Bismarck Public Schools received a recommendation for district accreditation at the close of its first North Central Accreditation visit.

The recommendation came at the end of an exit report given at the Knaak Center at Bismarck High School on Wednesday afternoon. The accreditation would encompass all the district schools. North Central Accreditation is a separate accrediting organization from the state accreditation. It compares the district's policies and procedures for meeting a set of national standards.

Prior to the visit, officials at Bismarck Public Schools submitted a report to NCA on how it believes it meets the national standards. The visit gave educators from the region an opportunity to verify the system meets the criteria for accreditation, find what the district does well and find areas for improvement.

"You are doing a very good job educating students," said David Hurst, who was chairman of the visiting committee. "You want to be great by focusing on individual students."

A focus on individual instruction was one of the few recommendations the visiting team provided. The other recommendations are on issues the district is already tackling. They were to create plans for all-day, every-day kindergarten; address facility and space needs; reorganize grade levels; and reconsider open enrollment policies.

The Bismarck School Board has discussed possibly changing its policy on open enrollment to no longer accept open enrollment requests. It will consider the issue more in-depth at a retreat this summer.

As for all-day, every day kindergarten, it has gathered information from the community on its feelings about changing, and crunched numbers for space.

Addressing grade configuration and space needs is a recurring topic at board meetings. The concern is that it would require at least one new school and there are concerns about how to pay for it. Board members have said it is not a good time to float a bond issue.

Other recommendations by the visiting team were to ensure consistency in how employees use the balanced scorecard. This is the district's format for strategic planning.

This format was commended by the team as well for providing a clear direction to employees on where the district is focusing its efforts. The balanced scorecard looks at different objectives, like student achievement and fiscal responsibility, and gives ways to meet the objective and ways to measure if it is being met. For example, the district wants to engage students in the school and community. It measures this through surveying the students and tracking how many students are in co-curricular activities.

Other areas the team highlighted Bismarck for doing well: educating special education students, communicating with the community and reaching at-risk student groups.

"Several parents said they moved into the district because the services are so good," Hurst said.

Regularly scheduled public forums, parent organizations and parent access through power school were among the avenues of communicating with the community.

In light of shootings at Virginia Tech, it shows a need to help these students, Hurst said, and Bismarck does an exceptional job. Among the programs are the parent liaisons for American Indian students, Students in Transition coordinators, South Central High School and Read Right.

The recommendation by the visiting team will be reviewed by the state NCA office before it is forwarded to the NCA board of trustees. The board meets twice yearly, and it could be November when it considers Bismarck's accreditation, Hurst said.

The only other district in the state to have NCA district accreditation is Fargo Public Schools. About three years ago, NCA started accrediting districts instead of individual schools. The idea is that the district holds the schools to the same standards, Hurst said.

The Bismarck Schools also are accredited by the state of North Dakota. A final report of the NCA visit will be available to the district in 30 days. In two years, it will have to do an online update on its progress on the recommendation, and in five years there will be another site visit.