By Keighla Schmidt, Correspondent

Administrators at Prior Lake High School said more measures will need to be taken to address inappropriate dancing at Prior Lake High School dances.

The information came about during the meeting of the Prior Lake-Savage Area School Board after PLHS Student Council President Derek Norton briefed the board about homecoming week activities on Monday night.

An area of concern, Norton said, was the homecoming dance.

“There was a lot of inappropriate dancing at the dance,” Norton said. “There was grinding that was far beyond what is normal to the point that it was sexual.”

Prior Lake High School Principal Dave Lund said parents were sent a letter and asked to help come up with ways to avoid that behavior.

“It’s something that we started working on last year with the Student Council, but we realized we were not taken seriously,” he said.

Lund added despite the efforts of the Student Council, the issue is one that needs to “come down from the top.”

After the meeting Assistant Principal Amy Steiner said this is not the first dance where dancing behavior has crossed the appropriate line.

Last year a screen that displayed music videos, where the grinding-type of dancing was glorified, was removed from the dances. Also, she said, the disc jockey was told to avoid certain songs or stop a song when students began dancing inappropriately.

Steiner said the “rules” of the dance, including appropriate dancing and behavior, were featured on an announcement screen that is displayed in the lunch room, but now a more drastic measure needs to be taken.

“We haven’t made any decisions yet,” she said, but parent meetings will be conducted and people are invited to share solutions with the administrators at the high school.