NSHE Update

Member Joe Arrascada updated us on the Nevada System of Higher Education. He reports they have been working hard to strengthen the conduit between higher education and the state board of education. The NSHE Board of Regents approved multiple academic programs at a previous meeting. NSHE system-level staff are working on policy revisions based on bills based on the last legislative session. He goes over various bills that just passed affecting the higher ed system.

Additionally, he says that the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP) is working to make sure college courses taught by high school teachers are as rigorous as the classes taught by professors on the sponsoring college’s campus. NACEP is hosting its 2023 national conference on October 22nd-24th in Saint Louis, Missouri. He ends his report by saying, “One of the reasons this is so important throughout the system of higher education and through the Nevada Department of Education is because concurrent enrollment is imperative for the productivity and the systemic way that the system of higher education and the department of Education can maintain the strong relationship between each other.” President Ortiz added by saying Nevada is one of the fastest-growing states when it comes to dual enrollment. In many cases, Nevada students have the opportunity to get their associate’s degree before graduating high school. Dual enrollment not only increases the number of students pursuing college after high school but also saves them money.

School Start Times

Opening this discussion on start times, President Ortiz gave a brief history of how this conversation got brought up and the work we have already done. This topic was brought up in the late fall of last year as an opportunity for the State Board to impact student outcomes. Nevada is a local control state, meaning most decisions lie in the local districts. Given this, the State Board of Education has a narrow authority, and school start times lie in that authority. We hosted three community workshops over the past year to gain community input, posted the research supporting later school start times, and talked about it at length during three separate board meetings. The research from the CDC, the American Heart Association, and the Association of Pediatric Doctors have all said it is imperative for students’ mental and physical health to get sufficient sleep. When one reaches their teenage years, their natural circadian rhythm naturally shifts to rising later and falling asleep later. Teens need at least 8-10 hours of sleep for sufficient brain development. One of the biggest things to come out of the pandemic was the increase of the focus on teens’ mental health, and this was something the BOE could change to impact mental health and safety in a positive way.

To guide this discussion, President Ortiz created a decision tree for us to follow, which you can find here. Following this tree, the board mostly agreed they would pursue regulation on school start times, that it would not apply to all school districts and charter schools, and that there would be guardrails in place for what school districts it would apply to. While considering a waiver, we decided that we did not want another piece of paper districts needed to fill out, as we wanted to take work away from districts, not put more on. Therefore, we favored an alternative: if they have schools starting before 8:00, they would have to justify why they are starting so early or that they are providing different options for students. The board does not currently need to decide on the specifics, but we are submitting language to LCB to begin the regulation process.

During the meeting, the Department of Ed provided us with a list of raw data on what time high schools start. While this was a rough list with some junior highs and repetition, I went through the data to clean it up and put it into pie charts. There is a statewide one as well as some district-specific ones. Please note there may be minor discrepancies in the data because I was the one who compiled it from the raw data, not the Department of Ed. The aim of this is to give you a rough idea of the percentage of schools that start early.