June 4, 2022 • 30 mins
Public education is facing a protracted crisis. From lack of funding and bureaucracy to politicized attacks on teachers and staff, Washoe County, much like the rest of the country, is also no stranger to public education controversy.
For this show, I spoke with Calen Evans. A ten-year teacher, he is now the president elect of the Washoe Education Association. That’s the group that represents more than 3,500 teachers in the county.
Evans said he hopes to take the association in a more active direction under his tenure. In this show we talk about what he hopes to accomplish, the union’s endorsements for school board candidates and challenges facing the school district.
We also talk about the future of public education in Washoe County.
This show is sponsored by Truckee Meadows Water Authority reminding you to water on your address's designated watering days in order to conserve water. Visit smartaboutwater.com for details.
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
When citizens show up and have a unified voice and
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message, it is we who can createchange.
We have to, as voters hold ourelected officials accountable,
we can no longer allow ourstudents,
our education system, ourprofession to be used simply to
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get elected. That's KaylinEvans. He's the president elect
of the washer EducationAssociation. That's the group
that represents more than 3500teachers in Washoe County. Evans
said he hopes to take theassociation in a more active
direction under his tenure. Inthis show, we talked about what
he hopes to accomplish theunion's endorsements for school
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board candidates and thechallenges facing the school
district. We also talked aboutthe future of public education
in Washoe County. For this weekin Reno news, I am Bob Conrad
with this is reno.com.
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Thank you to this show sponsorthe Truckee Meadows water
authority here with thismessage. Summertime conservation
is standard at Truckee MeadowsWater Authority. It's what we
do. And this year, we can allprevent waste by keeping
sprinklers off between noon andsix, get your conservation
reminders and more at smartabout water.com.
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Kailyn please tell us a littlebit about yourself. So right now
I'm an educator in WashoeCounty. I am currently the
president elect for the WashoeEducation Association. And I
will step into that role fulltime, mid July. What does the
Education Association do?
Exactly? So the EducationAssociation is the collective
bargaining arm of all teachers,counselors, and Dean's in our
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school district. So wecollectively bargain with the
district in terms of workerrights,
our contract everything that'sin that contract from pay raises
to working conditions, those arethings that we're going to
bargain for with the district.
And then we also represent ourmembers in any sort of grievance
hearings, things that mighthappen within the school where
teachers need support orrepresentation via through the
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association or legal terms. Sowe do all that.
Okay, well, thank you for thebackground.
What prompted you to go fromteaching you said you've been
teaching 10 years? Yeah, intothe sort of more kind of
advocate public advocacy role?
Yeah, you know, well, I got intoadvocacy work. A few years ago,
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through a nonprofit organizationthat I started called empowering
Nevada teachers. I started thatbecause the public education in
Nevada historically has reallystruggled. And it's been
exacerbated over the last decadeor so, due to just an overall
lack of funding and resourcesalong with just increased cost
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of living over the last decadehere in Reno. And you're seeing
it really starts on fold interms of our ability to have a
high functioning educationsystem. I would say that if
you're from Nevada, you know,unfortunately, education, well,
high quality education in Nevadaare not synonymous. And that's
an issue, right? For me. I mean,I think personally, just as a
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father, as a member of thecommunity, understanding the
importance of education and howthat shapes the young people,
and overall, our community as awhole, it struggled. And so I
was seeing a need for activism,I was seeing in need of feeling
as if educators voices weren'treally being respected and
heard. So I started down thatadvocacy route, through my own
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nonprofit. And then that kind ofled me to work parallel with the
Association, both state andlocal, on just different
initiatives throughout the statein terms of how we can support
education. And ultimately, Ifelt that there was a really big
need for us to change theculture and direction of the
association from within. And soI had an opportunity to run and
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a lot of support from ourmembers and a lot of support
from educators across thedistrict to run and felt like I
could really do something tostart to change it. Because
ultimately, you know, I feltthat in order for us to bring
about real changes in the schoolsystem in our district and in
our state, we had to bring aboutreal changes in the association.
What is one of the questionsthat I have here is how is your
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leadership going to be differentfrom your predecessors? The
folks that came before you atthe education as you know,
absolutely. I think, what iswhat's actually a benefit of
mine is, you know, I'll be thefirst person to serve as
president of the weta thatdidn't currently serve on the
board.
Word. You know, people mightlook at that as Oh, there's a
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lack of experience. And I lookat that as there's a different
perspective that I can bring tothe association. I haven't been
entrenched in what they've beendoing for years. So I also don't
come with kind of the sametraditions, or tactics or
messaging that they do. I reallyfeel like in order for us to
bring about real rights for ourmembers, and not just our
members, but all teachers,because whether they're members
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of the association or not, werepresent them, right. Like our
contract goes for all teachersin the school district, we have
to change the kind of theunderlying culture. And what I
mean by that is, there's acouple different things, you
know, in my opinion,traditionally, leadership of the
association has kind of lookedat our relationship with the
district as a bit subservient,as if we should just be grateful
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that we are allowed to exist,right? Because we are in
association with the schooldistrict. It's very similar to a
union. But there's some slightdifferences, where, you know, so
given that we're in association,we're in partnership with the
district, we, you know,traditional leadership has
always taken the idea of, okay,well, we're gonna push but we're
not going to push too hard,because we, you know, we don't
want to ruffle any feathers, wedon't want to rock the boat,
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like, we need to be workingpartners. Now, of course, we
want an amicable workingrelationship with our school
district. That's withoutquestion. But at the end of the
day, if we're not getting theworking rights and conditions
that are suitable for oureducators, we have to put our
foot down, and we can't just sayit through, you know, talking
about it, right, we can't justsay this is unacceptable. And
then when it continues, we justgo back to doing what we've
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always done, right, we mightcomplain about and go back to
work, we have to do more, right?
So we have to let our membersknow that we are willing, as an
association to really stand upand draw lines in the sand and
not allow them to be crossedwithout us, you know, stepping
up to the plate and doing whatwe need to do as an association,
right, like organized labor hascertain tools at their disposal,
but that they can use to bringabout changes, and nobody can
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look at the education system.
And you know, we can argue aboutvariables of the education
system, right, we might havedifference of opinions on how
things are implemented. But ifyou look at just black and white
in terms of how education isfunded, and how it is served in
our community, nobody can arguethat it's being adequately
funded. You know, Nevada, we're50th. In school finance, we're
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40 sevens and per pupil funding,which is the amount of money
that every student, you know,that we receive per student to
service them. You know, we havethe largest class sizes in the
country, one of the highest,one of the lowest teacher
retention rates, right. So wehave a huge turnover in
teachers. And so all of thesemetrics point to the fact that
we don't value education inNevada the way that we should.
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And ultimately, that falls backon the working conditions of
teachers. And I noticed thisweek, that in Clark County, they
raised teacher salaries, whyhasn't that been done here in
Washoe County? And it's kind ofa two part question. Because
we're constantly for about ayear now, we've been hearing
about the school districtsinability to retain, I assume
teachers, but also bus driversand nutrition staff in
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particular, why why hasn'tWashoe County raised salaries?
You know, that's a greatquestion. I mean, I think the
answer, you know, I try to wantto give an answer with think
what would they say? Right, andthey're gonna say, well, out of
the whole state being as lowfunded as we are as a state, you
know, Washoe County has thelowest per pupil funding. Right.
But even with that, you know,it's, you know, I can't really
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answer for them, right, I thinkthat there are, we have put
millions of dollars intoeducation in the thought of, you
know, whether it's curriculumadoption or assessment programs,
you know, with well intended,with with good intentions,
right, like the, you know,they're funding these things,
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thinking that these were goingto be the things that will help
close achievement gaps. But whatthey fail to understand is, it
doesn't matter how high tech ourschools are, or, you know, our
one to one ratio of technology,or if we're able to hire, you
know, additional support staff,or this amazing curriculum, or
we, you know, we spend millionsof dollars on these assessment
programs, and standardizedtesting. At the end of the day,
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we can't even get our kids toschool, because we can't afford
bus drivers. Right? So like,what does it matter, all of
these other things, these kindof bells and whistles that we're
trying to implement when wedon't have a teacher in the
classroom. I mean, we havedozens of classes across our
district. And you know, most ofthe community doesn't know that
they're not even being taught bya certified teacher. We have
long term subs that have to takethese positions that we've put
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in there. They're being paid afraction of the price, right so
there's obviously some salarysavings by the district. I just
wrote a lengthy email to theschool board and superintendent
just the other day bringing upthese exact same things saying
you know, Clark County is rightlike they understand the
critical need that we're at, ifwe cannot bring new
professionals and qualityprofessionals into the into
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teachingnothing else really matters
right now. And so them raisingthe rate, the starting salary,
but then also giving retentionbonuses because teachers are
leaving in there. And you know,with such a competitive labor
market right now, teachers havemore options than they ever
have. And I think teachers arestarting to really understand
their value, right, that theyare highly qualified
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professionals, that while theyhave a passion for teaching,
that passion is not going to putfood on the table, it's not
going to pay their bills. Sowhile they are passionate about
working with us, it gets to thepoint where it doesn't matter
how high, you know, how muchlove they get from teaching,
they can't afford to live, theycan't afford their rent, they
can't afford those things. Sothey can go find another high
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paying highly competitive jobwith great working conditions,
and then not have to deal withall of the other struggles and
strife that come with teachingin these working conditions. And
again, I mentioned class sizes,you know, having the largest
class sizes in the country, Ican't underscore enough how
important or how critical thatissue is, because it's a working
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condition, right, that thatdramatically impacts both the
educators and the students inthe classroom. So all of these
factors, you know, and so, whatthey need to I mean, without
question, I think the schooldistrict really needs so we have
all these eser fund money, thishas been fun, you know, money
from the federal government fromthe COVID response. And, you
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know, they need to be lookingvery closely at how they're
using that money, and, in myopinion, reevaluate where those
funds are going. Because, again,you know, we can, you know,
higher, I was just tellingsomebody, it's like, we're
putting a lot of money intosummer school and winter
session, which Yeah, we need,kids are behind because of
COVID. Absolutely. It's notgoing to mean anything that a
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kid goes to summer school, ifnext year, they don't have a
teacher in their classroom whenthey start the school year,
right. So we have criticalneeds, and we need to really
prioritize those things. Andthere's a lot of them right now,
having human beings in thebuilding, to get your kids to
school, to clean up the schoolsto feed your kids to teach your
kids toto keep your kids safe. Like all
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of those things need to be thetop priority right now. What
what you've mentioned the wordworking conditions. As you know,
I've done a lot of reporting onthe school district and a lot of
the administrative and personnelissues.
And some pretty striking cases.
What is your opinion about howthings have been in the last few
years? Um, you know, I thinkit's been it's been challenging,
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right? Because there's a lot offactors when we think about how,
you know, with thesuperintendent challenges that
we've had earlier, and then thentransitioning to McNeil, and
then she kind of taking overright as COVID hit and I mean,
who's going to be able to, tounderstand how to navigate
COVID. Right, like, that wasjust something that I think was,
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you know, you're kind of puttinganybody in a situation to fail
in that sense. And, you know, Ithink the issue that we're
finding is that, we're startingto see some of the residual
effects of COVID. Right now,especially with student
behavior, student behavior, andviolence is at an all time high.
And that's an extreme workingcondition. And so you have a lot
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of teachers that are reachingout to their administrators, and
then those administrators arereaching out to the district,
and they're saying, like, weneed help, like, we, we don't
have the resources, we don'thave this infrastructure at the
school to house some of these,like severe behavior students.
And then then it kind of comesback on the district where they
don't have the resources, right,like the district at the end of
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the day is coming back toschools and saying, you know,
like, Okay, well, you know, wedon't have the answers to this
either. So it kind of seems asif it's just being passed along
to a degree. And ultimately,that bucks gonna stop at the
teacher, right. So we'll havestudents in these classrooms
that need additional supportthey need,
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they need the type of supportthat, you know,
classroom teacher can'tnecessarily provide them, given
the fact that they have allthese other responsibilities.
But then we don't have thoseright. Like, we don't have
enough social workers. We don'thave enough behavioral
specialists, we don't haveenough si P programs, which are
programs for students who justneed additional structure and
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support for behavior, like wedon't have enough of those
services. And so it ends upreally creating a working
condition that in my opinion,and many others, that isn't
acceptable, and that's what'slead. So it's like cost of
living through the roof,stagnant
teacher salary, pay inflationthrough the roof, behaviors
going crazy, not feeling thatthe district is able to I mean,
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whether they're trying I mean,like I don't want to say that
insinuate that they're nottrying but if they don't have
the resources, right, then thatall is going to fall back. You
factor all those things. There'sno reason to keep teaching,
right? Like there's no there'snothing to keep teachers in the
classroom anymore. And that'sthe big issue that we're running
into.
Talk a little bit about and weyou and I spoke a week or so
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ago.
I'm about thiscommunity pressure from really
the far right sort of conspiracytheorist contingent. There's
sort of this underground,although very vocal and very
public, but it's, you know, itis a pretty slim minority at the
end of the day of people tryingto take over school boards at
the local level. You've seenthis in Elko, Clark County,
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Washoe County,what's happening? And what's
your perspective of it both as ateacher now and then going into
the W E, AE? Yeah, I mean, on,you know, I don't like to throw
the term around lightly. Butit's scary in the sense that you
have people who are running forpublic office that will have a
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direct impact on the, the, youknow, the education profession,
and our students who are, Idon't even not like lack of a
better terms, just, in manyways. Crazy, I guess you could
say, in the sense that I'm allfor having a difference of
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opinions, like we can becritical of the school district,
we can be critical of educationas a whole. And I will have an
honest conversation. And, and Ihave my critiques of education
as a whole and how it's doneboth nationally at the state
level, and at the district, Imyself have been very critical
of the district and decisionsthat they make. And that's not
what we're seeing. But what weare seeing is people who are
outright lying, they're cominginto school board,
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meetings, and they are makingthings up and they're making up
very hateful, divisive andhurtful things. And they're
spreading. They're slandering.
The school district areslandering teachers, and it's
not founded. And so for somebodywho's in the arena, like myself,
right, who who's been ineducation, who obviously is well
versed and understanding, youknow, district and state
policies, and how you know, howall these things inner workings
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work, when I come and I'mcritical, I'm speaking at least
as much as I can, from a placeof knowing right of
understanding.
We have people who have no ideawhat's going on in the
classrooms, who are saying andspeaking as if there's the
certainties of really justcrazy, I don't know if I can say
that I'm sorry, um, stuff in theschool boards, right, that we
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are, you know, sexualizing ourkindergarten students by
teaching them share inkindergarten that we like, like
stuff that is so beyond the paleof like, reality that I can't
even then begin to meet youhalfway, right? Like, if you
think that we are over hereindoctrinating your first
graders to not understand, like,whether they're male or female,
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like, I Where do we even have amiddle ground to start saying,
Okay, I think that there'slegitimate concerns. Okay,
great. Let's have a conversationabout those concerns, and how
can we better educate ourstudents? We have people that
are, you know, this whole ideaof CRT, and it's this boogeyman,
and you know, like, oh, CRT CRT,who's teaching CRT? Like, does
anyone actually teach it inNorthern Nevada? Yeah, like, we
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went our way this isn't thisisn't any, this isn't even in
the realm of being taughtanywhere K through 12.
Education, right, like, letalone most likely even college?
Yeah, exactly. So it's this,this whole idea that, you know,
that this is just, it's justtheir fear mongering, right. No
one really knows what CRT is.
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But I know if I say and there'speople that have issues with
some of the socialissues in our country, which you
can we can have thosediscussions, right. But they
have to be based in reality. Andso when we talk about this, and
we have people who are that arerunning for school board that I
really, you know, I'm hopingthat your listeners are hearing,
there's an organization calledSave WC SD, look them up Google
save WC ISD. If any of thosepeople are running in your
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district, and you care at all,about just our education system,
our students are educated, youshould not vote for any of those
people. Because they arecompletely, you know,
weaponizing social issues. Towithout factual without fat.
Yeah, exactly. Completelybaseless. Right. And that's the
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that's the tricky part. That'snot that's the tricky part.
That's the really unfortunatepart. Because then while it is a
minority, for sure of thepopulation, they're allowed
minority. And when you saythings over and over and over,
and if you have people whoaren't educating themselves
about what's going on, they go,Well, is CRT being taught or
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what is going on? What's theShare program going on? Like,
what are these social, like,what are we doing to our gay,
like, all of a sudden, it startsto pick up, you know, it can
start to snowball, becausepeople unfortunately aren't
really taking the time to findout whether or not this is
actually going on and havingthose conversations. So yeah, I
mean, these school board racesare extremely important, right.
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We have four incumbents that arethat are running best Smith,
Joe Rodriguez, Adam Mayberry,and Elon Veneto. All four of
them need to be reelected. Andyou know, so if you're in those
districts, those are nonpartisanraces. So everybody, Republican
Democrat,indepent everybody gets to vote
on those in our community. Andif you have any four of those in
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your district, which there's agood chance you do, you need to,
you know, please, please votevote in the primary. And are
those the official wetaendorsements as well? Yeah,
those why is that? Well, I thinkif well,
in regards to, to Joe, wow,okay. Regards to all of them,
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you know, Joe Beth Adam, theyare extremely responsive to
educators. And on a personallevel to like, anytime you have
teachers reaching out to themwith concerns, they are not just
given the lip service of oh, youknow, thank you for reaching
out. And we're going to lookinto about what I know, like,
tell me exactly what's going on.
And then following up with thosethings, and making sure that
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they're talking to thesuperintendent that there's
talking to the areasuperintendents, to make sure
that issues are being addressed.
And that, that they're reallylistening, and then following
through with actions. So thosethose ones, especially that are
running, and that's the biggestthing, too. So you have these,
you know, like a they're verypro educator in the sense of
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like, supporting what we'redoing. But then also their
opponents are the are the onesthat we were talking about the
Save WC SD. So I mean, it'sreally, you know, it's a no
brainer in terms of theendorsement side for both weta
and NSCA, which is our stateassociation. But it's, you know,
school board races have neverbeen this important. And as you
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were saying, like we're seeingacross the country where school
boards are coming under attack.
And it's happening right nowwhere people that are kind of
coming into our community, fromthe out from not local as well,
which is important to understandto the people think about all
these people from Californiacoming like No, like these
people from California, it's whoare coming in and trying to run
for the school board pieces liketo get people active in fear
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monger across our community. Sothose groups are not, they're
not local, they're not fromhere, they don't they weren't
born and raised here. So there'sdefinitely almost like a
mentality of like, just kind oflike, Let's burn the whole thing
down and start from scratchversus no, hey, let's look at
the issues that we have. Andlet's work together to address
them.
And the fear is that if if oneof those if somebody else gets
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on the school board, along withthe current trustee church, all
of a sudden, we're going tospend very valuable time and
resources talking about thingslike CRT that aren't actually
even being taught, right, likewe're going to be talking about
the boogeyman instead of talkingabout legitimate issues. And
that's the concern that all of asudden, we aren't focused on the
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fact collectively focused on thefact that we are one of the
lowest funded school districtsin the entire country, right?
Like that's, that is a realissue that is going to impact
every student and every personin our community. Ultimately,
that's what we need to betalking about not these other
issues, that aren't issues atall, that are completely
fabricated in order for, youknow, kind of to distract us to
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a degree. So yes, that answersthe question. Talk about
empowered Nevada, T shirts,teachers, what happened with
that there was a change, youchange the name or what's, you
know, we just we didn't changethe name, the nonprofit still
has the name, we change the, youknow, we had a, we have a really
large Facebook group, we changedthe name of the group, because
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what was happening was, youknow, when people were on social
media, you know, like, ifthey're in in that social media
group in that Facebook group,they don't necessarily represent
us as a board, or the act ofmembership. They're just a
random person that's in thatgroup, right? And then they'll
say something, or they'll dosomething, or they'll post
something. And then it kind ofends up being associated with us
(23:40):
indirectly. And so we felt thatit was important to change the
name in order for us to kind ofbe able to keep our own
autonomy, and so that noteverything that was said was
immediately good or bad. It waslike, Oh, well, they said it in
the group. And that must be ourposition. Well, no, that wasn't
our position. It wasn't anybodyfrom our board or myself that
said it. It was just, you know,somebody. And unfortunately, as
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you know, social media is a verytoxic environment. It can be
used in a constructive way. Butultimately, I would say more so
than not we ended up especiallywhen you're dealing with issues
that are verypassionate to individuals. It
just becomes toxic. The way thateducation has been over the last
few years going through thispandemic, and going through all
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these issues within Nevada. It'sa tough time to be a teacher.
And so you had a lot of you hada lot of negativity, you had a
lot of people venting a lot offrustrations and that sort of
culture and climate. We didn'twant to be associated with us
directly. And so we decided tochange that. One thing I
remember, in the last coupleyears was a
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one former school board trusteewho had set up a fake profile to
be a member of the group tomonitor the conversations that
appeared orYeah, absolutely, yeah, no, and
that definitely happens. And sothe group is still, you know,
the group still there. It's anopen platform, you know, we
wanted to provide a space, thatteachers could come together,
that they could share resourcesthat they could share things
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that are going on, and kind ofjust kind of have that more
sense of community. But yeah, Imean, it's definitely it can be
used, and it can gain using thatterm weaponize in a lot of ways.
I mean, we know we understandthat, and all teachers should
understand all school districtemployees, your social medias
are being monitored, right?
Like, just just be aware ofthat. And so it's not that
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they're in that group or not,like, you know, you need to be
thoughtful in terms of whatyou're putting out there.
Because you have, you know,professional conduct that you
need to stay within in terms ofyour contract. So, you know, we
understand that there are peopleon via social media, and then
yeah, with that particulartrustee, who, you know, was
creating fake accounts, andthen, and then kind of
commenting on, you know, gettingin arguments with people on his
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own burner account to, you know,go over these issues. But, um,
fortunately, we have been ableto kind of separate ourselves
from that in terms of thenonprofit piece, and a lot of
our active members have becomevery active with the association
now. And that was kind of howwe've been able to transition
from being you know, a nonprofitgroup and kind of this, you
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know,active group of, of teachers, to
then being able to have, youknow, have a number of
representatives, schoolrepresentatives within the WBA.
And now myself, as thePresident, and we brought in a
lot of really passionate, smartindividuals, our board is almost
entirely new. So it's excitingright now, because we have
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people who we have experiencedon the board, but we also have a
lot of new people that arebringing in that fresh
perspective, and willingness todo things differently. And
that's what we have to do, wehave to do things differently,
because this idea that, youknow, education is going to
magically fix itself here inNevada. It's just not the case.
And it's going to be throughkind of more radical changes
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that we can do that. How are yougoing to pursue more funding?
Are you going to be reallyengaged with the legislature?
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Imean, that's where it starts,
right, we have to start at thelegislative level, which is
right around the corner. So it'sour big thing is we have to be
able to activate our memberbase, traditionally, the web a
while we might have a lot ofmembers, we're not we haven't
(27:26):
been able to, in the past, getthem as active. But I also think
in a lot of work in a lot ofways, it's because of the
tactics that leadership hastaken, you know, like, the past
leadership has done all thatthey can, you know, they put the
work and they put the effortthat's not without, you know,
that's without question. So I'mnot at all trying to be, you
know, critical in that sense, Ithink that there's just a
(27:48):
difference of opinions, in termsof how we can bring about change
and what's necessary to bringabout change.
You know, if I'm a member of ofa labor union, and my labor, and
I think that my leadership isn'twilling to take any steps
necessary to bring about change,that doesn't inspire me really
(28:10):
to get active, right, I mightstill be a member, that's fine.
Because I want that insurancepolicy, I want it you know, if I
run into an issue with theschool district or my
administrator, something that Iknow that I'm going to have my
association that's there tosupport me right and that's
important piece because thathappens. You know, there's,
there's, there's definitely avalue in having the Association
for that reason. But if that'sthe only reason you're a member,
(28:32):
is for that kind of quote,unquote, insurance policy.
You're not we're never gonna getour membership active, right? We
need members that believe in us,they believe in the premise of
collective bargaining andcollective action. They believe
in labor as unions like theybelieve in that. And then we
inspire them by showing them thechanges that we can make
together. And when we start to,you know, not just talk the
(28:54):
talk, which we haven't done, wedon't even talk the talk but
then actually start following itup with actions then we're going
to inspire our members to bebecome more active and then
we're going to inspire nonmembers because we are right to
work state to join and the morethat we're able to get people to
join in Bacchus then the morepower that will have to bring
about the changes we need.
(29:15):
Thank you so much. Yeah,absolutely. Anytime please keep
us updated. We will appreciateit.
(29:50):
That's it for this week in Renonews, please visit us online at
this is reno.com. And if you areable to please subscribe to
support locally ownedindependent journalism
When citizens show up and have a unified voice and
(00:04):
message, it is we who can createchange.
We have to, as voters hold ourelected officials accountable,
we can no longer allow ourstudents,
our education system, ourprofession to be used simply to
(00:27):
get elected. That's KaylinEvans. He's the president elect
of the washer EducationAssociation. That's the group
that represents more than 3500teachers in Washoe County. Evans
said he hopes to take theassociation in a more active
direction under his tenure. Inthis show, we talked about what
he hopes to accomplish theunion's endorsements for school
(00:47):
board candidates and thechallenges facing the school
district. We also talked aboutthe future of public education
in Washoe County. For this weekin Reno news, I am Bob Conrad
with this is reno.com.
(01:08):
Thank you to this show sponsorthe Truckee Meadows water
authority here with thismessage. Summertime conservation
is standard at Truckee MeadowsWater Authority. It's what we
do. And this year, we can allprevent waste by keeping
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reminders and more at smartabout water.com.
(01:45):
Kailyn please tell us a littlebit about yourself. So right now
I'm an educator in WashoeCounty. I am currently the
president elect for the WashoeEducation Association. And I
will step into that role fulltime, mid July. What does the
Education Association do?
Exactly? So the EducationAssociation is the collective
bargaining arm of all teachers,counselors, and Dean's in our
(02:10):
school district. So wecollectively bargain with the
district in terms of workerrights,
our contract everything that'sin that contract from pay raises
to working conditions, those arethings that we're going to
bargain for with the district.
And then we also represent ourmembers in any sort of grievance
hearings, things that mighthappen within the school where
teachers need support orrepresentation via through the
(02:32):
association or legal terms. Sowe do all that.
Okay, well, thank you for thebackground.
What prompted you to go fromteaching you said you've been
teaching 10 years? Yeah, intothe sort of more kind of
advocate public advocacy role?
Yeah, you know, well, I got intoadvocacy work. A few years ago,
(02:54):
through a nonprofit organizationthat I started called empowering
Nevada teachers. I started thatbecause the public education in
Nevada historically has reallystruggled. And it's been
exacerbated over the last decadeor so, due to just an overall
lack of funding and resourcesalong with just increased cost
(03:15):
of living over the last decadehere in Reno. And you're seeing
it really starts on fold interms of our ability to have a
high functioning educationsystem. I would say that if
you're from Nevada, you know,unfortunately, education, well,
high quality education in Nevadaare not synonymous. And that's
an issue, right? For me. I mean,I think personally, just as a
(03:35):
father, as a member of thecommunity, understanding the
importance of education and howthat shapes the young people,
and overall, our community as awhole, it struggled. And so I
was seeing a need for activism,I was seeing in need of feeling
as if educators voices weren'treally being respected and
heard. So I started down thatadvocacy route, through my own
(03:56):
nonprofit. And then that kind ofled me to work parallel with the
Association, both state andlocal, on just different
initiatives throughout the statein terms of how we can support
education. And ultimately, Ifelt that there was a really big
need for us to change theculture and direction of the
association from within. And soI had an opportunity to run and
(04:19):
a lot of support from ourmembers and a lot of support
from educators across thedistrict to run and felt like I
could really do something tostart to change it. Because
ultimately, you know, I feltthat in order for us to bring
about real changes in the schoolsystem in our district and in
our state, we had to bring aboutreal changes in the association.
What is one of the questionsthat I have here is how is your
(04:41):
leadership going to be differentfrom your predecessors? The
folks that came before you atthe education as you know,
absolutely. I think, what iswhat's actually a benefit of
mine is, you know, I'll be thefirst person to serve as
president of the weta thatdidn't currently serve on the
board.
Word. You know, people mightlook at that as Oh, there's a
(05:02):
lack of experience. And I lookat that as there's a different
perspective that I can bring tothe association. I haven't been
entrenched in what they've beendoing for years. So I also don't
come with kind of the sametraditions, or tactics or
messaging that they do. I reallyfeel like in order for us to
bring about real rights for ourmembers, and not just our
members, but all teachers,because whether they're members
(05:24):
of the association or not, werepresent them, right. Like our
contract goes for all teachersin the school district, we have
to change the kind of theunderlying culture. And what I
mean by that is, there's acouple different things, you
know, in my opinion,traditionally, leadership of the
association has kind of lookedat our relationship with the
district as a bit subservient,as if we should just be grateful
(05:48):
that we are allowed to exist,right? Because we are in
association with the schooldistrict. It's very similar to a
union. But there's some slightdifferences, where, you know, so
given that we're in association,we're in partnership with the
district, we, you know,traditional leadership has
always taken the idea of, okay,well, we're gonna push but we're
not going to push too hard,because we, you know, we don't
want to ruffle any feathers, wedon't want to rock the boat,
(06:09):
like, we need to be workingpartners. Now, of course, we
want an amicable workingrelationship with our school
district. That's withoutquestion. But at the end of the
day, if we're not getting theworking rights and conditions
that are suitable for oureducators, we have to put our
foot down, and we can't just sayit through, you know, talking
about it, right, we can't justsay this is unacceptable. And
then when it continues, we justgo back to doing what we've
(06:30):
always done, right, we mightcomplain about and go back to
work, we have to do more, right?
So we have to let our membersknow that we are willing, as an
association to really stand upand draw lines in the sand and
not allow them to be crossedwithout us, you know, stepping
up to the plate and doing whatwe need to do as an association,
right, like organized labor hascertain tools at their disposal,
but that they can use to bringabout changes, and nobody can
(06:53):
look at the education system.
And you know, we can argue aboutvariables of the education
system, right, we might havedifference of opinions on how
things are implemented. But ifyou look at just black and white
in terms of how education isfunded, and how it is served in
our community, nobody can arguethat it's being adequately
funded. You know, Nevada, we're50th. In school finance, we're
(07:16):
40 sevens and per pupil funding,which is the amount of money
that every student, you know,that we receive per student to
service them. You know, we havethe largest class sizes in the
country, one of the highest,one of the lowest teacher
retention rates, right. So wehave a huge turnover in
teachers. And so all of thesemetrics point to the fact that
we don't value education inNevada the way that we should.
(07:40):
And ultimately, that falls backon the working conditions of
teachers. And I noticed thisweek, that in Clark County, they
raised teacher salaries, whyhasn't that been done here in
Washoe County? And it's kind ofa two part question. Because
we're constantly for about ayear now, we've been hearing
about the school districtsinability to retain, I assume
teachers, but also bus driversand nutrition staff in
(08:06):
particular, why why hasn'tWashoe County raised salaries?
You know, that's a greatquestion. I mean, I think the
answer, you know, I try to wantto give an answer with think
what would they say? Right, andthey're gonna say, well, out of
the whole state being as lowfunded as we are as a state, you
know, Washoe County has thelowest per pupil funding. Right.
But even with that, you know,it's, you know, I can't really
(08:28):
answer for them, right, I thinkthat there are, we have put
millions of dollars intoeducation in the thought of, you
know, whether it's curriculumadoption or assessment programs,
you know, with well intended,with with good intentions,
right, like the, you know,they're funding these things,
(08:49):
thinking that these were goingto be the things that will help
close achievement gaps. But whatthey fail to understand is, it
doesn't matter how high tech ourschools are, or, you know, our
one to one ratio of technology,or if we're able to hire, you
know, additional support staff,or this amazing curriculum, or
we, you know, we spend millionsof dollars on these assessment
programs, and standardizedtesting. At the end of the day,
(09:12):
we can't even get our kids toschool, because we can't afford
bus drivers. Right? So like,what does it matter, all of
these other things, these kindof bells and whistles that we're
trying to implement when wedon't have a teacher in the
classroom. I mean, we havedozens of classes across our
district. And you know, most ofthe community doesn't know that
they're not even being taught bya certified teacher. We have
long term subs that have to takethese positions that we've put
(09:34):
in there. They're being paid afraction of the price, right so
there's obviously some salarysavings by the district. I just
wrote a lengthy email to theschool board and superintendent
just the other day bringing upthese exact same things saying
you know, Clark County is rightlike they understand the
critical need that we're at, ifwe cannot bring new
professionals and qualityprofessionals into the into
(09:56):
teachingnothing else really matters
right now. And so them raisingthe rate, the starting salary,
but then also giving retentionbonuses because teachers are
leaving in there. And you know,with such a competitive labor
market right now, teachers havemore options than they ever
have. And I think teachers arestarting to really understand
their value, right, that theyare highly qualified
(10:18):
professionals, that while theyhave a passion for teaching,
that passion is not going to putfood on the table, it's not
going to pay their bills. Sowhile they are passionate about
working with us, it gets to thepoint where it doesn't matter
how high, you know, how muchlove they get from teaching,
they can't afford to live, theycan't afford their rent, they
can't afford those things. Sothey can go find another high
(10:39):
paying highly competitive jobwith great working conditions,
and then not have to deal withall of the other struggles and
strife that come with teachingin these working conditions. And
again, I mentioned class sizes,you know, having the largest
class sizes in the country, Ican't underscore enough how
important or how critical thatissue is, because it's a working
(11:01):
condition, right, that thatdramatically impacts both the
educators and the students inthe classroom. So all of these
factors, you know, and so, whatthey need to I mean, without
question, I think the schooldistrict really needs so we have
all these eser fund money, thishas been fun, you know, money
from the federal government fromthe COVID response. And, you
(11:21):
know, they need to be lookingvery closely at how they're
using that money, and, in myopinion, reevaluate where those
funds are going. Because, again,you know, we can, you know,
higher, I was just tellingsomebody, it's like, we're
putting a lot of money intosummer school and winter
session, which Yeah, we need,kids are behind because of
COVID. Absolutely. It's notgoing to mean anything that a
(11:44):
kid goes to summer school, ifnext year, they don't have a
teacher in their classroom whenthey start the school year,
right. So we have criticalneeds, and we need to really
prioritize those things. Andthere's a lot of them right now,
having human beings in thebuilding, to get your kids to
school, to clean up the schoolsto feed your kids to teach your
kids toto keep your kids safe. Like all
(12:05):
of those things need to be thetop priority right now. What
what you've mentioned the wordworking conditions. As you know,
I've done a lot of reporting onthe school district and a lot of
the administrative and personnelissues.
And some pretty striking cases.
What is your opinion about howthings have been in the last few
years? Um, you know, I thinkit's been it's been challenging,
(12:29):
right? Because there's a lot offactors when we think about how,
you know, with thesuperintendent challenges that
we've had earlier, and then thentransitioning to McNeil, and
then she kind of taking overright as COVID hit and I mean,
who's going to be able to, tounderstand how to navigate
COVID. Right, like, that wasjust something that I think was,
(12:49):
you know, you're kind of puttinganybody in a situation to fail
in that sense. And, you know, Ithink the issue that we're
finding is that, we're startingto see some of the residual
effects of COVID. Right now,especially with student
behavior, student behavior, andviolence is at an all time high.
And that's an extreme workingcondition. And so you have a lot
(13:10):
of teachers that are reachingout to their administrators, and
then those administrators arereaching out to the district,
and they're saying, like, weneed help, like, we, we don't
have the resources, we don'thave this infrastructure at the
school to house some of these,like severe behavior students.
And then then it kind of comesback on the district where they
don't have the resources, right,like the district at the end of
(13:32):
the day is coming back toschools and saying, you know,
like, Okay, well, you know, wedon't have the answers to this
either. So it kind of seems asif it's just being passed along
to a degree. And ultimately,that bucks gonna stop at the
teacher, right. So we'll havestudents in these classrooms
that need additional supportthey need,
(13:54):
they need the type of supportthat, you know,
classroom teacher can'tnecessarily provide them, given
the fact that they have allthese other responsibilities.
But then we don't have thoseright. Like, we don't have
enough social workers. We don'thave enough behavioral
specialists, we don't haveenough si P programs, which are
programs for students who justneed additional structure and
(14:15):
support for behavior, like wedon't have enough of those
services. And so it ends upreally creating a working
condition that in my opinion,and many others, that isn't
acceptable, and that's what'slead. So it's like cost of
living through the roof,stagnant
teacher salary, pay inflationthrough the roof, behaviors
going crazy, not feeling thatthe district is able to I mean,
(14:38):
whether they're trying I mean,like I don't want to say that
insinuate that they're nottrying but if they don't have
the resources, right, then thatall is going to fall back. You
factor all those things. There'sno reason to keep teaching,
right? Like there's no there'snothing to keep teachers in the
classroom anymore. And that'sthe big issue that we're running
into.
Talk a little bit about and weyou and I spoke a week or so
(14:59):
ago.
I'm about thiscommunity pressure from really
the far right sort of conspiracytheorist contingent. There's
sort of this underground,although very vocal and very
public, but it's, you know, itis a pretty slim minority at the
end of the day of people tryingto take over school boards at
the local level. You've seenthis in Elko, Clark County,
(15:22):
Washoe County,what's happening? And what's
your perspective of it both as ateacher now and then going into
the W E, AE? Yeah, I mean, on,you know, I don't like to throw
the term around lightly. Butit's scary in the sense that you
have people who are running forpublic office that will have a
(15:43):
direct impact on the, the, youknow, the education profession,
and our students who are, Idon't even not like lack of a
better terms, just, in manyways. Crazy, I guess you could
say, in the sense that I'm allfor having a difference of
(16:03):
opinions, like we can becritical of the school district,
we can be critical of educationas a whole. And I will have an
honest conversation. And, and Ihave my critiques of education
as a whole and how it's doneboth nationally at the state
level, and at the district, Imyself have been very critical
of the district and decisionsthat they make. And that's not
what we're seeing. But what weare seeing is people who are
outright lying, they're cominginto school board,
(16:27):
meetings, and they are makingthings up and they're making up
very hateful, divisive andhurtful things. And they're
spreading. They're slandering.
The school district areslandering teachers, and it's
not founded. And so for somebodywho's in the arena, like myself,
right, who who's been ineducation, who obviously is well
versed and understanding, youknow, district and state
policies, and how you know, howall these things inner workings
(16:48):
work, when I come and I'mcritical, I'm speaking at least
as much as I can, from a placeof knowing right of
understanding.
We have people who have no ideawhat's going on in the
classrooms, who are saying andspeaking as if there's the
certainties of really justcrazy, I don't know if I can say
that I'm sorry, um, stuff in theschool boards, right, that we
(17:10):
are, you know, sexualizing ourkindergarten students by
teaching them share inkindergarten that we like, like
stuff that is so beyond the paleof like, reality that I can't
even then begin to meet youhalfway, right? Like, if you
think that we are over hereindoctrinating your first
graders to not understand, like,whether they're male or female,
(17:31):
like, I Where do we even have amiddle ground to start saying,
Okay, I think that there'slegitimate concerns. Okay,
great. Let's have a conversationabout those concerns, and how
can we better educate ourstudents? We have people that
are, you know, this whole ideaof CRT, and it's this boogeyman,
and you know, like, oh, CRT CRT,who's teaching CRT? Like, does
anyone actually teach it inNorthern Nevada? Yeah, like, we
(17:53):
went our way this isn't thisisn't any, this isn't even in
the realm of being taughtanywhere K through 12.
Education, right, like, letalone most likely even college?
Yeah, exactly. So it's this,this whole idea that, you know,
that this is just, it's justtheir fear mongering, right. No
one really knows what CRT is.
(18:13):
But I know if I say and there'speople that have issues with
some of the socialissues in our country, which you
can we can have thosediscussions, right. But they
have to be based in reality. Andso when we talk about this, and
we have people who are that arerunning for school board that I
really, you know, I'm hopingthat your listeners are hearing,
there's an organization calledSave WC SD, look them up Google
save WC ISD. If any of thosepeople are running in your
(18:39):
district, and you care at all,about just our education system,
our students are educated, youshould not vote for any of those
people. Because they arecompletely, you know,
weaponizing social issues. Towithout factual without fat.
Yeah, exactly. Completelybaseless. Right. And that's the
(19:00):
that's the tricky part. That'snot that's the tricky part.
That's the really unfortunatepart. Because then while it is a
minority, for sure of thepopulation, they're allowed
minority. And when you saythings over and over and over,
and if you have people whoaren't educating themselves
about what's going on, they go,Well, is CRT being taught or
(19:20):
what is going on? What's theShare program going on? Like,
what are these social, like,what are we doing to our gay,
like, all of a sudden, it startsto pick up, you know, it can
start to snowball, becausepeople unfortunately aren't
really taking the time to findout whether or not this is
actually going on and havingthose conversations. So yeah, I
mean, these school board racesare extremely important, right.
(19:40):
We have four incumbents that arethat are running best Smith,
Joe Rodriguez, Adam Mayberry,and Elon Veneto. All four of
them need to be reelected. Andyou know, so if you're in those
districts, those are nonpartisanraces. So everybody, Republican
Democrat,indepent everybody gets to vote
on those in our community. Andif you have any four of those in
(20:02):
your district, which there's agood chance you do, you need to,
you know, please, please votevote in the primary. And are
those the official wetaendorsements as well? Yeah,
those why is that? Well, I thinkif well,
in regards to, to Joe, wow,okay. Regards to all of them,
(20:25):
you know, Joe Beth Adam, theyare extremely responsive to
educators. And on a personallevel to like, anytime you have
teachers reaching out to themwith concerns, they are not just
given the lip service of oh, youknow, thank you for reaching
out. And we're going to lookinto about what I know, like,
tell me exactly what's going on.
And then following up with thosethings, and making sure that
(20:46):
they're talking to thesuperintendent that there's
talking to the areasuperintendents, to make sure
that issues are being addressed.
And that, that they're reallylistening, and then following
through with actions. So thosethose ones, especially that are
running, and that's the biggestthing, too. So you have these,
you know, like a they're verypro educator in the sense of
(21:06):
like, supporting what we'redoing. But then also their
opponents are the are the onesthat we were talking about the
Save WC SD. So I mean, it'sreally, you know, it's a no
brainer in terms of theendorsement side for both weta
and NSCA, which is our stateassociation. But it's, you know,
school board races have neverbeen this important. And as you
(21:27):
were saying, like we're seeingacross the country where school
boards are coming under attack.
And it's happening right nowwhere people that are kind of
coming into our community, fromthe out from not local as well,
which is important to understandto the people think about all
these people from Californiacoming like No, like these
people from California, it's whoare coming in and trying to run
for the school board pieces liketo get people active in fear
(21:49):
monger across our community. Sothose groups are not, they're
not local, they're not fromhere, they don't they weren't
born and raised here. So there'sdefinitely almost like a
mentality of like, just kind oflike, Let's burn the whole thing
down and start from scratchversus no, hey, let's look at
the issues that we have. Andlet's work together to address
them.
And the fear is that if if oneof those if somebody else gets
(22:12):
on the school board, along withthe current trustee church, all
of a sudden, we're going tospend very valuable time and
resources talking about thingslike CRT that aren't actually
even being taught, right, likewe're going to be talking about
the boogeyman instead of talkingabout legitimate issues. And
that's the concern that all of asudden, we aren't focused on the
(22:33):
fact collectively focused on thefact that we are one of the
lowest funded school districtsin the entire country, right?
Like that's, that is a realissue that is going to impact
every student and every personin our community. Ultimately,
that's what we need to betalking about not these other
issues, that aren't issues atall, that are completely
fabricated in order for, youknow, kind of to distract us to
(22:56):
a degree. So yes, that answersthe question. Talk about
empowered Nevada, T shirts,teachers, what happened with
that there was a change, youchange the name or what's, you
know, we just we didn't changethe name, the nonprofit still
has the name, we change the, youknow, we had a, we have a really
large Facebook group, we changedthe name of the group, because
(23:18):
what was happening was, youknow, when people were on social
media, you know, like, ifthey're in in that social media
group in that Facebook group,they don't necessarily represent
us as a board, or the act ofmembership. They're just a
random person that's in thatgroup, right? And then they'll
say something, or they'll dosomething, or they'll post
something. And then it kind ofends up being associated with us
(23:40):
indirectly. And so we felt thatit was important to change the
name in order for us to kind ofbe able to keep our own
autonomy, and so that noteverything that was said was
immediately good or bad. It waslike, Oh, well, they said it in
the group. And that must be ourposition. Well, no, that wasn't
our position. It wasn't anybodyfrom our board or myself that
said it. It was just, you know,somebody. And unfortunately, as
(24:03):
you know, social media is a verytoxic environment. It can be
used in a constructive way. Butultimately, I would say more so
than not we ended up especiallywhen you're dealing with issues
that are verypassionate to individuals. It
just becomes toxic. The way thateducation has been over the last
few years going through thispandemic, and going through all
(24:26):
these issues within Nevada. It'sa tough time to be a teacher.
And so you had a lot of you hada lot of negativity, you had a
lot of people venting a lot offrustrations and that sort of
culture and climate. We didn'twant to be associated with us
directly. And so we decided tochange that. One thing I
remember, in the last coupleyears was a
(24:51):
one former school board trusteewho had set up a fake profile to
be a member of the group tomonitor the conversations that
appeared orYeah, absolutely, yeah, no, and
that definitely happens. And sothe group is still, you know,
the group still there. It's anopen platform, you know, we
wanted to provide a space, thatteachers could come together,
that they could share resourcesthat they could share things
(25:13):
that are going on, and kind ofjust kind of have that more
sense of community. But yeah, Imean, it's definitely it can be
used, and it can gain using thatterm weaponize in a lot of ways.
I mean, we know we understandthat, and all teachers should
understand all school districtemployees, your social medias
are being monitored, right?
Like, just just be aware ofthat. And so it's not that
(25:34):
they're in that group or not,like, you know, you need to be
thoughtful in terms of whatyou're putting out there.
Because you have, you know,professional conduct that you
need to stay within in terms ofyour contract. So, you know, we
understand that there are peopleon via social media, and then
yeah, with that particulartrustee, who, you know, was
creating fake accounts, andthen, and then kind of
commenting on, you know, gettingin arguments with people on his
(25:58):
own burner account to, you know,go over these issues. But, um,
fortunately, we have been ableto kind of separate ourselves
from that in terms of thenonprofit piece, and a lot of
our active members have becomevery active with the association
now. And that was kind of howwe've been able to transition
from being you know, a nonprofitgroup and kind of this, you
(26:20):
know,active group of, of teachers, to
then being able to have, youknow, have a number of
representatives, schoolrepresentatives within the WBA.
And now myself, as thePresident, and we brought in a
lot of really passionate, smartindividuals, our board is almost
entirely new. So it's excitingright now, because we have
(26:44):
people who we have experiencedon the board, but we also have a
lot of new people that arebringing in that fresh
perspective, and willingness todo things differently. And
that's what we have to do, wehave to do things differently,
because this idea that, youknow, education is going to
magically fix itself here inNevada. It's just not the case.
And it's going to be throughkind of more radical changes
(27:04):
that we can do that. How are yougoing to pursue more funding?
Are you going to be reallyengaged with the legislature?
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Imean, that's where it starts,
right, we have to start at thelegislative level, which is
right around the corner. So it'sour big thing is we have to be
able to activate our memberbase, traditionally, the web a
while we might have a lot ofmembers, we're not we haven't
(27:26):
been able to, in the past, getthem as active. But I also think
in a lot of work in a lot ofways, it's because of the
tactics that leadership hastaken, you know, like, the past
leadership has done all thatthey can, you know, they put the
work and they put the effortthat's not without, you know,
that's without question. So I'mnot at all trying to be, you
know, critical in that sense, Ithink that there's just a
(27:48):
difference of opinions, in termsof how we can bring about change
and what's necessary to bringabout change.
You know, if I'm a member of ofa labor union, and my labor, and
I think that my leadership isn'twilling to take any steps
necessary to bring about change,that doesn't inspire me really
(28:10):
to get active, right, I mightstill be a member, that's fine.
Because I want that insurancepolicy, I want it you know, if I
run into an issue with theschool district or my
administrator, something that Iknow that I'm going to have my
association that's there tosupport me right and that's
important piece because thathappens. You know, there's,
there's, there's definitely avalue in having the Association
for that reason. But if that'sthe only reason you're a member,
(28:32):
is for that kind of quote,unquote, insurance policy.
You're not we're never gonna getour membership active, right? We
need members that believe in us,they believe in the premise of
collective bargaining andcollective action. They believe
in labor as unions like theybelieve in that. And then we
inspire them by showing them thechanges that we can make
together. And when we start to,you know, not just talk the
(28:54):
talk, which we haven't done, wedon't even talk the talk but
then actually start following itup with actions then we're going
to inspire our members to bebecome more active and then
we're going to inspire nonmembers because we are right to
work state to join and the morethat we're able to get people to
join in Bacchus then the morepower that will have to bring
about the changes we need.
(29:15):
Thank you so much. Yeah,absolutely. Anytime please keep
us updated. We will appreciateit.
(29:50):
That's it for this week in Renonews, please visit us online at
this is reno.com. And if you areable to please subscribe to
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