With several Trustees unhappy that the goals they set for the district were not being addressed, the Lyon County School District Board of Trustees voted at the July 22 meeting to table a request to approve the 18 School Performance Plans they were presented, instead asking that they be brought back to the board in alignment with the District Performance Plan.
The item to approve the School Performance Plans was on the consent agenda for the July 22 meeting, but Board President Tom Hendrix requested they be pulled for discussion.
Hendrix then said that several of the School Performance Plans (SPP) don’t align with the District Performance Plan (DPP) that was unanimously approved by the Trustees in March.
“For them to say they’re going to do this their own way, when we as the Board of Trustees have set goals for the district, I don’t think that’s the correct way,” Hendrix said. “They just kind of thumbed their nose at the board and decided they’re going to set their own standards. And to me, that’s not acceptable.”
At the March 25 meeting, the Trustees approved the District Performance Plan, which included eight goals. Among those goals were percentages of students meeting or exceeding their individual growth in math and reading as measured by the end of the year i-Ready assessment and Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) testing; increase the graduation rate from 88.7% to 89.7% by the end of the 2025/26 school year; increase the number of work-based learning opportunities provided to all students by 10%; increase the total number of students participating in K-12 work-based learning opportunities by 10%, that all high schools will implement WorkKeys for students by the end of their 10th grade year; the percent of college bound students in grade 11 earning a composite score of 16-36 on the American College Test will increase by 5%; and reduce the chronic absenteeism rate by 10% in the next school year.
Hendrix said the district has not had that kind of data-driven, measurable goals in the past.
“The District Performance Plan is the minimum standard, as I see it,” he said. “We set these as data-driven, measurable goals. If they have additional things that they feel are goals for their school, I applaud them for that.”
Trustee Bridget Peterson, who said she previously was a part of a committee that developed a School Performance Plan, said SPPs should not mirror the DPP because each school has different needs and areas of improvement.
“Not every single thing in the goal has to be aligned exactly word for word with the district,” Peterson said. “As a matter of fact, I think that it’s prohibitive, because each school has their own individual needs and individual things that they’re working on.”
Deputy Superintendent Stacey Cooper said the school performance plans are put together by committees that include staff, parents and students using community feedback. She also said that if the approval of the plans were postponed, it wouldn’t be possible to get those committees together again until school starts. She said the School Performance Plans are due to the state by September 15.
In the past they were due in November, but Superintendent Tim Logan said next year they will be required by August 15, so the state gave the districts until September this year to adjust to the new deadline.
“One of the things we noted as we went through each one of the School Performance Plans is that they each uniquely aligned in their own way, based upon community feedback on how they were going to complement, not parallel, but complement, the district’s performance goals,” Cooper said. “It may evolve or look differently at each of the schools, depending upon their grade levels, academic performances, input from their stakeholders and communities.”
Trustee Sherry Parsons said the district’s absenteeism is high and test scores are low because the Board in the past didn’t hold schools accountable.
“The cabinet and the superintendent has got to understand it’s not like it used to be,” she said. “When we set our goals, we want those goals to go to the principals, and we want them to fulfill the goals at their school. We didn’t ever get anything done before, and that’s why our numbers were so bad, and our attendance is so bad.”
Trustee Elmer Bull asked if it has been customary in the past for School Performance Plans to differ from the district plan.
“Somebody may have attendance issues, and that’s what their community and teachers said, let’s work on this,” replied Logan. “Some may say we are super low in math. They could be in different spots, depending on their needs in their schools.”
Logan said he understood the Trustees wanting the school plans to align with the district plan, but said he was struggling with how the individual needs of each school fit in.
“I see the disconnect. I’m not struggling with that,” Logan said. “But they’re still accountable to the DPP, regardless. We’re going to be gathering that data, and when we see one school’s low, it’s still accountable to the DPP whether they have it in their SPP or not.”
Logan said because school administrators don’t return to work until August 18, there would be no way to get each school’s committee together in time to have the SPPs rewritten in time for the Board’s August meeting.
In response to a question by Hendrix about what would happen if the District didn’t submit the SPPs by September 15, Logan said the district would receive a letter from the State Department of Education that it did not meet the deadline, but he said he doesn’t believe there is any federal funding tied to meeting the deadline.
Trustee Darin Farr said the DPP is the Trustees’ directive to the superintendent to make happen within the district, but he said the Trustees shouldn’t be micromanaging schools.
Hendrix disagreed, saying the Trustees set a standard for the superintendent and district.
“And apparently, he hasn’t relayed that real well to our schools, because they haven’t incorporated our District Performance Plan in their School Performance Plans,” Hendrix said. “I’m not micromanaging them, I’m saying you haven’t done what the Board of Trustees set out in the District Performance Plan.”
Fernley Intermediate School Principal Blake Cooper said the DPP was presented to administrators twice and they were told their SPP needs to mirror the DPP as much as possible.
“We do have individuality at each school, and if I were to just take the DPP and slap it at Fernley Intermediate School, it wouldn’t make much sense,” he said. “We look at the percentages, how the percentages were created, we then do our own data dig at each school site. I think it takes individuality out when you say here’s the DPP, write these eight goals down.”
After an admonition from attorney Don Lattin that because the item was on the consent agenda it wasn’t scheduled for discussion, Lattin advised the board to vote on the motion by Hendrix, and it passed 5-1, with Peterson opposed and Trustee James Whisler absent.
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