You the Welcome everybody. I like to call a meeting to order for the Mannet Public School District number one, we’re the Man down City Hall, Bosch Freelich room. Today is Monday, February 2nd, 5:30 p.m. Please join me for the pledge of allegiance. to the Republic for which it stands. our nation under God indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Thank you, everybody. Uh, next up we have approval agenda. Any additions or changes to the agenda? I do have one addition. Um, you have a letter in front of you. We received, uh, a letter of resignation this morning, and I would like to add it to the agenda, and I believe we could, um, add it under letter D. Any other changes What are the wishes of the board I would move that we approve the agenda as in the edition from Dr Bitz. Second OK, we have a motion in a second Ms. Robinitch, please call roll Yes Yes. Yes, yes, yes. A public communication. Anybody in the audience wishing to speak to anything on the agenda? Anybody in the audience going once, twice. OK. Next up, the administrator’s report. Uh, first up, we got early learning update, uh, Janet Basen Bazinwe, uh, Dr Redroth. Yes, um, I’d love to introduce you to Janet. Uh, last year, if you’ll remember, she and I spoke to you a little bit about the Playlab concept that we had going for early learning. Uh, we hired Janet a handful of years ago as part of our early learning grant, and she has done phenomenal work, not just for Manan public schools, but in our community with her early learning, um, Spark activities at the library, the work she’s done with gearing up for kindergarten, family playgroups. I could keep going on and on, and we, if you remember right, Ferris Field, and she’ll talk a little bit about that. We have the old locker room down there that we’ve repurposed into some space, uh, that she’s been leveraging now for early learning, and she’s going to give you the update on that and all the exciting things going on. So with that, I’ll let Janet talk. Thank you for, um, allowing me the opportunity to come and share some of the exciting things that we’re doing with the early Learning initiative at Mandan Public, um, and some of the work that’s happening um within Man and Little Learners. In your packet that you received today, I did just a little write up of some of the different programs that we have been doing up until this point. Um, I just want to highlight some of those great things, um, that we’re continuing to do within this work and then talk more about the play lab and and some of the great things that are happening there and, and our ideas for future things within, within the play lab and withal also for the community of Mandan and the Little learners here. Um, so we continue to work with Amanda and Early Learning Coalition. Um, right now we are 33 members strong, and this coalition meets monthly, its agencies and organizations that you see on the screen here that touched the lives of children and families not yet enrolled in our kindergarten programs. And, um through the coalition, we, we really just brainstorm and think about how we can work together to leverage our resources and support each other in the work that we’re doing and the play lab is one of the things that has come out of these conversations and the coalition really supporting what’s happening down in the play lab and in that building and and making the programs work. We still continue to do gearing up for kindergarten in the district, um, like Dr Redderathth said, we’re still doing Spark, um, story and activity time at the library, and we continue to do family playgroup in collaboration with the University of Mary Pre-professionals. So I just wanted to share some of those numbers with you quick. Um, this is our 5th year of doing gearing up for kindergarten. We have 7 classrooms running. We meet once a month with incoming kindergartner and as of today, we have 112 students enrolled in that program. It’s about 1/3 of our incoming kindergartner. So we’re really excited about that. Um, like I said, we’re still doing Spark at the library, and our numbers are really strong there. um, I offer Spark twice a month, um, at the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month. We have a morning session and an afternoon, late afternoon after school session, um, and so we have, we have great partic participation there. And then our family playgroups with the University of Mary, we offer them, um, 3 times each semester. We just had our uh group last Saturday and we were able to do it at the Play lab, which was really exciting for us. So we do 6 of those a year and um those numbers are really strong as well. So one of the reasons that we wanted to look at what else can we do within the community and with some of the facilities and programming shifting within the district? Was there a space for us? And, and that’s what we talked about last year as we were pursuing partnerships and grant funding opportunities to do some expansion, um, and we are down at the Ferris Field building, uh, this year. And one of the reasons we, we wanted to make sure that we grow and continue and leverage all of these things that we’re already doing is because of this right here. We’ve been tracking our impact within the district since the beginning of the program, and, um, so we, we look at fall incoming kindergarten scores, um, before we’ve really done anything with them in the kindergarten classrooms and um these are the percentile scores of the NWEA math. Her map scores, um, so we hit, we peaked last year, well, hopefully not pe ak but last year we hit 79 percentile, which is phenomenal. Um we’re just, we’re at the top of the state with our incoming kindergartners, um, and we wanted to make sure that we were doing, continuing to look for opportunities to, to do more of the work that we’re doing. So, Man Dan and Little learnner’s play lab was opened in December of this year. Um, we are down at the Ferris Field building, um, the, the goal of this space is just to offer more experiences, more events, more opportunities to help families and their caregivers support some of those early learning initiatives in a very authentic, play-based way. With a space where um they can focus on all kinds of learning skills from every domain and and different discipline areas, and a key to this is for parents and caregivers to come in and just unplug and explore and engage in the opportunities, um, and ideas and and resources that we have for them. This is the building, I believe it’s 4300 square feet. I don’t know, Mister Legacy can correct me on that. Um, but if you’ve been in the building when it was a locker room, this is what the bill is, is looking like now, and I do have um some pictures that I want to show you as well. So we have a play lab side and a community room side, um. the district is supporting the operations and the upkeep of the building and my position. Um, we were able to look in back closets and storage rooms and um gather some tables and chairs and equipment and some material within the district and the rest of the programming and the rest of the things that you see within the play lab are all supported through sponsorships, contributions, and grants, um, from the community or different entities that are interested in being part of this project So to date, as I said, we’ve only been open since the first week of December. We’ve already had 134 families come through and experience our space, resulting in 243 individual little learners have been, um, participating in the programs that we’ve been offering there. For the most part, we offer a playgroup on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning and then 1 in the afternoon from 3:30 to 5:30. I usually have a 15 minute story time or activity time as a full group, and then the children explore with their grown-ups or caregivers and engage in different learning experiences and opportunities and, and my role is to set those learning experiences up and to walk around and talk to families about development, uh, about their little people, um, about things we’re seeing and and learning and and doing. We also have different programs within the coalition that has been utilizing the space, early childhood special ed, um, is now, um, completing their preschool selective screenings there. Healthy Families has done a playgroup. We’ve done the University Mary Playgroups designer jeans had a playgroup, um, last Saturday as well. We’ve had a couple of preschool groups come in and use the space, um, nurse family partnerships, and we continue to grow the different programs that we’re offering within the space. It’s completely free for families to come and join us. They can look on the man Daniel Lerner’s website. There’s a whole page, um, for the play lab that has the schedule and the hours, um, how to connect with me and um how to get to the building, which has been a little bit interesting as well. Um and we just, we look forward to continuing our partnerships and and growing our programs there, reaching out to the sponsors and the collaborators that are interested in in what we’re doing. This project and, and the other work that we’ve been doing, um, with the early Learning initiative in in Mandan is getting statewide recognition. We’ve had, um, a couple programs come and visit and look at what we’re doing within the community as a whole. Um, I’ve been able to present at several um Department of Health and Human Services, tasks force and um work groups and committees. I actually just finished writing the school readiness guide for the state, and it’s all based, they asked me to do it because they wanted me to base it on the approach of what we’re using here in Mandan. Um, I’m part of the BPI Early Learning Committee. also looking at how do we help other districts look at this approach of this community-wide organization and and focus on on early learning. So that’s been really exciting for us as well. Any questions I was going to ask what the Play lab, do you see yourself expanding into more days as it grows. We do, and we’ve already had families, um, request more days. We’re adding more Saturdays to the calendar. I am currently a one-person show. So, um, really thinking uniquely about how arranging schedules and getting our partner agencies, um, more comfortable with this space so that we can have more Saturday programming, um, so we had last Saturday, we will be able to do this Saturday as well. So we’re hoping to do at least 3 Saturdays a month through the Coalition Partnerships, um, and then expanding those afternoon times out as well for the afterschool programs, and we have a lot of ideas about bringing more groups in and and being more inclusive within the space as well. It’s exciting to hear kind of the, the recognition you’re getting. So he has the space you have now, is that adequate or or based on your numbers, are you projecting needing more space or how is that looking? We used to do this program in the community room in the library, so the space right now feels amazing, um, but yes, I could see us outgrowing this the space as well. We’re, we’re in there comfortably right now. Any other questions OK Thank you. Thank you Next up we have the assistant assistant superintendent Vacancies, Dr Rudderra. Yeah, just a quick update. We opened the application process on the 22nd of January and plan to have it open through the 20th of February. Right now we do have 8 applications that have come through so far. On the 24th then our plan of February is to review applications, uh, Mr. Legacy, myself, a representative from our administrators a representative from our teachers, uh, will be present to do that. It is something that if board members want to join us to do, they are more than welcome. We just need to remember if we do have more than one board member there, we will have to notice it as a public meeting, which isn’t a problem. We just would have to approach it that way. If not, I do have all the applications if you ever want to come look at them, review them, any of those pieces, then our hope is to do interviews March 5th, uh, with the panel style, Ho, at least 3 school board members, however, anybody who wants to sit in on that will be welcome A teacher and administrator, our business manager. I’d like one of our administrative assistants that works within the superintendent’s office and myself be a part of that process and then that group will conduct an interview, rate the individuals and make a recommendation to the board for the hire. So right now that is the process if there’s any questions, I can to them time is it on both the review and the um, we can be flexible the 24th. I was thinking probably 4 o’clock at the end of the day if we’re going to have a teacher and an administrator, uh, but if we have several board members that want to be a part of it, we could do an evening meeting. And the 5th, I blocked off the entire day, just depending on the number of candidates we have. Uh, I would plan on that being a full day. So would you like board members to notify you for if you’re interested, please reach out to me if you want to be a review applications on the 24th and be if you want to be on the interview committee, and I will come combine those lists, and then we can decide if we need to notice it as a meeting. Dr Rearth know if you’re interested in that. Otherwise, uh, superintendent’s summitative evaluation, Dr Bitz, yes, by state law you have to evaluate me, this spring by March 15th, um, you will be getting an email this week from Amy Reinitch, um, with that evaluation. So please complete that. And if you can get that back in by February twenty-eighthth, that would be great. So this will be our last one of you, so. Be nice, yes. OK, so we’ll watch for that email then, so. Uh, next up, consent agenda consent agenda we have approved previous board minutes from January 24, 2026 and accept student achievement minutes from January 12, 2026. I would move that we approved the consent agenda. I’ll second we have a motion in a second Ms. Reinitch, please call roll. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We have nothing on unfinished business, moving a new business. We’ve got a few policies here, so we’re reviewing that approval of first reading the volume policies, uh, Dr Ruderathth, do you want us just to ask questions as we go through them? Yeah, um, the new, the new policy or the policies to review have really minor changes to them, so we can go through them individually if you would like, but there are, there’s no substantial changes to the approval of the first reading of any of those policies. Any any questions on anything there? So you’re done OK So we’ve, uh set approval first reading the following policies GBRIA jury duty, GB RA Drug and alcohol-free Workplace GBRAA drug and alcohol testing for safety, sensitive employees GBRH Professional Leve of of absence. GBRI Family medical leave, GBRI dash R Family and Medical Le procedures. What is the wishes of the board I would move that we prove the first reading of those, said policies. second OK, we have a motion on second in discussion Otherwise, Mr. Reinic, please call roll Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes Except we review and consider approval of the first reading to delete. a policy Dr Rednerroth, yes, this one is professional and personal workload and actually Lori Langing, who’s part of the policy community kind of gave us some reference on this. This stems before, now we compensate teachers if they’re picking up another classroom or subbing when we don’t have a sub. So if we split a 3rd grade class between two teachers, those teachers now get compensated for that. Or if I pick up seven period biology, I get compensated for that. We haven’t always done that, and that’s where this policy stemmed from. Now that we do that piece, we didn’t feel like there was a need for this workload policy anymore. Any questions on the policy change And none So we got review and consider approval of first readings to delete the GBRC professional workload policy. What is the wishes of the board I’ll move to approve Mhm We have a motion in the 2nd to delete the policy in discussion hearing none, Mr. Reminiitbucaro. Yes. Yes Yes. Yes, yes. Next up we review and consider approval of 2026 Mannan School District School Board election timeline, Mr. Legacy. Yes, good evening. Included in your packet is a sample timeline for, uh, the 26, um, school board election. Uh, this is our the best year for me because the county will run our election. I love it. Um, but I’m gonna ask for you to set the date for June 9th, which will be in conjunction with all of our county elections. And on that timeline, there’s really two dates for you to be aware of, uh, June 9th is the election date, and then April 6th will be the filing deadline for candidates. uh, this year we’re going to have Mr. Haugen, Miss Hoovestall, and Miss Peel are up for re-election, so that will be the date for, uh, those 3 to get me their filing docs if, if interested, so, but I would ask for action to approve June 9th as our school board election date. Any questions on that Otherwise, what is the wish of the board I would move that we approve the June 9th as the uh. 2026 school board election date. Motion in the second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Miss. Robinitz, please call roll. Yes Yes. Yes. Yes, yes. Next up, review and consider requests to be released from teaching contracts and have the penalty waived. uh, Dr Bits, you, uh, in your package should be a letter from Janae Korn. She’s an English teacher at Mandan High School, um. she would like to work. I don’t have it in front of me right now, but March, end of March, basically, um, and she has arranged for Seth Peterson, um, to sub for her the rest of the year, Mister Peterson is a long time uh man and English teacher, um, so I think she arranged for their class to be covered for the rest of the year. And then we would open that position up for next year. Um, her husband is gonna be working out of town a lot and she took a job that allows her to work from home, which was better for daycare, um, the way our, the way it works, Mr. Peters, who’s the head of the Policy and Personnel Committee and Chelsea Bitner from MEA and I meet. Uh, we discussed the, the penalty for breaking contract. Um, it is our recommendation that we waive that penalty. She kind of arranged for her substitute, got it all covered, um, arranged nicely. So, our recommendation would be to release her without penalty. Typically with the penalty, that’s kind of on a case by case basis. It is. It is. Yeah Any questions on that I just had a question, not specifically just for her, but have you seen when teachers are and in the middle of a semester and they changed any struggles with student adapt. We do it. It is tough. Um, especially when we don’t have a substitute with that degree, you know, at the high school level, um, at the elementary, we usually can find an elementary teacher to step in. Um, in this case, we do have a seasoned veteran teacher who’s able to step in, but that’s not always the case. And I think that’s what we appreciated is she came to us with a solution, um, so, no. What are the wishes of the board I would move that we approve Mrs. Corn’s request to be released from her teaching contract without penalty. I’ll second Yeah motion the 2nd in discussion Otherwise, Mr. Rabinic, please call roll. Yes Yes. yes yes Next up, review and consider following certified resignations. We have, uh, Dave Steckler, principal at R Rachel Elementary, and we added, uh, Molly Cleeneringer who’s a special ed teacher at Lewis and Clark, um, both are great educators, hate to lose them both. Um, Dave is retiring and Molly is making a decision to stay at home with her uh, child for a few years. So, um, it would be my recommendation that you accept both these, one retirement, one resignation, and thank them for their service to man in public schools. Any questions on those? What are the wishes of the board I would move there. We approve the two resignations and thank them for their service, uh, I, I worked with Dave and I always appreciated working with Mr. Steckler. very professional uh, principal I second motion a 2nd, any discussion. Carry none, Miss Reinitz, please call roll. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes Review and consider requests to issue teaching contracts for the 2026, 2027 school year on March 2nd, 2026. Dr Bentz, if you remember, we negotiated a two-year contract with our teachers last year, so we don’t have to negotiate this year by state law, the earliest contracts can go out as March 1st. That happens to be a Sunday, so we’re going to go March 2nd, um, and they’re due back two weeks later, so they’ll be due back Monday the 16th of March. And with your permission, we will get those contracts out on that timeline Two weeks of standard um we always do, they get 14 days by state law. So, yeah. Any questions What is the wishes I’ll make a motion to issue teaching contracts for the 2026, 2027 school on March 2nd of 2026. We have a motion on the 2nd in discussion. Otherwise, Mr. Reinitch, please call roll. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes, yes. Next up, review and consider requests to approve open enrollment applications seeking a deadline waiver. I think we’ve got that in front of us. uh, Dr Bitz. Seems like we have at least one of these every meeting. Um, this is again, a family, a Mandan family who has moved out of our district who would like to continue attending here. It would be our recommendation that you approve this request. Any questions Where are the wishes I would move that we approve the open enrollment in front of us. I’ll motion a 2nd. Any discussion? Otherwise, Ms. Robinic, please call roll. Yes. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. except we have future meeting dates, uh, we’ve got February 9th facilities and finance 5 o’clock at the Reef Center. Our March or February 17th regular school board meeting at 5:30 is being canceled at this time due to lack of of items for discussion there. Otherwise, we’ve got March 2nd regular schooler mean 5:30 City Hall, and then one where, uh, February 23rd policy and personnel 5 o’clock at the Brave Center. Any other meetings that we’re missing? OK, otherwise we are Adjourned.