Glee Club, Close Up Club forming at Havre High

The Havre School Board voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with bonds to fund the projects at Sunnyside Intermediate School and Havre High School that voters recently approved.

The board also voted in favor of allowing a glee club to be formed at the high school.

“The glee club is a group for those students who want to combine singing and dancing,” Havre High School Principal Craig Mueller said.

Mueller said there is a group of students interested in forming the club. The club will not cost the school district anything.

The board also approved creation of the Close Up Club at the high school.

World history teacher Lindsey McInerney told the school board the club would be completely funded by fundraising and would cost the district nothing.

The Close Up Club’s main mission is to “inspire democratic souls in youth,” McInerney said, by taking them to Washington, D.C., to take tours, see the monuments, participate in mock congress and other activities.

The club is a nationwide program and is nonpartisan.

The specifics of the school renovations were then presented to the school board. The locations of add-ons to buildings was discussed. The goal is to have the plans for the projects designed and ready by March 2014, so private contractors could then begin bidding on them.

Reports of enrollment numbers were also presented. Numbers of students in the schools are up; last year there were 550 students at the high school and this year, there are 558. Final reports on the numbers of students at the schools will be given at the board’s December meeting.

Maureen Odegard, the principal at Highland Park Elementary School, said that the Language for Learning program showing great success in furthering students’ progress. All students, except for one, are showing signs of improvement.

Odegard said that though there are more students on the Language for Learning program this year than last year, this rise in numbers may be from the larger student body the school received this year.

Superintendent Andy Carlson announced that the school district is going through some technological problems.

The schools are hitting maximum bandwidth often with the advent of the Apple iOS 7 phone and multitudes of other devices that connect to the Internet which are now popularly used in classrooms and by students.

To increase bandwidth, Carlson said the district would have to buy two Apple caches for $1,200 each. This would focus communication between devices and satellites and thus increase bandwidth.