The ConVal School Board  and administration painted a bleak picture of educational equity and quality in the district if the proposed reconfiguration warrant article fails on March 12.

Kimberly Rizzo Saunders, superintendent of the ConVal School District, said supporting 11 separate buildings is no longer sustainable. 

“When you have a school with only three or five staff members like we have in these small schools, there is nothing left you can cut. I’ve been here 15 years, and every year when we have to make cuts so we can balance our budget. Since there is nothing left to cut at the small schools, we just have go back again and cut more at the high school,  cut more  at the middle schools. We have to do this every year just to keep those small schools going,” Rizzo Saunders said. “We’ve had to eliminate teaching positions and move a lot of classes at ConVal online. We had to cut AP classes. We had to get rid of French. We’ve had to cut program after program. We have declining enrollment every year, we have less funds every year, and costs just keep going up. I just don’t know how to make it work anymore.” 

The superintendent noted that funding for public schools in New Hampshire has decreased in recent years due to policies that divert funding from public schools to charter schools, Education Freedom Accounts, and other factors. 

“I would be happy to host an entire meeting just to explain school funding  for people and talk about what’s going on in our state,” Rizzo Saunders said. 

Alan Edelkind, chair of the ConVal’s Strategic Organization Committee, reiterated that the decision to approve the warrant article giving the School Board permission to initiate reconfiguration is up the voters in ConVal’s nine towns, and encouraged everyone to vote. 

Michael Hoyt, School Board representative from Bennington,  summarized the Board’s reasons for pursuing reconfiguration, including the consistently declining population in the region and the state, the lack of equity in services among the different schools in the district, and inefficiency in delivery of services including school nurse,  special education, speech therapy,  occupational therapy, and physical therapy. Hoyt said that reconfiguration would provide increase social opportunity and diversity for students and enable the potential for before and after school programs in the four remaining schools.

Hoyt also raised the issue of safety.

“We can’t take  safety for granted in this region,” he said. “With so few staff members in these smaller schools, we will be at the point where we will not be able to meet the mandated requirements for safety in these buildings, and they keep increasing.” 

Hoyt described his own experience of going through consolidation as principal and lifelong resident of Franklin. 

“In that situation, it was my own school that was closed – the one I attended through sixth grade, so I do understand how this feels. In that district, we had to make the decision in the best interest of all the children in the district. The financial crisis we had in Franklin is what I see happening in ConVal now,” Hoyt said. “The building does not make a school. It’s the passion of the teachers, the parents, and the children that make a school.”

Parents and community members from Dublin, Bennington, Francestown, and Temple pushed back during the public comment section. 

“It’s not true that this change will affect all the towns equally,” Rose Lowry of Temple said. “If you close the school, people will not want to move to Temple. We will not have families with little kids in Temple. It will deeply affect our town.”

Sean Foisy of Temple, a father of six, expressed similar sentiments.

“We never would have moved to Temple if there had not been a school,” he said.

Parents from Dublin and Francestown stood to state the same.

“I see my several of my neighbors here, and we all moved to Francestown because of the school,” said Ellien Larabee-Byers. 

John Manley of Bennington agreed.

“I just spoke to someone who said if this passes, they will put their house on the market, because property values in town will plummet,” he said. “You can’t say this won’t affect our towns.” 

The ConVal Deliberative session is  Feb. 6, 6 p.m. in the ConVal High School gym.  The snow date for the deliberative session is Feb. 7. For more information please go to https://schoolboard.conval.edu.