Current MPS Board President Mike Gessner is the lone incumbent, while Kaylee Bourquin, John Carey, Bill Irmen, Lacey Laudenschlager, Scott Louser, and Darrik Trudell are newcomers.

Minot native Bourquin earned a degree in criminal justice with minors in accounting and fraud examination at Minot State University and has worked in the financial sector for 13 years. Gessner and Irmen are both former educators who spent their whole careers teaching at MPS for 47 and 32 years, respectively.

Laudenschlager is a Sawyer native working as a Realtor in Minot, who also taught for three years within the Minot Catholic Schools. Louser is another Minot native and local Realtor, who is a state legislator representing District 5 in the House of Representatives.

Carey is a retired airman who served for 23 years and now works as a technical adviser at Minot Air Force Base. Trudell is another MSU graduate, working as a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security after stints with the U.S. Secret Service and as a Parole and Probation officer.

KayLee Bourquin

The candidates responded to questions to identify key areas of concern and priorities which drove them to seek one of the open school board seats.

What about your background or experience do you feel translates to the duties of the school board?

Carey: I’m a transplant. I came here with the Air Force in 2000. While I was in I earned a couple degrees — an associate in applied science and a bachelors in technical management. We PCS’d here from Whiteman Air Force Base. We volunteered. We wanted to come to Minot. We’ve been members of this community ever since. I’m the disengaged average citizen in this city. The reason I wasn’t engaged was because we weren’t blessed with kids. Even though my wife has worked with the Minot Public Schools for 17 years as a paraprofessional; even though all of that was around me, I still wasn’t engaged with what the school board was doing. I don’t have any internal biases. I’m just looking at this for the first time. I’ve always been a data-driven guy. I have to analyze data, and the data has to speak to me. For the most part, the data doesn’t lie. It tells you what is what, whether you like it or not.

Bourquin: I have worked in the financial industry for the last 13 years and am a Certified Financial Counselor. I am familiar with financial documents, budgeting and making tough decisions. I have served on the Minot Lions board for the last five years as club administrator and am currently the president. Through these opportunities I have gained many great skills,such as being a strong and respectful communicator, active listening, and being able to build relationships to help achieve real, impactful change. These leadership skills will contribute to being a productive school board member. Being a parent of two and sending my children to MPS for the first time and having a child who will be on an IEP entering into his first years of school, I have a unique lens on what that process looks like for new parents registering their children and how it can be improved or built upon.

Gessner: I’ve been a resident of Minot since 1956. I graduated from Minot High School. I graduated from Minot State. I have taught here for 47 years. I’ve been a member of Minot Education Association for 40 years. I’ve been on MEA’s bargaining for a number of sessions and was a past president. I did school improvement for our school district and did the data analysis. In 2020, some asked me if I was considering running for school board. As I thought about it, we talked about building this new school. My thoughts were about this system of 9-12. We were one of the last schools in the country to split them. My goal is to aid in the growth of this community and support our administrator and instructors in reaching this goal.

Darrik Trudell

Laudenschlager: I’ve always been closely tied to education. My mom taught K-12 music education in a small town her entire career, so I was able to see education from a “teacher’s kid” perspective. After high school, I pursued a BS in history and Spanish. I spent my first three years after college teaching Spanish for Minot Catholic Schools. I’ve had my sights set on the school board for about 10 years, but haven’t felt that it was the right time until now. I have done whatever I can to stay involved in the school system over the last decade. I’ve served on the three bond and realignment committees, helped in classrooms and coached various teams. I currently have four children enrolled in MPS — two at Jim Hill and two at Washington. Our district has changed tremendously during this time and I believe having been an active participant as a parent, committee member and volunteer have helped prepare me to take on this role.

Louser: My 14 years of legislative experience — including chairing committees and introducing bills that helped with the inflationary costs of construction for MPS — got me intimately involved in the process and purpose of the school board. As the real estate broker who brought the opportunity of the new building to the school system for only $10, it fulfilled a vision that I had for years to have a second high school in Minot, and through that and other initiatives, I’ve become even more passionate, but being a father of two daughters in the system and of a son who graduated MHS (as well as myself), nothing is more important than the education of our students in Minot.

Irmen: I have spent the majority of my adult life immersed in not only education, but in Minot Public Schools. From the classroom, writing curriculum, working on state and national standards and assessments, coaching, contract negotiations, I have many rich experiences. And now that I’ve spent time in the non-educational world of work, I appreciate even more those who educate our students and the demands they have to face.

Trudell: I think it gives me a very unique perspective of it. What experience do I have as an educator in telling teachers how to teach and running a school? Twenty years of being a criminal investigator comes into play. I’m not saying the administration doesn’t give the board good information or input, but in any investigation there’s multiple people involved. In everyone’s perspective, they have their own point of view. If I’m only getting information from the administration, I’m only getting what they know. The decisions that the school board is going to make impact you and I as community members. Nobody’s goal is to make poor decisions. It’s all about the process of how to get there. You go out and you talk to people and you gather information. Then you organize that information, assess it, weed out the emotion and get to the facts. The best approach is to talk to all people and understand how the decision being made is going to impact them.

In what ways could transparency and engagement with parents and the public be increased or enhanced?

John Carey

Gessner: We need to hear from board members at meetings. If you have a question, you need to ask. If you have a statement, let’s make it here so you aren’t walking away frustrated. There’s no such thing as a dumb question. If you have it, someone else out there is going to have that question on the board or in the public. Let’s answer that question for everybody. We as a board need to be more open, have more open dialogue so things are answered for the public either by the superintendent or a board member. If we talk it around, pretty soon we will come to a consensus. We haven’t been.

Irmen: I’d like more input from the public at school board meetings. Students engaging in service learning projects are a great way for us to engage with our community. I’d also like to see us create more opportunities and events to invite community members to come into our schools and interact, not just go to their kid’s band concert. But those as well, of course.

Trudell: There’s some meetings where they’ll put something in there for public input, but there’s not a dialogue. If the public wants to speak, they have to go up to a lectern in a somewhat intimidating setting they aren’t comfortable or familiar with and present their idea. We need to look at being able to provide a less intimidating, more informal format to have dialogue and conversation. These meetings don’t have to be contentious. I want to hear people’s input. I’m sure there’s some really smart people who can provide a lot of input and ideas to the budget of Minot Public Schools. We should seek them out and listen to them. I expect my opinions to change. I’d welcome people asking me why I voted some way. People elected us to the school board, and they’re owed an answer. Not everyone is going to agree with it, but they’ll understand why I made the decision.

Bourquin: I would encourage the district to implement a public information officer. The benefits of this role would impact everyone from students, teachers, parents and the community as a whole. MPS would be able to better communicate uniformed and consistent messages with more transparency. We could utilize Facebook and other social media platforms more effectively as many individuals use these sources for information. Making sure that parent apps for smartphones are accessible and uniformed throughout the district is important. Our website is also a great resource but needs to have work done on it to make it more user friendly. The board would also benefit from having more public forums for individuals to come speak at. Having forums more frequently will help the board understand the thoughts and needs of the community outside of only giving them time to talk in regards to a certain topic.

Carey: The relationship between the school board and all of the factions is strained. It’s strained with the taxpayers because they feel like they’re tapped out. It’s strained with the teachers because they were blindsided by the closing of the two schools. The administrators are strained because they have to find ways to make us leaner and cut the budget. The main thing we have to do is effectively communicate and be transparent in everything that we do. We have to earn the taxpayer’s trust back. We have to show teachers that we care about what they do. They’re in the trenches everyday. If we get more citizens engaged, everybody wins. We win as a community, and we don’t have enough who are engaged.

Lacey Laudenschlager

Laudenschlager: I think one of the easiest ways of increasing transparency and engagement with parents and the public is by simply having a more active social media presence and a more user-friendly website. We live in the age of technology, social media and the internet. This is the first place most people go to find information, and if it’s not available or difficult to find, that is a communication issue, and certainly one we can avoid.

Louser: Both transparency and engagement could be enhanced by more publicly promoting board meeting announcements and agendas, including using social media. I believe the option of having listening forums within the school or public remarks available at monthly board meetings would be beneficial as well. The recent use of the apps Parent Square and Power School have greatly improved the communication with parents and the continued use of those by teachers and administrators over email will likely lead to more efficiency and better engagement with parents.

What does “making the students the number 1 priority” mean to you?

Laudenschlager: Making students the #1 priority is all-encompassing to me. All of the big things like teacher retention/morale, open and transparent communication within the district and community, and having a sustainable budget funnel down to the students. It catches up with you after a while, and if you’re not taking care of these things, little problems turn into big problems that ultimately affect students.

Louser: Decisions made at the school board level should begin and end with the concept of what’s best for the students. There are many constituent groups that are reliant upon decisions such as the parents, the taxpayers, the community in general, the teachers and staff employed and the state as a whole. Students as the #1 priority should include focus on year over year performance improvement as well as increased proficiency scores, graduation rates and attendance. Further, the board can help set the vision for increased safety, engagement and enhanced education and extra-curricular opportunities for all students.

Mike Gessner

Irmen: Start with the students, all of the students. In public education we provide the best possible, safest education to all students from special needs to students taking dual credit classes that count towards their college degree. In order to do this, we need to keep the excellent teachers we have and attract teachers we need. Parent involvement is also important, both through communication and collaboration.

Trudell: For every kid to have an opportunity to get an education and to prepare them to be successful in their lives. But I can’t define what “success” is for some people, and the measure of academic success for each kid is based on that individual too. You have to be able to provide them with the resources and tools to help them. We have to provide an environment that is conducive to learning. Those teachers are spending a lot of time with those kids. They should be empowered to teach that classroom in the most effective manner they deem appropriate. If we hire someone to do a job, we should let them do their job. Those elected need to spend time at schools with teachers. If you run a company and don’t spend time with the people who work for you, how can you understand them?

Bourquin: It means making sure that all children, no matter their background or abilities, have the opportunity to get a quality education in a safe environment with qualified teachers. It means working together to remove any barriers that might stand in a child’s way of achieving academic success. Having programs that help assist students in areas of need and not letting our children go unseen. Having a variety of classes and activities for students to join to empower them and assist them in finding their path after graduation. It means creating a positive environment where our students feel accepted and valued.

Carey: No matter what this school district tries to do, if they want to enhance the quality of education in the district, whether they want to retain quality teachers, it begins and ends with the budget. I started looking into it, and things didn’t start adding up to me. Since 2016-2017 we have always been in the red. When you’re ingrained in the system, you lose your objectivity. At the forum, I said I would hire a budget/financial consultant. It wouldn’t be anyone within the school system. It would be a one-time hire; you’d contract them out to tell us what we can do with the budget. You can’t do anything that’s going to affect the quality of the education or affect teachers’ pay, but you can do so many other things. If you can get yourself a balanced budget, you can negotiate higher raises for the teachers.

Gessner: You want to be working with students eye to eye. For a lot of kids, activities are the reason why they get up and go every day. We want our kids to come every day. The band and extracurricular activities draw a lot of kids, and it’s important for them to participate. What our district is about is growing our community and educating our citizens so that they become successful contributors to society. We are trying to meet our society’s needs and wants. They are expected to be there every day that they possibly can and do the work they are assigned. Ask the questions no matter how insignificant they may be. If the question is in that student’s head, it needs to be answered. Our society depends on these students garnering the knowledge and work ethic to become productive members of it. My goal is to aid the growth of this community by supporting our administrators and all employees in providing the best education for our citizens and youth.

What significant goals would you hope the board to achieve during your term should you be elected?

Bourquin: One significant goal would be to realign the budget so we are no longer operating in a deficit. This may take shape in many different forms, such as cost cutting, working with state legislators for additional state funding, making MPS the #1 choice for students to increase the per pupil funding, and to continue looking for grant-writing opportunities. We can then continue working towards fiscal responsibility and ensuring that our dollars are being spent to directly impact our children’s education. Bussing students is always a goal for me. We’ve seen this as a barrier for a long time in Minot with the cold weather and other transportation challenges, which then increases absenteeism in students.

Louser: Successful school boards set policy and vision, place the right teams in place and let them do their job while holding them accountable to those policies and visions. Significant goals would include increased graduation rates and improved test scores on balance in the district, a balanced budget without levying additional mills, the passage of a bill proposal at the Legislature that I’ve drafted having the state replace the mandatory 60 mills currently leveled locally, a smooth transition opening the new Minot North High School and Central Campus as a middle school, a smooth transition for the McKinley and Bell students and a successful transition for the new superintendent and assistant superintendent. Finally, I look forward to an energized city of Minot as a whole with the opening of the new school and creating excitement and passion around “gold sharpening silver and silver sharpening gold.”

Carey: You have to deal with the realities that are in front of you. We have kids who are just barely meeting North Dakota’s average math and English scores. We’ve got to get those scores up. I would see Minot Public Schools having the best quality education, our teachers being some of the highest paid teachers in the state and our budget balanced. You put those three together, and you win.

Gessner: I want to be there to support our administration and our employees in the opening of this new school. If we’ve got some things we need to do, I want to be working with them to support their needs so we get it open and done the right away within budget. We’ll have to be mindful of the money that is there and do with what we have. Now we’re going to have that student from grades 9-12 in one building. Will we see students getting a perfect score on the ACT? That would be wonderful.

Laudenschlager: My short-term goals for the district are to get Central Middle School and Minot North open and going in a solid direction, start chipping away at the budget and establish a high level of open and transparent communication practices within the district and community. My long-term vision for the district is that we are the premiere public school system in the state, with a reputation of academic excellence, providing the best education and environment for those with needs, and being known for treating our teachers and staff with the utmost respect and admiration. I want Minot Public to be the “go to” place for families to send their kids and the place where it’s nearly impossible to find a teaching job.

Trudell: The goal for everybody should be to get our budget in line and make sure the public, administration, teachers, all parties affected by it, understand it — that there’s no surprises. It’s just numbers. Here’s how much money we have; we can’t spend more than that. How do we accomplish educating our kids with this amount of money? Then you have to prioritize those objectives.

Irmen: Providing the best, safest education for our children. It’s always about what’s best for kids. Attracting, retaining and supporting our teachers. Being a good steward and representative for the citizens of Minot. We need to continue to prepare our students for the world that awaits them while keeping an eye on the future to evolve our curriculum and embrace change.

Scott Louser