Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
A proposal by some Harrington area residents to end the sports cooperative for Sprague and Harrington led to the issuance of a clarification statement last week from the Sprague and Lamont school boards. Doug Shields, chair of the Sprague School board, explained they decided to issue the statement because of what they believe to be some misrepresentations which have been made in regards to the proposal.
Some residents of Harrington have pushed for an end to the present cooperative agreement in favor of forming a new cooperative with Odessa which is located west of Harrington on Highway 28.
A public meeting on the proposal was conducted at Harrington Monday night.
Sprague and Harrington High Schools have been in a cooperative sports agreement for the past 25 years. The two schools combine teams for fall and winter sports.
Lamont and Sprague have been in a school cooperative since 1971 with junior high students from both districts attending the school at Lamont, which is 10 miles south of Sprague on Highway 23. Shields explained the sports cooperative with Harrington extends to Lamont on the junior high level.
High school students in the Lamont District have the option of attending the school of their choice. Most enroll at Sprague or St. John.
The sports cooperative operates through a special cooperative committee which is made up of one school director each from Sprague and Lamont, two from Harrington and athletic directors from the three schools.
Amund Melville, the Sprague school board member who serves on the sports cooperative committee, attended Monday night’s session at Harrington with two other Sprague directors.
Two staff members of the ESD 101 acted at facilitators at the session.
Melville said the facilitators stressed at the start of the session that the workshop was limited to residents of the Harrington District. Residents from Sprague and Odessa were not allowed to participate but were able to monitor the session.
Four options for Harrington’s school future were introduced and later became the assigned topics for four work groups which convened in individual sessions. The four Harrington options included keeping the Sprague/Harrington Cooperate in its present form, a staged Odessa merger with sports combined next year and academic programs in two years, combining with Odessa only for sports, and converting to a non-high district with Harrington families given the option of enrolling high school students in the neighboring district of their choice.
Melville said the four groups gave a report on their sessions and participants were asked to rate their preference on index cards which were not tallied Monday night. Melville said he assumes the results on the cards will be presented at a Harrington School Board session later this month..
Sprague and Lamont school directors have sought to have a joint session with Harrington directors to get an indication of what Harrington’s intentions might be. So far that has not happened.
Melville said the Harrington debate is a concern for Sprague and Lamont because it leaves the status of their students unknown. An end to the combination would leave Sprague and Lamont scrambling to put together some type of sports program while area schools now are in the process of booking fall schedules.
Sprague/Harrington Falcon teams have competed in the Bi-County 1B league in fall and winter sports. Two years ago, the Falcons were part of the Whitman League before it was broken up by the WIAA creation of 1B and 2B sports divisions.
Shields Monday told the Gazette one of the points Sprague and Lamont directors want to clarify is the cooperative’s policy on spring sports. The two schools since 1996 have not fielded a spring sports team and followed a policy which allows individual students to participate with adjoining districts.
This year, Sprague High students have expressed interest in playing baseball and softball with Lind/Ritzville. This conforms with past policy. Harrington students plan to play on Davenport spring teams.
Shields said he believes the signup of individual Sprague students for the Lind/Ritzville spring teams has been used up as an example of Sprague wanting to drop the overall cooperative agreement with Harrington. That just isn’t the case, he stressed.
Advocates of an Odessa-Harrington cooperative have also pointed out opportunities to share academic programs.
Shields noted Sprague and Lamont Districts have never shut out the possibility of sharing academic programs. He added he believes the proposed Harrington/Odessa combination derives mainly from what proponents see as a potential competitive gain for sports.
The WIAA counts for sports classification in the top three grades total 26 students at Sprague and 36 at Harrington.
Calls by the Gazette Tuesday to the Harrington superintendent were not returned.
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