School board asked about costume controversy

The Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees met Tuesday evening and discussed a number of policy changes and revisions, heard a report from Sunnyside Intermediate School Principal Pax Haslem on his school’s activities and concerns including about student stress and on the school honoring veterans on Veterans Day, and heard from a parent regarding an incident involving a Halloween costume some students and parents found racially offensive.

During public comment, Havre resident Shanetrice Allen spoke about an instance just before Halloween when a student came to Havre High School painted black, which many students, her son included, said was extremely offensive.

Allen said the incident was handled very poorly by Havre High School, with staff and teachers ignoring the costume and not taking complaints made by her son and others seriously.

In an interview before the meeting she said she’s been told the student in the costume was unaware of how offensive the costume was and was genuinely upset that it had been hurtful to their fellow classmates, and neither she nor the group she represents is seeking punishment for the student.

She said she and her fellow Havre High parents are concerned exclusively with the school’s response to the incident, and, at the meeting, she said the school’s continued silence about the incident is unacceptable.

Allen told the board that she and other parents had to call the school about the incident just to find out what was going on and what was being done and after initial conversations. During these calls, she added, they were told they would be kept informed, but the school never contacted them again.

She said her son was given a generic form to report harassment and was told if they didn’t feel harassed to throw it away and that was the extent of the school’s efforts to address her son’s concerns.

She said this lack of communication with her and her son, along with other parents and students who complained, has made them all feel overlooked.

“Our children have to come to school and feel like they are not being heard,” Allen said. “... Our children were hurt and nothing was addressed with them.”

Superintendent Craig Mueller said the situation is being handled by the school and he’d be happy to sit down with Allen and other affected parents to tell them what is being done about the matter.

Allen said she’d like to meet with Mueller and she’s glad the board is willing to listen to her concerns, but ultimately incidents like this are something parents need to be actively informed of by the school, and this type of incident needs to be handled with much more transparency.

Beyond the lack of communication, she said, the fact that the costume drew no comment from any teacher or staff member for hours highlights the need for increased awareness about why this kind of costume is not acceptable and makes people deeply uncomfortable, contributing, intentionally or not, to a school environment where people like her son do not feel respected or heard.

She said her son told her he felt like he had no one to talk to because it didn’t appear that anyone at the school saw anything wrong with the costume and the response to the incident didn’t make things better.

Allen said when she moved to Havre two years ago and she knew there wasn’t much representation of people of color like her and her children and she told her children that she has their back when it comes to things like this, but in school she can’t be there to advocate for them and teachers need to be aware that incidents like this are not something to be dismissed.

Concerns on emotional and mental health

During the meeting, Sunnyside Intermediate School Principal Pax Haslem gave a report on his school’s activities and concerns saying the things his report would normally talk about are overshadowed by the school’s most serious current problem, the social, emotional and mental health of its students.

He said Sunnyside is seeing an increasing number of students dealing with serious problems with their social, emotional and mental health, with the school seeing a marked increase in fights and disrespectful language being used.

He said the problems are appearing with students across the demographic and economic spectrum and is a situation he wasn’t expecting.

“It’s something I didn’t anticipate coming into this school year,” Haslem said.

Beyond issues of discipline, he said, students in general are just dealing with a lot these days, estimating that between 12 and 15 percent of students at the school have significant emotional disturbances in their lives that they are trying their best to deal with.

He said he works with two to four students every day, not for discipline, but just helping them through mental breakdowns, anxiety and other things.

Haslem said he and the staff are making strides to address this issue with the school’s counselor seeing students individually and the physical education program making changes to address some of these issues, but they are not experts and they’re open to any assistance that can be provided.

Trustee raises concern on policy change

During the meeting, trustees also passed a number of policies and policy changes, few of which prompted much discussion.

The exception was a revision to the schools’ communicable disease prevention policies which added language regarding hand hygiene, which prompted trustee Jacob Ingram object to language in the policy that stipulates that school follow guidelines from the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.

Ingram said he thought this language would require the return of masks being required for students.

Mueller said the language in question refers mostly to isolation protocol, not masks and DPHHS can’t mandate that the school require masks.

He said DPHHS’ guidelines do not require schools to implement mask requirements, so the language would’t be used to reintroduce masks.

Ingram proposed that the language be changed to say that the school will merely take DPHHS’ guidelines into account.

He said it doesn’t make sense for them to tie themselves to the recommendations of an agency that doesn’t have any power over them.

Mueller said Ingram can propose a revised policy with the language he’d like to see at the meeting next month as the first reading of these policies is mostly informative, with proposed changes being handled during the second reading.

Ingram said he would bring his revised policy to the next meeting for proposal and all the policies passed unanimously on the first reading.

The board also heard from HPS Facilities and Transportation Director Scott Filius who said the schools may have an opportunity to purchase a pair of electric buses for the district.

Filius said the buses are more expensive than traditional buses but grants could pay for as much as 85 percent of them and they would save thousands of dollars a years on fuel and maintenance.

He said the batteries on the vehicles last 15 years and the longevity of the buses themselves are comparable to or exceed that of their current busses.

Mueller said he wanted to bring the matter to the attention of the board but recommended they table the matter as more research needs to be done before moving forward and the trustees did so unanimously.

Haslem also invited trustees to the Veterans Day Breakfast Thursday from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. where the school will honor the parents of students who served in the armed forces.

Assistant Superintendent Brad Moore said that Dec. 8 at 5:30 p.m. at the Havre High School auditorium, people from schools that have moved to a four-day week will speak about their experiences for the sake of the board’s Calendar Committee which is considering a proposal for a four-day week in the next chool year.