Harrington school board accepts LRS proposal

HARRINGTON – A special meeting of the school board was held Monday, May 9, in the high school library to decide whether or not to accept an offer from the combined Lind-Ritzville/Sprague sports organization to join them for a year-long trial period that would allow more Harrington high-school athletes to participate in sports. Following discussion that lasted an hour and a half, the board voted 3-2 to accept the proposal.

Board chair Shelly Quigley ran the meeting of the full board, which also included Darren Mattozzi, Justin Slack, Jon Evans and Mark Kramer, in the presence of approximately 20-30 interested faculty, students and parents. Principal Tiffany Clouse was also present for most of the meeting, as was John Cordell, incoming superintendent of the Harrington School District.

The many pros and cons of joining forces with the LRS sports combo were debated cordially and respectfully by all present. Even Kramer and Mattozzi, who eventually voted no to the proposal, were willing to state publicly that they would continue their whole-hearted support of the school district regardless of how the vote turned out.

The financial impact of accepting the proposal was said to be approximately the same as that currently spent by the district to offer the sports it currently has: cross-country, tennis, golf, track and field and volleyball. According to Quigley, the total cost including transportation to and from sporting events would run between $55k and $57k.

She also said that practice for girls would begin at 3:30 p.m. and for boys at 5:30 p.m. and that a room in the gym has been set aside for homework, reading, etc. if students choose to use their downtime for that purpose.

Harrington would have to pay transportation costs to Ritzville, but transports on to Lind would be picked up by the LRS sports organization.

Evans reported that after receiving the proposal from LRS, both the Davenport and Odessa School Districts were also contacted to see whether either school might have a similar proposal or one perhaps more beneficial to Harrington.

He reported that no response came from Davenport, but that he had a friendly conversation with Bruce Todd, Odessa’s athletic director. He did not mention anything concrete that developed from that conversations.

There was some discussion also of preserving the Harrington Panther identity by continuing to offer some Harrington sports that are currently viable and having other sports offered through LRS. Unknown was whether LRS would agree to that kind of arrangement.

Some other concerns were that Harrington, having struggled with low enrollment for a number of years, would find competing within the 2B classification rather daunting, since there had not been consistently active youth sports programs available to prepare them for a higher level of competition.

Although Evans and other community members described their efforts to offer sports opportunities to younger students as a way to build future sports programs, the lack of people willing and able to coach teams was a serious problem.

Slack also noted that failing to act on the LRS proposal would still leave Harrington with too few options for its students.

The vote was taken and, though the motion passed to accept the proposal, the narrow margin showed the community being cautious in its decision-making.