Mandan Public Schools has received accreditation for five years.

This was the finding in a report by a committee that visited the district in October. The accreditation is through AdvancEd, an agency that evaluates school districts and how well it complies with a set of standards.

"It is always valuable to have a group of educators from outside of your school district visit your schools to determine your educational strengths and to provide recommendations for school improvement," Superintendent Wilfred Volesky said.

The report highlighted strengths and pointed out areas to improve. It looked at the district in seven categories: leadership and governance; strategic planning; valuing students and community; information; valuing faculty and staff; helping students learn; and documenting performance results.

The district needs to work on a strategic plan and improve communication, but is making strides in these areas, according to the report. The school board is meeting Thursday to learn about a strategic planning method. It also has a strategic planning committee so that it can create this plan.

Among the report's findings:

The district already has some components in place to improve communication. The board has coffee talks on a few Saturdays during the school year where community members can talk with them about what's on their mind. The coffee talks were highlighted as a good initiative. The board also started a public commenting period during school board meetings earlier this year.

For leadership and governance, the board shows a willingness to increase participation and understanding, collaborate with other entities and use a research-based approach for strategic planning. The board needs to do more to engage teachers and the community in school business, collect more feedback from stakeholder groups for long-term planning purposes and develop a public marketing strategy to promote the district's successes.

For strategic planning, the district was commended for having the motivation for wanting to start strategic planning, but the committee urged it to follow through.

In the valuing students and community category, attendance at parent-teacher conference, coffee talks, support for the middle school bond and the implementation of PowerSchool were seen as positives. The committee said it believes the district should start a public relations campaign and pursue school-business partnerships.

PowerSchool, which is a Web-based student information system for tracking things like grades and attendance, and a data-curriculum coordinator were seen as strengths for the information system category. The committee thought more could be done in the area for marketing, providing assessment and providing a communication inventory.

Employee morale, the middle school endorsement and programs for employees to access wellness opportunities and release time and other benefits for professional development were highlighted for valuing faculty and staff. The report suggested the district work on professional development planning, including training for paraprofessionals and Advanced Placement Institutes for APinstructors.

The condition of the buildings, the lunch program, the Title I programs and extracurricular programs were among the items commended by the committee in the report. The committee would like the district to come up with a facility use plan and create processes for analyzing student performance data and resource allocation.

The district was given high marks for its test scores and how it uses them, and the report finds that it could do more with studying the test results, providing other types of assessments and training for teachers in disseminating the results.

The report was released by the superintendent at the Mandan School Board meeting on Monday.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@;bismarcktribune.com.)