3 candidates for 3 seats on Havre school board

Three candidates are almost certain to be elected to the Havre School Board in the May 7 elections.

Three people have filed to run for three seats in the contest.

They are:

• Incumbent Mark Proctor, a Montana Department of Transportation employee is seeking another three-year term on the board.
• Theresa Miller is seeking the remaining two-years of her term. She was appointed to the school board last year after no one ran for an open seat.
• Ed Hill, a city of Havre employee, is running for the first time for a three-year term.

The positions are all unsalaried.

Mark Magelssen is not seeking a second three-year term on the board.

People can still run as a write-in candidate, but the deadline to file is next week.

Last year, the district had only two people file for three seats.

The election was called off because there was no school board contest and the district did not need to ask for a mill levy increase.

The school board can decide not to hold the election if there is no contest, but there is a strong possibility, school officials say, that the school board will ask voters to spend more than $2 million to upgrade the locker room and add a fitness and wrestling room to Havre High School. That would lead to the closing and eventual sale of the wrestling building at 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue in downtown Havre.

The school board will probably decide whether to move forward with that plan at its April meeting.

School board members have been putting aside money for the project for some time, Superintendent Andy Carlson said recently, but other projects, such as the collapsed roof at the high school, have always taken center stage.

Interest rates are as low as they will ever go, Carlson said, so this might be the time to make the additions.