00:00:06,930	Good evening, I’m Dan Eastgate, president of the Bismarck Public School Board. It’s 5:15 p.m. on Monday, May 12th. I call this meeting to order. Welcome and thank you for joining us tonight, both here at the City Buildings. Tom Baker room or online. You can find her agenda under the school board tab at Bismarckschools.org. Mr.

00:00:25,300	Sher, will you call the roll, please Mr. Eastgate Mr Hager, Mr. Lee. Mrs. Peterson. Here. Miss Presky. Here all board members are accounted for. Dr F Fasna, would you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Item 1C is the BPS mission vision and values, the PPS mission is to empower every learner to thrive.

00:01:09,470	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. 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.

00:01:29,200	What are the witches of the board? Mr. Lee, I move that we adopt the agenda. Second. We have a motion in a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, Mister Sher Hager Lee Peterson. Yes. Presky. Yes. Yes. Motion passes. Item 3 is focused on success, 38 BPS 2025 to 2030 strategic plan. Dr F Fasno.

00:01:58,600	Good afternoon board members. Nice to be with you again. Uh, yeah, we would, uh, like to showcase our revised strategic plan. Be working on. I’m gonna talk about the timeline for that throughout this.

00:02:16,730	I probably have 2030 slides to share with you and, uh, our viewers at home to kind of talk about the future direction for Bismarck Public Schools in relation to what my office and we do with our educators as we move forward and, uh, at your, um, at your seats, you also have a printed copy. kind of a draft print of the new strategic plan, um, I will tell you there is an error in there.

00:02:32,730	We found it over the weekend, so I’m glad we did a short run just to kind of get it and print a copy to see how it works. Um, so we’ll be making more official copies after you take action later at the board meeting. So, um, if we can, we’ll flip over to a slide deck.

00:02:47,770	We’re going to kind of work through today, um, again, with uh, a new revised, uh, um, Bismarck strategic plan, um, on the next page, we. Do I just want to reiterate our vision and is unchanged from what we’ve had before and some keys, and I’ll bring those up later in the presentation.

00:03:10,670	Some keys really are some of my, um, Purpose, kind of some of the key words that I’ve been bringing forth during my short tenure here. Um, you can see they’re kind of based on each year and kind of things that I propelled forward, and you’ll see those reflected inside the strategic plan.

00:03:26,730	Hopefully, you’ll see some of that, um, that flavor of maybe Jeff in there. So hopefully, you, you like this, you like that and you see that, um, let’s talk a little bit about the process and um how we got to here, if you remember right, you had a present strategic plan, um, one more, Mr.

00:03:44,430	n har t You had a present plan, um, that was made in April of 2020 with Dr Schatz, and he took the district through a planning process, um, you created that mission empower every learner to thrive. You built those values out at that time.

00:04:04,730	Um, you had your, you aligned your strategic priorities of those values and uh excellence areas or excellence buckets at that point. Um, I bring this up only because last summer with the board and others we began a discussion like because that their present plan is expiring.

00:04:21,170	Do you want a full rewrite? Do you want us to go through from, um, 0 to 100 and do the whole thing, or do you think you had a really good start with the work of Dr Shotts, and I would tell you that resoundingly, you as a board and others that we talked through within BPS was, no, we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

00:04:37,430	We just need to revise what we have and then make it, make it better, make it for the next, for the next 5 years, so improve it. So that’s So we did. The revision process really started last, uh, summer again, we looked at those connections.

00:04:57,470	We looked at the the present plan that we have now and said, OK, how can we make it better, um, at that point, we looked at, um, and, Dr Ben Johnson, uh, Mrs. Misty Frank began became leaders on inside of, uh, my organization or the BPS under my leadership to, to propel us forward and did, honestly, a huge lift, a Herculean left and getting the, the right people in the room to talk about where do we want to go for the next 5

00:05:21,530	years, and that took, um, a tremendous work. I want to add Mrs. Kayla McLeod to that, who works in Dr Johnson’s. Office to meet with multiple groups of educators, multiple groups of parents, students, uh, support staff, leaders, board members, I think all of you had an individual meeting to kind of say, where do you see the

00:05:42,330	district going and then we brought all that feedback together, um, Dr Johnson and his team that we began to digest it as a leadership team within, um, the central office, brought that to you in April as far as a board and said, What do you think? Here’s where we’re going.

00:06:02,200	Here’s what we heard, um, got your, um, insights on that, and then tonight really is the end of the process. We’re at a community presentation. Hopefully people are watching, they can say, oh, OK, we see the direction, we see where we want to go and uh hopefully we have buy-in from the overall public.

00:06:21,330	So, next thing I’d like to talk about is some of the key attributes that you’ll see inside the plan, some of the changes. Hopefully, you’re holding it in your hand. Hopefully you say that’s a lot different from our present plan already just by what you see here, um, and hopefully patrons see that, but let’s go over some of the key things.

00:06:39,470	Um, one was those two keys that trust and inspire and that elevate, um, I think the new plan you will see a commitment to transparent communication. Not only with the plan, but also how we share results of our work.

00:07:04,530	Continually with the public, you’re going to see, um, connections to accountability tied to your coherent governance model and the results that you expect of the organization, and you’re going to see systematic reporting and that I’m going to share at the end how parents or staff or actually parents, community members can track our progress and being very clear about how you can track our progress so you keep us accountable of how we’re doing.

00:07:21,570	The other one is the elevate logo that was for this year and we talked about elevating. dignity, educators, opportunities and well-being, um, really it’s about increasing, uh, stakeholder engagement. It was opportunities to get more people’s voices inside of their school and how they can engage in their school. That was a key takeaway that we really tried to interject into this revised plan.

00:07:43,130	The other things that you’ll notice inside of this new plan is we’ve really been intentional to reduce academic language, academic jargon, try to make it simple. So, um, that the top down to anybody, but people aren’t going to engage with our, our documents if they can’t freely understand them and relate to them.

00:08:04,330	So we’ve really been trying intentional to say, let’s talk to our average parent, our average person who’s sitting in a waiting room, because if this documents sitting in the Sanford waiting room somewhere or Stints. We want people to look at and actually take part in it, right? And, and understand where we’re going, so we’ve done that intentionally throughout the document.

00:08:23,000	We’ve included drivers and I’m going to come back to those later in the document to be even um When you talk about strategic priorities and action steps that can be very education focused beer education, um, terminology of how we’re going to move our organization forward.

00:08:45,930	We’ve tried to talk a little bit more higher than that in terms that we hopefully the community can embrace and say we believe where our school’s going because we understand the big drivers of where what we’re doing. And the other one is becoming media friendly. Um, we’ve designed this honestly to be social media.

00:09:03,630	friendly, so we can share it with our patrons, share it with our community easily and then come back and reference it over and over and over again as we continue to do the work to move our organization forward, uh, for those that, and it’s hard to see on here, but it will be on our website, um, hopefully this week, maybe probably is already if I turned around and saw Mr.

00:09:20,630	Kunontz, but really, every single page should be something we can snap out and put on social media and use it over and over and over again to remind people about where we’re going, OK? Um, we’ve also incorporated some logos as you see logos on pages, um, and I’ll share with the reason for that towards the end, because

00:09:36,300	we really think that’s powerful to again make that connection to. Where our priorities are today, we would go for the next 5 years and then the work that we do so we can connect that to people for people. Sorry, get my next page’s work.

00:09:57,570	Right? So, the next thing is the format as we go through the document and again people online, you won’t be able to see this today, but board members, you can see in the document you have in front of you.

00:10:12,470	Each page is laid out with a driver at the top, and again, I’ll explain more what those are, um, you’ll have a driver logo in the upper right hand corner that’s kind of representing that driver and will throughout the next 5 years, um, you’ll see the key focus area, in this case, you’re seeing career and technical education for all. We talk about that. We give a little bit of narrative about that.

00:10:28,070	The strategic priority is that big box in the middle, like, what are we shooting for? What’s the big thing we’re trying to do? And I’m going to review those tonight. I’m not going to get into the deep strategies, but I’ll get into those priority statements for everybody watching tonight.

00:10:42,500	We did a lot of the work that, um, Dr Johnson and his team did. It was about some of these things we’ve been working on for years already. So let’s highlight some of the successes we’ve had, some of the work we’ve been doing, so that when we continue on with those strategies, you know where we are, where we’re sitting, and that.

00:10:57,870	That’s the highlight section, um, strategies and actions are just that, what we hope to accomplish over the next 5 years, and then Linked results is new. You didn’t necessarily have this in your last strategic plan, but we’ve been very intentional to link this, these strategies, this priority statement to your coherent governance results policies and other linkages that we have

00:11:20,200	within HRS that we’re putting in a, a school level document, so If someone wants to monitor this and say, how are, how is the school doing on preparing for the future workforce and particularly within CT they should focus on watching OE 11 and R4.

00:11:37,970	Those are the reports that they’re going to see that result reported in so they can track it if they were really, um, really interested in that section. So the present strategic plan, if you’re ready. Any questions thus far? Board members, any questions? Looks like we’re ready. All right, so you’re, you’re newly revised strategic plan.

00:12:02,500	Let me begin by saying, uh, we’re not changing your vision. I think BPS’s vision is perfectly aligned for the future. It was very good work 5 years ago, it’s still really good work, um, so we’re not recommending any changes to our vision, and we, during that time, you built out a portrait of a graduate that we reference.

00:12:21,600	In our present work today, we look at that as guiding our direction for how we want to build graduates and what we want those aptitudes and experiences and those skills that we want kids to have when they graduate.

00:12:37,730	Any BPS school, OK? So we still have maintained those, um, next, you have your values, the values you built again 5 years ago, those are I would, I must honestly almost say Evergreen. They are perpetual basal, grounded views of how we operate our organization that I think we’re all have everybody we’ve talked to has been very committed to that. They see the purpose for that.

00:12:59,600	They see the direction for that, and did not want to change, uh, those, um, those values that we hold dear within BPS. So we’re not changing them. We’re just gonna keep them.

00:13:18,730	Um, one thing that we are working on is the drivers and to move, um, our drivers of excellence from vision to reality, we’ve identified the priorities and the actions that that align with these drivers and the the priorities serve as a bridge between our values and our daily practices, ensuring every action we take brings us closer to a more responsive, effective, and empowering educational experience for our kids, and the drivers are a way to take very detail.

00:13:40,270	strategies and, and maybe difficult to grasp concepts for some people and give it a really simple, easy to understand. This is where we’re trying to get to. This is our driver for, um, that aspect of our BPS organization. So driver’s Excellence are at the center of this plan.

00:13:59,370	Um, they’re key areas we aim to strengthen across the district and and represent the core outcomes we want to achieve, and they are designed to be very easily articulated to be able to go into a large room.

00:14:17,230	People and say our, our drivers for learning excellence are these, and for them I’ll share them with you are 3 big things that we’re shooting for, um, when it comes to learning inside a BPS and, and I’d like to share those with you now. So inside of learning Excellence and uh we have these 4 key areas, these 4 excellence areas which were in your last plan were maintaining those, um, the drivers are empowering learners. Strengthening teaching practices and pairing the future workforce.

00:14:39,500	So again, the drivers being new, I should be able to walk into any room, the rotary. I’ve been to the Optimist Club. I’ve been to other organizations say, what are you doing about learning? What are your big things that you’re doing about learning? Well, we’re empowering learners.

00:14:58,070	We are strengthening teaching practices, and we’re preparing our future workforce, and I believe that when you do that and that very simplistic form, people are going to say, yes, yes, and yes, that’s. we should be doing inside of Bismarck Public Schools. Now we can get into the granular detail, but really off the, the elevator speech almost.

00:15:15,400	It’s a really simple thing to address to groups around our community and say this is what we believe in, this is where we’re going. OK. So does that kind of makes sense for the drivers, OK? To get in them specifically empowering learners, um. I don’t want to read these verbatim for everybody.

00:15:35,470	I’ll let them stay on the screen for a while, but we’re really focusing on multi-tiered um instruction assessment for both um Um, ELA, math, uh, and our academic areas to support students and support our learners, every learner has access to a personalized learning path doesn’t mean that every student will have a personalized learning. plan, but they have many, many opportunities within BPS to personalize the learning.

00:15:56,900	Um, that could be within a classroom and we give choices to kids as they’re learning, like, would you like to show me by doing this, or would you like to show me by doing that, and we do that, and we need to build that out even more. Um, could be a specialized program.

00:16:10,930	It could be the many, many offerings we offer our kids in middle school and high school, but we need to continue to personalize learning and let kids find themselves in their learning, uh, their learning pathway. And then lastly, in this one, we want to deliver high quality guaranteed viable curriculum.

00:16:28,970	What that means simply is that every single kid within Bismarck Public Schools should have the same opportunity to learn the same content in every single class. Um, if you’re a first grader in Moses, or first grader in Elk Ridge, you should have a similar opportunities to learn, learn the same content, um, you shouldn’t be just dependent on what teacher you’ve got, right? Um, I think, and I go back to

00:16:45,570	my experiences as a young man. It depended on what teacher you got, what their expertise was, what they liked, right? What they, what their passions were. Well, learning in our schools today shouldn’t be dependent on, you just got lucky to get, you know, Mr. Hager, for your teacher.

00:17:03,530	No, every teacher should have a similar experience so that algebra one is the same for every single kid who goes through algebra one, right? May not be identical, but they’re going to get the same key learning components in their course so that every kid can leave prepared and ready for the future.

00:17:19,530	So that’s for us is empowering learners and a little more detail. When we’re talking about strengthening teaching practices. It is about building up our educators. It is about using evidence-based instructional practices, um, to ensure that um, How do you want to say as long as I’ve been an educator, there’s an art to education, being an educator, and there’s a science.

00:17:40,330	And we talk about the art all the time, but it’s also making sure that every single educator has the science of teaching, teaching and learning so that they have those skills to be exceptional at the craft, um.

00:17:59,730	I would tell you, um, being a practitioner, uh, an educator who has taken time to practice the art side of teaching and the science side, um, that’s why professional educators are professional educators. That’s what differentiates the teachers that are sitting in BPS classrooms than just someone who I like to teach. I kind of dabble in teaching.

00:18:19,870	I’m really good at, you know, working, working in maybe something, uh, at, at a church group or something like that, that there are people who have the art. teach what makes professional educators professional as they know the art and they know the science of teaching and learning. So that’s what we want to focus on and strengthening teaching practices.

00:18:38,070	Um, the next one is preparing our future workforce, and this one has been such a huge, um, When I came in and I interviewed for the job, you were very focused on questions about this, um, I meet with business leaders. They’re continually asking about future workforce. I go to community organizations, they’re talking about how do we get kids ready to get to the workforce.

00:18:59,800	This has been a resounding in every group that I think Dr Johnson met with is how do we get kids ready, um, to access high quality career exploration experiences, so they are ready to thrive when they leave and get into. our workforce.

00:19:18,200	It is loud and clear in our community that they need, um, there is a need for career-ready work ready workforce to get out of our high schools and get out there and, and fill those needs in our community. And we really, honestly, we, we must be partners with our community business leaders to address this workforce need.

00:19:34,300	So we have really put a lot of focus on and need to continue in this area of like, what skills do you need for those future jobs in the Bismarckandan region, so that we can be ready. to have your, our kids ready to take those jobs right when they leave high school or with a little post-secondary education, they’re ready to come back and serve this community.

00:19:50,100	So we’ve heard it loud and clear, preparing for the future workforce. How’s that one? Learning Excellence, I move on. Yeah, you can keep moving. All right. Personal excellence, um, this is about nurturing well rounded individuals and elevating educators, and the first one, nurturing well rounded individuals, it’s really encompassing of all those skills and aptitudes, those qualities we want in our kids outside of that

00:20:15,670	traditional, um, reading, writing, arithmetic and math, you know, science. It’s about do we have kids, uh, are we ensuring our children have the soft skills to be successful leaders, good.

00:20:40,800	parents, they’re good citizens, they’re, they’re simply well grounded, ready to serve our community kids and that this encompasses so much of that, um, we want to ensure that our the first bullet talks about really MTSSB, making sure we have those lessons, those skills, those aptitudes of our kids to be ready for, um, those, uh, to be.

00:21:03,200	Prepared for behavioral mental health and be successful with those skills when they, uh, leave our organization, um, every learner is valued for the distinct characteristics or ideas, their perspectives, their cultures. Um, we want to be in, uh, an organization that is inclusive. That’s one of your values, right? We talk about inclusive sports. We talk about peer to peer. We talk about accepting kids as they come in the door.

00:21:24,000	We, we We, we just, we value all kids and we accept all kids and we help to raise love, educate, take care of all kids who enter our doors, and this is what we’re trying to say and maybe more words than I’m providing to it, but, um, The next one is, um, elevating educators.

00:21:47,630	Here it’s not about the development of their skills so much as we want to develop and enhance their employee skills, their person, um, when you are a strong, um, well rounded educator. You’re also the best educator we can put in front of our kids. So that’s not only their professional well-being and taking care of their, uh, making sure they’re the best version of themselves, they can be professionally but also personally.

00:22:06,430	Let’s take take care of our people. Let’s elevate our educators to make sure they’re the best version of themselves to support the many kids that they have in their classroom. And the second bullet talks about the future educators. We know we have an impending um impending doomsday of, uh, where our future educators going to come from.

00:22:27,800	We already feel the pinch about where’s that next educator going to fill our classrooms. That is a real challenge. We’re taking intentional strategies, intentional steps. to build future educators, just like we’re building future plumbers, engineers, doctors. We need to be that intentional to build future teachers.

00:22:48,970	And, and so this bullet is reflective of that. We need to build those programs out more robustly. Any questions on that section? Board members as we go through here, if something is said by Dr Fauzant, feel free to turn on your light and I’ll come to you once we hit a break if that’s all right.

00:23:08,170	Uh, environmental excellence, um, this is about the, the learning environment that’s the environment of BPS. So here we want to strengthen our community. We want to ensure we have a safe environment and we want to enhance communication.

00:23:28,470	So if we go to, uh, strengthen our community, we want to make sure the I, I, I do believe as long as I’ve worked in education, not every single person in our community is comfortable entering a school. Unfortunately, some of them had bad experiences in schools when they were young. And so we need to break those barriers down.

00:23:46,330	We need to make sure that everybody feels comfortable in our schools, and we need to improve that to make sure they’re welcoming and supportive for anybody who needs to come in our schools and needs us to help with their child or um uh and, and support their family. And we also needed to be really intentional about empowering and engaging with parents and families to partner with them and how we deliver education within Bismarck.

00:24:04,330	Um, it is a, it is a partnership. It is not you only receive it because the superintendent directs it, Education in our community is a partnership, and we need to get back to focusing on that partnership and fostering that that success, uh, for our children. The next one is, um, Enhancing communication.

00:24:30,400	Again, it’s kind of goes from both trust and inspire and the elevate um keys over the last two years, I think, uh, many things we’ve talked about is improving communication and how we communicate with stakeholders. This is addressing that. Um, how can we ensure that our stakeholders are well informed. They have an opportunity to voice, they have a opportunity to share their ideas, and we, we Relish that.

00:24:49,630	We want that and, and just making this a strategic priority that that’s what we desire within our school. And the last one is ensuring a safe environment. We want to make sure that every learner, honestly, and when I say learner, that’s just not students.

00:25:06,670	So we want learners when we use those words and the strategic plan. That’s really anybody who’s in the organization who’s learning, and that’s, that could be custodians, the teachers, the secretaries, and our children. We want people to feel safe physically, emotionally, academically and socially, um, when they’re safe and we give kids the opportunity to be safe, they can be successful.

00:25:26,700	The last bullet there is Not only being safe in the physical world, but being physical in the digital world. We want to make sure our kids are safe when they get online and they have the skills to be safe. That’s a tough, that’s a wild Wild West.

00:25:40,570	We sometimes say we got to give them good skills, right, so they’re safe in the wild wild West. And lastly, operational excellence. It’s dealing with a lot of things that Mr. Sheer and and we talked about um daily, but, um, the first one is building partnerships.

00:26:04,470	We think that’s really important for operational excellence, and we want to provide efficient responsive services in more detail, um, you’ve heard about these, right? We talk about those business partners, those community partners all the time. They’re so vital, particularly within our career and tech ed programs, but we have business partners in healthcare. We have business partners. how we serve our, our staff, how we serve our, um, with multiple service agencies that help support mental health and behavioral health for our students.

00:26:22,470	Those partnerships are critical, particularly in a time where resources are limited. If we have resource constraints, we go to our community partners for help. How can you help us achieve our goals. And the last one is providing efficient and responsive services. That’s People think, I, I, I joke sometimes. People think education is just about school.

00:26:45,130	It’s just about classrooms, and it is. That’s the vast majority of her job, right? But we’re still a business too. We employ 2400 people. We, we have, we’re trying to serve 28,000 parents and a whole community, so there’s things like transportation, facilities, uh, we have to take care of the finances.

00:27:02,470	We have to take care of HR issues. Those things are all part of efficient responsive services. We’ve got to do that well. We’ve got to do it, um. Lean, we’ve got to do it to say, not only save taxpayer dollars but to provide a really high quality service to all those we serve in our community, including students,

00:27:21,130	staff, and our parents, so, um, That would be the key drivers, I guess, so you go back to that and you think about the drivers and how they emulate the big themes that we want to hit within the organization. So I’m gonna move on to accountability if you’re good with those. OK.

00:27:39,930	The accountability side, that’s probably really hard to see, um, for viewers online, but it will be, it is part of the strategic plan. It’s right towards the last page is, um, we’re trying to identify one of those things by season that you can watch as a patron to say, how do I check how this, if the school’s meeting these drivers, these

00:28:00,230	strategic priorities, how do you know if they’re reaching the goal, um. We don’t want to hide behind a wall. That’s not the intent. We actually want to hide in the full bright sunlight, 96 degree day. We want to be out in the sunshine.

00:28:16,770	Everybody can see what we’re doing and providing the list, we hope that people can really access like, what should I be watching if I’m a parent in the community? What should I be tuning into to make sure my school’s doing the job that we want them to do. That’s trying to articulate that to anybody who reads this document.

00:28:32,730	In the last page I have today is how we’re going to connect this because, um, I’ve been in schools where we build strategic plans and then once they’re done and everybody’s gone through it, unfortunately, they get put in a binder and they get.

00:28:51,030	Shelf, they get put on the shelf, and no one checks them again, right? Um, in part, that was why we gave the detailed accountability list to say it’s not something we put on the list. We’re continually referencing it, but also, um, as we build out, um, social media and communication in the future.

00:29:08,570	You can see there we kind of put a little badge, you rem you can kind of see the logo, um, that is strengthening our community. So when we put out those news releases, those press releases, those social media bits. We really want to be able to that logo out there.

00:29:26,670	And it’s just a visual reminder for everybody watching to just say, oh, that connects to this strategic priority, which is part of that driver, and that’s why they’re doing it. Oh, I see why we’re doing that. It’s that important. Yes, it’s that important.

00:29:44,800	That’s why we’re trying to connect the dots for you, OK? So in the future when we do something in the area and tech ed or we’re focusing on MTSSA and building out those personalized learning pathways that way you can say, ah, I get why they’re doing. that. That was one of the priorities in the strategic plan. That’s why it’s important. That’s why they’re doing the work, um, and with that, I guess I would stand for any questions, so. Board members questions, comments for Dr Faszant, Mr. Hager.

00:30:01,630	Thanks President Eastgate, uh, not, not a question, just kind of more of a comment, um. I really appreciate Dr Fassa, your, your vision, and we’ve kind of seen this unfolding over the last number of years, um.

00:30:21,070	Kind of the direction you wanted to, to kind of take the district and in kind of a bigger overall view now like you highlighted the strategic plan very much feels like something that was a to do and then put on a show, um, what I like about this is how it gets tied back to our coherent governance and our policies and how you can reference those with within this, this document itself.

00:30:37,670	I really appreciate the way that you’ve, you’ve taken those and this in particular and just. Simplified them. Made it much easier and quicker for people to digest if they’re looking at something specific, um, in the interconnection between this, the OEs, the R’s, it’s.

00:30:56,500	It’s, it’s really nice to see, so I, I appreciate the work you and your team have, have done on putting this together. I think it looks, looks really nice. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Hager. Mister Lee. Uh, thank you, President hesca. I would agree, um.

00:31:21,000	And I’m always, uh, Kind of amazed by Dr Fassnt’s communication style and um the vision he has for the district and things like this, um, that are very tangible and that are easy for, for people to disseminate and discern, and, um, it’s just really great, um, one thing I would challenge this board and maybe, you know, it’s, it’s part of a workshop, um, just a couple of things that jump out, um, is, it makes sense on dual credits that that

00:31:40,800	legacy was kind of ahead of the curve, right? they were the pilot program and things, but I do think, um, we need to elevate, uh, our other two high schools and challenge them to to come up with the same offerings, uh, you know, we’re always talking about equitability, um, that’s one area where it just saves our,

00:31:59,900	uh, families, parents, just a ton of money. Kids get a head start. I think we have 8 kids that’ll be graduating from BSC with an associate’s degree before they graduate from BPS. That’s just amazing to me.

00:32:18,030	Two year head start, um, and so the difference between AP, there’s always going to be a place for AP, um, I appreciate that, but that comes down to one. But I’d say high stakes test, and you got to test out and the dual credit is, is probably mimics more of a, a college class, your, your coursework is, is graded and, you know, the downside could be you get the grade you get is on your

00:32:36,300	college transcript, but, but, um, I’m a big, big believer in dual credits. The other thing, uh, and Dr Fassnt talked about keeping uh teachers and students safe in the wild, wild West is, uh, my hope is that we get past the wild Wild West and we bring some. civility back to our buildings.

00:32:55,930	And one thing I would challenge the board on is that we need to really talk about when, when a building team, uh, principles and APs come together and say, um, this child, it’s not working for them, we can’t have them in our building for a myriad of reasons.

00:33:15,600	We have to get back to it being a privilege to be in our buildings and there has to be an expectation of, of how kids are handling and conducting themselves, and I’ve heard more often than not of, you know, uh, that we’re not really. In some cases, not really doing anything for the kids, they’re not getting educated by keeping them in the schools.

00:33:37,070	So, my point is if we’re told that uh there needs to be an alternate, uh, setting for a student that, that it would become our problem that we have to, uh, we have to address it in some way, shape or form, and I, I trust our, our principals and our APs that they don’t, they don’t give up

00:33:54,130	on kids, uh, ever. Um, and they certainly want them. In their, in their buildings, um, but when they say they need to be out, I think we have to take that a little more seriously. So, just my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lee. Ms. Presky.

00:34:12,800	Yeah, um, thank you to you and your team to put this together, um, love, love how it’s laid out, the colors, um, how everything’s pulled out and pulled together, really, um, to make everything coordinate like others said, one thing you didn’t hit on that I hope the public really looks at is the who we are today pages, um, because I think these facts are

00:34:34,830	just really mind blowing, um, and it’s really interesting to see some of those, um, those facts that are laid out. here, um, I mean, number one, I didn’t have a clue that 52% of our teachers are under 10 years of experience, so that’s a big number, yeah, and it really does show us like what, what,

00:34:53,430	what that challenge is, um. In, in the future too, and, um, finding those replacements for the others that will probably be retiring soon. Um, an English learners, 3% of the students in total are don’t know English and speak over 60 languages.

00:35:15,300	I mean, there’s lots of those different details that are in here that I think are, um, really interesting to the public. And I think this is just laid out in a really easy to understand way.

00:35:33,600	So appreciate it and I hope that, um, our, our parents and and community out there takes advantage of this and, and picks it up and looks at it and can understand what, um, what we’re. doing what we’re working towards. Thank you. Things like Miss Presky, Ms. Peterson. Yeah, thank you and um I won’t repeat what others have said, but one of the things that I want to thank the entire team and, um, because, you know, we’ve gotten to see this, this isn’t our first rodeo.

00:35:50,000	We got to see this throughout the, the process and, and really, um, coming through and being a part of the of of not only making sure that it was meeting the needs for what this current board is compared to where we were before, and then also really aligning um several of the things that you’ve been trying to do.

00:36:09,730	this entire year and making sure that, you know, all the way down from, from your role in the district office down to each individual classroom, I think that is um emphasized here. So just want to thank, thank the team for putting together.

00:36:25,730	I can’t wait to start seeing it in waiting rooms and seeing that final copy and so appreciate that we’ve got a really good communication tool for the next 5 years. Thanks. Absolutely. Thanks, Ms. Peterson. Yeah, Dr Fas not just my. Last few comments here. Thank you. Thank you to you, to the team, Dr Johnson.

00:36:42,970	I know you took the point on helping put this together and gathering information from board members and educators and stakeholders in our community from, um, parents and students and all kinds of people, so I, I appreciate all the time and effort that went into that.

00:36:57,230	Um, the board really, you know, talked and addressed a lot of the things already that are that are going so good and even some things that we can continue to work on because we see what we’re saying is a is a district we’re trying to, to bring to light. So thank you for that as well, Mr. Lee. Um, Ms. Presky kind of took the one I was gonna talk about as well.

00:37:10,600	I love these Who We Ares, these graphs, um, you know, she mentioned 52% under 1010 years of experience. Also though, I love the 60% of our educators with a master’s or higher. I mean, we, we have great professionals. We have people that are, they’re, they’re dedicated to, to their craft. Uh, both the science and the art as Dr F Fasno talked about earlier.

00:37:27,670	Um, I just love that, you know, overall our strategic plan here talks about talks about students, talks about our buildings, our educators, our families, um, really everything that makes up a community and makes BPS what it is, so, um.

00:37:41,600	We’ll be able to talk about this a little bit more as we, we see it in matters reserved for board action, but a big thank you for this because I, I know this wasn’t just something you, you threw onto a Word document and hit print, um, right, Dr Johnson. Um, Dr F Fassnot, so it’s, here we are and um yeah, we just appreciate that this is also, also the social media side of it with Mr.

00:37:56,570	Koontz, and now it won’t just go on a shelf. I like that there’s pieces here that we can continue to put out to the public and also for myself, I remember talking with Dr Johnson about it in mine. I just said I don’t want it just to be something that like, OK. Well, it’s important we have it.

00:38:09,870	I think we can all agree to that. But we don’t just want to put it away. I’d love to be able to revisit these things more regularly. Um, it’s still important, but we need to keep it in front of people. So I’m, I’m excited that Mr.

00:38:20,530	Kunons is going to be able to take these and do that. Something added that Dr Fas? Well, I, I, I did, I did skip right over those who We Are pages, but because the intent was to have something that is in people’s hands for the next 5 years. Um, the intent was to be able to always have people think, well, when was this published? 02. 25.

00:38:38,730	Here’s where we were today, so that when they see it, hopefully in 2029, we’re still looking at it, hopefully, we’re still looking at it, right? We’re still, we can go back there and say, wow, we’ve changed.

00:38:55,730	Cause when we went back and looked at the one you have now, it’s like, wow, we have changed a lot. We have new buildings up. We have new, many more kids. We have just different challenges. It’s always good to remember historically and that page, you will continue to see like in my summer, my My district Report and the district’s district report, so we’ll hit those same values, so you’ll be able to

00:39:13,470	keep over in time, but we really thought it was a snapshot in time and just to remember who we were in 2025. So thank you for that. Appreciate the kind comments and yes, I have an exceptional team that made this really easy. So, thanks. Thank you.

00:39:29,630	Moving on with the agenda, we’re on item 4, which is public comment. The board recognized the central role that parents play in the education of their children. And support active parent involvement in the educational process.

00:39:45,570	The board’s practice of public comment reflects on the lines of policy BCBA and the spirit of its intent for classroom issues, it’s best to follow the chain of command from your classroom teacher to the building principal to the assistant superintendent, and ultimately the superintendent for any district-wide issues, please reach out to Dr F Fassnna. If you do speak tonight, we simply ask that you be responsible, be helpful, and be respectful.

00:40:04,330	Our BPS students deserve to have adults model the expectations that we have for them. Groups are urged to select one spokesperson. Individuals will be limited to no more than 4 minutes, and we notified with 30 seconds remaining to conclude their remarks. The board does not debate issues as presented, but we’ll take such matters under advisement.

00:40:19,030	With that, please stand in the approach the podium if you’d like to speak tonight. See nobody coming to the podium. Public Comm is now closed. Item 5, monitor district operations. Uh, 58 or 2.1 academic achievement social studies, Dr Fasna.

00:40:45,730	I’d like to welcome Dr Johnson, the podium to give you your report tonight and just see, I’m sure someone as we were getting ready for the meeting, said, didn’t we cover that? Remember, we did the revisions the last two months, so it seems like social studies has been around for a while. This is actually the official report, so we’re gonna give you the actual results. So, Dr Johnson, thanks for being here. Thank you, thank you, um.

00:41:02,200	Thank you, President Eastke and Dr F Fast, um, members of the board, we’re talking about uh R21 social studies, so we continue to see steady improvement with student performance and social studies across the grade levels. Um, the district has implemented, obviously our intent around those instructional curriculum, as Dr F Fastt talked about are guaranteeing viable curriculum.

00:41:23,200	How can we ensure that we’re tight on the standards and those outcomes will also allow for some of that professional autonomy and the art to be infused to meet your where they are. Um, throughout our uh grade levels, we see continued improvement with our students meeting or exceeding the uh the standards and the outcomes.

00:41:44,100	We also have shifted in the middle school and the high school reporting that based upon letter grades and the percentage there. So you see some of that increase, obviously, the elementary is at 89.7 for that overall for the middle school, we’re at 78.6 and high school, 72.5.

00:42:05,800	see those as increases across all the grade levels at that point in time in those groupings, and so again, um, although the 912 is a little bit more of a baseline. We did go back and pull similar data, um, but now that we’re using letter grids, we can compare that, so that’s why that part is shaded in gray, but again, increases as we, um, educators and students continued to just be tighter

00:42:21,800	about, here’s the standards and here’s the outcome that essential learnings and what we want them to know. We do know that there’s been a lot of work that it crosses over with. Our context-based literacy, so the work that you’ve heard from about wit and wisdom and other literacy ties so much to social studies.

00:42:39,170	Again, the content and how we’re teaching students to learn, um, and be able to read to learn and access that. Um, we also see the work that you’ve heard about with Laing vocabulary.

00:42:55,600	Again, we were doing that in all subject areas that discipline literacy, the science of reading continues to show up here as social studies, and I think that helps make it even more accessible to students, thus, that’s part of what we believe helps lead the students being more successful in the class. Um, with the, the intent for the professional learning, we continue to look and implement those proficiency skills.

00:43:13,130	Again, how can we turn those into essential questions and how can we make that be really that driving those whys, the learnings that outcome that we want for that. We know that, um, we have great guiding coalitions where we have representatives, um, and again, some of that will be talked about in the OE 11 here at the end of June, but we have lots

00:43:30,730	of people who apply year to year to be on those guiding. Coalitions. These are the teachers across our schools and across the content areas who are representing their fellow colleagues and providing input, so it’s that evergreen, um.

00:43:50,130	Always doing that work and always refining as well as when the state or others, there’s new proficiency skills, we need to develop and see what that is expected in terms of outcomes. We continue to um do well there and you can see the civics exam as well on the 2nd uh area of 99, uh. 99.8%, 99.

00:44:13,970	9% of our students, and again, there’s a few exceptions for students that we opt out of that, uh, due to some academic ah challenges, but again, within that, that’s a high percentage, obviously, where we’re wanting it to be above the target of 98.

00:44:32,400	Um, so you’ll notice that again, that’s slimmed down to just now 2 standards, again, as Dr F Fassnt talked about on US board, but for the public, if you’ve heard this over the last couple months. We’ve really tightened and narrowed down and discerned here’s the central ones that are just social studies, um, specific. So at this point in time, I would present and ask you to, uh, hopefully approve this with making reasonable progress at Stanford any questions President Eastgate or members of the board.

00:44:53,500	Board members, any questions, Mr. Lee? Uh, thank you, President Eastgate is an indicator too that 70% on the North Dakota civics exam. Is that 70% required to graduate? Yes, so you have to hit a 70% to be deemed that you’ve passed the exam. That’s just what the state standard is that.

00:45:19,700	Correct except for a few exceptions for some students that might have some alternate assessments, yeah, special education sphere. Is that what we’re, is that why we’re at 98% and not 100%, would you say, because of those exceptions or if you do not pass the civics exam and you do not qualify for um A An accommodation or then.

00:45:45,470	You would not be able to graduate now. So most of our students can pass this at some point in time. We used to offer this as a middle school test, but we’ve really moved that into now the junior and then senior year and some students that may move in from out of state need to be caught up, but again, the

00:46:00,300	questions are similar to what would be asked if you were going to have a citizenship exam and so again, I go back to when we’re talking about social studies, hopefully we’re graduating students that are jury-read and civic ready, you know, they’re ready to vote and they’d be someone that you would hope would be able to sit

00:46:15,330	in good reason on a jury of your peers. So I think that it’s important and I’m glad that we’re making that progress. So. Board members, any other questions or comments from Dr Johnson. And if no more comments, how would the board find us on um R 2.1 social studies. Ms. Peterson.

00:46:43,470	I would move that um with respect to our two academic achievements, social studies that we are making reasonable reasonable progress as presented. I’ll second. But Motion a 2nd. Any further discussion? See no, Mr. Sheer Lee Peterson. Yes. Presky. Hager, Eastgate. Yes. Thank you Dr Johnson and Dr F Fast. Next up we have BSR3 staff accountability.

00:47:14,500	We have a public reading. And then the board can determine if we’re going to retain or amend it if we’re in compliance or not. BSR 3 staff accountability. The superintendent is responsible for all matters related to the day to, related to the day to day operation of the district within the values expressed by the board in policy.

00:47:31,100	All staff members are considered to report directly or indirectly to the superintendent. Number one, the board will never give direction to any employee other than the superintendent. Number 2, the board will not formally or informally evaluate any staff member other than the superintendent. And number 3.

00:47:49,670	Except as required by law, the board will not participate in decisions or actions involving the hiring, evaluating, disciplining, or dismissal of any employee other than the superintendent. Other provisions of these policies notwithstanding the business manager shall submit routine financial reports directly to the board and shall be employed, disciplined, and terminated by the board. This brings an end to the reading of BSR 3 staff accountability.

00:48:11,730	Board members, any discussion or? Or how would you like to find us, Ms. Preskey? I would move that we retain BSR3 staff accountability. Revolution is 2nd. Any further discussion? Mr. Sher. Peterson Presky Hager. Lee? Yes. Eastgate. Yes, motion passes. And how’s the board find us? I’d moved that we determine that we are in compliance.

00:48:40,970	Second, Emotionally a second. Any further discussion on that one? Signon, Mr. Sch Presky Hager. Lee? Yes. Peterson? Yes. He’s. Yes. Motion passes. Item 6 on the agenda matters reserved for board action. 6A is the BPS 2025, 2030 strategic plan.

00:49:06,470	Um, as you guys all know, we were just presented out on the Focus on success, but I can go to Dr F Faszan if you have anything else you’d like to add. I just hope after all this work, you say yes. Oh yeah, you affirm that you bless it. Short and sweet fall to focus on success, that’s OK. Board members. Ms. Peterson.

00:49:23,200	Um again, just thanks for all of that work on that, and then I’m excited, I think after this, you’ll have to update our board packet because it used to say 20, you know, through 25, so you’ll get to put this in there, but with that, I moved to accept the BPS 2025 through 2030 strategic plan as presented.

00:49:41,730	Second, Motion to 2. Any further discussion from the board? Mr. Sheer Hager. Yes. Lee. Yes. Peterson? Yes. Presky? Yes. Eastgate. Yes, motion passes. And 6B. I didn’t have a chance to check in with everybody, but any school visit updates if I see a light. Ms. Presky. Yeah, finally got after it.

00:50:08,530	Actually, today I went and visited, um, Pioneer Elementary School, and when I pulled up, uh, this afternoon, it was, um, like during lunch recess and um. The principal Chris Naamm was out in the front lawn playing football or catch with the football, uh, with two young boys, um, and so it was just kind of, I just, it brought a

00:50:30,130	smile to my face to pull up and see that, um, a principal can get out and actually go play with the kids and so chit chatted with the boys and um Mr. Naum, um, as they were finishing up their recess game, um, and then sat down and had a nice visit and a.

00:50:50,100	Uh, a smaller school in the middle of, of central part of Bismarck, if folks aren’t familiar where Pioneer is, uh, they have about 190 kids when they started the year and they have about 208 now. He described it as a very transient population.

00:51:11,400	There’s a lot of movement, kids coming in, kids leaving, um, they have two grade levels, uh, for each, for two rooms with with grade levels, um. for every grade level except first grade, where there’s, um, fewer kids. Um Small, but he described it as lots of needs, and that really got down to the transient population, how kids are flowing in and out of, out of there.

00:51:38,670	And then also just the challenging uh dimensions with kids and their families and, um, we talked a lot about behavioral issues that they are seeing and having, um, and just some challenges probably that. Happen at home that translate into, um, the school.

00:52:04,800	Um One thing that he said to me that Um, I really reflected on is that resources to the schools shouldn’t be based on population, but should be based on the needs and I, and I, I just really, when he said it just really took uh me to just pause for a moment and think about that, that, you know, so many resources might be allocated to a school based on how big they are, how small

00:52:21,970	they are, and really it should be based on what do they really need and what do those students need, um. To excel. Um, they have in Pioneer they have about 15 to 20 English learners, and they have a halftime EL specialist, um, so really 15 to 20 kids that don’t know English

00:52:44,330	in a in a school of 200 is, is quite a, quite a. Quite a large number. Um, again, kind of talking more about the behavioral issues. Um, he also talked about how there are students that really need an alternative setting for learning, um, that need to be removed from the classroom, um,

00:53:05,170	for a period of time and um he, he talked about the school within a school, which is a program that we have at our high schools, um, he thought maybe that would be something that could be implemented on the elementary level, which really spurred us into talking more about Renewed for.

00:53:22,200	Elementary, which is something that this board has, has discussed as well. And, uh, when I asked about the renewed program and expanding that for elementary. He said that they actually had a student that was the first.

00:53:45,200	Student to use that program, it really, um, helped a lot, um, was, it was good support and it was um, Perfect in that situation, uh, but then also just visited a little bit about how would it be more efficient if you had somebody in the building where you don’t have to figure out transportation for that student to get to a rote new ed setting, um, so just some good conversation surrounding that, um,,, 11 program that he, uh,

00:54:07,630	talked about that I thought was really interesting was called Relationship mapping, and this is the first time I’ve heard about this with any of my. School visits.

00:54:28,030	But they have, um, staff that indicate um with color codes like how well they know students in the school, um, do they, do they believe that they have some needs that need some, um, Some more attention to that they can help with, whether it’s at home or behavioral um challenges, uh, and then how well do they know that student? Do they have a relationship with that student, and then the student does the same thing and they kind of match kids, students up with

00:54:49,270	the teachers then and that staff is assigned a student 1 to 2, um, each staff member is assigned to just touch base with that student then throughout the week. Might just be checking in.

00:55:12,300	Hey, how are you doing? Um, but really to just build a relationship being very intentional about creating more relationships for the students in the school. And it’s not just teachers that are involved in this. It’s really the whole school, so it could be the janitor, the cook, um, and, and when we were done with our meeting, he ended with, you know, this, I’m really proud of how much the Everyone in this building really cares about

00:55:28,300	kids. They’re very dedicated and my response to him was, well, that shows by them buying into this, um, relationship mapping program because it’s something outside of what they would be doing in their job duties, teaching in the classroom or cleaning, you know, clean the bathrooms and hallways.

00:55:51,200	It, it really is going the, that next step and really just developing relationships. Um, as far as the facility, it is an older school, um. asked him what some of the needs are there and elevator that school too has, um, a few different areas where there’s different flights of stairs and it’s not handicap accessible.

00:56:12,000	Um, so an elevator is needed or some sort of making that building more ADA compliant, um, would be good, um, no, also he indicated that they would like a more secure front entrance, um, and then they also have 4 portables on the grounds and only one is being used and kind of. said I’d like to get him out of here.

00:56:32,970	So, um, I guess that’s something else we put a lot of portables in place, um, and then did some redistricting and reworking with our schools and so it might be a time to look at where, where those buildings are needed and where they’re not, um, and free up that space.

00:56:53,330	Um, also some concerns about Title One budgeting, uh, how their funding has, has dropped over the last couple of years,, $100,000 in two years and doesn’t really know what’s coming up next, um, and really what that, what that translates to, uh, if you’re looking at a $30,000 cut, that equates to a position, so you’re either reducing positions or cutting a position.

00:57:16,530	Um And it’s just You know, it’s a hard time. We talked about, um, I definitely got the feeling from From Mr. Naham that he is, uh, he, he understands the budget situation that we’re in for this next cycle and, um, the legislation with caps is is not friendly, and so, uh, you know, it was.

00:57:39,030	And in sentences with, well, if there was money or, you know, maybe someday, um, so, but I definitely think he was realistic to know that there’s definitely some tight budget constraints, um, coming at us for this year, but, um, It was a it was a good visit, uh, I, I played volleyball in the gym, but haven’t been past the

00:58:00,030	bathrooms, so it was nice to get a look inside. Thanks very much, Ms. Presky. Appreciate that. Um, I actually have, uh, a short, somewhat sweet school visit to report on because the visit was because, uh, it was a couple of weeks ago and it happened to be at Centennial Elementary where Mr.

00:58:16,500	Nairm had been the counselor when all my kids were there. Um, and it was because we were my school visit was scheduled on the same day as Governor Armstrong meeting with many of us board members and Dr F Fasnot, um, to sign a bill. They’re at Centennial Elementary. So I’ll just touch on a few quick things, but Ms.

00:58:31,900	Jess Jessica Nichols and I met together. Um, I was greeted like, I said, my, my kids had gone there and I had a chance to talk to board member Lee, but we were, um, getting ready for the, the signing of the builder at the school, and I know it was fun for him too

00:58:42,100	because his kids attended there and it’s just, you feel like you spent a lifetime there, and then it feels like it’s been a while, right, John? Um, and then when you get to be back, it’s, it’s always, it’s always a lot of fun and, um, the educators there as I was, I was waiting for the meeting to

00:58:54,330	start, I’d gotten there a little early. I had a chance. I just want to pick on, uh, Miss Megan Crawford just a little bit. It was really good to see her and some of her other, I won’t be able to mention every teacher by name necessarily, but there was a fleet of them.

00:59:04,870	And I think they might have known the governor was coming because they were wearing t-shirts that said things like support public education and things like that, which I thought was awesome, um, which was great. So it was good to have the governor’s team there as well and to see so many educators.

00:59:17,670	Um, some of the things that Principal Nichols and I had a chance to talk about, um, The space at Centennial, there’s some, there’s some tight spaces for even just having meeting rooms, conference rooms, um, I know the same is true. It wasn’t my school visit, but you know, Centennials kind of a sister school to Solheim.

00:59:31,400	They were built at the same time, um, and some of the similar space issues where the gymnasium is also used for the lunchroom and so some of the turnover of all that just creates, creates some tough, tough times during the day, uh, both to, to make sure that kids are getting fed and we’re getting the instruction

00:59:46,430	time and the prep time to get all those spaces ready. These aren’t things that are necessarily new to us in the district, but I think it’s so important just mention because it’s, it’s a real thing. Well, we continue to grow and we have to build new schools as well as our community grows.

00:59:58,330	We still have to take care of some of those, um, schools that have been around for a little bit longer, just like Ms. Presky was just talking about with Pioneer. Um, also, we talked a little bit, obviously with some bussing, timing changing, and also behavioral things that sometimes come up on that, and I was really impressed with, um,

01:00:11,300	Ms. Nichols said that, you know, even their, their bus drivers, they have the right to come in and they let the office know about if there’s behavioral issues and that those are things that there are write-ups essentially that go on.

01:00:23,630	I I just thought it’s good for people to hear that too, that we do, you know, our, our people are equipped. Mr. Barnhart, I’m sure is the, is the elementary in particular, that, you know, from the bus drivers to our principals that those things are getting addressed, um, that if there’s things that need to be handled on the bus, just like, uh, I think it was mentioned earlier,

01:00:37,400	Mr. Lee mentioned earlier that it’s a privilege. Also still to be in our schools, to be educated, um, the same is true of our bussing, you know, there you, you gotta kind of earn that seat, or at least you, you can lose it. Um, so just things to keep in mind about that. Um.

01:00:51,800	Mrs. Hartman hosted us in her classroom and the, the fifth graders that were there, they got to to see a bill being signed. It’s pretty cool for them.

01:01:04,000	Um, many members of our board were able to be there that day and I, I again, I just want to say thank you also to Governor Armstrong, um, not touching on the legislation or the bill itself today, but just, I really appreciated him explaining to the kids what that legislative process looked like, what it looked like to sign a bill.

01:01:16,500	Um, a lot of times he said that they’re kind of, uh, at those signings that might not be the actual bill, but that that was the real bill and those kids actually got to see a North Dakota log get signed in. Um, handed the marker off to a student who was overjoyed. I think tackled him with a hug right after that.

01:01:29,100	So, um, you know, I, I, I just think these are great things for our kids. We talked earlier about civics tests within our social studies, and for these kids to get to see some of these real life actions that take place, um, right there at our school. So Centennial continues to be just a fun place in my heart, um, Mr.

01:01:43,700	Nair, as I said, he was just, he’s mentioned as the principal, he was the counselor and sat with one of my kids when he was the counselor crying on his first day at kindergarten, picking on my kids.

01:01:57,930	Um, so I just appreciate the staff we have there, um, the people in our buildings, our bus drivers, as I mentioned, and um, and that’s like I said, Centennial just continues to be a, a place near and dear to my heart. So great time at that school. Um, with that, I don’t think we have any other school updates today. Uh, we will go on to number 7 on our agenda, the consent agenda.

01:02:12,130	What are the wishes of the board? Mr. Lee. Mr. President, I move that we accept the consent agenda. We have a motion in a second. Mr. Sher, the roll, please. Lee Peterson. Yes. Presky Hager. Motion passes. And number 8, Superintendent’s Report 8A major projects. I will hand this off to Mr. Sher to share a major projects.

01:02:43,470	Thank you, uh, President Eastgate, Dr F Fassn members of the board, um. Tonight, just a quick update on where we’re at with major projects. Uh, we’re really starting to take shape up at our silver ranch Career Academy, uh, Kirin Gutter started at the end of last week.

01:02:59,330	Underground should be complete this week and they’ll continue pouring on that north side. Um, uh, for concrete, again, that’s just the side that’s uh. Shelled for now, but, but concrete was part of that. And then we continue framing of the interior walls that will occupy this fall. Um, wanted a quick update you on, uh, some portable status.

01:03:23,330	We are moving the double portable to Solheim for some increased deed there. The quad we’re working on a sale of property for that, um, and then, uh, just remember that we did bring Uh, 4 elementary projects, so in Pioneer is one of them, so hopefully we can get him an elevator and we can, part of that is we need an addition, so strategically we’ve left those

01:03:40,400	portables there so that we can also do that project. So, I think Chris would agree that um he would want him gone, but he wants his project even more, so, um, in front of you also is the financials, um, and I, I don’t really have anything to offer other than, um, I did notice

01:04:00,200	one error that the completed amount. for the Lincoln Elementary changed by like less than $100. We had one strangled. Last minute build that came in that had to get coded there. So I would, uh, Entertain any questions that the board would have related to major projects. Board members, any questions for Mr. Sheer? OK.

01:04:20,770	Thank you, Mr. Sheriff. Dr F Fass not on the legislative wrap up. Uh, yeah, I would just like to go through, um, some bills now that we have the session over, finally, um, seemed like a long session for all involved, and I’m sure legislators too, but I’d like to just hit a few bills I think would be of

01:04:40,800	interest to you and also, I believe our listening public. So we tracked 91 different bills that all ended up in either past legislation or something that was vetoed or defeated. So it was, it was an extensive.

01:05:03,430	amount of bills that we are tracking this year, 61 of those were actually passed into law that I’m not covering 61 bills a day, but, um, we are working on addressing 61 bits of legislation, um, that’s why I do believe just for people who notice that, um, BPS employees, myself were up at the up at the session and would say, oh, you’re up at, you’re up the Capitol again, you know, even to some degree.

01:05:24,270	Oh, you’re at the Capitol again. Why aren’t you in the office? Um, That for a while became a second office, and the reason is, is that a lot of this policy, a lot of this legislation did affect kids, staff, parents, the BPS organization, our community, um, and, and really I, I will say when I meet with legislators,

01:05:42,770	they thank me for being there. They thank me for being there and so, and many of our employees that go and, and advocate for legislation because really we’re the boots on the ground.

01:06:04,530	Many of the legislators haven’t been in a school setting for 2030, 50 years, um, so we’re kind of that touch point of how, how’s that legislative idea going to impact our classrooms, so we take that very seriously and I, we work very hard on it. So if I can, I just have a few bills I’d like to go over, um, quickly for you tonight. House Bill 1562 was mandated reporter training, um, that’s another requirement.

01:06:22,400	We’ve already been doing mandated reporter training. Actually, there’s a course that, um, we have to take as educators, this just Added some components to that, so we’ll be implementing that here shortly. House Bill 1223, um, suspension expulsion.

01:06:44,070	This is really put forth by your BPS and large schools, um, what we call the study council, the Big nine schools, um, probably when I was in E in Ellendale, I didn’t have one expulsion during my time there. I never had an expulsion till I worked in BPS, unfortunately, um, we’ve had numerous experiences, but expulsions by law now. Only carry to the last day of school, um, like end of May.

01:07:03,530	So if you do something that warrants an expulsion and the first day of May, really your expulsion is less than a month. Um, this legislation gives schools the ability to push that expulsion into the subsequent the following school year.

01:07:21,500	Uh, I don’t think that that’s something we want to do all the time, but when you do bring a dangerous weapon to school, maybe that expulsion needs to be longer than just 30 days. Um, so that gives us some opportunity. to use that as a tool when we need to.

01:07:41,330	Um, human trafficking prevention, that’s now required curriculum for um grade 6, 10, and 12 to be informed about human trafficking, to be aware of human trafficking, um, that is definitely age appropriate, so please understand how we teach 6th graders will not be the same as we do 12th graders, but the state actually picked third party providers to do that. It won’t be through BPS, third party providers will be contacting us and arranging times to do that for.

01:08:00,000	Each of these grades, um, we have not heard that yet from them, but we will be having to schedule that in because that’s a required component of being in those grades as these, uh, um, for those students. Um, student voting, uh, this, this legislated that we can’t bar students from traveling to vote during general special or primary election.

01:08:21,600	What I’m really proud of is as we worked on this legislation with some legislators within Bismarck. It’s like, we don’t need legislation for this. I, I appreciate that maybe this is a problem somewhere else, but, um, inside of Bismarck, um, we have always allowed kids to go vote if they have, they say, uh, we

01:08:38,830	need to go this hour to go vote. Here’s my voting location. We’ve always allowed that, even to the point we’ve, um, given, uh, allowed kids to be election workers with no absence. You can do that without it uh working against you as far as your absence count because we want kids to vote.

01:08:56,330	We want them to work polls. We want them to get that civic experience. So I’m really glad to see that, uh, actually being, um, codified in House Bill 11678. Science and math was Senate Bill 2213. If you’ve heard the science of reading, Um, Dr Johnson kind of alluded to some of those things within literacy today.

01:09:15,800	Um, we’ve been working on that. I’m gonna look over at Mrs. Peterson. I think 4 to 6 years we’ve been working on science and reading, um, through the Department of Public Instruction. It was, it was legislated and, and required for all teachers who teach that within the primary grades to have that training.

01:09:31,270	Now this is coming science and math. So if you teach mathematics to our kids, you now have to go to required training to have the skills and the aptitudes to be able to be um. really good at teaching mathematics to our kids. Um, so that was, uh, uh imposed by the legislature.

01:09:52,570	House Bill 1105 virtual policies, if you remember two years ago, this, the legislature passed kind of a very comprehensive broad um virtual learning experience, kind of a choice bill, um, we’ve worked with the department. We’ve worked with CDE and legislators over the last two years to say, here’s, we need some reasonable, um, common sense guidelines.

01:10:15,670	when we allow those virtual opportunities for kids, things like, you need to register in a window. You have a certain ad drop timeline that you have to uh adhere to, so we can run the operation side of teaching and learning and, and make sure that our, our, our classrooms have teachers in them, and so this legislation just provided some of that guidelines.

01:10:33,800	It helped to allow us to be a little more flexible and in that application of virtual learning, but still allowing kids. Take full advantage of coursework within the Center for Distance Ed.

01:10:50,300	Um, it’s not about limiting in it, it’s just about helping us manage that, so kids make really good choices with their parents and with us as we, as we move forward on those, um, as, uh, President Eastgate mentioned tonight, um, House Bill 1160 was signed in front of our, um, kids that at Centennial Elementary, which is great. um, Senate Bill 2354 was the very similar bill, um, almost exact, which was past 2nd, which became the law of the land.

01:11:12,630	We have a new requirement to prohibit cell phone use, bell to bell in all of our schools K through 12, and the key word there is, um, technology must be stowed and inaccessible.

01:11:35,600	And so we’ll be working with, we’re composing working committees right now actually with our school leaders, educators, um, we write for loop in some parents and, and community members on that at some point, but we really just need to get our hands around the legisla start to say, what are the rules, uh, and so we can craft really good policy for acceptable use, and I gave you the policy references FFI is student acceptable use, we’ll be making some modifications

01:11:55,300	there and then probably also composing rules to put in the handbook so kids know what the rules are and what the consequences are for not following that legislation. Um, House Bill 1369 was the K-12 funding bill, um, as you know, that came in at 2.

01:12:14,630	5% each year over the next 2 years for the foundation a payment, um, they did, they had a few other items in there with some bidding thresholds and stuff, but really that was the majority of that bill came in really late, um, I think Friday or the last day or Saturday of the session, so it was really late when we got that done, um, to be honest,

01:12:31,130	as a school leader, I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed because, um, our legislature addressed a 3% increase for state employees when really and provided some support for their insurance costs.

01:12:57,270	Um, they provide a 3% increase for higher ed and insurance costs, um, they even did a 3% increase for compensation for legislators and then at the end they have, um, because of budget constraints and some challenges to say, hey, we’re going to do 2.5. for schools and really not addressing um insurance. They left that for us to do within the 2.5% and I, I just think I’m, I’m disappointed. I thought we could do better at the end.

01:13:17,630	We advocated for that, but we will, we will work through it for the next 2 years and uh we’ll do the very best job we can. I hope everybody in the community knows that we’re not going to, we’re going to continue to do the very best job we can.

01:13:32,570	We just might have to say some no to some really, um, Nice things that we just have to say no to because we’re going to fund needs first before wants, and that’s just what we have to do. Um. The, the other one was House Bill 1176.

01:13:53,870	I was a governor’s tax reduction bill kind of came from the offshoot of Me 4, and so that was, um, as, um, board member Presky mentioned that’s putting the 3% caps on, on, um, revenue growth in each of our levies that we can assess, um, but it also gave the primary residences tax credit, which I think is up to $1600 for your residents depending on value and there’s other components, but, um, you know, after we support it, and

01:14:15,830	I’ll say we as schools, school leaders really worked hard to defeat Measure 4. It is nice to see this bill passed. I mean, it was loud and clear from Us in North Dakota that we wanted some tax reform, um, all political subs are now capped at 3%, but I would say, unlike counties, cities, and other

01:14:34,470	entities, um, schools are going to see a challenge in that we can’t raise fees, um, I think if I was in a fire department, and I used to be the secretary and the chief of a fire department at one time. We levied a tax. Um, you could always charge more for your call.

01:14:51,530	You could just raise the fee for when we go out and service that fire on your Now that the, the fee went up. I think that’s true with counties and cities. They have the ability to capture, recapture some of their funding. Schools can’t charge fees, not like this anyway.

01:15:10,200	Um, so, uh, uh, the 3% cap is a little bit more constricting for us, and we advocated for that. The other part that we’ll wait and see on and you’re well aware of this, but for the public is within the funding formula, all schools are deducted the value of 60 mLs. What 60 mLs can generate, that’s the Deducted in the state funding formula for schools.

01:15:28,400	We really argued that the state should keep that 60 mLs because if you’re going to deduct me 60 mLs of value, you should allow us to tax the 60 mills, then the deduction matches the taxation for every school across the state.

01:15:46,670	It seemed like that would work, but of course, if you did that, sometimes that 60 mLs could raise by more than 3% based on valuation changes in our community became really difficult, I think, um, with the legislation to say over 3% capping. Um, we’ll see how that affects the formula.

01:16:06,800	Um, the legislators did say in 2 years we’ll come back, we’ll look at this and the impact, um, I think if we saw some rapid evaluation grows in part of the state, we could see schools that were really negatively impacted by the cap and the 60 mil mandated deduct, and, and so we’ll see how that plays out. And I think, uh, lastly, um, transportation formula.

01:16:27,700	We did see an overhaul and transportation that’s now a little bit more connected, not 100% connected, but a little more connected to the funding formula. Um, however, um, the state really is underfunding transportation. We talked about costs for bussing and transportation, even with the change, the state will only be picking up about 36% of the actual cost of transportation within all schools statewide.

01:16:51,670	Well, that’s well behind that 70% that they’re doing for general education costs and, and Transportation is just a challenge. We know over the last 6 to 8 years, transportation costs have really escalated, so, um, we did lobby on that. We did get some, uh, good work there, so we’re very proud of that.

01:17:08,830	And lastly, maybe what didn’t pass, those are things that passed, um, 3 bills that didn’t pass, uh, House Bill 1191. That was the open transfer bill that allowed any student in the state to transfer to any school, any high school.

01:17:28,770	Whenever they wanted to, any day that they wanted to and be eligible to play, and I’m, we argue that, I mean, I’m all about school choice and you can make decision you want, but we said, can you imagine after the WD tournament that all the right kids transferred to the other school to make sure that they’re on the right team that’s going to state, theoretically with the legislation they could have.

01:17:46,670	And so we really said there’s some slippery slope there. Well, I was glad to see that get beat. And, uh, um, House Bill 1540. that was the first education savings account and thank you to uh Governor Armstrong for a good veto on that bill.

01:18:03,730	I really appreciated his support on that and also, um, the governor’s veto on Senate Bill 2307. That was a library bill, um, just for the sake of everybody listening. I’m not about putting bad books in front of kids. I’m not. I will, if you have a book, you have a concern, all you have to do is let us know. We have a policy.

01:18:17,170	We have a process, right? The challenge we had with this bill was really every system technology. system we put in front had the opportunity for kids who had to be age verified. Well, very few of those online ebook platforms, research platforms had that age verification built in. It really wasn’t even able to be built in.

01:18:37,530	So really, we were saying we’re going to have to get rid of all these services for kids that they can look up information, they can do research, they can do that because they couldn’t age verify, so we are really looking at what the cost would be, which when they did the fiscal note on this bill, It

01:18:51,770	was in the millions for schools, and then they took the fiscal note out and it’s like, well, now we’re just gonna have to cut them all. And so it’s good to see again the governor’s support on vetoing what was kind of a very tricky bill as far as implementation, so I would stand for any questions

01:19:07,930	on legislation. Or there’s any questions or comments? to see to hear Dr Fasnak. We move on to the item C. Last thing, I think we finalize the date, if it’s all right, I would just have you check them. Uh, let’s not finalize them tonight. I’ll let my office finalize them, uh, Mrs.

01:19:27,000	Esbrook can reach out to you, but we’re looking for a, a budget workshop, probably in that Friday, August 1st range, if you want to check your calendars, OK? Be thinking about that because that budget cycle happens and we’ve got to live by the dates and the times, OK? And then probably have a special meeting to approve the, uh, uh, budgets.

01:19:45,700	Thursday, August 7th, that we have done that normally as a call-in meeting. So we’ll send you invites on that and just reach out to you on that, um, and, and finalize that more, but we’re already planning for that.

01:20:02,230	And the other thing I guess I’d like to ask you is we did it last year, would you like my office to organize a day, a day and a half retreat where we can talk about some of these issues, finances, budgeting, I can come up with facility needs, I mean, fiscal, fiscal needs, federal fiscal needs that are coming.

01:20:19,230	We probably could spend a lot of time talking about some good topics of behavioral health would be a good one, Mr. Lee, we can talk about, uh, um, some of those issues, if you would, would you be open to something? Would you like me to shoot for June, July? Board members, any comments on appetite for border treat, Mr. Lee. Uh, thank you, President Eastgate.

01:20:38,500	I, I definitely think, uh, there’s value in the border retreat, um, I think last year’s was about the right. Time, but of course we have to. Try to get all of our schedules to, to match up, which is always tricky, but, um, I think July would be a Mid to late July would be a good time. Other board members.

01:21:02,530	If you’re saying July, uh, if you’re OK with that, just, I’m looking for head nods and confirmation. If you’re looking for July, then I would find some windows of time and probably send something out so you can doodle pull it or something to say these all work, so we have an idea of what’s a good working

01:21:18,530	time so we can do that. Then we can discuss like where do you want to do that here? Yeah, we’re just, just. The logistics of it, so. Sounds good. OK.

01:21:35,070	The board members, if not tonight, then I’m commenting on that at all, if you could just check your schedules and maybe get back to Dr Fasant’s office or myself, and we’ll try to nail something down, depending on what people have available and on the past, um, some retreats have even taken place right here, um, so just depending on what everybody feels like we need to do to get things accomplished and cover all the different topics that we want to dive into, so just

01:21:50,070	appreciate feedback on that at a later time then. With that, Dr F Fasan, is that you want to cut off your report as you break your pen. Um, oh, I’m done. And the Superintendent’s report with that all the items