Last school board meeting before election focuses on students

School board trustees focused on attendance, test scores, and students on Tuesday in their last meeting before the Nov. 5 election.

The board approved all of the action items on the agenda and heard from individuals who enlightened the board on the success and areas of improvement for the school district. 

Director of Education Services Shannon Brown and Assistant Director of Services Leslie Peters presented a report for the 2023-24 testing achievement data, explaining that the scores do not necessarily reflect poor or excelling results, but instead provide insight to what the district and individual schools need to work on.

“We don’t want people to think we are not being transparent or that we are falling behind, but we do have a lot of work to do,” she said. “Every school has their own set of students, and students bring their own differences, so it’s about determining what the root causes are and finding solutions to improve our scores.”

While discussing schools at Lake Tahoe, Principal Sean Ryan and Assistant Principal Jim Pace said the students at Zephyr Cove and Whittell High School outweigh the data.

“Zephyr Cove is considered a one-star school, but that doesn’t really represent us,” said Pace. “Just because our enrollment is small, our scores get skewed.”

Pace went on to explain the many programs that Zephyr Cove and Whittell, including the farm to table program where students in each grade plant and harvest vegetables, then create a dish with the culinary students at Whittell.

The Fire Science program added this year at the high school has also been successful.

Brown and Peters also discussed chronic absenteeism.

Douglas County has the most students attending class behind the Pershing County, with a rate of 20.5 percent of  absenteeism during the 2023-24 school year.

Chronic absenteeism is calculated by looking at the number of students who attended more than 91 days of school, which is used to determine who has missed 10 percent or more days of school in creating the Nevada Performance Framework.

“I think parents don’t realize how much it adds up,” said Peters. “So, we are hoping to break that downward trend.”

Peters said schools are working together to find out why students are missing school and coming up with incentives to keep them coming.

Some of those incentives include Jacks Valley Elementary School’s Exploration Monday where students learn a new craft or skill. Zephyr Cove Elementary School has a special class with the school mascot called “Cubby’s Maker’s Space,” where students have creative freedom to build, color, paint, draw and more. Some schools have implemented engaging games and brag tags.

“One idea is students receive a letter to a certain word if everyone in their class shows up and if they spell out the word, they get to play a game with their principal,” said Peters. “The point is to connect with the students, find out the root causes for missing school, and get students excited about learning and increasing their desire to be at school.

During public comment School Board Candidate and Douglas County School District parent Erinn Miller said there is an increase at the Lake schools because of the fun activities offered.

Other ways Douglas County is working on improving absenteeism is by informing the public of the impact missing school has on a student.

Douglas County School District Marketing and Communications Director Hailey Sebahar created a marketing campaign to share with stakeholders the importance of students attending school on a regular basis and an attendance committee formed of schools administrators, district staff, board members, students, and parents was formed last year to discuss data analysis, student presentations and brainstorming how to improve chronic absenteeism.

“There’s no doubt that we have some of the best teachers in the state and there’s no question they are doing all they can, but we just want to support them and make them better,” said Board Trustee David Burns.