North Dakota has seen an increase in the graduation rate for Native American students.

State school superintendent Kirsten Baesler said when she was first elected, the Native graduation rate was 57 percent. Now it’s 72 percent. And Baesler said while that is significant progress, there’s more to do.

The overall graduation rate in North Dakota is 89 percent.

Baesler attributes the better numbers for Native American children in part to more engaged school boards.

The North Dakota National Guard and other state and local agencies are preparing for potential spring flooding around the state.

National Guard Adjutant General Alan Dohrmann said a state team has been meeting to talk about response plans, and the Guard is reaching out to its partners at the local level.

"Ther's only one agency that has the actually has reserve forces, and that's the National Guard," Dohrmann said. "If things get tough, we know we have to come in and help out."

The Bismarck Airport will be looking at some improvement projects in mind for 2020 and beyond.

Topping the “to do” list: parking. The airport has set records for passemger boarding for the past 10 years.

"We have to kind of work to find places to park all the cars," said Airport manager Greg Haug.

Haug said he believes this past Christmas season saw a record number of cars being parked at the airport. And he said with the growing passenger traffic, parking is a big issue.

Nearly 1.2 million passengers boarded commercial airplanes in North Dakota in 2019.

That makes it the second busiest on record for North Dakota airports. And it was up about 10 percent from 2018.

Seven of the eight commercial airports in the state showed more passengers than they did in 2018. And three airports – Bismarck, Devils Lake and Fargo – set new records.

Come this fall, Goodrich will no longer have its own high school.

It will enter a co-op with McClusky High School.

"Declining enrollment," is the reason given by Goodrich Superintendent and Principal Rodney Scherbenske.

Goodrich will keep a K-6 grade school, and grades 7 to 12 will go to McClusky.

Scherbenske said next year, Goodrich would have had 4 students in 7-12, and he says McClusky would have 15 students.

"Very few kids left in Sheridan County, between both schools," Scherbenske said.

For the first time since 2018, USDA is accepting applications for the Conservation Reserve Program.

And the state Game and Fish Department is offering help to farmers who are interested in signing up for CRP.

Game and Fish private land supervisor Kevin Kading said he hopes to show landowners that CRP-created wildlife habitat makes it a great fit for the department’s Private Land Open To Sportsmen program, or PLOTS.

"We might be able to help them out in some ways with cost-share assistance, or some other incentives, if they're interested in CRP," Kading said.

A milestone in the clean-up of diesel fuel underground in downtown Mandan.

The Mandan Remediation Trust will meet Wednesday, Jan. 22nd, to talk about closing the Mandan Remediation site.

Diesel fuel was first discovered in downtown Mandan in 1984, as the new Law Enforcement Center was being built.

Just like other commodities, the sunflower harvest was delayed because of the weather.

"We still have about 20 percent of the crop that still needs to be harvested in the US," said National Sunflower Association executive director John Sandbakken. "In North Dakota, it's probably a little bit higher -- closer to that 25 to 30 percent level."

But Sandbakken said weather permitting, producers are out, trying to get the crop off. He said it now looks like the crop will be about the same size as last year.

The Public Service Commission is still working through some issues regarding a proposed 205 megawatt wind farm in northern McLean County.

The Ruso wind farm would have 60 to 63 turbines.

The issue is the new light mitigating technology. It would use radar to detect planes in the area of the wind farm, to turn on lights.  State law says wind farms permitted after June of 2016 have to have that technology.

But Commissioner Julie Fedorchak said the Ruso case is different.