, dance and music; Galena High School’s STEM Academy, which includes aerospace and environmental engineering; and the Hug High School’s Sciences Academy that focuses on medical careers and community health and human services, among others.
The Debbie Smith CTE Academy is expected to accommodate 950 students—300 more than the capacity of AACT.
According to Josh Hartzog, director of career and technical education and signature academies, the district will host “passport nights” to inform students and families of the programs and resources available at the Debbie Smith CTE Academy during the year leading up to its opening. He said that it may be several years before the school reaches its full 950-student capacity, as most students entering it will be freshman and a few may be sophomores transferring from other AACT.
Plans for the Debbie Smith CTE Academy may be reviewed here.
Metrics related to the district’s strategic plan discussed
For the last several months, the school board has received regular updates from various district staff concerning metrics related to specific goals and objectives included in its strategic plan, “Envision WCSD 2020.” On Tuesday, the board heard updates concerning student academic growth and the district’s operational systems, central services and the finances thereof.
Student academic growth was discussed, but because of Federal Assessment and Accountability Waivers there was no Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SPAC) testing scores to relate for several data points, including the percent of students proficient in math, English and language arts, as well as reports on student populations with previous academic outcomes lower than those in the district as a whole.
However, district officials were able to report that the percent of ninth grade students failing one or more core curriculum classes was lower than the average for school districts involved in the Council of Great City Schools. Those schools median rate of freshman failing one or more courses was reported at 32%; in Washoe County, that figure was 24.6% in the 2019-2020 school year.
It was also reported that the percentage of students attaining sufficient core credits in the 2019-2020 school year was at 70%, up from 64% during the 2018-2019 school year. Additionally, the percentage of English Language Learners exiting ELL programs by the fifth grade was reported. This figure increased from 44% in the 2018-2019 school year to 61% during the 2019-2020 school year.
The report on operational systems within the district included discussions of transportation, facilities management and nutrition services.
The district is meeting its goals in regard to the on-time delivery of students to school by bus and transportation safety. However, it has fallen short of its goal on providing efficient cost-per-mile transportation. The cost per mile of operating school district busses is at $5.20; the target goal is $4.55.
As to facilities management—including decreasing overcrowding, keeping up on the maintenance of school facilities and providing clean schools—the district has been meeting its goals, though it was noted during the presentation that challenges to this include, “major additional burdens on housekeeping focused on COVID enhanced cleaning” as well as exclusions “of maintenance and custodial staff due to health and exposures” and “chronically understaffed” maintenance and housekeeping departments.
Nutrition Services was the last metric to be discussed during the presentation. The school district’s Nutrition Services Department has been hard hit by falling numbers of students partaking in school breakfast and lunch, despite a waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture allowing school districts to provide free meals to all local children ages 0 to 18. This has led to plans to furlough 98 Nutrition Services employees.
Nonetheless, prior to the pandemic, the district was on track to meet its goals for serving meals to students during the 2019-2020 school year, with 26% of students partaking in school breakfast and 40.5% taking advantage of school lunches.
Now, the district is working to increase the number of students taking advantage of free meals while the USDA waiver is in place—which is expected to continue through summer.
COVID-19 cases trending upward, but learning models will remain the same
Paul LaMarca, chief strategies officer for the school district, provided the board with its regular COVID-19 numbers and trends report. He noted that the district has arrived in the orange or “high risk” category on its threat meter, which takes into account and assigns a risk number based upon risk assessments, test positivity in the community, daily new case rates, medical interventions and hospital capacity—each of which is evaluated on a scale of zero to three. The risk meter as of the Oct. 27 meeting was 8.5. Should it increase by one half of a point, the district would be in the “very high” risk category.
“As president [Malena] Raymond did mention, the meter has gone into the upper orange region,” LaMarca said. “It’s been there for several days now…It was yellow for a while. It’s moved into orange. We’re at 8.5.”
The status of the risk meter is the result of risk assessment and test positivity both reaching a level two. Daily new cases have arrived at a level three. Medical interventions currently sit at a 1.5, while hospital capacity is thankfully still adding zero points to the risk assessment.
LaMarca also commented on what he called a miscommunication of information between the Washoe County Health District and news media.
“There was an article this weekend in the [Nevada Independent] in which the Washoe County Health District did indicate that there had been 70 cases—and I believe they attributed that specifically to Washoe County schools,” LaMarca said. “I do not believe that’s an accurate statement. Based on the information that we’ve received from them, in that time frame, there have been 21 cases within our schools and nine cases involving staff.”
He explained that cases are not attributed to WCSD schools if they did not result in an infected person being present in a school.
“It’s not a school specific case if a person comes down with the virus but they have never been infectious within our schools,” he said. “It’s an important distinction. It is also the case that there are a lot of schools within our county that are not a part of Washoe County School District. There are charter schools; there are private schools. And, so, some of the cases that were being referenced actually were from those locations.”
He also noted that the question of why teachers know about cases that have not been reported by the district has been brought up during many public comment periods. He said these, too, may be the result of cases that originated outside of the schools. In two recent cases, LaMarca said, these were people who became infectious but were never within a school during that time frame.
There are 21 active schools, and four of those are new. So far, the district has seen cases in 58 of its 96 schools. Lamarca reported 13 new student cases and four new cases among staff. He said there are 15 active student cases and nine active staff cases. This brings the total of student cases to 82 and staff cases to 47.
New case rates per 100,000 have hit a high since the district reopened. In August, those case rates were hovering around 100 per 100,000. They dropped briefly in early September but have since climbed and were reported on Oct. 21 as 172.96 per 100,000.
“We are kind of where we were two weeks ago,” LaMarca said in the conclusion of his presentation. “I will tell you that I know folks are concerned because we’ve been in that orange region. That’s a high-risk region. I’ll leave that to you. If you have questions, I’d be happy to answer those. And I’m sure Dr. McNeill can as well.”
Contact tracing prioritized
During their question period, trustees used the opportunity to comment on the distinction between cases tied to WCSD and those occurring in the county’s broader youth population and among teachers who’ve contracted the virus outside of work.
Trustee Katy Simon Holland said, “I think it is really worth reiterating the distinction between the school district cases and the frequency within the greater population for the same age cohorts. I have been one that was very concerned, and I know all of us are very concerned about the impact of the very large population which we serve every day of students and staff—that we would be risking incidents because of our large population. And I’m relieved to see and heartened to see the lower incidence of children and staff in school than children out of school. That being said, I know we’ve had some emails and it’s certainly been talked about in the news challenges with contract tracing.”
She asked if Director of Student Health Services Margaret Allen was present to speak about contact tracing efforts. She was not, but LaMarca spoke to those efforts.
“As we see this increase in the community as a whole…it’s taxing the resources available at the Washoe County Health District,” he said. “The folks that are doing contract tracing are working feverishly… They continue to prioritize pediatric cases. They continue to prioritize our Washoe County schools cases.”
He also noted that WCSD staff has been asked to return calls from contact tracers as soon as possible and noted that during a Monday meeting of Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve’s COVID-19 Task Force that testing was discussed as being as vital as contact tracing.
Simon Holland said she “just wanted to thank and deeply honor the educators and the staff members at our schools who are doing such a tremendous job” in the face of the virus.
“It’s tragic that we have any cases,” she said. “We know that we would rather not have any cases, but I think the work that everyone is doing together to facilitate and comply with those safety protocols has just been extraordinary in this district.”
Board Vice President Angie Taylor said she was pleased that trends reflect a lower number of COVID-19 cases among the WCSD population than in the general population. She said concerns over spread of the virus in schools is something she’s often heard about from families and school district staff.
She said, “I was speaking with a teacher at one of the schools in our district, and he said, ‘I want to be very honest with you…I was really mad at you guys for you sending us back to school. I was very mad. I was very concerned.’ It was for all of the reasons we’re all concerned, and he said, ‘Now that we’re going into week number nine, I feel better about it. I’m really glad you did it.’ He said he feels he’s safer at school than just about any other place in the community.”
Trustee Sharon Kennedy said she has been to 12 schools in the last few weeks and has been impressed by the way safety protocols are being observed. She noted that she had questioned how well students would do with wearing masks but has observed even the youngest students doing so consistently.
For now, in-person and hybrid models learning will continue.
Washoe County officials were scheduled for an emergency meeting with Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak’s Nevada COVID-19 Mitigation and Management Task Force at 1 p.m. on Oct. 29. The county has been classified as a high risk COVID-19 area for the past five weeks.
