With Bridgewater having voted, 291-28, to leave the Newfound Area School District, and with Groton having voted, 109-10, to also withdraw, it appears that the unity that has held the district together for 62 years has fallen apart. To clinch the withdrawal effort, Hebron also will have to vote to leave at its town meeting on May 14, but it is likely that that ship has sailed. It is probably too late to persuade those voters that staying with Newfound is the best choice.
To make the best of a bad situation, the new school board, once it is seated, should try to re-engage with the steering committee to offer tuition agreements and administrative services that would ease the disruption by keeping Bridgewater, Groton, and Hebron aligned with Newfound, similar to the way the Hill School District is aligned through tuition agreements.
The school board’s approach up to now has been, instead of attempting to find a solution to the problem and persuade the towns they would be better off staying with Newfound, to throw obstacles in their way. They succeeded in getting the enabling legislation amended to give the three towns seven months instead of as many as four years to work out the details of how their special-purpose school district would work. They refused to look into the financial impact on the four remaining towns if the three towns were to leave and how they might mitigate that cost by offering tuition and service agreements to keep the towns aligned with Newfound.
So the approach was to make it difficult for the three towns to come up with costs and solutions and then complain that residents didn’t have the information they needed about costs and solutions. They forced the towns to look to other school districts for agreements and then complained about how disruptive it would be if the students had to go elsewhere.
The towns have long complained about administrative denials of their proposals for improving education. Not since John Davis was superintendent has the school administration supported the innovative approach Bridgewater and Hebron took in building and maintaining the Bridgewater-Hebron Village School, which the district supplied with curriculum and staff. The resistance is exemplified by former superintendent Stacy Buckley’s recent comment on Facebook: “The new ‘Terry Murphy k-8 school’ will be great for his grandchildren!” Instead of addressing the substance of the proposals, Buckley and others have resorted to personal attacks on the people who offer suggestions.
(John Davis was not above pettiness: When he introduced himself to residents at Superintendent George Corrette’s last school district meeting, he said he welcomed hearing from all sides of the issues; but when some of my news coverage included complaints about his decisions, he took it out on my daughter, refusing to shake her hand at eighth-grade graduation.)
The three towns might have remained with Newfound, despite the slights they had endured over the years, if it wasn’t for the move by Alexandria residents to replace the school funding formula — that had satisfied the member towns for six decades — with one that would relieve Alexandrians of their tax burden. The seven towns had agreed when they formed School Administrative Unit 4 that school costs would be apportioned based upon how many children each town sent and what the costs of transporting those students was. It was fair to everyone.
In trying to reapportion costs, the study committee looked at factoring in equalized valuation — which most other school districts in the state use as one factor in determining what their towns pay. The problem with that change is that it would make Bridgewater, Groton, and Hebron “donor towns” which would be quite a blow after all these years. The study committee ended up leaving the formula alone, but they suggested the district might want to take up the question again.
That problem could be avoided, of course, if New Hampshire state government covered the cost of education, rather than forcing towns to pay through both their municipal property taxes and the statewide property tax that actually is another local property tax disguised as state funding. Putting the burden on property owners sets up a battle between property-poor communities and property-rich communities.
By opening the Pandora’s Box of school funding allocations, the three towns that already were fighting for a different approach to education also found themselves fighting to keep their taxes from doubling or tripling.
What I hope to see from the new school board is for them to start looking at factual information and to offer solutions.
The school district could not offer superintendent services because it would require adding more staff members in space that already is too cramped. How about looking at new quarters for the SAU, or for some of its personnel? With a declining school population, it might be possible to find space in the existing school buildings. As for hiring new staff, the Bridgewater-Hebron-Groton Steering Committee offered to cover the cost of any additional personnel necessary to provide the services they would need.
The three towns may be too far along in their talks with other districts, or no longer interested in gambling on a better relationship with Newfound. This year, the three towns will have representation on the Newfound Area School Board, but they will not be able to vote on anything affecting the new school district, which would begin operations in July 2025. That means the other board members need to work for positive results.
Regardless of what happens with those three towns, residents in Alexandria, Bristol, Danbury, and New Hampton will need to hear (finally) what the impact will be on their students and their pocketbooks — questions the school board has ignored so far.
The school board has a long way to go in restoring confidence in their work — some because of their actions (or lack of) and some because of the public’s misunderstanding of what they do and why.
The first thing is to clarify how the public comment period works. Their policy states, “Notice is hereby made that public comment shall be made without expectation of a response by any School Board member to matters raised by such commentary.” The addition of a simple word — “immediate” — is necessary: “Notice is hereby made that public comment shall be made without expectation of an immediate response by any School Board member to matters raised by such commentary.” As it stands now, the public is led to believe that the school board is not listening, and that the answers they need and are entitled to will not be forthcoming.
Subcommittees now vote to “approve” actions when they should only be “recommending” them, because it is up to the school board to approve any action. Board members need to ask committee members to present their recommendations and question them about them instead of simply going along with whatever the committee has “approved”.
That includes board policies. Rather than simply accepting the policy committee’s changes, they should discuss what the changes are and make sure they understand before accepting them for “first reading”. They may want to amend them and have them come back for first reading. Even if they don’t find anything wrong with the proposals, by discussing them in public, residents have a chance to learn what changes are being made and, if they have concerns, to voice them before the policies are accepted on second reading. Just referring to the incomprehensible alphabet soup of policy names (e.g., EF-R, JFCM, JLCJ) provides no way of knowing what they are.
Finally, I would suggest returning to two public comment periods, at the beginning and at the end of the meeting, so people can offer informed opinions of what is discussed. The excuse that it makes the meetings too long is false, as by the end of the meeting, the audience is as anxious as the school board to go home, but they might have a few worthwhile comments to make.