00:00:11,470	All right, everybody, let’s get started. It’s, uh, 530. I’ll call the Mendon Public School District number one meeting to order. It’s Monday, April 6th, 2026. Please join me with the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands.

00:00:38,330	One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thanks, everybody. Next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. Do we have any changes to the agenda? Administration has none. Does anybody else have any, uh, what are the wishes of the board on the agenda? I’d move that. We approve the agenda as is.

00:00:57,900	All right, we have a motion. We have a second, and we have a second. Any further discussion? Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing. None. Please call. Roll. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Next item is public comment.

00:01:23,700	Anybody want to address the board? Anybody want to address the board? One last time. Anybody will address the board. All right. Not seeing anybody standing. We’ll move on to the administrator’s report. First thing on administrators report is the 2026 school board election, which is June 9th, 2026. Doctor Bitz. Correct. The deadline to file is the candidate was 4:00 today. We ended up with six people filing. Filing for election.

00:01:46,570	Um. And we drew her Mr. legacy drew for the order that they’ll appear on the ballot. Um, they videotaped that, um, Justin Bailey, Julie Skerritt, Ashley. Jacob. Chick, Darren Hogan, Dusty Simmons, and Jill Miller is the order that they’ll appear on the ballot. And I see Justin, Ashley and Jill are all here tonight, so. All right.

00:02:08,370	And Darren, sorry, Ender. Yeah. Well, welcome. Good luck to you all on the election. Thanks for being here tonight in relation to that. Thank you for that. Anything else you want to add on that? No, just that the county’s running the election and, um, it’ll be together with the primary. All right. And that’s June 9th.

00:02:29,730	Yeah. All right. Next item on the agenda is State Superintendent Levi Meyer visit to Mandan High School, May 5th, 1030 to 1230 doctor bits. Yeah. Um, his office email that they would like to visit Mandan High School. Um, they gave us the hours. They’re here. Um, and you are all invited to attend. Um, if you’re able.

00:02:51,100	All right. You were going to post that as a public meeting. I will. So that we have more than a quorum. Yep. All right. Then, if I may continue on. Yeah, that’s at the high. School, right? It is at the high school? Yes. Go ahead.

00:03:06,170	Um, I was going to say the next thing is our annual retirement and recognition dinner will be held at venue 25 on May 6th, Wednesday, May 6th at 6 p.m. and I, Amy, will be sending you something if you’d like to attend. All right. Make sure you’re letting me know if you’re going to attend on that one.

00:03:29,530	Um, so make sure we got that covered in regard to it, Amy, and put me down as a yes already. Next item, uh, celebration at Mandan High School for Special Olympics unified champion schools on April 15th at 945. Correct. And this was rescheduled.

00:03:46,300	They were going to come out in December and weather prevented them from making the trip out here. Uh, Mandan is the only school in the state to receive this recognition this year. Um, just a real honor for our students. Um, and that will take place. And again, you’re welcome to attend that day as well. If your schedule allows. All right. And I hope that one goes off without a snowstorm.

00:04:05,830	I do too. It’s also tax day. All right. Any questions on any of those items for Doctor Betz. All right. Thank you, Doctor Betts. We’ll move on to the consent agenda on the consent agenda. We have review and consider previous board minutes from March 16th, 2026.

00:04:26,300	A set policy and personnel minutes from March 23rd, 2026. Except the Wellness Committee meeting minutes from March 30th, 2026. Review and consider approval of final reading of the following policies JTA education of homeless Students JT R education of homeless students.

00:04:53,930	Dispute resolution JTA, e amend and district level dispute resolution form JTA, E to McKinney Vento Homeless Program Dispute resolution initiation form GA, a solicitation by staff members G k a reduction in force GBR id military leave GBS professional organizations GCB classified positions GDB administrator hiring, promotion and transfer GD administrative leave and suspension GD communicable diseases. Significant contagious diseases g, d e r communicable diseases and significant contagious diseases.

00:05:29,700	That’s the reporting side of it. Review and consider approval of finding reading to delete the following policies GBD staff meetings in g d a administrative positions. What’s the wishes of the board? I would move that we approve the consent agenda as stated. All right. We have a motion. We have a second. Second. We have a second. Please call roll.

00:05:54,200	Yes. Yes yes. yes yes yes. Yes yes. And just for you guys in the, in the audience here in relation to some of you guys are on for board.

00:06:14,530	Uh, normally what we do on those, uh, policies in relation to we have one reading where we actually go through them and see what the changes are, and then they come back a second time for final approval. And this is the second time on the approval for the board. Just to kind of give you an idea of why we went through a bunch of policies without doing anything with them, because we did it last meeting.

00:06:28,000	Uh, next item is unfinished businesses. We have no unfinished businesses, so we’ll move to new business. Uh, review and consider approval of update school resources, office agreement with the city of Mandan. Doctor Roth. Yes, chief Zigler and Mr. Mishkin and I met about a week ago to review the current MOU.

00:06:46,630	And really, the changes, uh, and the one that is now in your packet. Updated. Just cleaned up some wording, updated. Uh, the century code sites in there had changed a little bit, but there were no substantiated changes as far as scope of service or cost of service in there.

00:07:04,200	It is written to that it’ll automatically renew each year, but we can certainly meet yearly to address it. If we needed to. Uh, chief has taken this to his board. And who needs to approve it on his end? And now I’m taking it to you to to approve.

00:07:21,530	Or if there’s anything that you have questions on, I certainly can take it back to them. Okay, so the city’s already approved it. Yes. Yep. Any questions? Comments, wishes of the board, anything on this one? I would move that we approve it. As it’s stated in the packet. All right.

00:07:48,670	We got a motion to approve the update of the school resource agreement. The city of man. And we have a second. Second, we have a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, please call roll. Yes. Yes yes. yes yes yes. Yes yes. Uh, next item review and consider approval of new Life hacks course for alternative education school students. Doctor Roth.

00:08:15,300	Yes, you’ll see a course description in your packet. This was approved by the student achievement at their last meeting. This is a class that is only state course code for alternative setting. It’s not something that we can offer in a non alternative setting. And it’s set up to be asynchronous.

00:08:31,770	And if you’ll look there’s a varying skills that students will demonstrate within this course. It might be everything from understanding a budget to understanding how to advocate for themselves medically to all those different just life skills. And it’s designed that a student could work on it and finish it in the semester.

00:08:49,500	They could work on it throughout their three years in the alternative education, however long it takes them to demonstrate their competency in these areas. Uh, that will then they can earn a half credit. So they’ll have a mentor in this. Their mentor would either be their their teacher through the Brave Center Academy. It might be Lynnette Horn, the social worker at the high school.

00:09:07,170	Whoever is appropriate for that student that can work with them and know that they understand the different concepts that are being discussed in here, and they might upload things like a job, like their pay stub or their tax return as documentation of of those skills.

00:09:23,100	So it’s it’s a neat course. Many of our students need some help in developing some of these outside of school skills to be successful. And this is a great way to do that. All right. Any questions. Go ahead. Yeah I was curious. About the curriculum.

00:09:43,630	Like the timeline of development because there were I was reading through it and some of the things I would like to have those life hacks, which means I don’t know how to do in there. So I liked it a lot. But I noticed some things about like writing checks and that kind of thing, and some of the things that felt a little dated in certain parts.

00:09:55,670	So I was curious about how often it’s updated. And I also had I saw later in it there’s some, um, fraud and, um, cybersecurity kind of things. But I was thinking about passwords and just a lot of that sort of locking down your, you know, your personal data and all of that.

00:10:09,630	It felt like there needed to be a little more emphasis there. And I was curious how often it’s updated. You know, it was just developed through, um, some consultation with some other alternative schools and what they’re currently doing. So it is kind of kind of a work in progress. And what I was telling uh, Mr.

00:10:23,930	Peters to is that to get credit, they don’t necessarily have to demonstrate every single skill. There’s a certain amount of hours in a certain amount of percentage in each area that’s appropriate depending on the student.

00:10:42,000	So for one student who’s out on their own, things like how do I access housing assistance and how do I find affordable housing might be really pertinent, opposed to somebody who’s wanting to go to college and need some help with financial aid, or so they’re able to tailor it to what that student needs. But I foresee them continuing to update and refine as they go. And artificial intelligence, too, I think.

00:11:00,170	Yeah, you know, knowing what’s real and what’s not, just some of that stuff is really important. And I didn’t see that reflected. I would make a note for sure. Yes. Any other questions? I’m going to fire off a couple. Yeah. Please.

00:11:15,400	Um, on the course code here, I’m not even sure what page this is on. Page 50. You said it was a half credit, but when I’m looking here, it says a half or one max credit equal for. I believe we are only offering it for a half credit, I think.

00:11:33,330	But with the code works is that you can award it for up to four credits if you chose to. As a school. Right now, we’re choosing to only do it as a half credit course. It’s not unlike ours. Um, some of our special education courses are coded the same way. It’s the same code for like applied topics English, but they can get it up to four times.

00:11:49,530	That’s how this code is coded as well. But we’re just choosing to leverage it as a half credit option. Okay. My other question is is do all of our full time students actually get most of the stuff? Because this is really pretty good life. It’s interesting. And it’s like, I think everybody should be getting a lot of this.

00:12:05,770	It’s interesting you brought that up because that’s exactly what student Achievement talked about. And right now it’s the state code only works for alternative. And one of the conversations we’ve had, though, honestly, is our social emotional learning curriculum is up for review at the high school and the coming years is does it make some sense to

00:12:22,370	marry some of this together? When we’re talking about life decisions and and those sorts of things, do we take an approach similar to this course and embed some of those life skills within that coursework for our freshmen and sophomores? All right. Thank you.

00:12:38,430	Anybody come up with any questions after I ask mine? If not one of the wishes of the board. I would move that we approve the new life Ax course for alternative education students. All right. We have a motion. We have a second. Second. We have a second. Any further discussion? Hearing and seeing. None. Please call the roll. Yes. Yes. Yes yes.

00:13:03,430	Yes. Shannon. Yes. Yes yes. Next item on the agenda is review. And consider approval of a first reading for the following policies CBRE, G sick leave Bank GBR, RIAA political leave h a k ratification and implement implementation of negotiated contracts h a board negotiation agent h a b a d negotiation

00:13:31,700	objectives, goals and duties I a content standards and curriculum id a career and technical education IDB Drug Education Program id a summer programs IDC, f cooperative work experience or programs IDC independent Study and correspondence course. If it’s okay with the board.

00:13:56,870	If we can do like we normally do, walk through a mall and if we have something to pull out, then we can take that separately, but address them all in one motion at the end if that’s okay. Yes, that sounds great. I’ll go through each of them and stop me if there’s questions. So the first one is sick leave bank and we didn’t change anything in this originally.

00:14:09,930	If you’ll look at number four under committee, um, it’s on the second page of the policy. We had had a conversation about changing it from consensus to majority. But once the sick leave bank gave us some feedback on, they felt really strongly that it needs to be a consensus decision.

00:14:25,470	When we’re talking sick leave bank. And we agreed. So we’re going to leave that the same as the plan with the sick leave bank policy. Words need to keep the same is going to come out of here right when. It’s final. Yes, I, I just put that in there. So I remember to talk about what we, uh. Talked about.

00:14:40,630	Yes, yes. These will get cleaned up. The second one is actually the second time you’re seeing this. This is the legislative political leave that there were some questions on last time.

00:14:57,900	So the blue in here is kind of the new wording that I put in to really clarify that both legislative leave and other elective office leave would be leave without pay, uh, for them. And just clarifying that the school district will pay for any substitute employee needed, but that the employee is responsible for the organizational coordination of the regular school responsibilities for them to function effectively and be prepared.

00:15:18,670	So just trying to clarify some of the questions that came up last time. Um, so if there’s any further questions on that, or if you feel like it clears up what some of the confusion was. Okay.

00:15:42,600	And then these next couple, we didn’t propose any changes to the ratification and implementation, uh, procedure for negotiated contracts, board negotiation, agent negotiations, objectives, goals and duties. I had Ryan Legacy, our business manager review them. The century codes were still good. We didn’t make any changes. There. Uh, the next one, the content standards and curriculum. Just cleaned a few things up, added some language in there about dual credit and Advanced Placement courses in their content standards.

00:16:02,500	Uh, but no real substantive changes. There, uh, for the career and technical education we just added in heart River, uh, career and tech, uh Technical Education Center. Since we’re now a part of that, we felt like that needed to be reflected there. The drug education program policy. We did not make any changes there.

00:16:22,270	But one of the conversations that came out is the Wellness Committee next year is going to take this policy and do a little bit of an audit of what what are we doing as a district around education? Because that was a lot of our conversation is we know they talk about it in ninth grade health.

00:16:36,530	We know counselors touch on it at the elementary level, but really trying to get a picture of what are we doing and do we have some gaps and maybe looking at that. So that came out of that conversation, but there’s no changes to the policy.

00:16:52,000	Um, summer programs just removed, um, one sentence there, but kept this policy primarily intact. And then cooperative work experiences we added in work based learning. We now have a work based learning coordinator. So we’ve expanded some of our offerings on that front. So just change the policy to reflect some of that work.

00:17:12,630	And then independent study and correspondence courses just cleaned up a few things we needed to add in the North Dakota Center for Distance Education. If we remember, legislation changed around that last session about some of our requirements to pay for courses for students. So we needed to make some tweaks to this. Um, but nothing super major. So that would be all the policies. Are there questions? Um, the descriptive.

00:17:32,500	Code. Uh, for sick pay bank was um, it’s coded wrong on our paper. It’s cb r I g but it’s actually G.B. RG so just not sure if that makes a difference for us. Oh, it’s wrong on the agenda. Yeah. On our agenda. Sorry. Mm. Okay. Thank you.

00:17:57,630	Anybody have anything else? What are the wishes of the board on the first reading of the following policies. I would move that we approve the first reading of the policy. Those said policies. Have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Thank the committee for doing all the work. They went through a bunch of policies again.

00:18:15,200	We got a we got caught up this year. We because of some federal monitoring, we were a little bit behind on our review and they did a lot of work this year. Very good group, engaged group. I do please call roll. Yes, yes yes. yes yes. yes.

00:18:34,430	Yes yes. Uh, next item on the agenda is review and consider release for contract with a request to waive liquidated damages from Connie Sheehan, counselor at Mendon High School. And Faith regress English Amendment High School.

00:18:55,930	So the first one and we’ll probably need to do these in two motions, but for for Connie, she and her letter was included in your packet. Uh, she’s requesting to be released from her contract to take a job in Minot and has some family reasons for needing to do that. So our recommendation is to release her from our contract. And, uh, Mr.

00:19:18,370	Peters and the MTA rep and I met and are recommending also waiving the liquidated damages in this situation. Uh, we feel like we have a plan to replace her internally. That will work out. So that’s part of our recommendation to release her from her contract. All right, let’s take care of that one first. Yes. Um, this is the one where the recommendation is to release from contract. And, um, the waiver liquidated damages.

00:19:39,770	What are the wishes of the board? And then we’ll go to any questions.. I move to. Um, release. her on waiver, liquidated damages. All right. We have a motion. We have a second, a second, and we have a second. Any further discussion on it? Now? Any discussion, any discussion. Seeing and hearing none. Please call. Roll. Yes. Yes. Yes.

00:20:05,700	Yes yes. Shannon. Yes. Yes yes. Uh. All right. Let’s, uh, provide the information on faith. We. Yes, yes. If she is asking to be released from her contract, uh, she has been offered a job in Bismarck. Uh, for this one, we are asking that we wait to release her from her contract, pending us finding a suitable replacement.

00:20:28,670	Um, English is is difficult right now, and we’ve already hired two in that area, so we would like to be able to find a replacement before we would release her. In addition, when we met about the liquidated damages in the situation, we would recommend that we enforce the liquidated damages for for this situation.

00:20:51,630	So your recommendation is, is that we do not at this time. Yes. Is that we will post the position, uh, and see what we can find. And if we’re able to find a suitable replacement at that point in time, we’ll bring it back to the board. And at that point, we can deal with the liquidated damage piece.

00:21:07,830	Right? Yep. What are the wishes of the board on, uh, Faith? We grasp. You to. Follow the recommendation of the committee on that front with just a note that this is consistent to how we approach these just for the audience and everything. It’s a consistent how we approach these. In general.

00:21:26,530	When someone leaves for Bismarck and he’s consistent. Yes. So typically we take into factors, things like extenuating circumstances, like a spouse moving or illness or things like that. When those extenuating circumstances aren’t, there is typically when we we look at the liquidated damages. All right. Do we have a second second and we have a second.

00:21:47,230	Any further discussion, any further discussion? If not, please call roll. Yes okay. Yes. Yes yes. Yes yes. Yes yes. Next item on the agenda is review and consider request to hire the following certified staff Ryan Kohler, Social Studies at Mandan Middle School Henrik Jacobsen, Stem at Mandan Middle School Ashley Beck, second grade at Mary

00:22:15,470	Stark Sonja Johnson, special Ed at Mandan High School Anja Shy Michael English at Mandan High School Alyssa Olson, first grade at Read Trail, and Cyril Nagurski, P.E. at Mandan High School, and the English teacher in this case is not the one to fill the one that wants to leave. Correct? Correct. Second.

00:22:37,900	Yes, it’s for another opening that we had. Okay. I just want to make sure everybody’s on the same page. With that one. Yes. And go ahead. Uh. Two things I want to note is that the Stem position at the middle school and the P.E.

00:22:51,970	position at the high school are additional FTEs we’re adding to handle. We’ve talked about our bubbles moving up to our middle school and high school. As far as large caseload or large numbers of students, and we’re needing to shift FTEs from our elementary level to our middle and high school.

00:23:08,470	So I just want you to be aware that those two positions reflect our commitment to do that. And we would recommend you accept the the request to hire all of these individuals and welcome demand. And we’re excited to have them. All right. We’re the wishes of the board. I have a question. Uh, all these new hires, uh, our teachers at Custer had first chance at this.

00:23:30,470	Didn’t they? Yes. Um, before we did any, um, new hires or internal transfers, we placed Custer staff first. Doctor and I met one on one with them a couple of weeks ago now. And on.

00:23:47,470	Honestly, that while it’s not a fun process to move people, I don’t know that it could have worked out better with the openings and where we were able to put people. Okay, thank you. And I’m assuming you said there’s a couple of new positions here by us making some of those changes at custard open up the ability to do a couple of these positions. Absolutely.

00:24:02,970	That’s part of why I wanted to note that that that was part of our intention. And when we made the hard decision to close Custer was to free up some FTEs that we could move them higher to deal with the bubbles as they’re moving up through our system.. All right. Good. All right.

00:24:19,400	Any other questions? What are the wishes of the board on the request to hire the following certified staff. I would move that. We, uh, approve the hiring of the certified staff listed. All right, we have a motion. We have a second. Second. We have a second. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing. None. Please call. Roll. Yes. Yes. Yes yes. Yes yes.

00:24:46,030	Yes yes. Next item is future meeting dates. Uh, regular school board. April 20th, 5:30 p.m.. City Hall. Regular school board. May 4th, 5:30 p.m.. City Hall. State superintendent visit. May 5th, 10:30 a.m. at the Mandan High School. Retirement and recognition. May 6th, 6 p.m. at venue 25, regular School Board. May 18th, 5:30 p.m., City Hall.

00:25:09,530	Graduation May 24th, 2 p.m., at The Star in Sports Complex and the regular school board meeting. January 22nd, 4 p.m. at City Hall. Any other meetings that should come to our attention span here? Seeing and hearing. None. Uh, meeting