Teachers and the public waited for two hours outside the Mandan School Board meeting room Monday night as the board went into executive session during the board meeting to discuss negotiation strategies.

The negotiation meeting between the board and the Mandan Education Association was supposed to start at 6:30 p.m., right after the school board meeting. However, the board members and board negotiation team hadn't agreed on a negotiator strategy.

Board member Kirsten Baesler brought before the board the North Dakota School Board Impasse Procedural Flow Chart and pointed out how the board negotiators had failed to follow the procedure. The board members were supposed to meet after the fact-finding commission released its recommendations and before the negotiators met. A few of the board members didn't know there was a negotiation meeting last Tuesday until they read it in the paper or heard about it from the public.

Lynn Wolf, school board president and negotiator, said the negotiators wanted one more opportunity to resolve the teacher contract conflict before the board meeting Monday night.

During the executive session, Wolf said, the board reviewed the fact-finding commission and came to some consensus. He said he believes the board has put a good package together.

However the teachers didn't get to hear the board's new proposal because they asked to have another negotiation meeting at noon today at the Central Administration Building, 309 Collins Ave.

"I'm very hopeful that we will be able to resolve the issues to everyone's satisfaction," Wolf said.

Before the meeting adjourned, both sides did sign off on the five of the seven items brought before the fact-finding commission. The only two remaining issues are teacher salaries and co-curricular pay, which is based off of teacher salaries.

Wolf would not comment if the board was still going to propose the one line teacher salary schedule that the MEA has refused to accept. They want to keep their current salary schedule.

While waiting in executive session, David Mellon, negotiator for the MEA, said their are two reasons why the school board wants a one-line teacher salary schedule.

"They want to be the first big school to push the one-line schedule, and it's a power issue,"Mellon said. "It has nothing to do with money."

However, after the negotiation meeting, Mellon said, "Things went well tonight. It was worth the two-hour-plus wait."

The negotiation teams have until Friday to come to an agreement on teacher salaries before the fact-finding commission will print its recommendations in the newspapers.

(Reach reporter Kayla Cogdill at 250-8251 or kayla.cogdill@;bismarcktribune.com.)