00:00:06,900	Uh, Monday, December 15th at 5:30 p.m. I’ll call him Mandan Public School District to order. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. of the United States of America. Republic for which it stands. one nation under God in the dismal just Thank you, everybody.

00:00:37,100	Um, next item on the agendas of the agenda. Is there any changes? I seeing none from administration, any board members got any changes? See none were the wishes of the board. We moved to approve the agenda. We have a motion. We have a second. We have a second. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing them, please call Roll. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:01:01,900	Yes. Next item on the jin is approval of the or his public communications. Anybody in the audience wish to speak to the board. as seeing nobody moving, we’ll move on to the next, uh, agenda item, which is administrators report. The first item is school accountability update. Uh, Dr Just, welcome. Thanks.

00:01:22,870	Um, appreciate spending tonight talking about one of my favorite subjects, which is data. and um wanna walk through, um, we had, um, a new state assessment this year, and we talked a little bit about it, uh, with you in the in the spring, but wanted to talk

00:01:42,070	about what the results of that data looks like and now that we’ve moved to a state assessment, um, first of all, I want to talk a little bit about the similarities and the differences, um, this new state assessment was much like the old state assessment is untimed kids had as much time as they

00:01:58,530	needed to finish the assessments was a computer-based assessment, looked a lot like the previous assessment, even though it was a different vendor. Um, the test is given for math and ELA in grades 3 through 8 and 1 grade of high school.

00:02:12,000	Um, that’s one of the differences is the is the grade for high school changed from grade 11 to grade 10. And uh the uh science version of the test is given in grades 48, and 10.

00:02:27,470	Uh, the major differences is that it was based on a new set of ELA standards and a new set of math standards. Those ELA and math standards are determined by North Dakota teachers, and then after we get a set of results, that’s one of the reasons it took so long to get the results back. Um, usually we would have results of the tests given usually in the spring in the year and usually we have results by May.

00:02:44,500	um, internally so that we can look at student data because this was a new test, um, and they had to set the uh proficiency levels for the new test, we didn’t get our data until probably October.

00:03:02,100	Um, it was around Octoberish that they released the, the student data and then the accountability results were just released a week ago for school districts. So that’s one of the reasons I’m here tonight. Um, so it’s new, new state standards with new proficiency levels and as I go through the data, you’re gonna see some differences in what was considered proficient on the previous test in relation to what’s considered pro

00:03:19,330	proficient now and it looks a little bit different. Um, one of the other big changes they made is there’s new proficiency level descriptors. It used to be advance d proficient, partially proficient, and novice.

00:03:37,970	um, it’s mostly just, uh, uh, more of a wording change than anything, but rather than saying uh pro uh partially proficient, they, they call it now approaching proficient, the idea being that if we can move kids from the bottom, which is being novice that they’re not near grade level standards and approaching proficient that their near grade level. It to give you some context for that.

00:03:55,430	And then the the other really major change, and you’ll see that as I go through the data is. in the past in Mandan, uh, juniors took the ACT test for accountability. Well, that, that’s been taken away now. That’s not an option.

00:04:13,730	And so now our kids in grade 10 are taking just the grade 10 NDA plus uh test, so that was, that was a major change for the high school. Not only did we change tests, but we changed the grade that the test was even given, so that, that was a big difference as I go through the slides for data, I think the thing to remember is proficient is the percent of students that meet expected levels of

00:04:28,630	performance based on grade level standards, and that encompasses both that advanced to scriptor level and also those proficient kits. So that’s the percent of our kids that are either advanced or and proficient at the proficient level. Dr Jos, two questions for you. How do you want to take questions whenever you’ve got them, you ask.

00:04:47,500	I should’ve seen somebody down there that has one. Go ahead and ask. Um, thank you. Uh, yeah, Dr Jess, so without the ACT, could you talk a little bit about what happens then for college entry scholarships, all that kind of thing because that’s what people are used to and I just want to understand.

00:05:02,270	No, for sure, for sure. A few years back, actually, if you go all the way back to COVID, a lot of the college, our North Dakota collegeist took away the ACT requirement for college entrance in the first place.

00:05:16,100	So a lot of that was kind of has kind of gone away at the higher ed level as we’ve gone along and then the other piece of that is, um, with the change to the new state test, the requirement for ACT tests for the Choice-ready scholarships has also been kind uh kind of taken away as well.

00:05:32,170	The long range plan is to move from, um, that, that they actually the NDA plus is one of those things that determines choice already, uh, as well as for the Choice ready scholarships as we go along. So that’s some of the changes that we’re seeing.

00:05:49,800	So when you say choice already, so like the North Dakota scholarship, that’s that, right? Like all the scholarships that are within North Dakota that used to be based on ACT scores are based on the and now they’re moving more towards the new NDA plus assessment.

00:06:03,530	And if kids want to go out of state, they may have to opt in to take the SAT or the ACT, which is, which has always been the case in the grand scheme of things. If you go, if you go east of the Mississippi, you’re usually taking the SAT West of the Mississippi, you’re usually taking ACT. OK, thank you for that clarification.

00:06:17,470	Any other questions before I go on? No, I said I had to, and she asked the one I was going to ask. So be, be, be shoot if you’ve got questions. So first thing I’m gonna do is just go through all of our English language arts, um, data, um, starting with elementary scores, you’ve, we’ve, I’ve presented

00:06:36,430	these over the last 4 years, charts that look like this. I think the important piece to remember here is the big black line on the right, kind of denotes that difference from the nor old North Dakota State assessment, the NDSA, and the new NDA plus assessment.

00:06:51,700	And you can tell that there’s no trend line there because again, it’s not the same test, but what you can see is if you look at Mandan, you can kind of see where, where we’re ranking in relation to state average, um, doing very, very well at the elementary level, um, substantially above state average and with the, we’re continuing that same growth

00:07:12,970	curve that we’ve had going for approximately 5-6 years now. Um, one note on the slide and you’ll see this in all the slides, um, that have the trend line on them.

00:07:31,370	I also put before COVID, kind of where we rank, you know, COVID’s kind of that big divider in schools, worlds in in the grand scheme of things, I think for lots of areas, but certainly in schools with closures and things like that. Prior to, prior to COVID, we were, we were just below state average and so for the, we’ve got a 3 year run right now of where we’re above or substantially above state average.

00:07:48,270	One of the big differences we made, and that’s on my next slide, um, in how we’re tracking data according to the strategic plan is because we’re not gonna have a long trend data like we’ve had in the past is we decided, well, OK, if we don’t have trend data can kind of see maybe what we could do

00:08:05,900	is see how we compare to our counterparts in the ground scheme of sowing. So last year we started doing this in preparation, knowing that this would be a piece of the pie as we go along because we lose some of that trend data with the new test is where does Man Dan Public Schools rank and

00:08:21,430	rela in relation to the 10 largest schools in, in, uh, in the state, um, those are the 10 largest schools you can see on the data where we rank right now is, I’m glad to say number one in elementary for ELA scores. Last year we ranked 2. Um, you can see in 2022 we ranked 8th.

00:08:42,700	Amongst the 10 largest school districts. To give some context for the 10 largest school districts, they encompass about 60% of all the kids in North Dakota. And they certainly encompass the vast majority of the diversity that exists in North Dakota as well. And so it’s really, really excellent data.

00:09:02,900	Dr Trust, that bottom line there, it says North Dakota, it says 38. Is that the overall ranking for the state or were we rank? No, no, that’s the proficiency level for the state. OK. I just want to, I just thought I’d ask. That’s not our ranking’s ranking.

00:09:19,530	Actually, to give some context to that, this test is, is just a North Dakota test. Minnesota gives a completely different state test related to completely different standards And so it is difficult across the nation to actually compare from one state test to the next because we all work off of different standards and different tests.

00:09:38,330	The one area where there’s a comparison is the NAEP scores. In general, I don’t have it off the top of my head. I know what the math is, not the ELA. We don’t tend to score as high in ELA across the state, but certainly in the top half of the nation in relation to, uh, the rest of the nation, North Dakota does pretty well.

00:09:52,730	Better in math. And if I may, Mr. Just interrupt you, um, you remember oh 89 years ago, we kept talking about Common Core, and there was the. the push by the federal government to have standards be the same in every state. Um, that has gone away and that does not exist. Each state picks their own standards.

00:10:15,000	Each state picks their own way to measure those standards, and each state sets their own proficiency level, so a student could take the test in North Dakota today, not be proficient. Move to Mississippi and take their test tomorrow and be proficient.

00:10:34,370	I, I always say we’re our own worst enemy in North Dakota because we set the bar pretty high to be proficient. Not every state does that, so you can’t compare proficiency levels between states, but you can prefer like what we’re doing now. Yes. Between the nine largest school districts in North Dakota.

00:10:53,000	That’s why we put that into our strategic plan that that’s what we want to compare ourselves to because we can compare ourselves to Grantorks, Bismarck, Williston, McKenzie Counsey, Jamestown, because their, their students are taking the same tests that we are on the same standards. No, you’re fine.

00:11:15,500	If you move to middle school, um, again, we, uh, we had, we, we, we have a, we had a really positive trend line, um, going particularly, uh, the last, last year where we got ourselves above state average and maintain that ability to above state average this coming year. One thing to note, and I think it really shows up here in middle school ELA.

00:11:33,170	When you go from proficiency scores, you know, in 52% and 49% in 2024 and the proficiency s cor es on the NDA plus dropped to 43 and 41%. That’s because it’s a harder test. North Dakota raised the bar for what was considered proficient with this new test.

00:11:50,100	So as you go along, you’ll kind of see that and you’ll kind of see where that looks when you see those differences, and that’s why we couldn’t have a trend line, but it, it is interesting. That is one area in middle school, ELA was one area where that drop is pretty substantial.

00:12:07,700	Um, where we rank with middle school as we ranked 4th in the state. Um, we were 4th last year, um, in 2022, we ranked last. and so the middle school has done some, some great things in ELA over the last, um, few years to move themselves up, up, up the rankings for sure.

00:12:31,270	Um, high school, again, very different test from 24 to 25, um, we, you can see our trend line. We, we had a really nice jump from 22 to 23 and then we were kind of mirroring the state. I feel like this last year, our, our grade 10 students in ELA closed the gap.

00:12:47,870	You can tell we’re almost there to being above state average in ELA, at the high school level, um, in terms of ranking, um, we rank 5th right now. with the largest schools in the state. Um, 2022, um, we ranked 10th. So have moved up the, the, the bar there as well. Dr Jess, yeah, maybe explain ELA for the people online.

00:13:11,370	We know it, but I don’t think, no, no, no, no, no, it’s a, it’s actually it’s two different tests on the state test. It’s a reading test and a writing test. And, and there are actually two tests that are combined to provide a proficiency score. OK. The CLA and they’re probably going, What? Yeah, I hear you.

00:13:26,900	No, I get it. I live in the edge of Cannes all day long. So we all do in our jobs. It’s like if I’d walk and talk to a mechanic, I wouldn’t know anything he was talking about anymore either. That’s why I asked.

00:13:42,370	No, no, no, fair question, um, kind of a nice little thing that we started doing too is when you take all of our grades, grades 3 through 8 and grade 10, you can kind of see our trend line in ELA amongst all grades together.

00:13:55,530	It’s, it’s good for us to break apart from level to level to kind of see where our strengths and weaknesses are, but this is kind of a, a look at what we look like overall, and you could see, um, we got ourselves above state average last year and kind of widened the gap. Uh, again this year we’re 33 proficiency points above state average.

00:14:15,730	And in terms of ranking, we’re tied for 2nd in the state in English language arts That is awesome data. To give some context officially been put in charge of, uh, Engli, uh, data and Mandan for 13 years now. This is the best ELA scores we’ve ever had. in the 13 years that I’ve been in charge and I’ve been here 30.

00:14:37,230	So, and we’ve had, we’ve had years where we’ve had certain levels score very well, and then other levels not so once, uh, not so much, but to see it all as a whole system score this high, it’s, it’s really encouraging. OK.

00:14:55,530	So Dr Jess, what do you, what, what do you credit that change with? Is it a sinking up of how you’re doing things at every level or what, what would you say to that? You know, I actually, we’ve been talking about this a ton, to be honest with, I think it’s a ton of things, to be honest with you.

00:15:06,070	I, I think it’s kind of like how do you become a healthy person? You do a lot of little things everyday really well, um, and I think some of it’s been our focus, certainly our teachers.

00:15:22,530	I think our teachers, especially post COVID, to be honest with you, when you see these scores before, um, right after COVID where we really struggled, um, we were really, we had some really positive trend lines coming before COVID, then we kind of took a dump for lack of a better word, and then have really moved up. I think a lot of it is stuff that we had been doing prior to COVID.

00:15:39,330	We were kind of starting to function more like a system. Things like professional learning communities and I’ve been in front of this group talking about that, really focusing on what are the most important standards that we need to be teaching and ensuring our kids are learning, things like that. Honestly, facilities. I’m gonna talk later in here.

00:15:58,470	I mean, we have, we have beautiful facilities, that’s decisions you guys have made and the community has made. I think, I think all of that makes the difference. Heart of its teachers though. Um, math, elementary level, um, you’re gonna see a lot of common themes here. Elementary level right before COVID, we were actually scoring above state average, doing very well.

00:16:25,630	Historically, Mandan has done well in math. Um, and then this year was no different, scored much beyond the state average, um, in our ranking with the rest of the state, we actually tied for first. So our elementary folks are either first or tied for first in both areas. um across the state.

00:16:50,630	um, in, in middle school, I say this is the weirdest trend line as a recovering high school math teacher I’ve ever seen in my life for 4 years. Ohhh, it’s crazy.

00:17:06,270	But the, the one trend that I like to see here from our middle school is they’ve topped above state average for two years in a row, which is what we’re going for. um and they rank again 4th. um, in relation to the rest of the largest 10 school districts. Again, doing, doing good work there as well.

00:17:28,630	Our high school, high school really closed the gap again a couple of years ago, and, um, they’re very close to getting above state average. I think the big change in test, we did, we did a lot of work in 2022 to kind of try to match what we were teaching to the to um college readiness and I think that’s why we closed the

00:17:44,230	gap. I think, I think as we go along, it’ll be more of that focus of what are the most important things that we want our kids to know and do over the next few years that probably could get us over the hump.

00:17:55,230	Not only that, but if you look at the kids that are coming to the high school, it’s probably the most prepared kids that they’ve had when you look at our middle school scores and our elementary scores that are moving up. And it, it takes a whole system and they happen to be at the top of the top of the heap, you might say.

00:18:10,230	I think one thing to add to that we’ve noticed, we talked about ECT was used previously. Well, you’re talking 11th graders with ACT. Now we’re talking 10th grade with um state accountability, and some of those standards didn’t shift down necessarily like we were looking at some of the math standards, um, and what makes

00:18:29,430	up the NDAA plus test and a lot of those kids aren’t exposed to those until they’re juniors. So a little bit of dis disjointedness with that that we’re working with the high school and and looking at, but also just the state spent when they set those cutoffs, I don’t think there

00:18:44,500	was that shift of we’re talking softwares now, we’re no longer talking juniors. So that’s just one of those hurdles with the new state assessment that we’re working and navigating. To give some context to that, it’s kind of like we’re seeing in the middle school ELA.

00:19:00,530	If you look at that chart, when 22% of all of the kids in North Dakota are considered proficient in math. a lot more of our kids are proficient than math, than 22%. It’s kind of what Dr Bitz was talking about yesterday. I think we set the standard really high.

00:19:20,230	for our kids, which is good, but it doesn’t always make us look good when we, when we do that. And I had just a question in that, um, I see, you know like Jamestown Dickinson are a little higher. Are they teaching some of their courses at a different time than we are, so that could cause some of the, uh, um, changes here in relation to it.

00:19:38,430	It’s funny you say that. I that that’s part of our been part of our conversation with the high school is just looking at what are our counterparts doing and what are we doing and does it make sense and does it line up? You know, the flip side of it, and I don’t want to steal Dr

00:19:51,700	Jess Thunder when we start looking at graduation rates. They’ve are phenomenal for us, and part of that is that we’ve gotten thought outside the box with how we’ve approached some of our math courses and meeting kids where they’re at, but that also doesn’t always get them to geometry and algebra 2 into calculus in the same fashion.

00:20:09,800	So it’s finding that balance of creating options for students, but yeah, it’s keeping that bar high and getting the right kids in the right seats. That that’s been a big part of our conversations with the high school.

00:20:26,430	Honestly, the last, the last 4 or 5 months and certainly last year we talked about it too is how do we ensure that a kid can be successful and pass the course, yet have enough rigor so that they get pushed a little bit too, because if they’re not exposed to grade level standards, how can they be proficient on a state test. Good. I’m glad you’re having the conversations.

00:20:43,070	I mean all changes happen for sure. Um Mandan ranked 7th in math. Again, we, we talked about we’re working to that end. For the whole district, again, uh, ranked pretty well. You can see that pre-COVID we ranked above state average. We were just below right after COVID and now again, substantially above state average.

00:21:06,370	Um, we rank here tied for 2nd, so for all grades, we rank 2nd in uh an ELA and for all grades we rank 2nd in math too. So when you think about that and, and both areas are substantially above state average. We’re, we’re doing a phenomenal job at all levels.

00:21:28,230	Questions on the student achievement data before I move on to a graduation rate. I, I do want to say that this data is Mr. Jess said, we got it maybe a couple weeks ago when it was in embargoed. We can’t release it.

00:21:43,270	They want to make sure that there’s no errors in the data, and they ask us to go through our information. Um, it just publicly was released last week, was it? Yep. And so St student achievement Committee hasn’t seen all this data yet. We’ll be sharing that with the com you’re getting it before the committee will, and then the committee will dive into it. you know.

00:22:01,330	Um, was it released publicly like in a news release too or is it released? Yes, it it was a news release, and it’s on the Insite. What’s that? Was there any pickup? Did they do any stories on it? I don’t know if, I guess I, not that I’ve seen so far.

00:22:15,230	But this, the DPI released their, they call it the Insights dashboard, you can go in and see any districtstat, any school data. You can’t dial down to the student, but and, and we’re required to post, uh, accountability letters online, uh, that links to the data and all of our schools individually

00:22:33,530	do that. So over the course of this next week, those will be sent out to parents. Some may daughter goes to Roosevelt. I got the message today with the link to it.

00:22:45,170	Um, so we will see that over the course of this week of it being released, so parents will have an idea of where it’s at as well. We have a month to get that out, and I think I gave, I told them that it had to be out by January 5th, so I, I think most of them are gonna have it out earlier, but so graduation rate

00:23:01,100	um, really when we’re you’d think graduation rate would be an easy calculation. Honestly, it’s not. It’s actually been an argued thing for a long, long time.

00:23:19,900	What most of what I’m gonna talk about is what’s considered a 4-year graduation cohort rate to, to put it in simplest terms, when a kid starts as a freshman, do we get them a finish line by the time they’re end of their senior year. And that includes any kids that transfer into our school district. Um, so that’s what a 4-year graduation cohort rate is.

00:23:33,970	The other rate that I’m gonna talk a little bit about is called a completer rate. And that is the percentage of high school seniors that complete a high school diploma plus or actually, uh, previous dropouts would obtain a GED. So if we can’t get them to a high school diploma, to at least get them to a graduate equivalency diploma they can pass the test.

00:23:51,900	If you think about that race, so those are the two pieces that you’ll see here. Um, this is kind of that trend line that I’ve been showing you, but for graduation rate over the last few years we have tracked, uh, low income Native American Hispanic graduation rates because those are our primary

00:24:08,370	subgroups. We added in this year IEP students because we thought it was important to start taking a look at that subgroup as well. Um, you can see the top line, um, we’ve moved from 82% up to 90% this year.

00:24:26,730	Um, and just in general, you can kind of see, you’re always gonna have some waves that I would say in the line with you’ve got smaller groups, you know, uh, a Native American four-year would be usually in the 20s or 30s for kids, 30, 35 kids total. So that kind of gives you some context. So that’s why you sometimes see a little bit of movement.

00:24:42,100	What’s neat to see though is from 2022, you see all of our subgroups in the 50s and in 2025, you see all of our subgroups in the 70s and the 80s. That’s awesome. Um and then our completer rate, which I think is amazing, our completer rate for last year was 97%.

00:25:02,870	It means 97% of our kids who entered our school as a freshman, got at least, uh, we got them to pass a GED test when they by their by their senior year. That’s, that’s awesome.

00:25:24,800	Um, if you’d ever go see the research on the difference uh income difference between a high school dropout and and a and a high school diploma, it’s astounding. We’re talking 1000 to 12,000 earning potential yearly in your lifetime. So huge to be able to do that. Where we rank, um, last year, um, we were actually first this year, uh, McKenzie County beat us out, which kudos to them, but we rank 2nd overall amongst the 10 largest school districts.

00:25:49,900	Um, and then I also kind of pointed out there how we ranked in our subgroup areas too, um, which was excellent. I mean, to give some context to that. We have not always done a great job with, uh, graduation rate.

00:26:07,500	I can own some of that because I worked at the high school pretty much my whole career here. And so, um, in years past, we’ve actually been at the bottom of this list in most of these areas and to see us at the top is, is, is awesome, honestly, it’s, it’s neat to see our Native American graduation rate, um, I went and

00:26:24,730	checked it for sure in 2017, we had a, uh, we had a, uh, under 20% graduation rate for our Native American students. And we have consistently been in the 70s the last 4 years. And again, I think that’s a testament, um, to what Mrs.

00:26:44,370	Peel was talking about earlier, to a lot of little important things that we’ve done to change the way we do things in Mandan over the last 10 to 15 years. Um, school accountability, so, yep. Go ahead, Marin I’m into this, Dr Jess. Um, so my question is about tracking IEP.

00:27:05,630	Um, are we doing that because of the way special education’s been gutted that we’re going to have to do more, like we’re gonna have to pay more attention to some of those students, or could you talk about that why that switch has occurred.

00:27:21,170	You know, I honestly, it was, it had more to do with, uh, wondering internally about how were those kids doing? You know, we’ve got these systems, we’ve got MTSS systems. I think that’s a major reasons why we’ve moved the needle and the grand scheme of things, really trying to find how we catch kids, you know, in the past, so often we in, in schools, we worked to get the kids on an IEP because we thought that’s

00:27:38,100	how we could get them help and in an MTSS world we’re just trying to get help as much as we can, but when we identify kids having an IEP then we provide the label under federal law. If that makes sense. It was more internally.

00:27:51,170	We weren’t sure how we were doing in that area, and we wanted to see. I think the other thing to note, uh, the importance of tracking is not every student’s designed to graduate in 4 years.

00:28:07,630	Sometimes it’s 5 or 6, and depending on the individual education plan, I think kind of looking at those numbers too helps us kind of keep that in frame of who are the students that we’re working with? What are the needs and, and how are we meeting those needs? And sometimes that takes longer than the cohort. The other pieces, as the state, we’ve really looked at it specifically our students with emotional and behavioral disorders.

00:28:25,170	We’ve seen a big spike throughout the state and increased IEPs, lower graduation rate, and there’s been a big push from DPI to really monitor those students and see how we’re meeting those needs. Also from a behavioral health standpoint, trying to kind of identify some of those community gaps.

00:28:41,000	So some of that’s in response to some of what the state has asked us to track as well. And if you remember with the IEP we’re responsible for all kids with special needs from age 3 to 21.

00:28:56,100	So, if we know that a student’s going to be with us till they’re 21, till they can enter a group home or do something different. They aren’t going to graduate on time. But we want to make sure that they get a diploma and and so that’s kind of part of the graduation rate piece. Thank you. It’s really helpful.

00:29:11,630	Actually contributing to that, if you take a look, I mean, when you can have your IEP kits based on that information who are that close to being where your regular graduation rate is, then, then you’re doing a lot of good things Accountability, so all of this and it’s one of the things that was just released and like Dr Bitzs was talking about, now states are tasked with creating

00:29:34,730	basically the rules for how they grade schools, and that’s what school accountability is all about. So in North Dakota for K8 schools, this is the pie of how we’re grated. Um, 30% is, is, uh, climate and engagement, and that is based on the um student engagement survey that our students take every year.

00:29:56,000	Um, one is just on our proficiency rates, and I’ll talk a little bit about how that is scored. 10% as per federal law is English learner proficiency.

00:30:15,370	and then 30% are states derived a growth metric when kids go from 4th to 5th grade, how, how were we growing them? And to the state’s credit, we, we switched tests, but they were able to determine still a growth metric going from the old test to the new test, so that is a part of this pie as well.

00:30:29,100	And so for the most part, the total highest total score you can get is 615 points. So it’s, that’s the scale 0 to 615. Schools will score anywhere from 300 to 500 for the most part. Nobody gets all the points. Nobody gets an A plus in the school accountability world. And so it, it kind of works off a scale.

00:30:47,230	So that gives you some context and under ESA, this, the state is required to um to identify the lowest 10% and the lowest 5%, and it’s based on schools, not necessarily districts. So when you, when I show you this data, all this, all this data is organized by school.

00:31:08,100	and so the change in the calculation and it was a it was a big change and I thought a a very good one that the state made is it used to be you were either proficient or not. You got 1 point for an advanced kid. You got 1 point for a proficient kid.

00:31:24,100	You got no points for partially proficient kid and he got no points for a novice kid. The change that they made is that they basically gave uh additional points for score or schools that had a higher number of kids that were advanced by giving 2 points for advanced, 1 point for proficient, and also a kid who is approaching proficient. We talked about that at the beginning, got 0.5 points.

00:31:41,800	And then if they were novice, you actually got negative points. The idea being how many kids can we move the needle towards grade level, proficiency in the grand scheme of things.

00:31:59,800	So that, that was a bunch of changes that they made to the calculation with the new test, um, how are schools scored? If you kind of have what the 24 results were, where we ranked at and then what our 25 results were for the most part, all of our schools, most of our schools moved the needle and, and having looked at the data a little bit deeper, you would have had to have me here another 45 minutes

00:32:16,900	and I could have talked that long too. The biggest change that you would have seen is our number of novice kids in Mandan is substantially lower than the rest of the state.

00:32:36,230	Um, to give some context, um, in a typical grade level, you’ll see anywhere from 12 to 15% kids in the novice category, Mandan schools tend to be more in that 3 to 6% area for novice kids. Most of our kids are in those upper 3. And so for the most part, that helped a lot of our schools move the needle on their accountability score.

00:32:53,730	And so that’s, that’s why you see what you see there, um, the virtual Kate virtual Academy Virtual Academies, uh, uh, like, uh, like kind of a tricky sort of thing because it’s a really small group of kids. A lot of times the way the pie works is if they don’t have at least 10 kids taking the test, then those kids don’t count.

00:33:11,370	And because we have such a small school with their, they don’t always get enough kids to even count, and so then the whole circle gets reconfigured.

00:33:26,370	So in certain years, a large number of the, the school is just based on the student engagement survey because they all take that. This last year, our kids did count and so they actually went up quite a bit because they scored pretty well in the ELA area for our K-8 virtual Academy. So that was one of the reasons for their major move. So it gives you an idea there.

00:33:48,230	um the high school pie, we have 3 high schools that we run in Mandan. That looks a lot different. because they only gra, they only take the state’s test in one grade, there’s no opportunity to do a growth metric for them because there aren’t any multiple grades taking the test.

00:34:07,000	So to add into that they’ve added in a bunch of other things. One of them being graduation rate, which we talked about, the climate engagement survey, English proficiency, but they also have GED completion. That’s one of the reasons that completer rate I was showing earlier is important.

00:34:25,700	The state assessment achievement, like we’re scoring like before, and then Cho already and we’ve talked with the group about Choice Ready, and that’s getting kids to score to take certain classes at the school and and certain CTE classes and falling into those choice ready categories, probably should have shown the, um, chart, but it’s a big old chart that’s uh our presentation all by itself.

00:34:49,170	Howard high schools scored? Our high schools actually did quite well here. All three schools, the high school moved up 43 points. Um, and when I looked at that, the Braves alternative Education campus moved up substantially, um, because they had a few more kids, they were able to have all of their kids score, um, they had enough kids to take

00:35:06,630	the test, so they scored in the LA and math. So that moved the needle for them. And the Vana Virtual High School did exceptionally well because we got a lot more kids to take the test last year, so they were able to get a score for the math and the ELA test as well.

00:35:21,170	So, they did quite well too Any questions on the accountability or it’s a lot of stuff I know. Thank you. Any questions? you know, um.

00:35:38,370	I just got to say, you know, thank you to all the teachers, the administration and staff for all their hard work and dedication. I mean, it really shows here in regard to it. I mean, thank you to all of you guys, the kudos cause we definitely made some strides from last year to this year. And in accordance with our, uh, counterparts. So thank you all for that. Pass that on, please.

00:35:52,100	I mean we definitely will, and we were talking this morning that that it’s just fun to see, not fun, but rewarding to see the decisions that we made years ago and that you made years ago when we set up our PLCs when we had our teachers teach 5 instead of 6, and they have that shared accountability

00:36:09,170	in their PLCs. Um, we, some of you were here when we opened our alternative school and our virtual schools, and that saves kids. I mean, it really does, and to see those little decisions that we made, um see the results of that, it’s encouraging. Thank you all.

00:36:29,500	Thank you All right, we’ll move on then to the nautical School Board Association winter summit. These aren’t as much fun. Um I have the next two items if I can take together. Um, they’re just two professional development opportunities for board members. There’s the winter summit, which is February 5th and 6th. Um, if you’re interested in going, let Mr.

00:36:48,800	Legacy or myself know when we will get you registered. And then there’s also the, the National School Board Convention, um, in early April, um, if you’re interested in that, let us know as well, and we can see if we can get a team going there.

00:37:04,730	All right if anybody’s interested, let them guys know in regards to that, all right? Uh, moving on then, um, item D, December 31st World Re Pyro Experience near men in High School, Dr Bitz, correct, and we haven’t met in a month and there’s been some news stories, so you probably heard some of this, but, uh, MPO is working with a company or a Mart, um, and

00:37:21,730	New Year’s Eve, weather permitting, they are going to set a world record for Roman Candle shots. I think it’s 2.5 million Roman candle shots in just over 20 minutes.

00:37:41,270	Um, that’s going to be shot off near the high school, um, the largest east of Subaru, we don’t own that, but it’s going to be in that lot. They’re going to shoot it off, uh, parking is gonna be in the high school parking lot. Um, they’re going to do some staging in the high school, um, in our southeast corner ner um, they are gonna have porta potties available.

00:37:57,530	They are going to clean up our parking lot afterward. I think it’s going to be interesting if the wind is too high, they’ve reserve the next two nights, so, um hopefully all goes well. Um, they have insurance, so I, I think it’s gonna go well.

00:38:14,630	The safety was their primary when we walked through the school with them, they talk all they wanted to talk about was safety and what they’re doing, so. Questions on that Sounds like a fun night I just wanted to clarify the, on the paper that you sent, the funds are getting split between 3 different entities, not just the warriors. I have my note here too, correct.

00:38:35,500	It’s, it was wounded warriors. Um, it’s also the Mandan bands and the third one was, there’s another charity too, but their, their funds are gonna be split three ways. Thank you for the update. Anybody else? Any other questions? If fun night, um, next item on the agenda is update on the noodle Scooper new superintendent search, Mr.

00:38:58,330	Legacy. Yeah, good evening. I believe you have the survey results from Dakota Leadership Solutions was handed out before the meeting. I just kind of want to go, go over those briefly with you. Um, and if you have questions, you know, stop me, um, as pleasantly surprised.

00:39:12,800	We had the survey open for a week, uh, December 8th through the 12th, and we had over 500 respondents. Um, that’s from the school board, um, other groups were our teachers, other staff members, parents, and I believe we had 56 students, um, also take the survey, which was great.

00:39:34,270	Um, across the board, um, for most groups, principal experience mattered the most to them. Uh, they want to see some administrative experience, uh, step into the role, uh, North Dakota experience is preferred amongst all groups.

00:39:53,900	Um, and across all the groups there was very strong alignment on what matters most in a candidate’s record, uh, creating a positive learning environment, keeping student learning and well-being at the center of decisions, uh, recruiting and retaining high quality staff providing strategic direction and a shared vision? Um, when it comes to past experience, the top priorities were clear and consistent communication, strong faculty relationships developing and managing school budgets, understanding policy and governance. uh for personal characteristics.

00:40:21,700	Um, all groups were very consistent in personal characteristics. They want to see a good communicator, friendly and approachable, a strong work ethic and strong ethical values. That was very, very high amongst all the groups. Um, overall, the message from stake stakeholders is clear. They want a people-focused leader with school level experience and really who prioritizes students first.

00:40:46,800	That’s, that’s what we’ve seen from the survey results. So, you have a lot more information there, um, from Dakota Leadership Solutions, but I wanted to make sure that you were aware of it in, in a summary and our community was aware that we had really good turnout.

00:41:00,170	um impressed with her community doing this, um, just a personal note, my wife took the survey and was so happy that we made it available. She felt like she had a voice to be able to share her uh comments and concerns and going forward, she knows how important it is, so. I do.

00:41:15,000	Can you just kind of walk through the timeline on just a little bit, please. Yes, the timeline our application deadline is December 30th. Um, as of right now, I believe we have 4 completed applications. It’s a process to apply for the superintendent opening. I’m expecting a few more, um.

00:41:32,700	and I’ll, I’ll share with those as soon as we get to the deadline, I’ll share with you who we have, um, we’ll be selecting finalists on January 5th, and interviews are scheduled for January 15th. and I’ll stand for any questions on the survey or any other items on the superintendent search. Thank you.

00:41:54,530	Any questions? All right, then we’ll move on. Um, update on the men in high school, demolition in you might as well do the construction close up to Mr. Legacy. I just want to do them both. Sure, yep.

00:42:10,530	Um, I’ll start with the high school demolition and update from Steve Hozier, um, who’s in charge of the demolition for Hozier worldwide. Um, it, it’s looked like a pretty quiet site, but they have been very busy inside the building. Um, they’ve taken out 99% of the regulated waste as of last Friday. What that means is, uh, light bulbs and light ballasts those have to come out separately. So those are out.

00:42:27,730	They have been working on interior salvage operations through the north half of the, of the building. Um, that’s going to be done by the end of this week, and they’ll continue doing interior salvage through the rest of the building over the next month or so.

00:42:44,730	Um the first excavator arrived on site today. They’re going to bring a 2nd on site after the holidays, uh, fencing will go up around the site by the end of the week or beginning of next and demolition will start on the gymnasium area next Tuesday is their plan. All right. Things are moving.

00:43:06,630	Questions on that piece before he goes into the construction close up. Good. OK, uh, good news on our construction close out. This has been a process building a high school. I don’t think any of us were. real prepared for how long this was going to take. It’s been good though.

00:43:25,370	Um, if you remember when we approved the contract with Northwest Contracting, our guaranteed maximum price was $94.4 million. Um, we are close to closing out the financials, um, visiting with Brandon Sandberg, Eric Brendan, and Tom Todd of Northwest. Uh, we’re expecting to be just over $3 million under budget. Um, that’s, that’s a big win.

00:43:44,530	I, I need to say a thank you to, uh, those gentlemen at Northwest Contrac ting They were our construction managers, um, they did an amazing job for us, uh, when problems came up, they really looked for solutions for us to keep the cost down and save us money. Our design team, icon architects Lee Pierce and her team were great in working through design, prairie engineering was part of that as well. Um.

00:44:07,470	the biggest takeaway, those are all local companies. They cared that we had a. great final product which we do. Our high school is beautiful, and they did everything they could to keep the costs in line, so. very proud to be part of that project and I could say Northwest icon prairie.

00:44:25,700	everybody that worked on that building would feel the same way. I got to say thank you to all those contractors and thank you to you guys. You spend a lot of time working on this too, trying to get it all done, including our high school staff and everybody that worked on it.

00:44:37,070	A lot of people put a lot of time to build something that is very nice for the next you know, 50+ years, I hope at least in relation to it. So thank you all. We won’t be here anymore. No, maybe.

00:44:56,100	Maybe not me, but you guys maybe, but thank you all very much for all the hard work in regard to it. Any questions on any of that stuff that we have here? All right, let’s move on then to the consent agenda. First item of the items on the consent agenda, review and consider approval of previous board minutes from November 17, 2025.

00:45:15,800	Aep the facilities and Finance Committee minutes from October 27, 2025. Aep the wellness committee minutes from December 1st, 2025. What are the wishes of the board and the consent agenda? the consent. All right, we have a motion. We have a 2nd, and we have a 2nd. Please Kroll. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Uh, next item is unfinished business.

00:45:41,730	We have no unfinished business, so we’ll move right on to new business. The first item there is review and consider approval of updated strategic plan. Dr Riderath.

00:45:56,970	Yes, Dr just touched on much of what is in here, but just to highlight a few things, if you look at page 10, I actually handed one out to you. I made a correction on there. It’s uh, it’s accurate now online, but at the bottom of it, you know, we talk about at the top, the graduation rates which are outstanding that we already talked about.

00:46:12,430	I had a note after our retreat of 90% graduation rate, unreasonable to set, and it turns out it’s not, it’s not an unreasonable goal for us to set, so we still have that on there. We’re looking at 75% graduation rate, um, uh, choice Rey. We are at 72 right now, so that’s still our goal. We’re right there.

00:46:32,370	But what I added was that third objective, and it’s looking at our participation in work-based learning opportunities for students. And the reason I have sustained work-based learning there. We have two kind of work-based learning opportunities for students. There’s what we call simulated.

00:46:52,070	So think about like our school store and some of those opportunities students have with classes to do some work-based learning, and then sustained work-based learning is actually Carly’s gonna go work in the dental office cause I want to be a dental hygienist. I’m gonna have to physically go out into the real world and work with a company, and that’s really what we’re looking to grow for our students.

00:47:06,970	We have some awesome simulated opportunities, which is a great first step, but really looking at building those sustained partnerships. And if you’ll remember, we have Pig Jensen as our work-based learning coordinator now at the high school and she’s really done awesome things to grow that.

00:47:20,870	So that’s a new thing in there and I wanted to highlight that. Dr Rideroth in regard to that, if, if there’s, um, businesses in town that want to participate that currently are. Who do they contact? I’d have them reach out to the high school and uh contact Daresen is our current technical education director.

00:47:39,530	He would be the good kind of first contact for that, um, or myself. I think any of us, if there is an interested business, just reach out and if we will get you connected to kids to go to 25%, that means it means we got to really partner with our businesses to get there.

00:47:56,070	That’s why my long term vision or goal would be that every kid walks at Amanda and high with some real world working experience that we’re able to get them and we’re like we just talked about, I think we’re taking the baby steps in that direction. And we’re, and I’ll just tell you, working at the college level, the university level, in relation to it.

00:48:10,900	We have students that think they know what they’re going to do until they get out in the real world and they find out that’s not really where they wanted to be.

00:48:24,800	So, so the more you can have it at the high school level, that makes it so much easier for us to build uh the educational level for them if they, if they go on to the university or college level, but if they want to go into the real world and work, you know, hands-on, that all helps a lot, even though we do have quite a bit of hands-on in our CTE area, but, and I

00:48:37,730	think how often do we talk about that kids need those soft skills anymore that there’s, there’s so much information in the world that they have a lot of information, but just learning to apply them and what better way to do that than on a work-based learning site.

00:48:50,430	And so if we continue to go through, uh, page 11 looks at our uh NWEA scores. One change here is we used to only report on specific grades, and we decided that we’re going to report on all grades who take the NWEA. So that’s a little bit of a change.

00:49:10,700	We’re looking at 65th percentile nationally is our goal. That’s pretty high, but we felt like it was an attainable one. And if you look, we have certain grades that are hitting it, but we still have a little bit of work to do for all grades to hit that 65th percentile.

00:49:24,370	But we’re moving, we’re getting more and more green, which is what we want to see. And then if you, we keep scrolling and we’re looking at state assessment. I don’t need to continue to talk about that.

00:49:40,800	I think Dr Jess talked about that, looking at how we compared to the top 10 districts, that’s again a shift because we don’t have that longitudinal data that we typically have had. Um, we look at our sub, uh. subgroups for graduation rate and achievement, uh, again Dr Jess touched on all this, but we’re knocking it out of the park to have that sort of to have low income Hispanic and Native American students, all scoring above the state average and state assessments is, is outstanding.

00:50:04,530	And then as we go down our E E E students have done a phenomenal job. We’ve we’re over 50% growth in our students at the EL level, which is also unheard of. What we really have to think that staff, um, and then it just closes out with our facility and finance items. Nothing much has changed there.

00:50:23,000	Most of what I had updated was the data that we had just got gone over. Um, I apologize that the strategic plan is so late this year, typically we approve this in like October, but without having the data to update it, we weren’t able to do that.

00:50:38,370	And with that, if there are any questions, I will answer them. Any questions for Doctoredderathth? Any questions? Not what the wishes of the board. I would move that we accept this, uh, excuse me, the strategic plan. All right, we have a motion. We have a 2nd. 2, you have a second. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing them, please call Roll. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes.

00:51:07,070	Yes. Next item on the agenda is review and consider approval of an open enrollment application seeking a deadline waiver, you should have it in front of you, Dr Rereth.

00:51:23,800	Yes, this is a family who’s gone to school here for a long time, happened to move to Bismarck, Wana continue to attend the parent also works for us over here in Mandan, so we would love to be able to keep them. What are the wishes of the board? I would move that we approve the open enrollment. All right, we have a motion. We have a second We have a second. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, please go roll. Yes Yes.

00:51:42,370	Yes Yes. Yes Yes. Yes. Yes. Next item on the agenda is future meeting dates. January 5th, Special board meeting as discussed earlier, 5:30 p.m. at the Braves Center. January 8th joint powers with Mend and Parkes at noon at Raging Rivers. January 12th, student achievement, 5 p.m. Braves Center. January 12th. Policy and Personnel 5 p.m.

00:52:10,100	Braves Center, January 15th. We’ll be superintendent interviews, uh, where the date and time, uh, is to be determined at the men in high school, uh, January 20th, regular school board meeting, 7 p.m. City Hall. Any other board meetings? Uh Januaryth joint powers with Me and Parks. It’s our annual joint power meeting we have with them.

00:52:33,230	at Raging Rivers Any other questions If not, I would like to, uh, wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Thanks for all the work you do.

00:52:49,730	We just got a great, uh, review of all the work our employees are doing and our students learning and everything like that, so thank you for coming tonight. Appreciate it very much.