Public comment at ConVal’s deliberative session Tuesday night in the ConVal High School gym focused on Articles 7 and 8, which propose  Dublin and Francestown’s withdrawal from  the ConVal School District; and Article 9, a budget cap warrant article signed by 34 Dublin residents.

The ConVal School board does not recommend any of the three articles.

Jim Fredrickson of Sharon, chair of the ConVal School Board’s Budget and Property Committee, suggested that the wording of the budget cap warrant article, which stipulates that the school district use Oct. 1 average daily membership numbers to calculate the population of the district, be changed to Jan. 1. Fredrickson also said that the wording of the amendment was problematic because “there is not a direct correlation between losing one student and saving $29,000.”

The cap is based on spending of $29,000 per student.

“It does not work that way,” he said. 

The motion to amend the wording to Jan. 1 passed.

The wording in the warrant article stems from an organization called the School District Governance Association of New Hampshire, which is advocating for school budget caps articles across the state. The group’s website states:  “Elected school district officials now have a resource devoted entirely to educating and empowering them to assert their lawful authority and be responsive to their electorate.”

A recent effort to pass a similar budget cap warrant article in the Kearsarge School District failed by 95%. 

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Blake Minckler of Dublin, who submitted the warrant article, did not attend the meeting to speak on the article. Traceymay Kalvaitis, a resident of Dublin, spoke up against it. 

“This makes me really nervous,” she said. “It may sound great on the surface, because we all want to save money, but we need to be really careful with this, where its coming from, and whether it is appropriate and whether it will help our children.” 

Jim Kingston, School Board representative from Temple, also spoke against the budget cap article, noting that too many contingencies would not be covered. 

In discussion of Francestown’s and Dublin’s proposed withdrawals from the ConVal district, Mark Fernald of Peterborough asked “why these towns still want this.”

“The School Board is not going to close these elementary schools. The proposal failed, and they heard these communities. They are committed to keeping these schools open, and Francestown and Dublin have some of the lowest tax rates in the district, so why would their taxpayers want this?  If they leave, it is going to cost everyone more,” Fernald said. “I understand people were angry after the proposal last year, but you need to look at why you are doing this. You will lose representation of running the district, where you will be sending your children for middle and high school.  It safe to assume that costs will go up for all the schools in the district.” 

Jesse Marcum of Dublin asked the School Board to stop stating that “Dublin wants to withdraw.”

“It is not true that the whole town of Dublin wants to withdraw. Some people in Dublin want to withdraw. The only townwide vote we have had on this issue was when we voted to have a feasibility study last March. The community has not weighed in on this issues since then. None of the informal polls have asked whether or not we want to withdraw, and there are a lot of people in Dublin who don’t want to withdraw, ” Marcum said. 

Answering questions about how the withdrawals from the district would affect taxpayers in the other seven towns, Mike Hoyt, School Board representative from Bennington who chaired the Feasibility Study Committee, said that creating two additional districts in what has been a single-district SAU for over 50 years will increase administrative costs for all taxpayers.

Jeanne Dietsch of Peterborough, a former state senator, said that “we don’t know what the numbers are, but we do know that they are going to go up.”

“What we will end up doing is expending more administrative costs and less on the kids, which is what has even happening for years. This will make this that much worse,” Dietsch said

Pat Troy, speaking for the Francestown School Committee, said that if the article for Francestown to withdraw passes, Francestown will pursue withdrawing from the SAU as well to eliminate any additional administrative cost for taxpayers in other towns. Troy said the decision had just been made, and that the town would formally notify the ConVal School Board as soon as possible.

In a presentation at a public forum last week, the Francestown School Committee stated that their proposal to withdraw is a “win-win for the district,”  with Francestown supporting its own elementary school and reducing the burden on ConVal to run a small school.

"We would like to retain our school. We would like to pay for our school, and we would like to lessen the burden on ConVal, including withdrawing from the SAU,” Troy said. 

In answer to several questions from members of the public about the exact shared costs of the proposed withdrawals, Kingston said there are “too many moving parts.”

“There are a lot of things which can’t be negotiated until the districts have actually withdrawn, such as tuition for the middle school and high school, and what services the new districts will opt to use from the SAU,” Kingston said. 

In New Hampshire, an SAU, or school administrative unit, is responsible for administration for any districts within the SAU, including policy setting, budgeting, curriculum, compliance with state and federal regulations and business administration, including accounting, payroll and benefits. ConVal has been a single-district SAU since 1967, when it was created. 

A withdrawal article can pass in one of two ways – a majority vote across the district supporting it, or 60% support in a town looking to withdraw and 40% across the district as a whole.

Curtis Hamilton, school board representative from  Greenfield, urged all members of the public to attend ConVal’s informational forum Wednesday night, Feb. 12, at 6:15 p.m. at ConVal’s Lucy Hurlin Theatre.

“We will present all the numbers we have at that time around the costs of these withdrawals,” he said.

At the close of the session, the board asked the public to recognize Alan Edelkind, the outgoing School Board representative from Dublin, and retiring board Chair Dick Dunning. Dunning, who has served the ConVal district for 54 years as a teacher, administrator and School Board representative, received a standing ovation from the crowd.