00:00:00,000	that. I. Good evening, I’m Dan Eastgate, president of the Bismarck School Board. It’s 5:15 on Monday, August 12th. I call this meeting to order. Welcome to all of those of you here in the crowd and also uh joining us online. You can find our agenda and follow along online under the school board tab at Bismarckschools.org. Mr.

00:00:23,930	Sher, can you call a roll please, Mr. Eastgate, Mr. Hagar, Mr. Lee, here, Mrs. Peterson, Ms. Preske. All board members are present and accounted for. Dr. Fazna, could you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

00:00:51,730	One nation under God, indivisible. Liberty and justice for. Item 1C is the BPS mission vision and values, the BPS mission is to empower every learner to thrive. The BPS vision states together are strong relationships build inclusive, collaborative and innovative environments that create agency and inspire a passion for learning, excellence and discovery.

00:01:22,300	The BPS values are inclusion, excellence, innovation, and leadership. You can also find a link in the agenda to the BPS strategic plan. Item 2 is to adopt the agenda. What are the wishes of the board? I move that we adopt the agenda. I’ll second motion is second, any discussion. Mr. Sheriff Hager Lee Peterson, Preske Eastgate, motion passes.

00:01:48,800	Item 3 focus on success, Dr. Faszna. Um, good afternoon, board members. Nice to see you again. It’s been a while, but I, um, tonight’s focus on success, we’re going to talk about middle school CT camps and to begin this and do all the further introductions, I’d like to introduce Dr.

00:02:05,800	Tabby Rebenberg, who, uh, is not only, um, going to talk about, uh, she’s really is the forefront of getting these started and their expansion this year, so. Thank you, Dr. Fast. I appreciate that. President Eastgate, board members, thank you very much for inviting us here today to listen to this exciting summer adventure that we all had.

00:02:26,070	So really the credit goes to the instructors here. We have Melissa Corsley and Brian Price, Tammy Anderson, Jessica Melhoff, Lisa Bru, Kate Gardner, Luke Melmer, Brianne Heaton, and David Ax. They did an amazing job putting on these summer camps, uh, this summer for CTE. So we offered 4 camps this summer. We offered a business camp where we had 43 students, medical careers.

00:02:50,270	We had 61 students, STEM 69 students and welding 50 students. Those were the students that we could accommodate. when um it started going crazy after day two and we were completely full of all of our camps.

00:03:09,470	I started looking for more instructors and found some more instructors to be able to accommodate all the spots for these camps, but again, we still had students on the waiting list because I could not find enough instructors. After everyone tried to sign up, so we had, um, total summer students that we served was 223 and we still had 91 students on the waiting list, so big deal. And now we can plan better for next summer.

00:03:30,730	So I’m gonna come up and introduce Melissa Corsley, who is in charge of the business camp, and she brought some students here with her and. Go to share.

00:03:49,930	Yeah, real quick, I just wanted to um do some shout outs to the business partners that were able to help us this, um, go around, um, fabulous, fabulous showing from our business community. We were able to get a behind the scenes look at the Bismarck larks. So we walked from Hughes down to the Larks and special shout out to any of our community members who, um, honked when they were doing the please honk at us, we had the 100 honk chart uh challenge.

00:04:09,730	Um, as you can tell, they’re middle schoolers, so it, it’s, it’s about career exploration, but it’s also about having fun. They’re taking a little bit of their summer a way to learn, and we appreciate that. We also visited Plant Perfect.

00:04:27,300	Um, that’s really cool when you’ve got a business owner who bought the business when he was 24 years old, so it was really cool for our students to see, you don’t have to be, you know, a boomer, right? Like you can, um, be a young business owner. Um, we also had railway credit union. And come in and do budgeting lessons.

00:04:45,000	We had Luigi’s ice cream truck come in and talk about a small family business. We also had ice cream. Um, we had a state DEA officer come over from Mandan High School to talk about her experience um in national competition and then also the classes.

00:05:07,000	And um also just want to give a shout out to the foundation for putting together thank you gifts for all of our people that helped us, um, we had a great time and what’s awesome about this is they get 32 hours to really soak into an experience and see if this is something they want to do or not.

00:05:22,270	If it is, here are the classes you can take when you’re getting up to, um, high school. If it’s not, what else can we, can we let you try? And so it was really awesome. So I have 2 students here. Um, I have Vaya and I have Braylin, and the cool thing about them is their cousins, and they’re in different grades, but they were able to do the camp together.

00:05:39,270	And that was really meaningful for them. So why don’t you guys come up and talk? Welcome. Thanks for being here. Hello, I’m Vyda Hints, and I’m a 7th grader at Wachter Middle School. This summer I got to do business camp with Mrs. Corsling as my teacher.

00:06:02,770	At camp, we learned about handling money, building effective advertisements, and we created our own imaginary companies. We took 2 field trips, one to the Larks and the other to Plant perfect. There we got to see how they operate and how they sold goods for profit. Missus Corsley made business camp super fun with lots of games. We learned a lot while we had fun and laughed.

00:06:19,830	I hope to see more opportunities like this for 7th and 8th graders next summer. Hello, I’m Brayen Shoemaker at an 8th grader from Wachter Middle School at business camp, we learned a lot about what it takes to run a business. There, sorry, there’s a lot. Of work that goes into starting one like finding loans and having a plan.

00:06:42,030	We learned how to they have to track their money and work on advertising and training employees. We also got to come up with our own businesses, business ideas and do a presentation in front of our peers. I think it’s important that we keep this program going. We learned so much and it was really fun.

00:07:02,930	There are not many summer options for middle school kids, especially extra learning opportunities, and I would love to see these keep going and even more, add more. Thank you. Thank you very much. So next we had medical careers camp. I’m gonna have Braden come up front. He is injured.

00:07:27,200	He might have been able to diagnose and fix himself. I’m going to let him speak first and then I’ll just fill in the blanks after he talks to you about what you love best about medical camp. Hi, I’m Brayden Meyer. I’m going into 8th grade at Horizon. I attended medical career camp. It was a fun and good learning experience.

00:07:50,700	Teachs did a great job making learning hands-on and interactive topics included pharmacy, CNA, radiology, surgery, and many more. A couple of my favorites were cast making with real materials and the steps, sutures using real equipment, going to the zoo and seeing all the responsibilities of a vet.

00:08:18,000	And the germ game with a volleyball to see how fast germs can spread just by touching an object. I feel this camp helped me understand more medical professions and all opportunities available in the future. It also helped me with real life skills that could help me in everyday life like taking vitals, emergency response, and safety. I hope that they continue to offer this program to others like it.

00:08:44,900	And it’s that you, Braden, that I didn’t do that on purpose, but that’s pretty cool. Thank you. Thanks, Braden. Wonderful. Well, I think Braden did an awesome job, so I don’t think I have any blanks to fill in.

00:09:03,700	You can see the awesome experience that they had in medical careers camp and we had some pretty incredible instructors for that as well. All right, Stem camp, we had 2 instructors for that, um, Mr. Price and Mrs.

00:09:23,070	Anderson, um, and they had a great time creating projects, um, in fact, I walked over to, they weren’t able to be here tonight, but I walked over to one child and I said one student and I said, what are you, what are you up to? And he said, we’re making a hot tub. I said, is that a soldering pen you have in your hand? He said, yep, I said, do the instructors know you have a soldering pen, he said, oh yeah, I got that approved. I brought this from home.

00:09:38,670	great, he said, I’m building the motor for the hot tub and they’re creating the shell for the hot tub, and I thought, wow, we really underestimate kids. So that was a pretty cool experience. They got to put together, um, Put together drones, fly drones, um, work on that.

00:10:02,670	They actually made a cotton candy machine that worked, which I was super impressed with by that as well. I was impressed every day I walked in there, so that was pretty cool as well. Finally, we have welding camp, and we have Mr. Luke Miler here to talk about uh welding camp this summer. Evening, Mr. Wilmer. Hello, how’s it going? Good.

00:10:24,330	All right, uh, so just a little bit of a background. Um, I’ve coached wrestling pretty much all my life and um in the summer times I’ve coached the North Dakota national team and I’ve coached wrestling camps, uh, since I’ve been in college, and, uh, I never had once had a thought that welding could be uh taught in a, in a, I mean, a

00:10:45,030	welding camp, uh, never would have thought that, and so when Tabby approached me with. You know, would I be interested in this, um, I, I thought, well, I’m just gonna approach you just like I do with a wrestling camp and show these kids some, you know, the ins and outs and a little bit of technique and

00:10:58,130	show them how to do it safe and uh, you know, I was a little bit nervous straight away, you know, you got 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, um, with 6000,,, 7000 degrees in their hands, um, you know, but, uh, so we limited our numbers to 12, um, and then I also got um two high school

00:11:17,400	students to help out two juniors for business. uh high school to help out with the camp and um I think one of the, the, the best things that I noticed out of these kids was the confidence, the confidence that was built in those in those four days.

00:11:35,900	Um, and we’re talking kids that, you know, don’t know much about tools or welding industry at all. I mean, when I was asking the, the, um, Preca questions, you know, what do you know about welding and and whatever else and you know, no hands were going up or how hot this is going to be and no hands are going up and uh to

00:11:54,500	the to the last day where the kids are independently turning on the machines, adjusting the machines, and we welded together a bird house we um.

00:12:10,870	There’s a couple of pieces that I had them cut down their own measures and cut down their own to complete the project, but, uh, you know, you could see in the picture that they all got to take a project home with them, um.

00:12:27,970	But I would say that like I said, the, the, the best part of the the whole camp, that, you know, it was 2 weeks, um, two separate 4 day camps, and I, and I think that the best part of it was, was the confidence building with these kids so just really wanna appreciate and uh and say thank you you guys to the for the opportunity of, of doing this with these kids, so. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Malmer.

00:12:51,070	All right, so we had several videos about what students liked uh about CTE camp, um, you have those, uh, that those videos you can take a look at that, those are pretty exciting to watch. And then we have some data, so I thought I’d leave the fun stuff till the end because everybody loves data, right? So we gave a pre-survey and a post survey, and as you can see the interest for STEM camp skyrocketed from

00:13:12,530	49% to 72%, but not only did we want to know what kids were interested in, we wanted to know, did they gain some knowledge about STEM, and as you can see, it went up from 27 to 36% and the kids had a ton of fun.

00:13:28,930	So we asked them, do you believe experiences like this should be a part of your school day they started out as at 81.6% and ended up with 96% of students think that should be a part of their school day. Medical careers camp, you can see the same, um, we had a high interest but ended up with 100% of the students, um.

00:13:48,130	Having an interest and the knowledge here skyrocketed as Braden can probably attest to as well, um, and we had a high number to start with that it should be a part of their school day, all but one student said, um, said yes, it should definitely be a part of the school day.

00:14:08,530	Business camp As you can see, maybe the interest went down a little bit, but that’s OK because we want kids to understand and know at an early age when I’m not interested in it just as much as what I’m interested in, so, um, that number is to me is super positive and I have talked to Melissa about that as well is

00:14:28,000	super positive because now those kids know, oh, I might not wanna take a business class in high school and go, go into that, but as you can see their knowledge about business went from 29.4% to 94%.

00:14:50,500	Welding camp, the same thing, high interest, high knowledge they had no knowledge when they came in and they’re knowledge increased significantly, and they do want uh welding to continue as well. What did the parents say? the child’s, um, you can see that they learned a lot of the children learned a lot of relevant information about the career fields. Do you want to see more career exploratory experiences offered. Parents say yes, 100%. Yes.

00:15:18,370	And here are just some comments from some teachers. My, um, favorite comment is my daughter was super irritated with me for signing her up for this experience because it was going to be super dumb and boring. Each day I got home from work before I could ask her.

00:15:34,370	She would come and tell me all of the things she learned about the activities she did and the it was the best part of her day. She has never spoken about the dental field, um, but as of today she thinks she wants to be a dental hygienist. Thank you so much for bringing opportunities.

00:15:51,270	Like this for middle school aged students, so I want to thank you for allowing us to offer these um great experiences to kids. And as you have heard from the kids, they love it too, so we appreciate your time and thank you again for allowing us to do this. It’s fantastic. Thanks a lot, Dr. Rubenberg.

00:16:12,630	Board members, any questions or comments for any of our presenters tonight. Board member Lee. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, no, this was, this was awesome. I loved hearing about it.

00:16:28,030	Uh, thank you so much for presenting, um, and to the young ladies, you don’t need to come back up, but so you learn all about a business and what it takes to start a business and run a business, right? Do you think that’ll make you a better employee in the future? Right. That’s awesome. Yeah, very well done. So good. This Preskey.

00:16:50,730	Yeah, I really appreciate you students coming in and sharing your experiences and it’s it’s, uh, you know, it gives us a lot of information too to hear it from you who experienced it, not just the teachers or those that have put this program together so thank you for doing that.

00:17:09,130	Um, I think what you know what the survey two shows us is the support and the interest that’s there for, for expanding CTE into our middle schools like we’ve been discussing and and is could be. Down the road for BPS, so it’s exciting to see that that it was successful and that there is a strong interest in growing the program. So, thank you. Ms. Peterson, I also want to just thank everybody for um coming in presenting and especially, um, Dr.

00:17:31,400	Rebenberg and the instructors for putting this on, um, my son also got to participate in the business camp, and I think he was similar to the, uh, you know, making, making me go and then um really, really enjoying it and um really proud of the business that he got to create at the very end, so I so I just

00:17:47,900	wanna thank everybody for these experiences, and again, I hope they continue in the numbers definitely show, you know, you don’t want to see 91 on a waiting. List, you want to see those 91 getting a getting a spot in one of those camps. So, so hopefully we are able to do that and accommodate next year.

00:18:02,700	Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, to the staff, thank you. Thanks for your time during the summer and your expertise and um, to all of you and Va Brayn and Braden. Great job tonight.

00:18:18,700	Thanks so much for taking time out of your Monday on a hot summer school hasn’t started yet for you, and we certainly appreciate you guys coming here to share a little bit about what this program did for you guys and uh we hope that we can continue to offer more of these things for you guys and for future students at BPS. So thank you guys so much for being here. Appreciate you. OK OK, thank you. OK.

00:18:40,400	Yeah, moving on from the focus on success, which is always a highlight, especially when students come share. Uh, we’re gonna move on to item 4, which is public comment. The board recognized the central role parents play in the education of their children and support active parent involvement in the educational process.

00:18:59,300	The board’s practice of public comment reflects and aligns with policy BCBA and the spirit of its intent. For classroom issues, it’s best to follow the chain of command. Going to the teacher, the principal, assistant superintendent, and ultimately to the superintendent. For districtwide issues, please reach out to Dr. Fosna.

00:19:19,370	We do not have any public comment to address from our last meeting, um, if anybody does wanna to speak tonight, we simply ask that you be responsible, be helpful, and be respectful. Our BPS students deserve to have adults model the expectations that we have for them. Individuals will be limited no more than 4 minutes be notified with 30 seconds remaining to conclude the remarks. The board will not debate issues as presented, but will take such matters under advisement.

00:19:36,370	With that, please stand and approach podium if you’d like to speak tonight. Seeing nobody, public comment is now closed. Moving on to item 5, monitoring district operations 5 A’s R1, Mega result. Dr. Fasna. Um, thank you, um, Mr. Chair, I, before I ask Dr.

00:20:02,970	Johnson to come up and provide you with a report tonight on R1 mega results. I do want to just share with the viewing public and for you, um, we’ve kind of shared these before, but for them, we’ve made some format changes these reports, so I thought I’d just talk through a few quick items, um, you’ll notice, uh, I guess the first thing they’re at the end of our

00:20:20,730	previous reports there used to be a um a um. An improvement section that was kind of like what do we see moving forward? We’ve now moved that to the first page, so that’s before my signature, so now you’re gonna see here’s what I’m attesting to that we’re going to do moving forward.

00:20:38,930	My signature ends that, so that’s in the first page. You’ll also see in the first page that bulleted list for progress reporting. We’ve done that simply for ease of reading. So when you as a patron, you don’t have to digest a paragraph or read inside the paragraph about what we’re saying.

00:20:58,030	We’re simply gonna say based on each of our categories that we use, here’s where each of the indicators falls. So we’re giving that to you in a very simple format so people can easily digest it. I think you’ll also know that we’ve um. We’ve moved some of the definitions that in the previous reports were scattered through the document.

00:21:18,900	We’ve moved them up to a a separate page. In this case, it’s page 5 in this document. That’s just for the policy to to uh restate that, so it’s clearly understood and then we’re putting all those um definitions and maybe terms we’re using or color coding we’re using in one place, so it’s not repeated through the document, shortens it up a

00:21:37,500	little bit, and also hopefully makes it all clearer for. People. And then throughout, you’ll see we’ve done uh I think my team’s done a really good job in trying to simplify, condense, keep it to the point of what you’re asking for, what do you want? How do we verify that what you’re looking for is

00:21:54,700	we’re providing that. Um, we’ve taken, um, some of the year data and you’re gonna see that in this report and others where instead of maybe 5 or 6 years, we’re reporting 3. We’ve condensed it down if you want to see 3 years before you can go back.

00:22:09,800	We keep all these reports so anybody can go back and see them online. But for this report, you can see back just a few years makes it a little more visually uh trackable, and so I think that’s a real positive for this report as well, so, um, you’ll see more changes as we go through the years as we simplify others and apply this

00:22:27,070	metric to our future reports that you’re gonna give you, but I do think it’s a um. Um, hopefully a more consumer friendly report for our patrons. So, and with that I would introduce uh Dr. Johnson to give you the report this evening. Thank you, Dr.

00:22:55,070	Falan and members of the board, um, President Eastgate, um, we Place ourselves with this mega results and this mega results is really just this broad look at some big data, big outcomes that we uh measure again results, what our student outcomes, not necessarily the OEs that are inputs, but if we have if we’re doing everything right, hopefully it’s all leading to these, so as we do

00:23:13,530	work with our uh results around whether it’s community ready regarding behavior, personal development, or the academic electives, etc. those are student results that hopefully are all contributing to measures that we call. Mega results such as uh graduation or uh whether or not students are choice ready.

00:23:34,930	So we found ourselves making progress with exception and we’ll outline that here as you can see uh Dr. Frost not uh overviewed, we’re making regional progress in 4 areas, 5 areas with exception, and then we were, we had zero indicators that were marked with failing to meet that. Um, continuous improvement.

00:23:52,830	We’ve talked about this for a little bit and so like last week had some communication with some of my people, and again this morning. Um, put out some more communication academic alert is a process again to engage parents and students in a conversation about where are you, are you on track? What does it take and how can we have a conversation to get you back on track, um, if you maybe

00:24:10,600	have dropped off or um and dropped out or if you’re there, but you’re just falling behind a little bit. So again, we are seeing some good work with that in our grad roundup, uh, trying to really go out and have those relational connections and re-engaged students, um.

00:24:26,500	That may have dropped out of one of our 3 high schools or been at South Central recently and whether that means coming back and getting your GED or coming back to one of the schools, how can we get you back on track to be um. Uh, productive and be able to help make an impact. Uh, we are entering our last year with UTTC’s Monarch Project.

00:24:44,100	Again, that’s been really targeted at our Native American indigenous population, and it’s been a good uh help of uh support as for academics, uh, social, emotional, cultural outcomes as well as the ability to um regain some of those credits as well. All that, of course, leading to graduation rates there.

00:25:05,600	We also highlight because we feel like that there’s this interconnectedness of the work that we do with. uh, first in the state to have a director for indigenous education and the work that the IPAC, the parent uh indigenous parent advisory group has been going through and we of course have a new director as well as, um, just two years ago, we added an indigenous education

00:25:25,570	curriculum coordinator by uh request and direction from the IPAC. So again, some of that funding had been directed to that so we can provide meaning and why are we highlighting this? Well, part of it we know in the mega results is an area where we continually. to improve is our Native American uh graduation rates.

00:25:42,070	However, that being said, that we’ve talked about this as a board in the past, although our graduation rate here is reported at 88%, um, you know, and it, it, it goes up and it goes down, it’s a little bit lower than our target, you know, but it definitely increased a little bit from last year and

00:25:57,970	we’re outperforming the state by 5%, but when we dive into our Native American graduation rate, it falls shorter of that overall mark. However, In analyzing if students are part of our system from 6th grade through 12th grade that uh graduation rate for Native Americans is at 87% and overall at 97%.

00:26:20,530	So again, when you’re vested and you can stay in our community and we can continue to have that partnership with parents and students. It really produces outstanding results, those mega results that we want to make sure that your son or daughter is ready and equipped for the next stage of their life there.

00:26:36,530	Um, we also do look at the graduate often means going to post-secondary education and we have in the past had a goal of 70%. Um, we’ve been hovering in the mid to upper 60s here for a few years and it might be something that the board continues to move forward when we talk about choice ready, entering the workforce with so many great

00:26:55,030	opportunities and not necessarily a bad route, um, so perhaps there’s a little bit of a a ceiling on there more so than we maybe thought if we apply some of the lens that even a few years ago when we’re talking about you have to go to college, you have to go to college.

00:27:09,030	Many of our students are, you know, signing on that bobcat and then perhaps going back and getting um further training and a degree over the span of the next 3 to 5 years and so they wouldn’t represent as being a um college enrollment, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not on the right path.

00:27:27,400	When we talk about empowering every learner to thrive, what is their right personalized path and are they set up to be successful for that. Um, we do know that when we look at uh student engagement and um. Whether that’s overall, we see that we as a district continue to outperform the state average.

00:27:46,800	Again, I’ve reiterated this in years past, but just for the board bringing that to the forefront of our conversation is when 1 and 9 or so students goes to Bismarck Public schools when we beat the average and we’re 1 in 9 students already. That’s saying that we’re doing a good job and it it gets a lot tougher to hit those margins there.

00:28:04,700	But overall, as we take a look at this, these mega results we’ve as Dr. Fastant shared, you know, we slimmed down a little bit of that, um, empowering the learner to thrive like what that means in terms of definition and the indicators there, um, really proud of increasing the graduation rate, um, you know, Jim Collins, all those other

00:28:21,400	great gurus in the business world, the good, the great, that becomes a lot tougher getting to that percentage, but we know that programming and the work that done to support student mental health, um, the recovery from COVID that we see some impact along the ways. Um, Dr.

00:28:38,100	Frostnot, you know, is pointing out too as we look at graduations and rates and sometimes you look at year to year, you see that kind of dip in 21, 22 at 85. Well, those were mostly our sophomores, I believe there and then likely uh when you then follow that into the those that are going into college again when we’re dipped a little bit in

00:28:54,100	graduation, we also are going to be dipping in the number of kids that maybe are choosing that academic. Rigorous route. Um, but we also take pride in our kids that are completers.

00:29:11,070	So we’ve had, you know, 16 year olds that completed GED to, you know, 21 year olds that are complaining GEDs as well as those adults that are coming back, but when a student does complete their GED, they do count as a completer, they do not count officially as a graduate because they are not completing that. However, as uh Mr. Calvota and others can attest to, um.

00:29:30,970	Taking a GED exam is far more rigorous than maybe it was a decade ago when there was that transition about maybe 12 years ago to a new uh test, it’s a pretty rigorous exam, so anyone that is completing a GD truly has the skills and capability in terms of academic skills, at least to compete mathematically and with their English.

00:29:49,370	So we see that and we always look at the 7 year because we’re always trying to track those students as they still have that opportunity to come back, um, bringing us kind of to the end. When we talk about choice ready and we saw some increases there and part of that is uh some deliberate work around, um.

00:30:05,570	Um, On page 13, if I’d point your direction to the choice ready and some of that work was some deliberate intentionality around how are we talking to students about getting out into our community to do community service.

00:30:24,630	We want them to be see that their community, their school in Bismarck Mandan is their first community as well as being members of our state and our nation. So how can you contribute and give back, but also how can we make sure that we’re having intentional direction and conversations with our students as to are they doing career exploration, are they, um, engaging in an experience where that can count towards that and again those

00:30:43,330	are assessed there and reported. Um, we still hold a pretty tight definition and maybe. That’s something we evaluate about what a capstone project is, or is there a better measurement that’s more accurately, um, representing a larger swath because we do hold that definition a lot tighter than maybe some other, um. Places are looking at that.

00:31:02,530	That being said, um. We know that when kids are engaged in meaningful learning experiences where they get to think critically and they get to use their creative problem solving, um, as Mr.

00:31:21,700	Lee pointed out, whether or not they own a business, they’re contributing to be a better employee and a better member of a team that may be contributing in that way. And so again, we want to see increasing efforts and opportunities for kids to show their critical thinking, follow their passions, um, and really be set up so that they are choice ready to open up whichever door.

00:31:37,800	Or in front of them, uh, they would so choose and that in the end, I believe parents should. Know that they send their kids to a school where they are safe. They feel like they belong, they have caring adults, and they find their academic niche and we hope that through the mega results we’re showing that I think if you’re part of Bismarck Public schools, no

00:31:54,700	matter what time you come in your educational journey, you’re gonna have good outcomes, but if you’re really part of here long term and you’re a family here raising your your young children know that the, uh, you’d be hard pressed to find any other community, I’d say in the Midwest, Upper Plains and the.

00:32:11,770	West here that is having just as good a results when you’re here in our community, you’re gonna be successful and you’re gonna have a lot of choices ahead of you. So I’d stand at this point for any questions. Thanks, Dr. Johnson. Board members, any questions? Mr. Hager. Thanks, President Eastgate. Um, kind of more of a, a comment, Dr.

00:32:28,470	Johnson touched on it, and I think I. Maybe commented on this last year too that the indicator for you’re talking about. Post-secondary as a percentage of this this metric is always kind of seemed a little bit strange to me as as one that we.

00:32:46,770	We have on here and we have a target for, but we continue to see like we did tonight, you know, CTE type opportunities where some of these kids are coming out of our schools and going straight into their career, um. I don’t know how we change this or look at something different. As an indicator, but just.

00:33:04,570	I guess more food for thought, just something for you guys to maybe like think about maybe there’s a better way to. Have have an indicator for us as opposed to whether or not they’re going to a college. Thanks, Mr. Hager. Ms. Preske. Yeah, thank you.

00:33:25,830	I had a similar thought on that as well, and I believe I, I think we had a very similar discussion last year when we looked at these results and probably even the year before that that either, you know, maybe we, we change how we’re monitoring that, um, measuring it, or we. Lower that target. Again, to be more reflective of the opportunities that we’re giving kids to students to get.

00:33:47,130	Into some of these fields right out of right out of high school, so. Um, I, I too don’t really know the process and how we should address that or how we go from here, but. I don’t Mr. Lee, Thank you, Mr. President.

00:34:07,030	um, yeah, then we were talking about an indicator 4, I had that marked down to, you know, there’s just so many more opportunities for kids coming out of high school, cost of higher ed is a lot higher than uh for sure when I was there, but um, but they also can they they can get good jobs, you know, they can get good paying jobs, um, right out of high

00:34:23,100	school, so I do, I’ve seen a lot of our, our kids just say I’m gonna work for a year or two and then. Um, which is smart, you know, get a head start, um, on the finances before they, they take on that debt.

00:34:37,800	Um, so in regards to that, you know, as the times change this governance document is a living document, you know, so, um, I wouldn’t be opposed to looking at indicator 4.

00:34:56,900	I certainly don’t think the target and indicator for is uh I think it’s, I think it’s too high for the times we’re in right now, um, just my opinion, but I would also go back to, you know, indicator 2 had some notes on that, but 95% is extremely high, um, the mark we’ve set, and if you look at that nationwide or even statewide, it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s very high, um, not to say we don’t want, uh, kids to graduate for sure, but we don’t, uh, I think you got, you know,

00:35:17,970	it’s tricky when you put these, these targets out there because that does that direct the work of the district. You don’t wanna, you don’t want to push kids through to make sure they graduate so you hit a hit that mark. Um you. Also have kids, um, that we’ve continuously talked about.

00:35:33,170	There’s behavior issues and things like that we don’t want to keep some kids in the building when when they shouldn’t be in the building, that doesn’t mean we don’t deliver services to them and try to get them to graduation, but um there’s a, there’s a bunch of tensions with that, that percentage, I would say,

00:35:46,970	and as we look at, you know, 89, 85, 88. Um, I, I think, uh, those are, those are pretty healthy, not that we can’t stretch, but I would say 90, 92 at the highest would be a. Uh, you know, uh, a target, anything over 92, I think is.

00:36:04,570	It is really high, so just my thoughts. Dr. Fast, um, really appreciate the insights from board members tonight, I guess, uh, Dr. Johnson and I did talk about that uh uh indicator for today because we were talking about that COVID.

00:36:27,730	Group coming through and we’re just just chatting up education data and and how it impacts us, but we said the same thing as like we need to come back to you with a recommendation for a change of the indicator, and I think that’s on my team to bring that recommendation to you see if it’s appropriate, you can decide if it’s appropriate or not, but I’m, I’m a fan of it if you haven’t heard it, it’s

00:36:43,030	in some things they send out. I’m about kids finding their passion. It’s like we empower our kids to thrive in their passion where they want to go. You know, it’s not where I tell you to go and I do truly believe being an Education 30 years.

00:36:59,830	We went through a point where everybody, we pushed everybody to college, um, Mr. Lee, you’re exactly right. The economics are higher ed, the economics of the workforce have changed that paradigm.

00:37:17,400	Um, I think, like we said today, I want kids to go to post high school, that may be a year in college, that maybe 2 years, that may go work and then my work’s gonna pay for me to go to college, so I just think our metric maybe doesn’t capture all that as well as it did, so we can bring a recommendation there and I did, I just pulled it up while you were talking about graduation rate because I like that discussion as well and we can bring you some

00:37:32,700	recommendations. We only have two subgroups right now who would make the 95. Asian American children and military children. None else would make it. Now we can talk about some are higher, some are lower.

00:37:55,200	I, I think it’d be um interesting to have an overall target where we’re shooting for I think 95 is an adventurous target, um, but also I think there are some for the work of the district there’s probably some subcategories that really deserve some attention and work, and that, and once we lift those boats, we’d lift the whole total if we could lift some of the boats that are a little lower in the water.

00:38:08,700	So, no, I loved your comments. I, I think we And I know we can, we’ll make that work this year is to bring you two recommendations this area, so you got time to change them. So Board members, any further discussion? Thank you, Dr. Johnson. Follow up from Mr. Hager. Yeah, just a quick question for Dr. Faza.

00:38:29,500	So on that indicator to, are you gonna come back with a target recommendation as well? I, I think we would come do the whole thing. We’d give you a target, um, target recommendation, and if we think we could look at that instead of totality, maybe a subgroup or a couple subgroups we’d bring that as well, so.

00:38:49,600	Board member Peterson and just as a comment, I think really the indicator 2 and 3 go together and if you then had a subgroup piece, I think. You You’d show some growth there. Um, well, with respect to our one mega result, um, I would move that we.

00:39:13,370	That they that we, uh, say that the district is making reasonable progress with exception. We have a motion 2. With motion is second, any further discussion? Mr. Sher, the role please Lee Lee Peterson, Preskey Hager Eastgate, yes, motion passes. Thank you, Dr. Johnson, for the presentation this evening.

00:39:40,770	Moving on to the agenda, we’re gonna go to item 5BGC1 board purpose with a public reading and then the board can decide they’d like to retain or amend GC one and also determine if we’re in compliance and compliance with the exception or out of compliance. Here’s the public reading GC1 board purpose.

00:39:59,970	The Bismarck Public School Board represents, leads and serves the community and holds itself accountable to the citizens by committing to act in their best interests and by ensuring that all board and district action is consistent with law and the board’s policies. The board’s purpose is to assure that the district achieves the results described in the board’s results policies and that it operates according to the values expressed in the board’s operational expectations policies.

00:40:16,930	This brings the end of the reading of board purpose GC one. Any discussion amongst board members or wishes regarding this policy? Preske. I’ll move to recommend that we retain GC1 board purpose and we find ourselves in compliance. 2 We have motion in a second. Any further discussion? Mr. Sher. Peterson, Preske Hager Lee, yes. Motion passes.

00:40:53,430	Thank you board members. Item 6 matters reserved for board action OE 6 Financial Administration changes. Dr. Fasna, um, board members, we’ve talked about this before and we last went through it and I kind of like we just talked about mega results.

00:41:12,800	We’re doing that now for you for OE 6, so we’re bringing forward some recommendations for you to consider and I’ll hand this off to Mr. Cher. Thank you, Dr. Fox. Now members of the board, uh President Eastgate. So the, the changes really, um, maybe clarify what we’ve dealt with recently with our audit, um, so if you go to the very last, uh, we have some markup language. Um, so.

00:41:36,100	The director of accounting and I went through this and feel like this would be better represent what a lot of us maybe talked about, um. And I guess I, I just let you read it quick and then try to answer any questions that you may have.

00:41:58,000	Sorry, and I know I said I was gonna let you read, but I think The the the the whole main gist behind this is really to focus on the financial piece of the audit and that’s truly what the bulk of that audit is for, um, you of course get that audit, so if there’s anything else in there, you would see that. It just wouldn’t go against OE 6.

00:42:21,970	Questions from the board. Mr. Lee, can we clarify um. Where is the change at? Wireless page there you go right there, it’s on the Saved the best for last, OK. I did not see that earlier. I’m sorry. I Directly Mr. Hager. Yeah, thanks, President Eastgate.

00:42:51,070	Uh, just, just to comment, I, I like this change personally. I think it, it gets more more to the, the intent of what we’re looking for from from our audit kind of spells it out a little bit more specifically as to kind of the results that.

00:43:09,070	That we want to see and adding that second indicator, I think it also kind of helps based on kind of what we experienced this last audit. I, I, I guess I, I like these changes. I think they, they do exactly what uh. Mr. Sher just just talked about. Doctors and just for cause I know Mr. Hager you have experience in this market, and I would leave it to Mr.

00:43:27,830	Sher just for the general public. I mean, this holds us to the same level of accountability as was there before and I think it that’s my recommendation, but. If you concur Ms.

00:43:47,630	Peterson And I just, I just kind of want to point out when we have that other audit and when there are other um findings that audits come across. I just wanted to commend, um, Darren your team for Taking action, taking direct action on any of those suggested, um, Findings that they come up with. I mean, that’s what audits are there for is to make sure that there’s whenever there’s changes or compliance issues, um, I don’t see anything in this change that’s gonna.

00:44:08,930	Adjust that process. I think we’re always going to take action on any finding that we find out, um. And, and in that case, we did it immediately and, and we will strive to do so, I think. Any further questions or discussion? And are we looking for? My recommendation is you would have a.

00:44:40,600	to the prove these changes and we make it official in our. Mr. Lee Mr. President, I would move, uh, the, the changes as presented to OE 6. That we approved them We have a motion in a second. Seeing no further discussion, Mr. Sher.

00:45:12,670	Preske Hager Yes Motion passes Moving on with our agenda item 7 is a consent agenda. What are the wishes of the board? I move to accept the consent agenda. Second, we have a motion in a second for the consent agenda. Mr. Sher Hager yes, motion passes. Item 8 is the superintendent’s report, Dr. Fastnat.

00:45:42,570	Mhm Move too quick on you there, sorry sorry, um, uh, to do, so I didn’t want to forget, um, just a few things I would probably start with Mr. Sher on major projects. Thank you, Dr. Fassant, members of the board, President Eastgate, uh, you can see in front of you, Lincoln Elementary and hopefully, uh, some of you will get to tour that tonight as we’ll discuss later, um, that project, um, we’re gonna call

00:46:02,870	complete, so this will be the last time you’ll see a report on that. And we’re kind of in this waiting phase before we can actually start getting you um decent information about the CTE center, so you might not see a major project report for, for a month or two.

00:46:18,130	definitely if there’s something that comes up that the board. should be made aware of, we will absolutely do that. Um, also included is the financials again we are just starting the year, of course, and that’s driven by our building fund, uh, collections, so not a lot of revenue yet.

00:46:38,330	We’ll continue to have expenses to finish off Lincoln and then, um, as we do the CT project, a majority of that will, will have to show the expense and then we’ll get reimbursed so then it’ll offset so. To answer any questions that the board may have on. Major projects Any questions from the board? See, none, Dr.

00:46:59,830	Fosna, we can continue with your report, um, next thing on here is the release of Superintense annual report. I gave you a paper copy. It’ll be on, I believe it’s online, it’s on our agenda already for the um public out there, but I do believe I’ve asked Mr. Koons to put that on the administration page so people are out visiting our new website and trying to learn navigation.

00:47:16,700	Um, it should be up in a few days, but my intent with this is I know you do or we do, I should say, um, an annual districts. Report and that usually comes out later in the year after we have all the data from DPI and insights and our fiscal data and stuff like that.

00:47:33,800	So I just thought it was um. Appropriate because I’ve done this in my previous positions to have a summer annual just summer, uh, summary of the district, kind of a state of the state of the union type thing. It’s not really union but stay the district type oversight.

00:47:52,000	So, um, it used to be in my previous district used to be like 70, 80 pages deep because I put all the data and all the, all the things that maybe we do in governance. It was a different world then, but I did make this really intended for our viewing public.

00:48:08,800	So for for families out there, um, you’ll have just a cover letter on the front, just a kind of a here’s where we’re at, here’s what we did this year, here’s what I expect to see in the future, um, coming year and it’s, it’s really, it’s not written towards you, it is written towards our families to help them.

00:48:26,300	And then the next 3 pages are really just snapshots of data, uh, try to make it easily consumable, something that can grab people’s attention, honestly, I hope that I could pick on my buddies that I have coffee. With on occasion.

00:48:42,800	I hope my buddies have coffee with on occasion, grab this and go talk about it a coffee because I think you’re gonna be impressed and if I can share just a few things, um, on the first page. Absenteeism I hope people pick that out. It’s a really small graphic about chronic absenteeism that has been going up statewide, nationwide, the number of kids who miss 10% of their school days or more. BPS is much.

00:49:03,800	Less than the state average, which I think is a positive, but even then 15% of 14,000 kids is a lot of kids, and it’s a lot of days of school that they’re not in session with us. I do think that’s something we continue to work on. It’s not something we should be really proud of.

00:49:20,570	We need to continue to make that better. Um, but along here I’ve included daily average daily membership, just the percentage of kids from each demographic area that represent our kids, um, some key factors On attendance, ELA math achievement, and ACT. On the second page, I gave you kind of more district data.

00:49:42,570	I thought it was interesting for people to understand we drive over 800,000 miles in buses and just to make that, you know, that’s 32 times around the Earth and some point of that, but um that’s a lot, we do a lot with transportation, so when we come to talking about concerns with transportation in about 7 days when our buses start rolling.

00:50:03,470	It’s not a, it’s not a simple task. It’s not, it’s not just one route, um, with one driver that we can make sure happens every day. We do a lot of transportation and, and we need to do it better.

00:50:17,630	We know we need to do that, OK? We have some information on the budget and what we spent last year. Actually, that’s not the budget, that’s actual expenditure for last year, so people know exactly what we spent, um, some information on staffing. I put in um. Retention rates. Now this is inclusive of retirement. So if they’re retirement, they count against this number.

00:50:38,330	So just as for if we take out all the people retired, all the people that left us, we still retained 94% of our teaching staff. We have people just retire. They’ve met the retirement age, they’re entitled to retirement, so that, that’s just 94% of our teachers are back in our classrooms. I think that’s a pretty good number.

00:50:56,730	I’m pretty I’m pretty proud of that number, OK? You can tell with instructional aids we have work to do there. It’s hard to keep our support staff. They turn a little faster, um, and that’s a concern.

00:51:12,900	The other one I’d point out to you, it’s at the bottom of the page, um, we’re talking about before, when you think about how much food we prepare in a year. That’s over 2 million breakfast and lunch. I mean, together, that’s 2 million meals we provide to our kids. That is a lot of meals.

00:51:30,100	Um, I think our, our hot lunch staff does a really good job or child nutrition, I should say it that way. Um, last one is just looking ahead, uh, that’s just a narrative to our families about what I see is in their future and kind of gave them, I also gave him the enrollment uh graph uh from the RSP results just for their information and uh we’ll talk about Enrollment next meeting

00:51:46,100	so you guys get an update along with the community, uh, once we get our numbers settled, but again, that’s my intent with this is a really quick 3 page snapshot of the district. Thanks Dr. Fro. It’s a great document. Appreciate you putting this out, Ms. Preskey.

00:52:07,300	Absolutely, really enjoyed this, um, I think it’s a great, a great piece of information that’s something that our our citizens can go to and understand and really it it. does show how how large our district is and what we all provide so I appreciate you doing this. I also think it’s timely with the budget coming up. Kind of all works together.

00:52:30,470	There’s the same song, so, um, any other questions? I hope you enjoy it, so. Um, last thing or next thing I have back to school schedule. I just gave you a copy. It’s in your agenda.

00:52:46,570	Just remember opening day that that is um if you are planning to attend, if you just let me know you’re planning to attend, but that usually is with um uh uh we kind of make a celebration of that, but if you are planning a 10, let me know. That’s 1 to 4 o’clock at the civic center on August 19th, so just let me know if you hope to be there, but hopefully, uh, Mr.

00:53:02,270	Eastgate will be sharing some words of wisdom from the board and we have a A good presentation, uh, planned, so. And aside from that, um, you kind of heard about the Lincoln Project already. I’m really excited to go take you out there and see the work, um, that, uh, um, Mr. Sher and his team and, and uh Mrs.

00:53:19,230	Hurt and her team have been doing their prepared Lincoln Elementary for our kids, um, I think this is your part, but no more business, we’re just gonna go out there and if a tour and if honestly if someone’s watching and they say I wanna go see that too, uh, in about 15 minutes if you’re there and the door opens,

00:53:36,130	you’re free to walk around with us, so. We may not have a slice of pizza for you, but um, you can sure walk around with us, so absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Fo Dr.

00:53:52,430	Fost just said, um, following tonight’s board meeting, the Bismarck school board will be touring the Lincoln Elementary School edition, just as another follow up note, no action will be taken, no business will be conducted during the tour. The public is welcome to attend. We’d love to see you, um, whether it be tonight and obviously excited to see all of our Lincoln parents and students coming up here this fall for a beautiful new edition. So that this meeting