SAU 93 includes the towns of Fitzwilliam, Gilsum Richmond, Roxbury, Sullivan, Swanzey, and Troy.

Their website is: http://www.mrsd.org/board_education.cfm?subpage=522562

HINSDALE, N.H. — A Hinsdale committee made up of school officials and town residents unanimously recommended to withdraw from the School Administrative Unit 38 during a Wednesday night public hearing.

The Hinsdale SAU Withdrawal Committee supported leaving Unit 38 to give the district more authority over their finances and provide more direct services to students. The decision came after approximately 20 meetings since March 2009 to explore the numerous educational benefits by forming a separate Hinsdale district.

Withdrawing from the SAU would allow for local school leaders to work directly with the town on matters of mutual interest, reduce the complexity of the current administrative structure and allow full autonomy in decision-making by Hinsdale voters.

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Karen Cota, a former school board member from Roxbury tried to amend the budget so that it was the same amount as the default budget, thus depriving the taxpaying public of any choice

Colleen Dreyfuss, former Chair of the MRSD, backed Cota’s efforts publicly. By secret ballot, the taxpayers present rejected that amendment by a vote of 115 to 94. The initial budget of $31,694,597 was then approved by the voters. The Monadnock School Taxpayers Association supported this budget, which is almost $700,000 LESS than the default budget.

Article #3 which created an Employee Health Insurance Trust fund was also passed by the voters. Thus, surplus tax money from health care costs will go into this fund and be used towards the next year’s health care costs. Many times in the past, surplus health care funds were treated almost like a “slush fund” and spent on anything the school board wanted, which would also raise the default budget. Last year’s health care cost surplus was $717,000. The Monadnock Schools Taxpayers Association initiated this warrant article and the school board carried it forward. This is a win for the beleaguered tax paying families of the school district.

Towards the end of the meeting, after most of the non-union voters had left, the teacher union amended article #9 which effectively deleted it from the ballot. This article was to see if the voters of the MRSD would direct the school board to support any and all efforts of the NH School Board Association to seek legislative appeal of RSA 273-A:12, Section VII, the provision in the statute commonly referred to as the statutory “Evergreen Clause”. This would restore local control in the collective bargaining and school district budget process. The Monadnock School Board and the Budget committee supported this article. The teacher union squashed it by removing it from the ballot, thus depriving the voting public of the right to vote on the initiative at all.

Union members and their supporters who remained, then used the forum to speak about article #9 to lambaste Mr. Bauries, the president of the Monadnock Taxpayers Association. When Mr. Bauries got up to speak to the article, the union members, in unison, all walked out of the gym. Bauries made the point that even under the proposed budget, the cost per student in MRSD is $16,733- the highest in the area.

But move by Monadnock committee doesn’t sit well with some

SWANZEY CENTER — One week after the Monadnock Regional School Board voted to slice $200,000 from next year’s proposed school district budget, the budget committee opted to put nearly the same amount back in.

The committee agreed on a budget proposal of $31,694,597 following Thursday’s public hearing. This figure — which is $194,325 more than the school board’s proposal of $31,500,272 — will be the number voters can adopt or amend at the district’s official-ballot first session next month.

The budget committee’s vote restored most of the money the school board had cut for two maintenance jobs and a maintenance management position. But that doesn’t ease the danger that all three people will lose their jobs. Because, while the budget committee sets the budget number that goes before district voters, the school board controls how the money is spent.

In addition, while suggesting money be added back into the budget, committee Chairman Wayne S. Lechlider of Swanzey made no mention of sparing the maintenance staff. Instead, he derived his more than $194,000 addition with the hopes of keeping the biology, technology education and Spanish teachers at Monadnock Regional Middle/High School whose jobs were slated to be cut under the school board’s budget proposal.

Lechlider’s proposal also included adding back $24,700 for staff training, summer work by a guidance counselor, job-related travel and technology-education equipment and supplies.

Still, by hiking the budget proposal, the budget committee may have stirred a brewing fight with the Monadnock School Taxpayers Association.

“The $31.5 (million dollars proposed by the school board) makes sense,” said Richard E. Bauries, a Swanzey resident and president of the citizens’ organization. Bauries said the taxpayers association “made a deal” with the school board last year — which he later told The Sentinel wasn’t a formal agreement but rather a “thank you” to the board for being financially conservative. Last year, the association supported a high school building renovation article, according to Bauries, and refrained from circulating its publication that has, in the past, argued with many of the school board’s proposals.

However, he cautioned the budget committee, “If you’re going to add a lot more to the budget, then our support starts going the other way because people cannot afford that.”

Bruce W. Barlow, also a Swanzey resident, and chairman of the school board’s community relations committee, warned the budget committee about making a foe of the taxpayers’ association.

“At the current level (of the budget), we have an ally rather than an adversary,” he said, which he described as especially important since voters will also be asked to pass the next phase of a renovation project at the high school.

“If we raise the budget too much, we’re not going to have the support of the taxpayers association. My job (as community relations chairman) just got infinitely harder.”

However, Colline M. Dreyfuss, a Swanzey resident and former school board chairman, retorted, “The budget committee and the board should really look at the facts based on their own integrity and not by some threat from some other outside organization.”

This year’s proposed budget of $31,694,597 is $286,013, or 0.89 percent, less than the $31,980,610 budget Monadnock voters approved in March. As was the case last year, the budget proposal is less than the default budget, which the budget committee set at $32,507,904.

That number will kick in if voters defeat the budget proposal in March. State statute requires the default budget to reflect the current year’s operating budget plus debt service and contractual obligations and minus one-time expenditures.

So what exactly is a “one-time expenditure?”

On Thursday, this became subject for debate, as budget committee member Cornelius “Neil” F. Moriarty of Richmond attempted — and failed — to remove $160,000 from the default budget for a legal settlement because he said it’s a one-time expense.

Dassau told The Sentinel that while he didn’t recall the specific total of the settlement, Moriarty’s estimate seemed “very close.” Because of a confidentiality agreement, Dassau declined to confirm this money was for the settlement of a lawsuit from former Monadnock High School principal Daniel E. Stockwell.

But Moriarty told Thursday’s meeting crowd, “If you don’t know who the person is, you can go around the corner and look at the picture.” One of two pictures on the wall of the high school’s front hallway is of the late Stockwell, who launched a lawsuit against the district that was settled last year.

Regardless, Dassau said, whether the settlement counts as a “one-time expenditure” that can be included in the default budget warrants some interpretation.

“It’s not a truck. … You put in a new truck in the budget, you get your new truck, that’s a one-time expense,” he said.

Brian S. Gallagher, interim business administrator, backed Dassau up — questioning how $160,000 can be removed when it was never in a budget line item to begin with.

“To take out this $160,000 for a one-time item that was not appropriated for would seem not to be reasonable in following the intent of a one-time appropriation,” he said.

- The official-ballot first session is scheduled for Feb. 6 at 10 a.m. at Monadnock Regional Middle/High School.

Here is a graphic of similar data. Although the Monadnock School district is down just over 500 students from just a few years ago, we have had virtually no reduction in teaching or support staff, or administrative staff.

A new middle school plan in Monadnock falls victim to economic worries

SWANZEY CENTER — The bad economy claimed another victim Tuesday night, as the Monadnock Regional School Board voted to remove a plan for up to $18.7 million for a new middle school from March’s school-district warrant.

“It’s just the economy. It’s just not the time,” said facilities committee Chairman Robert J. Smith of Swanzey, who said committee members had voted unanimously at a recent meeting to recommend tossing the warrant article.

The school board’s vote Tuesday night is a reversal of its action in August, when members voted to bring the proposal for a new middle school for 7th- and 8th-graders before the district’s residents.

At that same August meeting, the board also approved putting on the warrant another article for up to $12 million for renovations to the high school.

Both articles were billed by supporters as a way to address the range of facilities concerns threatening the high school’s accreditation status with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

In 2007, a public high school commission of the group voted to downgrade the high school’s accreditation status from “warning” to “probation.”

In an April 2007 letter, the commission called the 46-year-old middle/high school building on Route 32 “crowded, over-extended and tired” and cited facility problems among numerous reasons for commission members’ decision.

Before the board voted to get rid of the middle school warrant article Tuesday, former facilities chairman Karen A. Cota of Roxbury — who had been a strong advocate of building a new middle school but recently resigned from the school board — spoke against delaying action.

“The economy has hit all of us pretty hard,” she said, but added, “We cannot wait until it gets better to fix our school. Renovations are only getting more expensive.”

Still, multiple school board members spoke in favor of getting rid of the article.

“You can’t do this. Not today, not in this economy,” said Troy school board representative Douglas Lyman, who said it would be difficult for the board to explain to voters both middle school and high school building proposals, along with the need for other projects in the district.

Swanzey representative Jane Fortson said she was similarly on board with removing the article. But she made an unsuccessful attempt to table the issue because she said she wanted to hear more of a rationale for nixing the plan. And, she said, the board should be discussing options for both the potential new middle school and current middle/high school building at once.

“We considered them as a package. But we separated that package,” she said. The $12 million in facility improvements still on the warrant was originally pegged for renovations on the building if it only housed grades 9-12, she said. However, fixing overcrowding if the school continues to hold all five grades would be a bigger project.

The $12 million slated to appear on March’s warrant is less than architects’ $28.7 million cost estimates for renovating the middle/high school to house grades 9-12. Renovating the building for grades 7-12, according to the firm, would cost $40.1 million.

Troy representative Susan Oerman said she agreed with Fortson.

“You’re talking about a lot of money. It’s going to affect a lot of people and I would like to have the opportunity to look at it as a whole,” said Oerman, adding that she needed more information before moving forward.

But board member James I. Carnie of Richmond said, “I think in this case we need to do this, and take it one step at a time.”

Smith said the facilities committee still needs to discuss future of the $12 million warrant article — whether, for example, that figure should be increased or the same amount of proposed money stretched.

Meanwhile, with the new building proposal off the table, the school board has also yet to come to consensus about a long-range plan for the middle school — another reason Fortson said she disagreed with turning down the middle school proposal Tuesday night.

After the school board’s vote, middle school Principal Linda Sutton said she was disappointed about the new middle school plan being axed from the warrant.

“I thought that it would be better to table it,” said Sutton. She has said splitting the middle school and high school would benefit her students by giving them more room and removing some of the social pressures that come from sharing the space with much older teenagers.

And even if voter approval of the new middle school proposal was a longshot, she explained, bringing it before residents on the warrant would have helped educate them about the need and cost of such an undertaking.

Keeping 7th- through 12th-grades in the same building, she said, “will affect (student) achievement in the long run.”

SWANZEY — And then there were 12.

What sounds like an Agatha Christie novel has become the Monadnock Regional School Board’s reality show as, one by one, representatives have abandoned its ranks.

Swanzey representative Kristen Goodenough is the latest member to quit — the third since September — and each departing member has given his or her resignations effective immediately.

There are 14 seats on the Monadnock school board, serving the district towns of Fitzwilliam, Gilsum, Richmond, Roxbury, Sullivan Swanzey and Troy.

With former board member Colline M. Dreyfuss’s Swanzey seat recently filled by Eric Stanley, Goodenough’s pending resignation — which school board members, in a formality, will likely vote to accept or reject on Dec. 2 — brings the vacancy count to two.

Another seat has been empty for about seven months. Although Sullivan representative Timothy Aho hasn’t resigned his position, he hasn’t been to a school board meeting since April. Aho did attend an official-ballot first session for the teachers contract in August, but said he’s been unable to attend board meetings because of business conflicts.

This morning, Aho repeated his intent to return to the board in the future.

Goodenough was elected to the school board in March for a three-year term and served briefly as chairman of the community relations committee. She was also chairman of the Be True to Your School committee, a group that links school officials, students and parents in an effort to raise funds for the high school.

In an e-mail to The Sentinel Monday, Goodenough became the latest exiting board member to point to the district’s contentious politics as weighing heavily on her decision to resign.

“I am discouraged and frustrated with the current direction of the board,” she wrote. “The issues are so BIG … Bigger than simple volunteerism can resolve.”

Goodenough’s e-mail also describes a lack of funding for improving communication with voters and speaks of “strong, mean-spirited factions in our community” blocking school board efforts to raise student achievement.

The two other representatives to jump ship in recent months expressed similar frustrations.

At a Sept. 16 meeting, Dreyfuss, of Swanzey, announced in a letter that she was quitting the school board.

“I feel that I can serve my district better as a watchdog of those who skirt the truth and promote dysfunction in our cooperative district,” she wrote in the letter, while later describing to The Sentinel other personal reasons that factored into her decision.

Five weeks later, Karen A. Cota — who had served as the school board’s longtime facilities chairman and Roxbury’s sole representative — also threw in the towel.

“In the last six months it has become more apparent that this board is not interested in the welfare of our students,” she said, reading her resignation letter to the school board Oct. 21. “I believe this board is more interested in power trips, and personal egos are at an all-time high.”

In her e-mail to The Sentinel, Goodenough wrote, “I feel that there are other, more productive, ways that I may be able to contribute without the restrictions imposed by being a board member.”

Yet, as district budget hearings approach, Swanzey is down one school board member. And Roxbury and Sullivan — should Aho continue to be absent — are left without any representation at all.

“It’s disheartening to have this happen,” Nancy L. Carlson, chairman of the Swanzey Board of Selectmen, said Monday.

With the passage of the teachers contract in September and the strong message of change Monadnock Regional High School Principal Brian S. Pickering gave this summer in a documentary on Cheshire TV, Carlson said, “Things just seemed to be running and heading in a positive direction. And then the school board doesn’t seem to be on the same page.”

As with Dreyfuss, Swanzey selectmen will choose a replacement for Goodenough, according to Carlson.

This person will finish the year, she said, but will need to be re-elected by voters in March to continue serving on the board.

This could present a problem, Carlson explained. She said the endpoints of school board terms are staggered in a way that prevents large turnovers — yet three of Swanzey’s six seats will open this March.

But Roxbury has even more immediate troubles.

“We’d like to fill our position as soon as possible, but we just haven’t found the person,” said Daniel E. Stockwell, a Roxbury selectman and former principal of Monadnock Regional High School. “At this point, we haven’t found anyone interested.”

Stockwell also lamented losing Cota because of her experience on the school board.

“She worked very hard for the district,” he said. “She did a lot on the facilities committee.”

Superintendent Kenneth R. Dassau echoed him.

“I’m concerned that the board is losing experienced members. When you have a (Colline) Dreyfuss and a (Karen) Cota leave, I mean that was years of experience and two of the hardest working members on the board,” he said while describing Goodenough as bringing marketing skills and enthusiasm that will be difficult to replace.

As for the fact that Roxbury — like Sullivan — currently has no one at school board meetings acting on the town’s behalf, Stockwell said, “We certainly pay taxes and send our kids there and would like to have a representative there when they’re making decisions.”

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The people who have quit the school board are among the biggest tax and spenders in the district. They contributed heavily to the large school tax increases that we see on this December’s tax bill.