Many Bismarck parents want school to end by Memorial Day.

A survey handed out at parent teacher conferences shows 60 percent of respondents favor ending by Memorial Day. The Bismarck School Board discussed the preliminary results at the board's meeting Monday.

"We postponed conferences last Thursday, which put a crimp in our results," Superintendent Paul Johnson said.

The response rate on the survey was 32 percent, but eight elementary schools and one middle school have not finished parent teacher conferences because of the storm cancelation last week. They are rescheduled for Thursday this week.

For school to end by Memorial Day, it would need to start in late August, before Labor Day. It's the only way to get the required days students must be in school combined with required days off, such as holidays and teacher training.

The survey will be given at conferences Thursday, then the calendar committee will consider the results when they meet on Friday. The school board directed the committee to make a calendar that shows a school start date after labor day in order to see how it effects the rest of the calendar.

The calendar committee has two draft calendars, one of which has early dismissal days, that both start Aug. 27.

In other board news, the contracts with Channel One were found in a box called "Whittle Communications," which was the company that owned Channel One when the student-geared news program started. The company has changed hands since then.

While the board left it up to the schools to decide, some urged that they drop the service.

"I would encourage them to discontinue it rather than keep it," board member Lawrence King said.

Board members Dan Kuntz and Marcia Olson also said they'd rather see it discontinued.

After reviewing the contracts, the district has contracts on a school by school basis instead of districtwide. The board decided to let the middle schools and high schools to decide individually whether to continue showing Channel One.

The board also is considering changes to the district's attendance policies. The new policy would combine three policies and set common criteria for schools to enforce the policy.

"Some schools would drop a student from enrollment after 10 days, and others would drop at the time a records request was made," Assistant Superintendent Fran Rodenburg said.

Part of the changes include sending letters out to parents after a students has accumulated a set number of absences and calling in child protective services when a child is chronically absent, unless there is an underlying reason, such as health, to warrant the missed days of school.

The changes will be considered at a future school board meeting.

Also, the make-up day for Thursday will be April 13, which was scheduled as a day off. It was one of two days identified in the calendar to make up for canceled school. The other day was May 22, the day after the last scheduled day of school.

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