Also on today’s menu:
Bringing History To Life
The Changing Color Of NH Politics
Murder In Berlin
Public schools today are facing challenges on all fronts: Parents who want more control over curriculum and even what books are in the library; the loss of funding as more and more students move to home-schooling or private schools; a shortage of substitute teaches and para-educators; and in some cases, disruptive students.
The Winnisquam Regional School District boosted the pay for substitutes and para-educators from $80 to $90 per day to make the positions more attractive, and Gilford’s proposed budget for '23-24 includes salary increases for support staff, including paraprofessionals.
Meanwhile, Winnisquam has hired a behavior specialist for Southwick Elementary School as part of its efforts to address what Superintendent Shannon Bartlett called “extreme” disciplinary problems among the district’s youngest pupils. “We have students with really unique needs and we are working to get staff the training that they need, and paraprofessionals the training they need, and come up with specific behavior plans that help address some of these behaviors, but they’re unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” she said.
During the Newfound Area School District’s annual meeting, voters added $100,050 to the proposed operating budget in the hopes of retaining all five literacy teachers at Newfound Memorial Middle School. In order to keep the budget from exceeding the tax cap, the administration had proposed eliminating one of those positions, but voters were willing to break the cap rather than allowing reading scores to drop back to the low they recorded the last time there were only four specialists in the district. The budget still has to be approved in a final decision by voters in March.
Bringing History To Life
Former Senator Wayne King has interviewed Evelyn Auger of Sanbornton, an 89-year-old who has been portraying women in living history performances since the time she did a solo performance as “Mother Gilman,” using historic records from the Civil War as the basis for fictionalized correspondence from the battlefronts. It led her to take on historical dress for performances as others, such as Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science movement.
In addition to her historic characters, she created a living documentary of “Mourning fashion and practices” over the years in which she and her neighbor, Linda Salatiello, would explain and model mourning mores and fashions.
Evelyn also has written several books based on historic documentation and her active imagination. In his podcast, New Hampshire Secrets, Legends & Lore, Wayne discusses her journey back in time.
The Changing Color Of NH Politics
Michael Davidow offers an interesting take on the New Hampshire First-in-the-Nation Primary that the Democratic National Committee has voted to replace. Along with the usual argument that the Granite State allows unknowns to break through — something neither Democrat nor Republican party leaders want to happen — Michael offers a little New Hampshire’s history “for those who don’t know it.”
“For years and years, this state was run by the railroads, the power companies, and the racetrack. Those entities paid the bills and got whatever they wanted in return. And they got it from the Republican party for one whole century. The working-class ethnic votes of our state’s bigger cities could never get their acts together enough to empower the Democrats (the Irish and the French had a bad tendency to snub each others’ candidates) so the GOP pretty much ran this place for decades.
“And as can happen with one-party states, by the grace of God and the law of centrifugal force, that one party eventually found itself home to a broad range of opinion …. There was never one school of Republicanism here….
“Then, when that Republican monopoly faltered, from having so many newcomers in the south on the one hand, and from the national Republican party’s going so berserk, on the other, our state’s resulting mix of fiscal conservatives, social liberals, barking dogs, middle-of-the-roaders, libertarians, stone and rock farmers, crabapple experts, stock Democrats, and certified lunatics combined to make our population decidedly purple in hue: which is the only color that counts these days in our national debate.”
Murder In Berlin
Police have charged Nomar Ramos-Rivera, 44, of Berlin with one count of second-degree murder and two counts of reckless conduct with a deadly weapon that resulted in the death of Christopher Veliz, 44, on February 3. He also is accused of recklessly firing a firearm into an occupied vehicle.
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jennie Duval performed the autopsy that determined that Veliz died of multiple gunshot wounds.
Attorney General John M. Formella, New Hampshire State Police Colonel Nathan Noyes, and Berlin Police Chief Daniel Buteau said Ramos-Rivera is being held without bail pending arraignment in the Coos County Superior Court.
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