00:00:10,800	On Tuesday, January 2 6th, we public school. Please join me in the. Thanks everybody. Next item is approval of the agenda change I do. Um, I have a letter of resignation or actually a letter of retirement in front of you that we just received today, and I would like to add that to new business letter B.

00:00:57,800	Um, we already have a resignation there or a retirement there. So if we could combine those two, that would be ideal. changes Uh are the wishes of the forward? agenda I’d move that we approve the agenda with the changes. All right, uh, do we have a second? We have a second.

00:01:23,430	Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, please call Ro. Yes. Peters, yes, Peel, Shenando, Schmidt, yes, Wolff, yes. Next item on the gin is public communications. Anybody in the audience wish to address the public? Uh, not seeing any moving and anybody indicating they do, we’ll move on to the administrator’s report.

00:01:46,530	Uh, first item on the agenda is North Dakota School Board Association Winter summit, February 5 and 6th, Dr Redeath. Yeah, just let us know if you’re wanting to attend. It’s a school boards does this every year.

00:02:04,600	They renamed it this year, but a lot of the focus is around, um, budget and finance around negotiation pieces, election basics, just some of those important things for us to know as a board. So let us know if you want to attend and we’ll get you registered All right, if you want to attend to please let, uh, Dr Bitzer Dr Riderathth. No, they’ll get you on the list.

00:02:19,530	Next item, National School Board Convention April 10th through the 12th. Doctoredorath, yeah, the same thing. Please let us know if you’re interested in attending. I believe it is in San Antonio. Uh, this year and if there’s a group that would like to go, we will get you registered. I don’t believe there’s an agenda out yet on it. I looked.

00:02:36,070	a couple of days ago and they hadn’t had it posted. Is there any set timelines on uh, you know, like reduced rates or anything like that that we need to be aware of. I’ll look at that and send an email out to the board on what the deadline is for registration. OK, thank you.

00:02:52,070	Any questions on that? Again, let them know if you want to go so they can get that taken care of. Next item free and reduced lunch update. Dr Ridereth. Yes, you’ll see that in your packet, uh, for the month of December. The green at the very bottom is our district rate. Right now is a district, we’re 36.

00:03:11,330	19% free and reduced lunch. So any of the schools that are in yellow, if we use December to qualify for Title I, they would be our Title I qualifying schools. Um, so nobody out of the ordinary there right now. Those are all schools we currently serve for title, the middle school, Custer, Lewis and Clark, Lakewood, Mary Stark, and Roosevelt.

00:03:27,870	All right, we do have our choice of which month we wanna use, right? We do OK. yep, go ahead Dr Doctoritz um. question about the question about the free and reduced lunch. I know in the special session there are. Mm-hmm.

00:03:50,800	3 bills, 2, I think, that got through plus there is an initiative for the gathering signatures for another and can you just, could you give a little context as to what will change for us shouldd the legislature and or this initiative measure before Dr Bitzs can jump in. I think, I do think a bill’s going to pass special session here for for free lunch and breakfast.

00:04:09,530	I don’t think they want it to be an initiated measure because then it would go into the Constitution. And while I think we all agree, you know, no one’s going to argue with free lunch and breakfast for students, putting spending in the Constitution is never something I think people are super comfortable with.

00:04:23,500	So I do think they’re going to have a bill go through so it’s in statute and law. As far as financially for us, not a huge impact free and reduced lunch numbers, we’re going to have to continue to try to find a way to track that metric when we’re looking for Title I and those sorts of things.

00:04:40,730	So how we want to do that, we’ll have to talk as a district what our best way of doing that is, um, because we do use those numbers for this. We don’t have to. We have to use a metric now with the way they redid TEO funding so we could look at something else.

00:04:57,000	I’m not sure we’ve ever found what that’s something else would be. So I think that ’ s going to be the biggest change for us is how do we adjust and what do we do to collect that information.

00:05:11,470	And I think the state wants us to collect those, they’re going to want all schools to collect those numbers as well because if we’re collecting the a partial payment from the federal government, it’s less the state has to contribute, so, but it’s hard on if people are getting it free for them to want to fill it out.

00:05:30,100	So that’s gonna be the challenge that schools are going to face, um, one as long as we’re telling stories, I’ll tell one. What we had a, a call with the Zoom meeting with a couple of legislators.

00:05:46,870	and um one of our area superintendents says, I don’t need free lunch for my kids, I can pay for my kids’ lunch, and one of the legislators, uh, made a comment that made some sense to me. He said, we talked about that. He said we talked about, thought about setting the threshold at 400 or 500% of the poverty level and above that you have to pay, he said, but that requires schools then to have a process in place to bill and to collect, he said, and that’s not free, and

00:06:05,100	there’s so few kids above that that it just almost, if you’re gonna do it, he said it just makes sense to do it for everybody. I think for us, one of the big messages though going into next legislative session is that this is not education money, like it’s money that’s benefiting our students and our

00:06:21,500	families, which is good, but to lump that 70 million, roughly what it’s going to cost to do that into our per pupil funding or to make that argument is what makes me a little nervous, so I think just continuing that mantra of really good, we want everybody to have breakfast and lunch, but that is not part of

00:06:41,270	our poor-up funding Thank you. That was really helpful Anybody else have questions, comments? You, you guys all done getting more All right, then we’ll move on to uh Mena Public School Finance 101. What’s your legacy? Yeah, good evening. Good to see all of you tonight.

00:06:59,170	Um, in your packet, I hope it comes on the screen there it is, um, we put together a presentation for our middle school and high school staff today for Braves Gage, and I thought it’d be a great refresher for the board and actually probably more importantly for our public that is going to watch this tonight.

00:07:13,270	So just gonna go through some uh basic uh general finances of what our general fund is, what our building fund is, and then I want to touch on our health insurance. That’s been a hot topic around the school district, uh, for very valid reasons.

00:07:29,730	So our general fund, you know this, uh, but maybe the our public doesn’t know uh what is it? It’s, it is our operating fund, um, we spend all of our time as a school board administration. That’s what we talk about. It’s $67 million. We use it for salaries and benefits, classroom instructions, student services, think of it as anything that’s happening inside our buildings educationally related.

00:07:49,470	And here’s a breakdown of how that $67 million is spent. We spend 82.2% on wages and benefits, um, you share this and people are kind of shocked. We have almost 800 employees in our district. We have a lot of people that we employ, uh, in the community. Our transportation contract is about 4% of our budget.

00:08:10,900	Utilities overhead 4%, classroom supplies 4%, then we have just other catch-all expenses of 5%. This makes it tough for us when we talk about budget constraints. When our budget is people, it is really hard for us to adapt quickly.

00:08:31,630	Where does our revenue come from? Uh, same thing, we bring in $67 million a year, 23% comes from property taxes and 70% comes from state foundation aid. Uh, we really don’t have a lot of say in our revenue anymore.

00:08:48,730	It is all controlled by your state legislature, um, with our new tax tax caps on our property tax limits and then the foundation aid our revenue is, is really set for us. In our property taxes you’ve seen this, um, kind of broke it down a little bit more on the table in front of you, you can see the, the blue cells are what we consider our general fund levies.

00:09:06,900	There are 4 of them that are available to us. Our general fund levy is capped at 60 mills. This is unrestricted dollars that we have to levy that comes into the general fund that we use for salaries, benefits, all those general fund supplies we talked about earlier, the board discretionary is an additional 1010 mil authority that you can levy that again is unrestricted that

00:09:28,730	comes into the general fund, the tuition levy we are allowed to levy for those costs for those students that we send out of district to Anne Carlson Center, Deo and Boys and Girls ranch. We spend about 75,000 to $800,000 per year on those tuition costs, so we’re gonna levy to re recover some of those funds next year.

00:09:47,370	The miscellaneous fund we are not levying for this year, but will be in the future. Uh, we are capped at a 12 mil limit on our miscellaneous fund. And then below we levy also in our building fund and for special assessments. Those are legally restricted.

00:10:06,270	The building fund we have to use on bricks and mortar, long-term maintenance, the special assessments where we levy 3.75 mills. That’s just like you have at home, curb and gutter, uh, street repair projects, that’s what, that’s what that levy is for. Then our sinking an interest on the bottom there.

00:10:21,600	That’s our mortgage payments for our debt for the high school, for Lakewood, Red Trail, that’s the easiest way to think about it is that is our mortgage payment. It is set aside just for debt service Our state foundation aid makes up 70% of our general fund budget, uh, the payment per student this year is $11,349 per student.

00:10:42,970	Um, I want to say that during legislative session, it’s always a hot topic of, you know, the state’s going to give 1%, 2%, 3% increases. This is the number that they’re talking about that per pupil payment of $11,349 this number is driven completely by enrollment. Uh, we talk about enrollment as an admin team.

00:11:01,600	uh, at least weekly we’re talking about it right now, I think all of our conversations have centered around birth rates in Morton County because we’re trying to track, you know, what’s going to happen over the next 5 years.

00:11:16,630	So we have a better pulse on our enrollment And speaking of enrollment, this is, I know the board you have seen multiple enrollment, uh, pieces of information that have come out that are more detailed in this, but just overall for the last 5 years we’ve grown by about 200 students, but really kind of seeing this enrollment growth flatten out, you know, we’re up

00:11:31,530	19 students this year from last year. Uh, next year, I think we’re gonna gain only 7 or 8, and it’s a little worrisome right now. Our kindergarten class is our 2nd smallest class in the district, so our total enrollment K through 1 2 is going to stay about the same, but we’re going to see

00:11:47,870	that bubble group of 3rd, 4th, 5th graders are going to start moving from the elementary level through our middle school and high school, so we need to be ready to adapt for staffing to accommodate those bubbles.

00:12:01,870	Um, we are down, I’m gonna get this wrong, but I think we’re down 60 students in our elementary from last year. Next year we’re going to go down another 27. The year after that it’s ’87. not losing those kids in the district, but they’re going from the elementary to the middle school then to the high school so we really need to stay on top of that.

00:12:19,000	The budget challenges, uh, you know them, um, you’ve heard me talk about him at length. Um, I’ve budgeted a deficit this year of $1.6 million. It is going to be worse than that. Our health insurance fund has not operated well this year. We have had to supplement that with some general fund dollars.

00:12:36,700	So we’re going to look at about a $2 million deficit this year. That’s OK. We have plans to get back to a balanced budget next year.

00:12:49,730	Uh, we do have carryover funds to kind of get us through the year, um, but it, it’s not a good feeling to have that large of a deficit, and it is not sustainable. We need to make plans for the future. Uh, facilities budgeting. I talked about our building fund levy.

00:13:11,530	Um, again, we are legally restricted on the building fund to use that for bricks and mortar, um we use it for major repairs, renovations, our building fund we used to put the addition on at Red Trail and the Middle School, um, safety, security improvements, roofs, HVAC, uh, those are expensive projects, and that is what the sole use of the building fund is for.

00:13:30,070	And for planning purposes, you know, last year we did that Krauss Anderson study to help us plan for long term capital maintenance, and you can see for the next 5 years, uh, just some revenue and debt projections that we have. I’m gonna look at 26. We’re bringing, going to bring in $3.6 million this year. Half of that is allocated to debt payments for Red Trail and the middle school edition.

00:13:45,100	So we have $1.8 million available for those long-term, uh, maintenance projects, uh, that doesn’t go very far. Last year, if you remember we did a bathroom renovation at Lewis and Clark that costs $400,000.

00:14:02,100	Those funds get eaten up very, very quickly, um, but I do think we have a good plan to kind of address some of those needs at our elementary schools, you’re gonna start seeing a lot of work done at Mary Stark, Roosevelt, Lewis and Clark, they need some work. That’s where our building fund’s gonna be going to the next few years, uh, followed up by some work at the middle school in Fort Lincoln.

00:14:21,870	And then our, our health insurance, um, it has been a tough, tough year. Uh, this was an eye opener at our, at our sessions today. I don’t think our staff really understood how much we spend as a district on health insurance. It makes up 7% of our general fund budget, uh, we’re going to spend $4.

00:14:38,530	5 million just on premiums this year on the district side of things, so it is a huge cost for us. and it’s been a really tough year. Um, our current loss ratio is 129%, uh, which means that we spent 29% over the premiums that we have collected.

00:14:57,070	It has been difficult to manage it, and it is a, I’m hoping it’s a one-year blip. Uh, the last 4 years we have operated at 100% or below, so we’ve actually been very efficient with our health insurance. We have just had a really difficult year, uh, that’s ne necessitated some changes in our health insurance plan.

00:15:14,730	Um, we had to change some Macs out of pockets. Uh, we had to add a PPO plan back in, um I’m not gonna go too deep into it, but for the most part 87% of our staff is going to come out ahead financially with the new plans that we changed to.

00:15:35,100	Um, it’s just going to be a tough year for those that are that other 13% and unfortunately that’s how insurance works. um and then what happened this year Uh, we had 27 large claims in excess of $50,000 those total have total 53% of our medical claims for the year, $2.5 million. Uh, that’s just 27 individuals on our plan.

00:15:59,870	That’s an anomaly, um, working with our health insurance consultant, we expect 30 to 35% of our large claims to equal the total claims, and we’ve really ballooned past that this year. We’re hoping it’s a one-year blip.

00:16:20,500	Again, it’s really hard to know, um, healthcare is so volatile right now that all we can do is keep working with the information we have, um, you know, looking forward with our health insurance, our health insurance committee meets regularly to discuss these, these issues, and one thing that we made very clear to our staff today is we are not gonna guarantee there won’t be future changes to your health insurance plan. Uh, it is so volatile right now.

00:16:41,730	I, I don’t want to make changes. I know Dr Bitzs, Dr Redderath, we, none of us want to make changes to a health insurance plan going forward, but we just can’t guarantee it at this point. There’s just too many unknown with with healthcare right now, so. With that, I know I went real fast.

00:16:57,370	This is probably a refresher, but please, if you have any questions on, on what you had in your packet, please let me know. Thank you, Mr. Legacy. Anybody got questions? A lot of information here. Go ahead. I’m just full of curiosity tonight. um That’s good Ryan, what so we talked about there’s so much uncertainty about healthcare plans.

00:17:16,630	Does that have to do with the ACA credits res expiring or how is it tie into the market that we’re in? Like, can you, can you give any insight into that? Not for us. The ACA credit’s expiring doesn’t touch us at all. Um, we just I’m gonna go, oh, if I can go back to a couple of slides.

00:17:32,970	Our high-cost claimants, it was just a huge year. the one factor that we’ve talked about in our health insurance committee with our consultant is. our max out of pocket on our HSA plan was $3300 last year, $3400 last year. One thing that we’re wondering is that that is very low that max out of pocket.

00:17:55,370	So I believe that we were inviting some risk onto our plan. No matter where you go, you’re gonna, you’re gonna shop around, you know, I, I’m on my spouse’s plan because it’s a lower max out of pocket.

00:18:11,470	People shop and they came to our plan and said, Hey, that, that’s the best thing financially for us, so I think we invited some of that risk to our plan this year and we had to adjust for it. I really think that’s it’s strictly due to healthcare costs. Thank you. Anybody else have questions Thank you, Mr. Legacy. That was very informational. Thank you.

00:18:31,630	All right, then we’re gonna move on to the consent agenda and the consent agenda we have review and consider previous port minutes from December 15, 2025, review and consider special board meeting minutes from January 5, 2025. Review and consider a special board meeting minutes from January 15, 20202026. I’m sorry, both of those were 2026.

00:18:56,270	Aep joint powers board meeting minutes from January 8th, 2026, Aep the policy and personnel minutes from January 12, 2026. Review and consider November. 2025 bills. November 2025, revenues and expenditures in December 2025 bills and December 2025 revenues and expenditures. What are the wishes on the consent agenda? We have a motion. We have a second. And we have a 2nd.

00:19:20,230	Uh, please call Ro Horn Peters Horn Horn Peters, yes Horn Horn Peters, yes. Yes Horn yes.. Yes Horn yes.. Yes. Next item on the agenda is unfinished business. We have no unfinished business, so we’ll move on to new business.

00:19:44,900	Review and consider approval of non-renewing teaching contracts for Cassidy Schmidt at Eary at Red Chill, Sam Gallagher, Social studies at Mandan High School. Uh, Dr Bitz, can you just explain a little bit about the non-renewing and provide us a little information on that, please. Yeah, um, non-renewing just so the public understands what that means.

00:20:03,800	By state law, any contract issued after January 1st does not have continuing contract rates, um, that does not mean these people won’t be back with us next year, it’s just we don’t have to make that decision today, um, Cassidy Schmidt, uh, student taught for us in and she was the teacher record for us at Red Trail in a, I believe, 3rd grade classroom, um, we paid her as a substitute while she student taught

00:20:22,100	and now we’re gonna pay her as a teacher for the rest of the year, um, Sam Gallagher, um, started, he graduated in December from the University of Mary, um, and then now is now in, uh, Rob Birdhorse’s classroom, uh, if you remember, you let, we let Mister Birdhurst out of his contract,

00:20:38,730	um, to accept a job um with Standing Rock. on the Standing Rock reservation, so Sam is doing that, so I would ask that you approve these two contracts. All right But the wishes of the board on these two contracts. I would move that we, uh, approve the non-renewing these non-renewing teacher contracts.

00:21:00,600	All right, we have a motion. We have a second and we have a second. Any further discussions? Seeing and hearing them, please call Roll. Yes. Yes. Horn. Yes. Peters. Yes. Yes. Gander Schmidt, Wolf, yes.

00:21:25,270	Next item on the gin is review and consider the following certified teacher resignations, Bryan Palmer, special ed at Roosevelt and Lynn Haugen was the one that we added on for this one. Dr Bitz. Yeah, and these are both retirements, um, both have been long time and and teachers, um, and they’ve decided that this is going to be their last year.

00:21:42,430	Um, I would ask that you accept their retirements and thank them for their service to men in public schools. Thank you, Dr Bitz. What are the wishes of the board? I would move that we, uh, approve the two certified teacher resignations and we thank them for their many years of service. right? We have a motion. We have a second. and we have a 2nd.

00:22:01,470	Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing them, please call roll. Yes. Yes, Yes Peter Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Next item on the agenda is review and consider approval of uh Superintendent contract. if you remember, we’ve had a couple of special meetings in relation to this.

00:22:25,800	One of them to go over and uh consider who we were going to interview and then last week we had an actual interview in regard to it. Um, we went into executive session and come up with a contract to offer, um Doctoredderroth, excuse me, in relation to it.

00:22:47,370	Do you have the contract in front of you there is what we have, um, this, this one here doesn’t show Dr Red or a signature, but she has told me she has signed it, so we, from her perspective, she is willing to do this and we thank you for that.

00:23:04,530	uh, Dr Bitz, uh, Dr Redderathth, anything you two want to add before we address this issue? No, I just, I’m so thankful for the opportunity and the trust that you’re putting in me to do this job, and I’m excited to continue to work with you to serve our students in our community, and I don’t know that thank you is enough to say

00:23:16,270	to Dr Bitzs and the work that he’s done and to save I have big shoes to fill as an understatement, but I’m excited for the opportunity. So thank you. I heard he’s retiring. Maybe he’ll leave a pair there for you.

00:23:31,230	No, I just say you made an excellent choice and uh I would ask you to approve the contract. All right. What are the wishes of the board I would move that we approve the superintendent contract for Dr Ritterathth. All right, we have a motion. We have a 2nd. And we have a 2nd. Any further discussions? Any further discussions Please call roll Yes. Yes. Yes. Peters Smith.

00:23:59,500	Yes. Wolf yes, Dr Rodero, congratulations. We look forward to working with you in your role as assistant until we get to July 1st. So look forward to working with you then and congratulations, well deserved in relation to it. Thank you.

00:24:18,730	Uh, next item on the agenda is review and consider approval of open enrollment applications seeking a deadline waiver, Dr Beitzs. Yeah, I believe there’s 99 of them in front of you, um, from 3 different families, um, and it would be our recommendation that we, uh, they’re all currently Mannan students, and they want to remain here after their families moved out of district, so we would ask you to approve

00:24:39,000	these open enrollment applications. All right, what are the wishes of the board? I would move that we approve the open enrollment applications in in front of us. All right, we have a motion. We have a second and we have a 2nd. Any further discussions? I, I just, I’m gonna make my comment. I make all the time.

00:24:59,230	9 people, they moved out of town for other reasons, but they leave their students here. That says a lot about the services they’re getting here.

00:25:14,270	So I just want to say thank you to all of our teachers, all of us support staff, all of our administration, everybody, because this is a sign we’re doing something right in regard to it. So, anything else If not, please go Roll Yes. Horn. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes. Next item on the agenda is February 2nd. Regular school board at 5:30 p.m. City Hall, February 9th, facilities and finance 5 p.m.

00:25:40,970	at the Braves Center, February 17th, regular school board 7 p.m. at City Hall. That’s a 7 p.m. uh, just so you know, I’m gonna be, I won’t be here at that meeting, Mr. Horn, so I’m, I’ll be out of town. Anybody else have anything to add to the list? Go ahead. Oh, go ahead. February is a wellness committee at 4 p.m.

00:25:59,000	Also at the brace Center And the other one The 7 o’clock meetings we could, uh, switch sometimes into a 4 o’clock. which get my way sometime. Yeah. All right. Take that under advisement. Uh, anything else? I did look at the National School Board Convention were past the early bird date, so now we have till April 9th.

00:26:25,800	I think it’s still something we can do for sure. So I think by probably the end of February 1st part of March, if you could let us know if you would like to go, then we have time to make the travel arrangements. All right, sounds good. Anything else If not, we’ll Adjourn the meeting. Thanks, everybody.