CCSD BOARD MEETING 1

Clark County School District Board Meeting March 31st, 2016

Julie Guerrero
CCSD BOARD MEETING 2

Abstract

The Clark County School District board meeting on March 31st, 2016 had a fairly

long agenda. Multiple amendments were gone over with no changes made in the current session

but these amendments needed to be agreed upon by the Board of Trustees. The school board also

took some time to recognize various schools for their individual exceptional programs. These

programs were created by the school and their staff and sound like they should be implanted

throughout the entire district. A few students were invited to speak on behalf of their schools and

these wonderful programs that are being offered at their schools. Part of the session was allowed

for public comment on some of the labor issues at hand currently in the district. A little

interesting fact that was brought up in the meeting was that a student at Durango High School

has qualified for the Olympics.

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Clark County School District Board Meeting March 31st, 2016

In the beginning of the Board Meeting all of the Board members were respectfully

introduced. Each board member represents a different part of the district. The president of the

Board meeting continued to go over the night’s agenda so everyone was aware of what would be

discussed. At the beginning of the meeting the audience seemed to be pretty full but as the night

went on people began to leave. The board allowed multiple schools to be represented by their

students to discuss some new programs that seem to be helping the schools environment succeed.

They then opened up to public comments that are only allowed two minutes each to speak about

issues at hand. Finally they went over some of the testing requirements for graduation as the

board wants to add in mandatory AP (accelerated placement) testing before graduation. The

district needs more opportunities for students like the student from Durango High School that has

qualified for the Olympics.

A student from Cheyenne High School came to inform the board of a new program called

“Fathers and Father Figures.” This program allows students and parents or parent figures to

become closer by having a dinner together then recognizing each other for what they are proud

of for the last month. This allows fathers to participate in school activities and acknowledge an

activity or item that they are proud of their child for doing. They also offer multiple activities

throughout the night to encourage parent involvement. After the student finished talking about

the program a few parents gave testimonials on how well the program is working.

Indian Springs High School also had a student to represent their high school. Indian

Springs is a smaller rural high school. They have smaller class room sizes to allow for a greater

graduation rate. Their current graduation rate is 100 percent which is actually only seventeen

students or so that graduate a year. Having smaller classroom sizes allows for teachers to help the
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students get through their individual struggles to improve the chances they will graduate. The

community is so involved that for these seventeen students graduating about a hundred people

show up to support them on graduation night.

Many of the people attending were very frustrated with the pay scale offered by the

CCSD. Members of the support staff informed the board how upset they were because they have

not received raises in about six years. One of the items scheduled for a future board meeting was

also discussed. The board would like to remove themselves from employee responsibility. They

do not want to have anything to do with contracts over the employees. The staff that was present

was very upset with this future issue. The board is also looking to reduce the amount of public

comments allowed per meeting from two to one. They have also restricted the amount of time to

speak from three minutes to only two. It sounds like the board does not want the publics opinion

anymore and just wants to do what they have to do.

The school district board would also like to mandate AP testing. They used refrences

multiple times to other districts within the state that have higher graduation percentages since

they implanted the AP testing. Parents would still be able to opt-out their child from the test if

they do not want the child to test. The student can still pass with the “honor roll bump” and not

the “Accelerated Placement bump.” The board also questioned why a fine arts class can be

considered geography or world history for students as their fine arts requirement for graduation

at career and tech. They said they will do further discussion on that topic at a later time. It was

argued that the district wants so many funds for fine arts and does not want to cut out fines arts

but they allow a basic subject to be used as a fine art.

The school district would improve immensely if they make their staff happy and review

some of the pay issues at hand. The board should try to keep their current staff and offer
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incentives for that staff to stay with CCSD. CCSD’s teacher and staff job openings are very

large, and from what these people said in the meeting they have been looking for other jobs

outside of the district to make sure they have food on the table for their kids. Some of the people

also suggested changing the terms in contracts to allow for strikes because the district is not

listening the way things are now.

There are many legal issues that are going on within the district. They need to continue

providing support for school programs, address the pay issues with support staff, and implement

testing standards that are not so confusing for parents to understand. Having these meetings seem

like they allow the public to voice their concern but with some of the regulations it seems the

district wants to cut the public out of these sessions. The district needs to stop being one sided

and bring back together the team. This district is the fifth largest in our nation it should also be

one of the top five districts not at the bottom of the list! CCSD needs teamwork to bring it back

together.
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References

School Board Meetings | Clark County School District. (n.d.). Retrieved April 08, 2016, from
http://ccsd.net/trustees/meeting-agendas/