Havre school board discusses adding boys baseball

The Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees held three meetings Tuesday evening, which included canvassing the recent school board election, electing officers and discussing the possibility of adopting boys baseball as a sport.

Havre Superintendent Craig Mueller talked during the regular meeting about the possibility of adding baseball as a sport at HPS, which he said he’s personally interested in, but has some concerns about implementing, especially in the coming year.

He said before they think about adopting baseball a student and community survey should be done to gauge interest in the sport, along with an economic impact study to see what kind of effect adding the sport would have on other programs, which is a significant concern of his.

He said the school may end up having some considerable start-up costs between pay for coaches, equipment and facilities, and while some schools around the state have said these costs are estimated to be fairly minimal, others have expressed the opposite.

Mueller said one of his biggest concerns is that the program may be redundant with the American Legion baseball program, which he said is strong in the area and whose players are the same age as those who would be playing in a potential baseball program at Havre High.

Some of these concerns were echoed by Havre Public Schools Education Foundation Chair Kyle Leeds, who also raised concerns about the cost of officiating games.

Leeds said American Legion appears to be in a better position than the softball games he’s involved with, but he said they’ve been having serious difficulties with so many games having to be presided over by out-of-town officials who have to be paid for travel.

He said he loves the idea of setting up a baseball program at HPS, but not in the coming year, and suggested the board get in touch with American Legion Baseball Coach Patch Wirtzberger who would be able to provide a valuable perspective on the matter.

During public comments two local residents expressed dissatisfaction with how the board has handled the issue.

Darin Miller, said he appreciates everything Muller brought up but the issue could have been discussed much earlier in the year, but now that it’s May already the school only has until the end of the month to make a decision for the next year.

“I think a lot of people in Havre assumed we were going to have baseball next year,” he said.

Trustee Jacob Ingram agreed and said he feels he and other board members dropped the ball somewhat, but said they didn’t get a lot of feedback from the public earlier in the year so they were in the dark about the enthusiasm for it.

Randy Cloninger was the other speaker who said it is not too late to get things going for next year.

Cloninger said he knows students who would be interested but are going to age out next year and encouraged the board to move on the surveys and studies they need to do.

After the meeting, Mueller said it is possible that the board could implement a program by the end of the month, but it would require a special meeting and work on it would need to begin immediately, and reiterated his concern that a program might be redundant with American Legion.

He said many of the schools that are pushing the hardest for baseball programs are ones where the American Legion is less present, which makes sense for them, but may not make sense for Havre Public Schools, at least not just yet.

“I don’t want to replicate baseball when we already have a good program, but at the same time I want to give students the opportunity to participate if they want to,” he said.

Mueller said during the canvassing meeting that some provisional ballots in the school board election have been counted since the release of the unofficial results, but there were not enough to change the turnout percentage or the results of the election, which saw incumbent Garrit Ophus and Christin Hileman elected to the two open seats.

Mueller said 37 percent of the ballots were returned, which is the highest turnout of mail ballots the district has ever seen.

Before Hileman was seated however, the board held their regularly scheduled meeting which included consideration of a number of new and revised policies most of which were language changes and adopted unanimously.

One policy was 3610 — Programs for At-Risk/Disadvantaged Students, which Mueller said he believes is a step in the right direction and would set up a plan for addressing the district’s dropout rate which has been an area of concern recently.

He said some work still needs to be done to figure out which parts of the plan are whose responsibility, but it shouldn’t be necessary to create a new position to implement the policy.

However, one policy, 3416 and 3416F1 — Administering Medicines to Students, was tabled after Board Vice Chair Theresa Miller said she had concerns regarding the policy which she felt had some elements that lacked clarity, including what constitutes an emergency and what the standard is for administering the medication Glucagon.

Mueller agreed that some areas of the policy could use some added clarity and said it merits further consideration and research before implementation.

The policy was tabled unanimously.

Mueller said graduation will be at Blue Pony Field like the last few years and, if the weather holds, they shouldn’t need to postpone it.

At the end of the meeting board members thanked outgoing trustee Theresa Miller for her 10 years of service on the board and her work as vice chair.

The next board meeting held immediately after the regular meeting saw Hileman take her seat on the board as well as the reelection of Curtis Smeby as the board chair and Trustee Tim Scheele as vice-chair.

Smeby was voted in as chair in a 5-3 vote with himself, and trustees Hileman, Ophus, Cindy Erickson and Lorraine Larson voting for and all others voting against.

Scheele was also nominated but lost in a 3-5 vote with himself and Trustees Ingram, Brittnee’ Loch voting for and all others against.

Scheele was elected vice chair 6-2 with Larson and Erickson voting against.

Chris Wendland was unanimously elected to serve as HPS District Clerk for another year at the recommendation of Mueller.