Havre School Board discusses baseball and ag education

In addition to discussing the district's new Agricultural Education Program, the Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees and HPS Superintendent Craig Mueller, at a special board meeting Tuesday afternoon, discussed the logistics of adding baseball to the district's lineup of sports programs, as well as their concerns about implementing it for the coming year.

The possibility of implementing a baseball program was brought up at the last regular board meeting two weeks ago, and Mueller laid out a number of concerns about implementing a baseball program, especially for the next year, including redundancy with the American Legion's local baseball program, as well as the logistics of setting up the program in the closing weeks of the school year for the upcoming fall semester.

While some board members lamented not discussing the matter earlier in the year, a criticism made by a few attendees to the meeting as well, the prevailing attitude seemed to be that they should investigate the impacts of adding a baseball program, but shouldn't rush to implement one in time for the coming school year.

This attitude was echoed at Tuesday's meeting by both Mueller and members of the board.

Mueller reiterated some of the concerns he expressed at the last meeting, as well as some new ones.

He said trying to set up a program in the closing weeks of this school year will be difficult, considering they will need to set up schedules, find ways to pay for it, evaluate the impact on other sports and arrange transportation.

Transportation was a particularly serious concern, he said, because the district is already having trouble providing transportation to the teams it already has, and he doesn't want to make the problem worse.

"I don't think that's where we want to be right now," he said.

Mueller said he's not opposed to talking about a baseball program, but there is a lot to do if they want to do it responsibly.

He said if the board does want to move forward with looking into the program they would at some point receive a formal request from the district's activities director including an economic impact study, as well as details about how it would be paid for and what entities the district would need to form agreements with.

He also discussed a recent survey given to students about their interest in adding baseball as a sport, but said he thinks there is still plenty of discussion to still be had about the possibility.

Of the 116 responses from eighth through 11th grade students, 51.7 percent said they were interested in playing if Havre High School had a baseball team, and of them 23.3 percent were currently playing with on another local baseball team.

Trustee Tim Scheele said he recently spoke with American Legion Baseball Coach Patch Wirtzberger about the possibility of adding baseball, and, like Mueller, he said he wasn't opposed to the idea but said there was a lot the school would need to do to implement it and was worried they might be moving too fast.

"He was relieved to see that we wanted to ... not rush," Scheele said.

Trustee Brittanee' Loch agreed.

"We all want to provide opportunities for students, but I'd hate to rush it," Loch said.

Board Chair Smeby also reiterated a concern he had about the cost of a potential program, saying they should find what the cost per student would be and make an informed choice.

When asked how long it would take to put together all the information necessary to make a fully informed decision about the program for the 2023-24 school year, Mueller said it would be ready by February of next year, March at the latest.

At the meeting the board also discussed class descriptions for courses in the district's new agriculture education program.

Mueller said he and HPS Assistant Superintendent Brad Moore are very excited for this program, which will be the first full agriculture program the school has ever had.

The initial offering of classes in the program would include Intro to Ag, Plant Science, Animal Science, Ag Leadership, and Ag Business.

Mueller said the district has hired a new teacher for these classes and they will be able to provide more comprehensive course descriptions, but the ones presented should give the board an idea of what's going to be available.

He said he hopes the course descriptions will be approved so students can sign up in the closing weeks of this year, but there will almost certainly be students signing up in the first week of the fall semester as well.

Moore said students in the program would have the opportunity to work with Northern Agricultural Research Center, particularly those in the Animal Science Course, and he's already met with the people working at the center.

When asked why the district had never had an agriculture program in the past he said that was a good question considering they are surrounded by great programs run by much smaller schools like Big Sandy and Chinook, and even Turner on and off.

He said agriculture education is growing statewide in school districts and universities are producing more and more graduates in agriculture fields.

The board unanimously voted to accept the presented course descriptions.

They also voted to accept the personnel items which includes the hiring of Cheryl Russell as director of special services, which Mueller said he's excited for.