It’s 5:30. We’ll call the November 17th, met in public school board to order, uh, next item on the agenda is Pledge of allegiance. Please judged me in the pledge. the United States of America the Republic for which it stands. on. nation. for God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you everybody. Next item on the agenda is approval of the agenda. I’d like to make one change. I’d like to move, uh, the administrator’s report, planned to hire new superintendent and move it down under new business because I would like to act on, I’d like the board to act on what we want to do to be able to do that process. So I think a motion would be in order. So I like to move it down to be under new business and move B to C. Any other changes Seeing none what it wishes to the board on the revised agenda. revised agenda. All right, we have a motion. We have a second. We have a 2nd. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, please call roll. Thank you. Yes. Yes yes Yes, yes. Yes. Next item’s public communication. Anybody in the audience wish to address the board? Anybody wish to address the board, seeing nobody moving, we’ll move on to the administrator’s report. First item on the administrator’s report as North Dakota School Bbird Association winner’s summit. Dr Bitz, correct. Um, the school boards association used to do a negotiation seminar. Um, they would hold it in the, in basically late January, early February. Um, this year they’ve rebranded in it and they’re calling it the Winter winter summit, excuse me, and they’ve got a, you can see in your packet, they’ve got I think, um, 5 or 6 different topics that they’re going to share information on and they say they’re still working on getting a few more topics, everything from budgeting and finance, superintendent evaluation, uh workforce, uh school board governance, election, um, 4 day school week and negotiations. So if that’s something that interests you, um, let us know and we will get you registered. Um, it will be in Bismarck. at on the BSC campus. What’s the timeline on the registration here? I, I think we’ve got plenty of time. I think it’s mid January if I remember right, I don’t. All right. If anybody wants to go, please let Dr Bittz or one of the staff know in regard to it. Some interesting topics there actually. Um, next item on the agenda is the National School Board Convention, Dr Bitz, correct, and that is, oops, let me find my, I lost my spot here. That is, um, it’s over a weekend, April 10th through the 12th, and it’s in San Antonio. Um, if you’re interested in attending that, uh, let us know and we’ll see if we can get a, a group to go down. right? Let them know if you’re interested, all right? Uh, next item on the agenda is the consent agenda, first item on the consent agenda is review and consider previous board minutes from November 3, 2025. The next is review and consider school board retreat minutes from November 3, 2025. Review and consider October 2025 bills, revenues, and expendituresep the student Achievement Committee minutes from October 27, 2025. Review and consider a second and final reading on the following policies, GBC A background check, screening procedures, GBCB emergency hiring of classified personnel, GBI employee evaluations GBRA drug and alcohol free workplaces. Uh, what’s the board’s thoughts on that one? I would move that we approve the consent agenda. We have a motion in the 2nd, please call roll. Yes. Yes. Peters, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Next item on the agenda is unfinished business. We have no unfinished business, so we’re going to move, move the new business. First item under New Business Review and consider approval of the 2026 2027 calendar year. Dr Redderrath, yes, both options that we put out for a vote are in your packet, but option one was our winner with a little over 62% of the vote. So we had about 1500 people, uh, respond to the survey. So the option two has a little bit of the later start, um, to the year we would be starting school August 26th next year, and having graduation Memorial Day weekend like we traditionally have, so that would be the calendar that we would recommend you adopt. All right. Any comments, questions, motions? All in order I would move that we approve the option uh, what option one All right, we have a motion. We have a 2nd, and we have a 2nd. Any further discussion? I’m glad to see 1200 people, uh, coming. That’s a big number. Do you know what it was last year? It was a nice, I don’t know if it was comparable to what we’ve had in the past, um, but I, I can find out for you. I think it’s pretty close, but having 1500 people is a nice representation and our plan would be to send this out if you, you adopt it tomorrow would be to send it out to staff and probably do a remind message to families so that they’re aware, just planning or is already happening for vacations and all those sorts of things. No, the quicker we can get it out for everybody, the better in relation to it Um any other comments or questions? Thank you What are the wishes of the board? Well that’s done, I guess we can call roll. Yes. Yes Yes. Yes. Yes. Next item on the agenda is what we move from the administrator report was planned to hire a new superintendent in relation to it. And the reason I moved it down here is I think we need to act on one of the things in our retreat, we talked about really 3 things in relation to it. One outright hiring, um, the current assistant. Second one is going out and do a search. And the third was, uh, I think it was 2 is really what we talked about in regard to, well, the third option was hiring a consultant to do the search which would involve more people. Yep, exactly, which would involve more people. What are the wishes of the board here on this one, neither a motion or if you just want to talk through them, I don’t care, but I think by the time we’re done, we should have an avenue because we do need to get this moving, uh, to make sure we can get it taken care of. I would, well, I won’t move yet, but I would I would be in favor of hiring a consultant so we can uh it’s just a I, I, I just would be in favor of hiring a consultant. All right Anybody other comments or did you want to put that into a form of motion. Well, I’ll move that we hire a consultant to uh we have a motion, we have a second You have a 2nd. Any further discussion? Any further discussion I’m gonna actually throw my two cents in here too. I think we have, um, a very, very viable candidate sitting at the table right over there in relation to it. However, in my personal opinion, I, I’d like to see this opened up also through a consultant because I think in the long run, it gives her a little bit of protection. If we happen to so chooser in the long run that we actually did a search and nobody questions it in relation to it. So, in my mind personally, for that reason, I will support this motion in relation to it in regard to it, even though we’re probably going to spend a little bit of money and we’re going to spend a little time, but I think in the long run it’s probably the right thing to do for the board’s perspective and for that. So normally don’t chime in on my thoughts, but this time I’m going to. uh, Mr. Legacy Yeah, I, I hear the motion. I just kind of want to clarify, you know, we had the Dakota leadership Solutions was the consultant we talked about, um, in our retreat, uh, they have a proposal for, uh, it was $10,000 to do a community survey. They would come and do interviews, uh, screen candidates for us, um, is that what we want to do as the Dakota leadership solution that we or is there, I would. I just wanted to make sure that it’d be uh Dakota Solutions. OK. There aren’t any other options, right? Maybe we don’t. There are actually got a letter right here. I got one today too from a firm out of Nebraska, um, there are others. I mean, they’re out in Nebraska in regard to it. That would be one of the things. But before I move on, will you amend your second to include that? Um you seconded it, right? Yeah, so, I second the consulting. firm I just want to make sure we kind of follow some rules here in regard to it. I just want to chime in on that. Dakota Leadership Solutions is the right company to do it for us. They are North Dakota based, uh, they have very good, um, expertise in our area. They know the potential candidates they’re going to get us the, the largest applicant pool, um, for those that are in our area, if you really wanted to expand the search out to other states, I think you could look that way. I we’ve talked enough. I, I really trust Dakota leadership to, to get us the right, the right pool of candidates. who sets the qualifications or how will that be decided? Um, well, they’ll do, they’ll do the survey. Dakota leaderships will come to you and ask for your opinion as well. Um, but yeah, I’ll let Dr Bitz chime in on this one. I think the basic, basic thing is you have to have a North Dakota teaching license and a North Dakota superintendent credential, which would also give be heavy of a principal credential. But then when they do a survey, they’re going to survey, um, our, our community members, our staff members and our board and say, what are, you know, are you a board member? Are you a community member? And when they complete that, they’ll say, what’s important to you? Do you want him to have a master’s degree, uh, Doctorate degree. Do you want them to have superintendent experiences, superintendent experience, not important. Um, and then they’ll take all that summarize it and give it to you, and they’ll say, um, your community members felt that uh Dr degree was not important. Uh, your teaching staff felt a Doctorate degree was important, you know, or, or whatever the results are and they’ll share that to you, but the minimum qualifications in order to apply you have to have in order to go to superintendent’s credential North Dakota teaching license. Thank you. Any other questions? Just, uh, one question. could we revisit, we know our sister city just went through this. Were they also in the process of hiring consultant. They did. They hired. That’s the consulting firm that they did. when they took, when they hired Dr Fossnot, they use the same consulting group. And do we think they had any surprise candidates other than what they expected? Um probably not. I don’t know that they’re going to get us more candidates, but one thing that they can do that we don’t have the capacity to do ourself is in Bismarck each of those candidates interviewed with different groups, you know, when we talked about it in our, our. retreat that we talked about, do you want to involve teachers in the interview, have like have a teacher group, uh, support staff group, uh, involve the people from our committees or however we want to do it, um, and have those different groups we don’t, I don’t think you have the capacity to, we don’t have enough people to do that during the day, whereas they would do it, so that’s they’re gonna, they’re gonna do the survey and involve more people. I don’t know that they’re gonna get a lot more candidates than we would have. And because we probably got an outside candidate having somebody in an outside firm running it probably helps with that too, and the credibility side of it. Personally, I mean, when I’m looking at it that way, even though I know we might spend a little money. Go ahead. You had another comment, no, I, I understand the credibility side of it. It consultants for whatever are all the rage, which to me in this case it, it doesn’t matter. We’re hiring an individual and that individual can be good, he can be bad, but, um, uh uh just concern is whether or not a a consultant is necessary in this. arena Got you Not that I’m opposed to it, but spending a lot of money for maybe we need it, maybe we don’t. Any other questions, comments? I think the consultant helps people have a voice in the community and in the school and all that, um. I don’t know, that’s why I’m kind of leaning that it would be a good option for us to get us a better, bigger picture of what everybody wants. Anybody else One last time, if I may, Chair Wolf, sorry. Yeah, just, just one point on this with the fee, um, I think they the kota leadership will help us screen applicants that we get through the through the process um if we go through the application process and. we don’t feel that we need to do the interview process, um, we may not get many applicants that there would be a reduction in the fee. Um, so this is I want to say, I’m not sure on this, but I think it’s $6000 upfront to kind of help get everything in place, do the survey, um, screen candidates, get you that recommendation, and then it’s $4000 roughly for the interview process so if we don’t go through that, that would be a savings just so you’re aware. OK Anything else Anybody else got any questions? This is a big decision. I mean, this is probably one of the biggest things we do as a board, to be honest with you, is hiring the new superintendent. Last time, anybody else? All right, please call Roll Yes, yes. Yes Yes Yes No Yes That motion passes we got here? 61. All right, then we’ll move on to the last item on the agenda. Uh, before I do that, I’m gonna go through future meeting dates. December 1 wellness Committee, 4 p.m. Manda Middle School Library, December 15th regular school board, 5:30 p.m. City Hall, January 12th, Student achievement, 5 p.m. Braves Center, January 12th, policy and personnel 5 p.m. Braves Center, January 20th, regular school board 7 p.m. City Hall in relation to that, um, any other meetings that are not on here? Seeing and hearing none, let’s go to the last, uh, new item. Review and consider a motion to go into executive session pursuant to North Dakota censure code 4404 19.1 to discuss negotiation, strategy on possible land acquisition. Uh, what are the wishes of the board on that one? I would move that we go into executive session. right? you have a second? We have a motion of 2nd. Any further discussion? Seeing none, please call Roll Yes Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Um, at this time, we’ll go into executive session and once that’s completed, we will Adjourn the meeting. Thanks