Katharine Gleysteen and Mona Swanson have met before.

“When I was at Klahowya (Secondary School), Mona came to work there,” Gleysteen, Bremerton High School’s principal, said. “Then I was at Olympic (High School) when she came to work there. Now, we are here together.”

Swanson, BHS assistant principal, spent eight years at KSS and 13 years working at OHS. Her position at Bremerton will only be a part-time slot, but the job will still be a big one. She will help Gleysteen in a couple of areas where the Bremerton-based school has been lacking as of late — special and advanced placement education.

The main goal though, according to Gleysteen, is getting boys more involved.

“This is the year of the boy,” she said. “Several years ago there was a push to get more girls involved in math and science, but some people believe boys were farther behind in reading and math than girls were in math and science.”

And those numbers are echoed in the number of scholarships received by students of the male persuasion versus the amount of scholarship money received by girls.

“Even in the advanced placement classes there is still a two to one ration of girls to boys,” Swanson said.

“Last year there was an AP biology class with 35 students in it,” Gleysteen said. “They were all girls.”

Gleysteen, a BHS graduate herself, said the staff are really preparing for the pending school year to begin and during this preparation, they came across an interesting fact about BHS students.

Using scores from the preliminary SAT Reasoning Test, numbers are formulated to represent a course’s potential at a particular school. These figures can be used to determine the probability of students having success in a particular advanced placement class. The test showed the two courses that had the greatest potential at BHS were psychology and art history.

In fact, Swanson said the AP Institute, where teachers go to educate themselves on these programs, almost cancelled the art history class due to lack of interest.

Where most schools had at most 15 students ready to take the course, BHS boasted 70 ready and willing participants.

“It is really telling about the area,” Swanson said. “Bremerton is a very interesting place.”

School starts Wednesday, Sept. 2 and both administrators say they are ready for it all to get going again.

“I am delighted to be here,” Gleysteen said. “Every day is going to be joyful.”