00:00:07,500	Good evening. I’m Josh Hager, president of the Bismarck School Board. It’s 5:15 on Monday, November 24th. I called this meeting to order. Welcome to those of you who are joining us both here and also online. You can find our agenda and follow along online under the school board tab at BismarckSchools.org.

00:00:26,800	Uh, Dr Sher, will you call the roll, please? Mister Hager? Here, Mister Eastgate, here, Mister Lee, here, Mrs. Peterson. Miss Pressy, here Miss Pearson was unable to join us. She’s on work assignment tonight. Uh, Dr Fossau, would you lead us in the pledge.

00:01:16,900	God Item one CBPS, Mission, Vision and Values, the BPS mission is to empower every learner to thrive The BPS vision states together our strong relationships build inclusive, collaborative, and innovative environments that create agency and inspire a passion for learning, excellence, and discovery. BPS values are inclusion, excellence, innovation, and leadership. You’ll also find a link in the agenda to the BPS strategic plan.

00:01:41,530	Item 2 is to adopt the agenda, what are the wishes of the board? I’d move that we adopt the agenda Second. we have a motion to second, any discussion? Seeing none, Dr Sher Eastgate? Yes. Lee? Yes. Presky. Yes. Hager. Yes. Brings us down to item 3.

00:02:07,800	Focus on success Instructional coaches, Dr Fassnott. Well, good afternoon, board members. Nice to see all of you. Yeah, tonight, oh, I’d like to introduce, uh, Miss Amanda Meyer. She’s our director of the Learning Design Innovation, um part of BPS has uh started, I think, uh, you’ve got an opportunity to meet here.

00:02:24,730	Star last year, has taken on the reins of that job very well, and during our summer retreat, had a little time to talk to you about instructional coaches, which I think collectively thought would be a good topic to share, not only again for you, but also the listening public, so I’d introduce Missmeyer.

00:02:39,700	Good evening, President Hanger and members of the board, if you would turn to the second page, we’re going to start this evening by connecting to the strategic plan. So you know that we adopted a new strategic plan this year.

00:02:54,800	And so I just want to draw your attention to two drivers that we’re going to highlight in this presentation. The first strengthening teaching practices and the second empowering learners, and then right underneath there, you’ll see in the green text, those are the strategic priorities that I’m connecting our instructional coaches to this evening. So effective instructional strategies and systems of academic supports.

00:03:13,370	And then if you look towards the bottom of the page, it says in the next 18 months, our focus will be on and there’s some bullets there.

00:03:25,970	So on the left hand side of the page, we’re going to draw attention to bullets 12, and 5, and on the right hand side of the page, we’re going to draw your attention to bullets 1 and 3. All of this work would not be possible without the help of our instructional coaches. And we’ll slide down to the next page and I just have an overview of the purpose of our instructional coaches.

00:03:42,270	It is to improve teaching quality, improve student achievement, retention and job satisfaction of our educators and then that last one I’d also like to draw extra special attention to his vision to practice. So like I said, we just adopted a new strategic plan and part of the role of instructional coaches is to help translate the goals of this board into action into classrooms.

00:04:00,900	On the next page, I, um, have an overview of their roles and responsibilities. This is just a very condensed version of their job description. Nobody wants to read their whole job description, but a couple of highlights is supporting teachers through personalized coaching, modeling and co-teaching, leading professional learning within their buildings, collaborating across the system with district

00:04:20,630	leaders, guiding our MTSS system and our PLC processes and advancing curriculum and innovation, and they do this through partnership with our guiding Coalition teams and then finally fostering those relationships and making sure that we have healthy cultures in our schools. On the next slide, I just connected to research for you.

00:04:37,170	So this is research conducted by John Hattie, where he looked at over 300 influences on student achievement and why I draw your attention to this is there are 3 specifically where instructional coaches impact is seen, uh, for student achievement.

00:04:55,800	So first thing for the audience, a 0 would be neutral effect. Hattie says that at 04, there is a positive impact on student achievement. So everything that’s listed in that blue category would be a highly effective influence. And you see the 3 that I have boxed there are all areas where instructional coaches have a direct impact on student achievement.

00:05:12,600	Specifically, I’d like to speak to that collective teacher efficacy in education, we use that word often for those that maybe don’t spend all of their time in this environment.

00:05:29,630	It is the belief in the collective ability to have an impact on student achievement and our instructional coaches play a pivotal role through our PLC process and through supporting our teachers to build that collective teacher efficacy. On the next page, I have some Bismarck specific data and some comparables for you. And so our staffing has been very stable over the last 10 years. You’ll see in 1516 there are two asterisks there.

00:05:51,970	That is because some legislation wasn’t introduced that year that required so many instructional coaches to student ratio, and then you’ll see that we’ve stayed very consistent with that ratio. Um, the actual ratio for BPS is 10.5, so we do invest a greater number of instructional coaches than what would be required by law. And then you’ll see the comparables there for Bismarck, West Fargo, and Fargo.

00:06:08,500	And that long, um, table at the top just shows you the increase in student enrollment over that same time period. So we have about 600+ kids compared to the 2015 comparable.

00:06:25,530	And then other thing I’d like to point out is we have actually uh increased our brick and mortar in that same time period. So we have two elementary schools that have been built, um, Silver Ranch in Elkridge, and then we have expansion at Career Academy, and we have not increased our staffing, which is just a kudos to our coaches and our fiscal responsibility to the public.

00:06:42,170	On the next slide are the two data points that I really want to point out that I think show quantitatively the impact of our instructional coaches. So, so the first is percentage of teachers with advanced degrees. We have over 15% higher percentage of, um, educators with advanced degrees, and then the second example that I pulled out was our teacher, um, retention.

00:07:05,800	So percentage of teachers was less than 3 years of experience, or 6% less than the state. The next two slides just give you some specific examples of how coaches support our principals and our teachers. So first, our principals, first and foremost, they extend the principle’s reach.

00:07:26,800	So principals oversee large buildings, their job roles and responsibilities are pretty robust. Our coaches are able to hone in and focus on instruction. The next one is improving teaching across classrooms. They have the ability to be in all classrooms looking for fidelity, looking for high impact practices. They support our new teachers in growing their practice.

00:07:45,700	They lead our data-driven improvement processes, and they strengthen our MTSS MPL PLC professional learning work. And the next slides more specific to our teachers. They’re in classrooms co-teaching and modeling. They are looking at student achievement data and progress monitoring data with our teachers. They’re planning and supporting curriculum. They do lead just uh building level professional learning with their teachers.

00:08:07,700	One that maybe you wouldn’t connect with instructional coaches, but I would like to call out as the technology integration, so as many of you know, we’re moving to a new student information system, PowerSchool to Infinite Campus. Our coaches will be integral in making sure that our teachers feel successful in that transition.

00:08:21,430	And then also in our learning management system, so digital delivery of curriculum instruction. They make sure that our educators have the skills that they need. And then finally support, making sure that our teachers feel seen, valued and heard.

00:08:41,100	And then the last slide there is we have spent a lot of um time and investment in growing our instructional coaches in the last couple of months. And so they can’t be experts in supporting our teachers unless we invest in their own expertise and so they’ve had the opportunity to do the HRS mini summit and instructional coaching Academy with Dr Warwick to grow their own skills, and then most recently

00:08:57,800	they completed a safe and civil school train the trainer workshop, which will help them more effectively support classroom management and behavior supports in coaching our teachers. And with that, I will stand for any questions.

00:09:22,230	Board members, questions, comments? Miss Presky Have you surveyed teachers to find out, um, how valuable this is for them? Like, do you have any data on what, what they gain from it or how they’re rating it, the effectiveness of having instructional coaches. That’s a great question. I would not say we have quantitative data, but plenty of qualitative data, and I would encourage when you’re in your building walkthroughs to collect some of that qualitative data yourself.

00:09:40,430	I think our teachers would tell you that the impact is evident. I was a school principal for 10 years, and I would not have been able to support my teachers without the support of my own instructional coach in my building, but that’s a great question that maybe we can bring back and see

00:09:53,270	if we could capture that in a more quantitative way. Mr. Lee Thank you, President Hager. Um, so kind of along those lines, how is the efficacy of coaches measured if, if we’re not doing surveys of teachers.

00:10:14,530	Well, we do survey teachers in their, like the overall, I think the my response was more we don’t target that to is your instructional coach positively impacting your instruction, but we could draw correlations.

00:10:31,170	I think my hope would be before I answered that for us to be more direct in our questioning of is this the direct impact or are there other factors weighing in, but achievement, our actual student achievement outcome data would be a reflection of our coach’s impact which I shared at the, uh, bar retreat. Yeah, um, so would we surmise because West Fargo and Fargo have more coaches that their student achievement is higher than Bismarck Public Schools.

00:10:56,170	That would not be accurate at this time compared in the 2024 school year. Our achievement data is higher than both of those two districts, which I guess I knew, but, but so what are we doing different or why are, um, why are we, uh, excelling at a different rate.

00:11:12,430	Can you, I mean, do you, have you been able to kind of pinpoint that, or is there something we’re doing different with our coaches, or is it a different factor that our students achieve.

00:11:27,230	Again, I’m drawing a correlation, but I would say that that commitment to excellence and the amount of professional learning that we’ve invested in those coaches so that they can in turn support the teachers would be a factor in why we, our student achievement data is higher than other comparables, and we could just say our teachers are better, and our teachers are, and that’s why I did pull out that advanced degree because I think that when you have good coaching, you have a good

00:11:42,270	environment, then your educators want to elevate themselves. And so 56% of our educators obtaining an advanced degree is a reflection of the culture that Bismarck Public Schools has created. I agree, and in our professional learning communities, I kind of tie in with that as well, correct? Absolutely. OK. Good. Thank you.

00:12:01,870	Yeah, great question Mystery skate, thanks a lot, Ms. Meyer. Um, just some kind of practical questions, like you said, we had a chance to hear you present at the retreat and whatnot, but how often does the instructional coaches and the principals or assistant principals for that matter, collaborate.

00:12:15,700	Do they get together? And again, I’m just kind of curious to like, does the instructional coach, um, do they help identify some of the teachers they’re gonna give more coaching to or is that always delegated by the principal. So a couple layers to your question.

00:12:33,470	So at the district level, our instructional coaches get together at least twice a month to collaborate across instructional coach group and then I would say every other month, maybe more often depending on the initiative or the work that we’re doing, our principals and our coaches are as a system together collaborating, but then at the, your second part of your question, I would say weekly, if not daily, our principals and coaches are collaborating in the building,

00:12:51,600	whether it’s through their instructional leadership team or just through one on ones to id ent ify tiers of teachers that need support and make sure that they’re getting that timely feedback. Doctorssant Yeah, I, I think that’s a very fair question to Mr. Lee’s question.

00:13:08,070	I, I, I would not wanna say we’re better than Fargo, West Fargo, even though I think we are, but a new superintendent’s here today from West Fargo, um, state Superintendent, but, um, I do think a little of that you can almost follow the the growth rate in West Fargo, which has been a challenge.

00:13:25,330	I mean, just the sheer number of teachers that they brought on last decade, um, and, and that turnover you can see in that data a little bit and how many new teachers they have in that data, which I, I thought was a powerful data that stat, um, to the, to the benefit of our teachers.

00:13:42,270	We have really good teachers and we keep them, which is a great thing, right? But, um, the other part I’d add to that is even then we’re bringing on 100, 130 new teachers a year, and our instructional coaches are really at the heart of helping support them because, no offense, principles can’t dedicate that much time to support that many when you

00:14:00,470	bring 6 new teachers into Century High School. There’s just not enough Mr. Maddler to spread around to do that, so I think that’s really important and then Mr. Eastgate, to your question, I would agree that’s weekly. I I, when I talked to principals and hear what they’re doing to find the teacher who needs additional coaching.

00:14:20,170	That coaching is done by our administrators to some degree, but is very much our instructional coach is going out and providing that support to get better. Um, again, I think our assistant principals and principals are stretched in too many different ways from student behaviors to meetings, IEPs, meeting with parents, and organizing activities that they

00:14:40,500	can’t dedicate that time where you have someone everyday they wake up and it’s about making teachers better, and that’s, you know, the benefit of the job. May I add one more thing, Dr Faschnat, Ms.

00:14:55,070	Pressy, I’ve been thinking about your question, and I think that the reason it’s difficult to answer is because instructional coaches focus so much on expertise and precision that it’s going to be hard to identify those little tweaks that they make in a system that you see over a long period of time, but without directly asking our educators, it, it’s like a quarterback coach, and I

00:15:11,630	think we talked about that last time we were together, like they’re going to make these little practitioner changes with our educators that it’s going to be hard to see those intangibles, but it shows up in the end product, so I think we’d really want to think about how we would want

00:15:24,870	to get that specific data because it is so invested in the overall impact of the system, and I think that’s why the outcome data is the best measure, but we can certainly explore other opportunities. Mr. Lee, uh, thanks again, President Hagar. Just a couple other things came to mind.

00:15:42,470	So, um, early on in the board, it was kind of explained to me that instructional coaches are a cheaper way of doing professional development. Would you agree with that? Is that still the case? They are not on administrative contracts.

00:16:01,630	So if you’re, if that’s the reference point, they are on a teacher contract, so they would be less costly than an administrator, um, and then they’re obviously cheaper than sending 40, 50 people to Hawaii for a conference. So if we can host it for 300 bucks at a at a cab. Yes, it would be more fiscally responsible.

00:16:15,100	And yeah, what, what, yeah, the, the second part there too, just, just makes a lot of sense just to try to connect the dots for, for people in the audience, um, or at home uh, I, I can see the wisdom in that, obviously.

00:16:33,170	Um, I just had one other question because it comes up a lot, but, um, LDI, I think is, is more um involved with guaranteed and viable curriculum are the coaches involved in that work as well? Yes, so that’s a direct partnership and so how we have it set up is we have portfolio holders, which is often our coaches and our assistant principals and then we have our LDI specialists, which are focused on a specific curriculum area, and they in partnership support the

00:16:50,230	teachers in the guiding coalitions. And so there’s two roles there that’s really that leadership oversight and then the expertise of our LDI specialists to make sure that the curricular process is moving forward.

00:17:06,800	OK, and just, just, uh, again, to be clear, so that means someone at, uh, a sophomore, uh, in English at entry. They’re the guaranteed to buyable means that English at, at, or other high schools will be covering the same material at the same pace, essentially, is that a good summation? Yeah, so we have a curricular process and so the guaranteed Bible is saying that all the standards at every course are going to be taught across the

00:17:25,530	board, and then our guiding coalition teams work to tighten up unit plans pacing the resources or the actual activities may differ, but they have tightened up the assessments and the actual instruction. Does that answer? I, yeah, it was perfect, and, uh, I knew you could say it a lot better than I could, so.

00:17:43,530	And we have beautiful resources that are available to the public if we wanted to highlight those after this for other people to take a look at. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, great question. Well, thank you, Ms.

00:17:58,270	Meyer, thank you for coming and presenting and spending time like you did with us at the board retreat, we’re able to dive a little deeper into this. It’s nice to be able to show this to the public kind of what the instructional coaches do within our, in our school district. So thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening. Item 4 is public comment.

00:18:15,800	Uh, the board recognizes the central role parents play in the education of their children and supports active parent involvement in the education process. The board’s practice of public comment reflects an alliance with Policy BCBA and the spirit of its intent for classroom issues, it’s best to file the chain of command.

00:18:35,900	Teacher, principal, assistant superintendent, superintendent for district issues, please reach out to Dr Fossnott If you do speak tonight, we simply ask that you be responsible, be helpful, and be respectful. Our BPS students deserve to have adults model the expectations we have for them.

00:18:53,730	Groups are urged to select one spokesperson, individuals be limited to no more than 4 minutes will be notified with 30 seconds remaining to conclude their remarks. The board will not debate issues as presented, but will take such matters under advisement. With that, please stand and approach the prodium if you do wish to speak tonight. Uh, seeing no one public comment is now closed. Uh, item 5, monitoring district operations R3 Personal development, behavior.

00:19:16,970	Dr Faussum, um, I’d like to introduce, uh, Dr Johnson. He’s going to come and present R3 to you this evening. Thank you, uh, Dr Fassad and uh President Hager members of the board. Tonight we’re here to talk about our 3 personal development, uh, behavior, um.

00:19:42,700	we are here to recommend that you accept this report as making reasonable progress with exception, as we believe it’s an alignment with um the work and the outcomes with the indicators there. Bismarck Public Schools has continued to demonstrate strong and stable behavioral outcomes for a large majority of our students across all grade levels.

00:20:02,430	Again, I really think that it’s important for us to frame much of this work in terms of the affirmative when we’re talking about 98% of our kids are doing exactly what we want them to do.

00:20:14,270	Um, not that there isn’t room for growth and not that we don’t care about all kids, but again, just sometimes we see it from where it’s not going right versus where is it going so right? as my own kids are in the system, have been in the system, uh, many of you as well.

00:20:31,700	I think that, uh, Bismarck has continued to focus as a district around targets and um we might be looking at respect and we might be looking at what safe behavior is occurring and the types of instances and how we respond and how our system is set up for that.

00:20:50,530	Our work around MTSS uh behavioral supports and sort of practices, other social, emotional learning that can help equip students with that skill set and the ability to manage their own emotions and their behaviors as they have enter an intrapersonal um issues that they have to work through.

00:21:12,470	Um, there is, however, room for us to continue to peel an onion and look back deeper, for example, in our restraint seclusion events that have required uh continuous, um, work and support with systems as well as personnel. Uh, regarding the positive uh behavior we can see that all of our groups, our elementary, middle school, and our high school are all exceeding the 85% target for demonstrating and respectful behaviors.

00:21:35,900	Um, we see the strength there, uh, in terms of major infractions as we looked at most of our students, 94% of our elementary students do not experience a behavioral incident. 89% of our middle school students do not have a behavior incident. Last year, 94% of our high school students suspensions, um, you know, we continue to improve the rate or lessen them. But again, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t appropriate, as Dr Fassnnatt and I, along with Mr.

00:22:00,470	Barnhart. We talked about we need to maintain safe schools for all 1400 students and 100 staff members at high school, pare that down through middle school and elementary again. And so sometimes we do have to have consequences. Uh, Dr Larry Bartlett was my professor for law.

00:22:18,970	He said, we’re educators, we’re going to use discipline to educate doesn’t mean that there’s not consequences that some point in time, we all have to, um, sometimes have those consequences that go with the learning and the changes in behavior that we’re striving towards. Over 92% of our students in grades 3 through 12 reported uh interacting with others in safe ways.

00:22:40,430	Again, uh, some questions we ask how they are perceiving and and whether or not they see that in themselves. We also, um, when we look at the tier one behavior, it shows that um elementary at 97, middle school at 94, almost 95, High school at 97.9%. So again, we’re in good areas. Could we improve? Absolutely.

00:23:04,370	One of the areas is restraint seclusion did see an increase, um, particularly of note, um, I wanted to pull your attention to on page 11, where the students with 11 plus incidents increased by 105% over the last few years.

00:23:25,730	Um, that’s really highly concentrated right now in our PK pre-kindergarten through 5th grade, so that is not surprised based upon the conversation, at least here at the table, you as a board have talked about and as you’ve gone out um to buildings, you’ve talked and heard about the work that we’re trying to do and um Director Nelson with Support Services and all the personnel from our school sites, our counselors,

00:23:41,870	our social workers, our general teachers, our special education teachers, APs, principals, everyone working. There are some really tough and intensive cases there. But again, um, there, for example, you can see that there’s 39 kids that had 11+ instances. So even when we look at the totality of the large numbers increasing.

00:24:04,900	Sometimes that unfocused, and what I would also hope is that sometimes we get fluctuation in how we document. We try to have consistency, so I don’t always look at an increase in data as being, while things are getting worse, it might be people understand that it’s OK to be clear and

00:24:23,370	better document. Do each incident as a separate versus, well, there are 4 incidents today, we’ll put that in one report. So we’re trying to clean up some of those practices too.

00:24:37,900	So again, if there’s trends, then that would cause us to have different discussions, but I hope that, um, everyone knows in our system, the staff that we want clean and clear data. that can allow us to have honest conversations of where we can get better and where there might need to be additional support requested.

00:24:53,500	but that is an area that, again, we’re not just waiting until next year to hope that it gets better, but we’re doing work along that and having those conversations there. Um, we do see the opportunity to continue to work on improving our systems. There’s some consultants that we’ve brought in, as well as internal capacity.

00:25:14,270	So we’ve brought some work around our triads with our school psychologists, our school social workers, and our school counselors. They work with administration and other teacher teams to figure out how is a system we can move from bringing mental health and addressing student needs and uh sometimes that requires that expertise, but again, just like this is Meyer was talking about, um, likewise on the other wing

00:25:35,530	from LDI on teaching and learning to student support services, there’s this role of where sometimes you need external consultants, but we need to build that capacity within our own personnel who can help lead that work.

00:25:56,870	And again, Brad and I over the last 8 years, Brad, have really worked trying to scale that MTSS work across uh elementary through middle school and high school, and I think again that’s done through the great work of those in the trenches, um, doing that work in the buildings every single day. Um, we have definitely worked to try to help, um, you’ll hear about integrated systems framework where we have more school-based mental health.

00:26:12,900	Again, that’s on the OE 10, those inputs into our environment, but hopefully they’re yielding good results here in our behavior, and that’s what we’re seeing. Additionally to that, um, it’s been lived before some of the the restraint seclusion when that’s necessary. There’s some CPI holds and some other training.

00:26:32,230	We’re building capacity within our staff for, sorry, 5 new certified instructors have been added for this current school year. We’ve, uh, done some rollout with regarding Mant, which is verbal de-escalation training that was held as in negotiations, as well as just conversations you’re hearing, hey, we need better help.

00:26:53,970	Well, sometimes it could be your custodian, your lunch lady, or uh a secretary or any other staff educator personnel as Dr Fasan who says anyone’s an educator that picks your kid up on the bus in the morning to dropping them off throughout the day.

00:27:08,430	So how can we equip all people to know when a kid’s escalated, how can we all talk even ourselves and other adults, you know, down in that. And so again, that’s intentional work that’s been there.

00:27:25,970	There’s been some great work around functional behavioral assessments, behavioral intervention plans, um, our renewed program, we’ve expanded and I think we alluded to this a few weeks ago, Dr Fossnott, but um, Brad and team working to expand that option into some elementary for some of those students that are needing that um programming and what we have really felt with that, uh, I think it’s captured on the back of the first uh page, which would be page 2 where we talk about for some of

00:27:45,000	those who might not be as familiar with Renewed. The enhancements that’s allowed for that has allowed for that more flexible personalized learning environment. There’s really meeting the student learner needs, so that they have access to the support and structure that’s appropriate given their behavior and learning approaches that’s

00:28:03,430	necessary for them to be able to be successful within the R RNUed program. So, again, sometimes the least restrictive environment is where they can appropriately be successful and sometimes we just have to unpack or provide those additional supports to allow those students to be successful.

00:28:20,100	So at this point, I would stand for any questions, but again, we would move this forward and hopefully ask you to accept this as making reasonable progress with exception. Can we get better? Absolutely. Do I think that we are the best school district in the Upper Plains.

00:28:36,630	I absolutely do think that we are, and um if I don’t believe that, then you should have a conversation with me. But I hope that this is one area where we have taken some intentional steps along the last decade to become better in this, and we know that this is intertwined, the behavior is intertwined with the academic outcomes of our students as

00:28:52,070	well. But again, we got to love kids behind everyda point. There’s a kid with a real situation. It’s someone’s son, daughter, brother, sister, grandchild, etc.

00:29:09,000	So, um, we know that and I think our teachers know that and we do that work on the teaching and learning side as well as that behavioral part and I think that it produces some really good robust systems, so I’ll stand at this point for any questions. Thank you, Dr Johnson. Board members, questions, comments? Dr Fasstant Yeah, before we take your, let’s your process a little bit because there’s a lot in this report.

00:29:28,270	I’ll just remind you guys already know this, but in mind the viewing audience. This is the one we just revamped, put it in the affirmative, it was very much slanted to the negative, so I think Dr Johnson’s comment about really seeing it in the affirmative and really it’s noticing that being more plain and clear that the vast

00:29:45,370	majority of our kids are doing what we, every parent, and we want them to do in school. Um, I would also point out on page 5 that’s 6 through 8 bucket that’s now aligned with the Care Ready practices.

00:30:02,600	It was a positive change to get that aligned with those indicators that come from North Dakota Curren Tech Ed. Those respect indicators we’re looking for are job ready skills. Those are the respect qualities we want in kids to go out in the workforce. So I think that’s a really good metric we now follow good, good skill.

00:30:18,970	We want kids that resemble that is how we track um respect in the workplace or in our workplace leading to their future workplace. But again, the rest of it I, I, I would take your questions on the restraint seclusion data is up.

00:30:34,700	That’s something we’ve noticed, but again, it is a very nichey small group that we’re dealing with. They’re pri primarily our youngest learners, and, uh, um, yeah, there’s something we have to monitor and keep track of and to see if that’s a persistent trend or is it because we’re reporting better and we’re being more intensive with our, with our interventions, behavioral interventions for kids.

00:30:52,630	Um, before they become older and we need to do that throughout the system, but yeah, with stand for any questions. Board members, questions, comments? OK, not, uh, not seeing any, um. entertained. Mr. Eastgate Barring any other further comments, I would move that with with respect to R3 personal development behavior. The board accepts the report as making reasonable progress with noted exceptions.

00:31:21,370	We have a motion to second any further discussion? Seeing none, Dr Scher Lee Pressy, yes, Eastgate, yes. Hager, yes. um moving on, matters reserved for board action, uh, school visits, I believe I’m the only one who has a school visit tonight, so. I’ll just keep going. Keep going.

00:31:52,370	So, I was fortunate enough last week to visit Prairie Rose, um. as a kid growing up on the south side of Bismarck, I had a lot of friends who went to Prairie Rose, um, and lived out in that part of the, part of the city. It’s a, it’s a pretty, pretty area down there with all the trees.

00:32:07,330	Um, so as we know as a board, uh, Dr Abenberger left us in July, um, kind of put us in a, a difficult spot, at least for leadership at the school there and, and Gary Mossett has stepped in to be the interim acting, acting principal for, for this year and

00:32:24,370	she, she said how much over and over again as, as we talk throughout the, the visit, how much she loves the school, how much she is grateful and appreciates, uh.

00:32:42,100	Brad and the district for giving her that, that opportunity to kind of step in and and take over that leadership role, um, this year to fill in for, for Dr Rabenber So one of the things as we were walking around, she, she mentioned to me and and you do feel it when you’re there, it is a it’s a country school, as she put it in a, in a big school district.

00:32:58,630	and the example she gave me for that was, she goes, you know, we’ve had lockdowns here for wildfires, floods, and mountain lines. which I thought was kind of a, kind of a funny way to, to really think about it. Yeah, you, you are kind of remote down there in, in that area.

00:33:18,330	The other thing she, she talked about to um was the family’s and the staff how they have just such great families down there, very tight knit community, very much a neighborhood school. Same with the staff, you know, a lot of the folks that, that are there working at Prairie Rose have been there for a long, long time, um.

00:33:36,070	really like the area, like the building, like the, the staff, the other the other thing we talked about, um, as we wandered this school is again kind of that community family aspect of, of Prairie Rose, and she said that um during Halloween, they do a do a walkthrough where they have a hallway kind of cordoned off and they have uh

00:33:56,730	the fifth graders put on little skits and as you walk through, you get to see these various little skits as you, as you progress the hallway. She said the middle school kids, um. will come back and actually lead the Prairie Girls middle school kids come back and lead families through this tour.

00:34:14,900	And she said that this um particular tradition has been going on since 1994. So it’s kind of, kind of neat to see those again, that kind of country, small, small school feel.

00:34:29,700	Um, so the one other thing that we talked about, which is the question I know all of us ask when we go to, uh, school visits considering some of the changes that were made to schedule. So we talked about you know, how her and her staff and the students and and families are adjusting to the new start time and she, she said like we, we’ve heard from a lot of folks, you know, kind of early on, um.

00:34:45,970	it was definitely an adjustment for for folks to be there at 7:50 and kind of the new start time for families to, to make sure that they, they got their at that 7:50 time she highlighted their, their attendance rate, um.

00:35:06,900	and said that over 68% of the school has a 95% or higher attendance rate, so the, the attendance is, is up compared to where it has been maybe in the past and she said that as they’ve adjusted to this, this new start time, what she’s.

00:35:24,870	generally I guess anecdotally hearing from from the staff, um, as they like it, that early exit time is, is kind of been nice for them to get the kids out and the lecture recess and in the afternoons, um, so that was my visit to Prairie Rose. Item 7 is the consent agenda. What are the wishes of the board? I move that we accept the consent to Jena. Se.

00:35:48,370	Uh, motion in a second, Dr Scher. Presky, Eastgate, yes. Lee, yes, Hager, yes. uh, item 8, Superintendent Report. All right, I have just a few items for you tonight. First one’s in your packet is the non our student residency or non-residency sorry student report which we give you annually this time of the year.

00:36:12,470	So, if you, I guess if you have any questions, let me try to address some of them. First of all, in the non-resident students attending Bismarck tuition agreements, that’s a lot of foster care placed and place kits that could be court placed, um, maybe service placed by a parent in our

00:36:29,530	community. So there is a, there’s a lot of those 127 kids that enter BPS that are really residents of other districts. The other one I want to point out in that first column is open enrollment because you’re gonna say to me, Well, Jeff, we don’t have open enrollment.

00:36:45,070	We don’t accept open enrollment, um, remember this time, about this time last year, we made a change in our open Roman policy to say if you work for BPS, your teacher, you can now bring your child with you.

00:37:02,630	That was really an intentional way of keeping and retaining the high quality staff we’ve talked about earlier. So, if you are a teacher and you want to bring your child with you, um, to BPS, you can, and we gained 3 kids for that. They are bringing them across the border, you may say with them into BPS, which is good.

00:37:21,370	Uh, on the other column, uh, Bismarck residents attending out, a lot of those 49 are foster placed. They are just in some service, some um placement of some kind, particularly foster placements, um, make up those 49, and I will point you in the open enrollment column down to the bottom one, the 27 in Yellowstone.

00:37:42,170	Yellowstone is a virtual school in the Western in Yellowstone in the western part of the state has been operational, I think, now for, um, 5 years. Um, and is really become a kind of a popular item for traditionally homeschool students.

00:38:04,530	So, uh, most of those 27, I’ll say all those 27 were home educated students living within the BPS district, and they have opted to take virtual instruction through Yellowstone, um, that isn’t part why we have a propped up and kind of built up our own virtual school that ties in more closely to the BPS community and what we do.

00:38:20,730	I think that last report again, that was Mrs. Meyer who was here heading that up for our elementary division and uh I think we just put a new cap on that at 50, so we’re gonna be close to that cap of 50 students that were now serving a very similar niche um to

00:38:34,000	these 27. So I know we’ve drawn some kids out of um out of that school and also out of just traditional homeschooling to be part of the virtual academy. So, um, yeah, if you have any other questions on that part? OK Um, oh Ms. Lee uh, thank you, President Haert.

00:38:54,630	So just on the Yellowstone, um, that’s kind of been a something that’s been talked about the last few years. Is that my memory might not serve me. Is that number down or up slightly? I will have to get you that number.

00:39:08,900	I can’t tell you that off top of my head. Let me, let me find that for you, and I can share that out and I maybe I’ll. throw it out there so people in the public can know too, but I can get that number to you.

00:39:18,270	I know, I don’t know that right at the top of my head. And this academic year is the first year we’ve, we’ve had the virtual Academy as an option for those homeschool. Yep. Kids. OK. Yep. Thanks. Good question. I should have came prepared for that. You’d think I would have had that number. Well, you would think.

00:39:39,530	Um yeah, but I mean, yeah, I can get you that number. I yeah, we’ll see. I don’t know. We’ll see what it is. Hopefully, again, I’ll go back to, um, a beating our own drum a little bit. I think the virtual academy that Mrs. Meyer’s building and that, and we didn’t ever anticipate 50 kids in there.

00:39:55,500	We are planning, I think early in the year 12 to 15, so we have really, um, grown that, so I think that’s a good opportunity for us to, and not only bring those kids, uh, give them a, a a quality option within BPS, but I know they have designed that curriculum and that, that coursework to now not only do

00:40:13,800	the learning online, but then to meet us at the Career Academy or meet us at the museum or meet our teachers and our LDI staff at, at places in towns so they can now engage with learning opportunities in the community along with what we’re providing at BPS.

00:40:29,730	So I think it’s a really good fit Mr. Lee. President Hager, I, I do want to give you a plug for that because I think it’s been great work, and I think for people at home or if you know a homeschool students, it’s just a great way to, um, have the benefits of homeschooling but still benefit from the Bismarck Public School system, which is

00:40:46,270	a strong academic system. Um. And, uh, I just, I’d love the idea. I love that we have it up and running, and I think it’s going to continue to grow. So thank you for that. Yeah. Um, the other one is a long-range facility plan. Next one, just wanted to give you an update.

00:41:01,270	We concluded all the building meetings, uh, last week. I think I’ve shared that with you in your Friday email. Um, so those are done. Um, we had two surveys that went out. We surveyed all the, uh, we gave out a QR code to all the people who attended our building level meetings. Uh, we had 117 people respond to that.

00:41:18,870	That was a myriad of questions of you kind of agree with the present plan? Do you think you’d change the present plan? What do you agree with the alignment of the deferred maintenance that was in the 2020 plan or 2018 plan.

00:41:35,970	I mean, do you, do you, um, just some open-ended questions or maybe something that we’ve missed. So 117 really valuable responses that were working through right now, primarily um um Mr. Cher, and then we also put that out last week, I think it was Tuesday, to all parents.

00:41:54,170	So parents across the district, if you want to go and look at the present plan, just kind of digest it and give your same input. Um, that’s been 225 respondents as of this morning. So again, we’re just taking all that input and trying to redo that, put that into the revi uh renewed uh long-range facility plan, um, would be Mr. uh, Dr Sher was working on his executive summary this morning.

00:42:12,270	We’re kind of going over that so we can have a formal document to present operational excellence and you of what that feedback was before we start revising the whole plan to present to the board later, I would say, um, January, February, so we can get that to you.

00:42:29,970	OK? Um yeah, and I think we hope to get some of that draft stuffed operational excellence meets on December 17th, so I think that’ll be the first time to really start to look at some of that data, very, very simple view but uh begin to look through that.

00:42:44,800	Any questions on that part There’s a lot of, it was a lot of evenings meeting people, but it was actually a really good meaning is I, I felt really positive lead leading our leaving those, um, just good dialogue, good questions. People wanted clarity.

00:42:59,870	People wanted to share their view of where the facility’s needs are at and actually learns a few things about facilities that I wasn’t aware of, cause I just don’t see them everyday like parents do, so yeah, it was good. Good. All right. Um, next thing, um, I’m obligated to give you your next school calendar, so, um, this is kind of coming out official tonight.

00:43:20,170	Um, we did put out a survey earlier in the month. We end up with over 2500 responses from staff, um, parents, and I’m sure I think there’s a few kids in there actually that pick student and they responded about the survey. Um, here, my key takeaways, and we have a summary document for the survey that we’re gonna put out tonight through, uh, Mr.

00:43:39,470	Koontz and Combs. Um, that will, um, share some of this to you or with you and the community, but first of all, very strong response on short first week They don’t want to have a Monday start. They want to start Wednesday, Thursday. They want that short ramp up. I, I wouldn’t say that’s all staff.

00:43:55,330	There’s a lot of parents agree that way because the number of responses was just more than they, uh, staff alone are are viewing. So people like that short startup or short first week startup. The other one that I was honestly really surprised with, and Mr.

00:44:10,230	Barner, if you could slide up just a little bit on the screen is that second graph about long winter break. By far was the most popular option of all the options we gave them, uh, for components in the, in the, uh, any calendar long winter break, and you will see that in the 26, 27 calendar that we’ve moved some days around to, to get

00:44:33,730	that longer winter break, um, versus going to school Monday, Tuesday, and then kind of breaking then, we’ve really tried to, um, comply with what our people are telling us, and they like that long winter break.

00:44:49,470	Um, I will say the 27, 28 calendar, which I ’ ll share with you also, um, doesn’t have that, but it’s just because of the layout of the calendar. The calendar gets to be, um, we’d have kids at home, I think, 78 days, 7 days before Christmas even, and we just thought parents might get tired of their kids beforerist is even there.

00:45:06,430	So we thought we’d better keep him a few more days. So, um, the other thing that was really popular, kind of more support on this graph was less random days off, and I know that’s something that I can take a little responsibility for this last year, that Veterans Day on a Tuesday, which we have to take Veterans Day off. That’s codified in law.

00:45:21,730	We really should have contemplated taking the Monday, Tuesday off and making a longer break out of it. I don’t think anybody wants those just random one days off here or there, um, so we heard that loud and clear.

00:45:39,370	And then, um, we did have some responses, and that’s more towards the bottom of the of the survey or that document Mr. Barnhardt is about starting school after Labor Day and I’ll just, I don’t need to remind you, it’s your policy. You tell me in 011 to start school in late August and to be done before Memorial Day.

00:45:54,070	That’s your rules that I have to play by, um, you do that with 174 days of instruction. You pile those in between, take a few breaks where people want them. There’s not much flexibility in there, and I did put the percentages in these respondents. These are the highest uh, we took all the, all the open-ended responses, kind of put them into categories.

00:46:12,530	So that idea of a late Labor Day start, even though there was in the totality of responses, there is, it became a theme in there. It really only represented 5.3% of all the people who responded.

00:46:29,100	So, um, it wasn’t a significant amount when you look at all the people who took the survey, but there are a growing number of people that say, hey, would you start after Labor Day? Um, I think there’s a growing number of people who would like to have a start after Labor Day, take a big break in the winter, take another big break in the spring, and then still start, stop before Memorial Day, but them

00:46:42,470	and I would probably have to debate that a little bit more, but, um, it, it’s out there. So, um, lastly, again, you have two calendars. You have 26, 27, uh next year.

00:47:04,870	Uncommonly, what we’ve done is I’m giving you a 27, 28, and that’s a decision we’ve made in a cabinet level to project out a little better, um, a little bit for in the future, that helps us with LDI and Mrs. Meyer and the work we’re doing with professional development, but it also, we believe it helps families. So we want to give that calendar out to you earlier.

00:47:19,870	So if you have that nice trip planned somewhere warm, that you can know where those days are, so you can start to shoot out a little bit earlier. I would tell you the 27, 28, we’ll look at again this time next year to make sure we don’t have a fine tweak, but we want to give the real, the, a lot of the um the, the.

00:47:34,730	the bones of the, the calendar so you can plan around them. And again, if we find something that needs to be tweaked because of, uh, um, like an infinite campus rollout or something like that, we can do that, but we’ll always be looking that 2 years out, so you’re really be getting a lot

00:47:49,270	of the work we’ll be doing is the 2nd year calendar from this point forward, so. any questions on that Miss Pressky Yeah, thank you for your work on this. Um, I think I’m sure, like, I appreciate it.

00:48:12,100	I’m sure other parents do as well, like the two-year calendar, um, look at, and then also just your process and developing this and collecting input and, um, asking people what they want, um, I don’t recall a process like this in the past. So, um, I believe it is important to hear from those families and, and anyone who wants to weigh in so thank you.

00:48:33,500	You’re welcome I think you’ve had surveys in the past before, and I know we’ve always, Mister Coontz has headed up an internal meeting, but even this year, um, he did that multiple times, gave them, and we opened it up more to like if you want to be involved with it, you can.

00:48:45,870	It wasn’t kind of a, a set number. We just said, if you want to be involved, show up, just it was a virtual meeting, you could show up in person or you could lie climb on online and just, yeah, if you want to share your voice, share your voice.

00:48:57,600	I mean, we took all that in together and really, um, the person who gets to allow the credit, uh, Ms. Preskee about making it and dealing with all the comments and making it work is probably Mr. Koontz. He’s got to make it work. So, um, he did a really good job.

00:49:13,900	So that brings us down to, uh, financial report. Dr Cher. All right, thank you. So, I wanna circle back around because the non-resid report actually does come out of my office, so I’m gonna answer your question, Mr. Lee. So in, in FY 23, um, kind of wanted, this was all kind of starting.

00:49:37,470	We denied all of those Um, so they still went, but we didn’t, they didn’t get to collect foundation aid on them, um, in FY 24, which would have been the year 2324. We had 18 in FY 25, we had 19, and then you just saw this year we have 27.

00:49:56,800	So, uh, a slight uptick and then hopefully in the future we can have a slight downtick if we can start pulling some of those uh families back to the virtual academy would be the hope. Ken, Financial Report.

00:50:13,330	So first, um, hopefully that was impressive for you because I’m gonna start with an apology on the next report. Um, I always say I’m gonna put page numbers on these, and I, I do occasionally and then I forget and this one I forgot. So, um, the financial reporters in front of you.

00:50:31,430	The one thing that um I always like is how are we trending on both revenues and expenditures, uh, you can see where trending favorable, which means we’ve collected about 750,000 more than we projected and to date, and we’ve spent about uh over a million dollars less than we had said to date, um, and that’s, um, our variance to budget.

00:50:50,870	Now the one thing that I’d like to point out, so if you go to the tabular form of the the financial report, which is looks more like a table with all the numbers and go to page 3 of that. If you look at one thing that um uh, Mr. Middelstead and I have had numerous conversations on. Look at the second line, Building and site repairs.

00:51:08,730	We have a budget of million dollars and $40,000. and we’ve spent 97% of that, and that’s as of October 31st, so we have a, you know, we’re almost done with November, so that is kind of repairs.

00:51:32,270	So those are sometimes things that we can’t necessarily control, um, but we always say, well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, again, cut back on the things that we can cut back on, uh, like Satan or uh building improvements which would not be repairs, but things that people ask for in their building, um, so that’s, that’s one thing I did want to point out to you that it’s likely that we’ll go

00:51:50,430	over, um, and then I would answer any questions that the board would have concerning the financial report. Board members, questions Dr Frostant There’s no question, but I have one more OK.

00:52:14,000	I see no questions, Dr Frost now Yeah, I, I think, uh, that’s a good number to point out, uh, just before I address my last item that Mr. or Dr Sher shared is because we did get that comment a lot, a lot of that question a lot at our building uh meetings for long-term facility, like what do you spend on facilities now.

00:52:27,500	So I think that’s a good number that he he shared, um, that we do do maintenance and it is a lot. I mean, I, I think it’s good for people to remember we have a little over a million square feet of school property we take care of, that alone ground

00:52:41,100	s That’s, uh, that’s a lot, so I applaud him and his team and, um uh, Mr. Middlestead for their work, but, um, I just wanted to give a quick update and I should have put it on the agenda, sorry, um, I kind of promised people to do it and I missed it.

00:52:55,500	It’s transportation and bell time, just quick update. We’re working on it. We continue to work on it, um, but really we’re waiting on Transpar’s route analysis. Remember they came in in October, they did that route review. We are expecting that here in early December.

00:53:13,700	So I think that’s one of the last variables we need because we have the surveys, we have some of that other information We’ve just been kind of waiting on that route analysis feedback before we start really in earnest working on a recommendation for next year, so just so you know. Thank you, Dr Faustnutt Uh, with that, all agenda items have been considered. I declare