Three Medina Students Selected for North Dakota All-State Choirs

Taryn Mittleider, Cherdan Slaughter and Charice Slaughter traveled to Bismarck last weekend to perform among roughly 440 of North Dakota's top high school singers and instrumentalists at the All-State Music Festival, bringing Medina Public School one of its most visible musical honors in recent memory.

The festival, held at the Bismarck Event Center, drew students who earned their spots through a competitive statewide audition process. Three concerts filled the Saturday schedule: Jazz Choir and Jazz Band at 10 a.m., Treble Choir and Orchestra at 1 p.m., and Mixed Choir and Band at 3:30 p.m. Guest conductors leading this year's choirs included Shawn Kirchner with the Mixed Choir, Chris Maunu with the Treble Choir, and Trist Curless with the Jazz Choir, clinicians whose work extends well beyond any single school or district.

For a small K-12 district like Medina, placing three students in All-State in the same year is notable. Getting there requires more than talent: students must prepare audition material to a statewide standard, then rehearse intensively alongside peers they have never met before performing in front of a public audience. The experience also carries practical weight for students pursuing music in college or competing for scholarships.

Medina's district recognized Taryn, Cherdan and Charice in a live-feed post published in the first days of April, part of a broader string of updates that also announced the April 2026 school newsletter had been mailed to district households and made available online. Other items in that same week's feed included Pre-K and kindergarten students visiting Medina's ambulance and fire stations, a calendar raffle supporting a planned Washington, D.C. student trip, and a chess program for upper elementary and high school students run by a community volunteer the school identifies simply as Todd, the Chess Guy.

That mix of updates, statewide choral honors alongside first-responder field trips and a community chess volunteer, reflects the range of programming Medina sustains for a student population drawn from a small Stutsman County town. Families wanting more detail on school events or the district's music program can find the April newsletter through the Medina Public School website or in their mailboxes.