Board gives new school its name

It was unanimous Tuesday night - the new school north of town will be named Glacier High School.

Kalispell school board members sided with an earlier unanimous recommendation from an ad hoc committee, following the trustees' discussion at their regular meeting.

The ad hoc group of 10 parents, students and staff chose the name from a list of more than 400 suggestions from community members. Many of the suggestions were duplications of similar names, but the large response was a show of the community's considerable interest in the matter.

The names Mountain Trail, Mountain View and Grinnell were the next three possibilities, but they weren't offered as alternatives at the school board meeting.

Though trustee Anna Marie Bailey said Glacier was already familiar as an often-used business name, most of the trustees found the name was an appropriate match for the area.

"You can go to any state and find a lot of duplications," Keith Regier said. "That's who we are."

Chairman Don Murray said the name Glacier will keep the school from being tagged with the Kalispell label.

"We have been able to avoid calling the school Kalispell Flathead," he said. "It connotes where we are. So (Glacier High School) is unique enough that we'll avoid Kalispell Glacier."

The name commitment clears the way for architects to incorporate any appropriate features into their drawings and design plans for the new high school in the coming months.

It also will give a name to the new building before ground-breaking, expected in late May. Concrete work could be finished by this fall, with the building's steel skeleton possibly going up through the winter.

Choice of the name also paves the way for trustees to pick a mascot and school colors.

That will happen after a committee comes up with new attendance boundaries for Flathead High and Glacier High, and the trustees act on that recommendation.

The school board also discussed the early work of that committee Tuesday night - a draft policy on school attendance locations and exceptions to those boundaries.

The committee is composed of a representative from each rural and city elementary school that channels students into Flathead High, Flathead Principal Callie Langohr and committee chair Joe McCracken.

Those attendance zones probably will not be determined until June, so work on the mascot and colors likely will begin in the fall.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com