School board awards students recognition, hears area reports

The Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees heard area reports and gave out five athletic academic achievement awards during its monthly regular meeting Tuesday.

  Havre High School Activities Director Dennis Murphy told the board Park High School in Livingston chose not to play varsity football and when he met with representatives of that school district last fall, the Park High School representatives said the school will not play it again next season.

"Because of that, that only leaves eight teams in Eastern A for football games, so if we play everybody once that leaves us with seven games, and so we wanted to add more than seven games for our football team," he said. "We reached out to the west, because they have 12 teams, to help with it by crossing over and playing on the eastern side, though they elected not to do that because (we were) thinking it'll only be a one-year deal and they just made some major changes in their playoff systems on the western side."

He added that to make sure Havre plays eight games this year, Havre will have to play someone in their conference twice, and the first time they play will be a non-conference game.

"What we are looking at currently is what we call our second week, we can play what would be that non-conference game," he said.

Murphy said the number of participants in activities at the high school has gone up by 12 from last year, "which is a very good sign, our kids are participating," he said.

"Two years ago, we were 23 down, last year we were down fourteen this year we are up 12," he said, "so that is really good to show that our kids are participating in activities."

He said the school had 155 students start participating in fall activities in 2019, and when it started winter activities it had 154.

In academics, he said, GPA has declined in comparison to a year ago, 97 of the 155 have a 3.0 GPA or better, 62 of them have a 3.5 or higher and 37 were academic all-state in the fall.

"In order to earn academic all-state you have to have a 3.5 (GPA) and earn a varsity letter. We are down a little bit from the year before, we had 43, but if we combined all our athletes of the 155, they had an average of 3.12, so that's pretty good for our athletes," Murphy said. 

He said the A Capella Choir of the high school is traveling to Bozeman this weekend to sing in a PBS fundraiser.

Havre High School senior, member of the choir and Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees student representative Katelyn Maloughney said the program should air sometime in March.

"I'm excited," she said.

Lincoln-McKinley Primary School Principal Holly Bitz gave an update on her school

"At Lincoln-McKinley, our mission is to respectfully prepare students academically, socially and emotionally to be citizens of tomorrow, so with that mission it encourages our students to be productive members of the community," she said.

She said that each year, the school receives a high number of volunteers teaching the students about various topics from social studies in different countries, reading and math small group interventions, anti-bullying and more.

"We have many different community partnerships," she said, " ... It's just wonderful to have all these volunteers."

Bitz said some of the people involved are retired teachers, parents of teachers, and representatives of Bear Paw Battlefield, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Masons, the Rotary and Boys & Girls Club of the Hi-Line.

In the past couple of years, Lincoln-McKinley has had more than 2,000 hours of volunteering, she said, adding that in 2017-18, the school had 1,012 hours of volunteering by 232 people, in 2018-19, it had 840 hours of volunteering by 222 people and, as of this year by the end of December, it had 130 hours of volunteering by 92 people.

"A lot of achievement gaps are filled just because of those personal experiences people can bring in, not every child can travel the entire world, but people can bring in pictures of their travels and explain things and talk about them, and that can bring it to light to them (the students) and makes it more realistic," Bitz said.

She said people interested in volunteering at Lincoln-McKinley can call the school at 395-8554.

Havre High School football players Kellen Detrick, Mason Dionne and Kasee Henderson and volleyball players Jessa Chvilicek and Samantha Oliver were recognized at the meeting with athletic academic achievements during the 2019-20 school year.

The next special board meeting will be Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 12:15 p.m. at Robins School Administration Building.

The next regular board meeting will be Tuesday, Feb. 11, at 6:30 p.m. at Havre Middle School.