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Area Back to School 2015

New Administrator Profiles:

Craig Mueller

Principal of

Havre High School and

Assistant Superintendent

Havre High School Principal Craig Mueller will be wearing an additional hat this school year as assistant superintendent.

Mueller will still be acting as the principal for the high school until the position can be filled and will jump between the two jobs until it is.

"The balance there in the first month or so is something I'm going to have to figure out and make adjustments to," Mueller said.

He said he will still be attending the myriad meetings and responsibilities of being the high school principal and will be able to incorporate his work on the district administration level. He said Havre Public Schools District 16 & A superintendent Andy Carlson has been great to work with, as he has been helping him split the responsibilities of his assistant superintendent position until they can get everything evened out. Carla Geda, who is working with the paraprofessionals, is also taking some of the responsibilities normally under the assistant superintendent position's flag.

The high school will really start looking for someone to replace him in January, he said, and that person will be instated for the next year of school.

"I want to make sure I spend enough time doing what needs to be done here at the high school, but there also responsibilities with the district," Mueller said. "As the district curriculum coordinator, I'll want to make sure I can get in each of the buildings and be visible and also find out what's going on as far as those curriculum are concerned."

He said his experiences with high school grades will help, but he needs to study some of the curriculum for the lower grades, like elementary math. He needs to look at the strategies used to teach math in those grades, he said.

"It's just spending the time learning about that before we can move forward," Mueller said.

Mueller has spent 21 years in education and said he is seeing things come around again as far as the ever-changing way children are taught and the district is changing with the rest of Montana.

"I think it's always changing," Mueller said. "I think that's good. Not all the changes have been great, but you have to give all students a chance to succeed."

He said one of the nice things about the upcoming new year is that there has not been a lot of turnover in faculty and staff. The high school still has a solid and experienced faculty.

"I'm really happy with how far our teachers have come," Mueller said. "Our veteran teachers have always been a strong point over here."

He said four years ago, over half of the staff was new, and now the departments are beginning to stabilize.

Mueller spent 17 years as an educator in Illinois before moving to Montana and said that he came from a family of educators.

Mark Irvin

Vice Principal of

Havre Middle School

Mark Irvin comes from Box Elder and said he is very excited to come to fill the role of Havre Middle School vice principal.

He spent 17 years teaching in Box Elder. For the last 11 years, he was the principal of the elementary school and high school, six and five years respectively. He taught for the first six years and was also athletic director for a time.

"It's a new challenge, but then again it's an exciting challenge," Irvin said.

He said part of the reason he applied for the middle school position is because he feels that the philosophies of the school match his own.

"I felt like it would be a good fit," Irvin said. "Our school vision is to instill in our kids that success is the only option."

He said that the kids at the middle school are in a transitional period. They're changing from elementary school kids to the young adults they will be in high school.

It's kind of a tough time for kids that age, Irvin added.

"But, it's also kind of a special time," Irvin said. "That's a unique phase of life. I guess my vision is to help those kids have a smooth transition. Figure out that they can expect more from themselves and realize that it's OK to mess up and learn from it and move on. All of us have to do that."

He said that though there will be a learning curve for him as he finds his footing with his new position, he thinks it is going to be a great school year.

Holly Bitz

Principal of

Lincoln-McKinley Primary School

Holly Bitz is heading into her first administrative role as principal of Lincoln-McKinley Primary School and is ready for the challenge.

"This is an amazing staff and they put hundreds of hours and weeks of time getting everything ready," Bitz said. "They're ready to help shape our youth."

She said this year, the school will be updating their math curriculum to bring it up to speed and fine-tuning their standard-based report cards.

Bitz is originally from Great Falls, where she taught for six years. She also taught in Box Elder for seven years and has now been with Havre Public Schools for three years. She was a fourth-grade teacher at Sunnyside Intermediate School.

She received her undergraduate degree in Missoula, her endorsement from Montana State University-Northern and her graduate degree in Bozeman.

"Hitting all the Montana schools," she said, laughing.

She said her biggest goal in her administrative position is to teach students to "use their resources to prepare them for the global market.

"It has changed so much since we've gone to school - with technology and everything else - so many things are available to us that weren't before. And so the major, major shift is from knowledge to understanding," Bitz said.

She explained that when she was growing up, everything was knowledge-based. You had to recall the facts and recite them. There has been this switch from that to students now having to take that knowledge, apply it and understand it.

Carmen Lunak

Principal of

Sunnyside Intermediate School

Sunnyside Intermediate School has a new principal this year, as well as enjoying the near-completed new facilities.

Carmen Lunak is moving into her new position at the school after a stint as principal at Havre Middle School.

"I am totally and completely excited to go into Sunnyside Intermediate School," Lunak said. "It's going to be a fantastic building - I would actually say one of the finest in the state."

She said she loves fourth- and fifth-grades a lot, as well as working with the teachers at Sunnyside.

"I like the curriculum work and being close to the instructional side - that's one of my passions," Lunak said.

She has been with Havre Public Schools for three years, but has been in education for 25.

She was in Glacier County before and moved to the Havre district because she wanted to be a "teacher leader." That was a goal she has had since the beginning of her education career, but wanted to prove herself in the classroom before she pursued administration positions. She has taught elementary, alternative and middle school language, arts and writing.

The recent additions and renovations to Sunnyside are going to push the school to the top, she said.

"It's going to be an amazing place to teach students and I am extremely appreciative of people at every level who have worked so hard to make us a quality product," she said.

She said the school is moving forward. There will always be things to do for the school, but everything is going to be better, she said.

"The main goal I have is to just knock it out of the park with instruction," Lunak said.

 

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