Dick Dunning grew up Dublin, attended school in Dublin and Peterborough and was a teacher and then the longtime principal at South Meadow School in Peterborough. In total, he has spent 54 years in the ConVal School district.

Dunning spoke to the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript as an individual member of the ConVal School Board, where he is the chairman, and his opinions do not necessarily represent that of the board.

What is the main thing you would like ConVal district residents to understand about reconfiguration?

Many people also don’t understand just how small some of our schools are. The question is, how small are we willing to let these schools get? Would you keep running a school with eight kids? People need to think about that. Right now, the way the Articles of Agreement are written, the district is legally obligated to keep schools open even if they get down to eight kids. A “yes” vote on Article 10 would give the School Board the power to make the decision to close buildings if needed.

We could also decide not to close some schools. The concern is the low numbers. We had many different options on the table; we didn’t all agree. If we are successful, we will have a whole year to transition and to decide what works best.

Many people also don’t understand is just how unequal the elementary schools are. Kids in Peterborough and Antrim get a lot more services, a lot more support, because of the towns they live in, because there are more students in the building. The larger schools have full-time nurses and counselors; the smaller schools have to share. Kids don’t just get sick or need help at a certain time on Tuesday. It’s not a sustainable situation, and it gets worse every year. At the same time, all the other costs go up every year.

Another huge problem is the duplication of services. We have it in nursing, in administration, in guidance. The occupational therapists, the special education teachers, they go from school to school to school, and every minute on the road is a minute that a child is not receiving services. We also have a lot of duplication in paraprofessionals. Some paras can serve multiple kids in a classroom, but they can’t do that if they are all in different buildings.

With every student, you need to look at their social, emotional and academic needs. People talk a lot about small class size, but the fact is, there is no research supporting these very tiny classes like we have. On the national scale, a “small” school is 200, 300 kids. Running a school for 30 or 40 kids is just not something most towns can continue to do. If you look something like even food service, it is hard to break even when you have schools with 37 kids. The food will not be as good as school with internal kitchen. The kids in the small schools are not getting the same options.

The social aspect is just as crucial for kids’ development and achievement. If you don’t have emotional and social stability, academics does not happen. The social piece is critical to academic success – it has an impact on their academic performance critical to a child’s success. Students are not getting the same social opportunities in a class with seven kids, and it may stay that way for three or four years. It’s hard being the only girl, or the smartest kid, or the only struggling learner in the group. It is nice to have more kids like you, to create that sense of self-identity, to have that feeling of being part of the group, to know you have more options if things don’t work out with one group.

Right now, we are asked constantly by constituents to lower taxes, to get the budget in control. You have to give the board some ability to start controlling cost. Right now, we don’t have that control over the spending, because our hands are ties by the articles. If we don’t do something, our budget will be pushing $60 million. All the buildings need major capital improvements at this point – new roofs, new windows, stuff that is just necessary. The small schools all need repairs. Not having those facilities under us would save a lot of money.

We may also decide not to close all four schools. There were different options on the table, and not everyone on the board came to the same conclusions. We would have a year to look at this and figure out what is best.

What would you tell parents who are concerned at the effects closing a school would be traumatic to their young children?

I would say, it might be “traumatic” for the first 45 minutes, but then they’ll settle in. We would do the same thing for these students that we do for our fourth-graders headed for the middle schools, or for the middle-schoolers going to the high school. We can address kids’ fears and anxiety by having kids come over early and become familiar with the new building. We can have them meet the kids who will be in their class; we could have an open house; we walk them through and transition them over the year before, while there are kids are in the building. They might even get to meet their teachers.

We would do everything we can to deal with the anxiety and to make situation less of an unknown, more of a familiar situation. We would get the kids involved in the whole process so they would feel ownership.

Some parents may make requests for something different than the choice given. If parents can provide their own transportation, they could look at other options. Transportation is a big one – we know that many parents are really concerned about how it will work out. We would minimize the bus routes so no student has more than a 45-minute ride, which is about average for many routes in the district now.

When the small towns see the positive impact in the students, they will realize it’s a good thing.

Won’t reconfiguration be disruptive to teachers?

When I was a principal, the most-critical thing we have found to change education is PLCs – professional learning communities. The PLCs give teachers opportunity to get together so they can compare practices, talk around instruction, discuss what works. We had two blocks a day for admin and for PLC, for teachers to talk about their instruction. A major advantage of bringing schools together is to have a balanced teaching staff – some teachers are new, some are getting ready to retire, you have a whole range of experience.

You need the younger teachers to pick up roles like coaching and running the extracurriculars. The older teachers mentor younger teachers to carry the torch. Younger teachers bring new ideas, and they bring a lot of expertise with technology, which is huge.

Why didn’t the district go with the option of closing the middle schools, which was much more strongly supported by parents?

Our middle schools work great. It is not as simple as moving kids back. If you move those kids back to the elementary schools, there is no more band, there is no more chorus, there are no more middle school sports. When we moved the fifth-graders to SMS and Great Brook, the parents fought it and were very concerned and very upset. Within few weeks, they were all saying they wish they had done this years ago, because the kids were thriving. They loved the new opportunities, they loved having more options for friends and they loved the band and the sports and the social opportunity. If you send kids back to the elementary schools, they go back to the tiny classes and no extracurriculars, and the schools will still be half empty.

Closing SMS or Great Brook makes no sense to me. You would be taking everything away form those kids.

What would you say to towns who are considering leaving the district?

As far as leaving the district, what I can say is, the grass is not always greener. Other school districts might be concerned about taking on schools with very few students, because it is very costly. Towns without housing options have fewer kids. People also simply do not understand the impact of special education. One student with severe special needs can bankrupt a small community. We have had students who needed residential care that cost $450,000 a year.

Towns need to look hard at this; it will all fall on their taxpayers, without help from the district.

What will happen if the vote fails?

That’s a good question. My guess would be, depending on the what the vote shows, if it is a close vote, I think we would have get information back out there, and provide more insight and information for people, and we would try again. We would look at where the votes break down; that would indicate where we need to put more energy in the next time around.

If the proposed warrant is defeated soundly, we would need to look at what we are going to do, given the demands of the district. We have been told many times, the budget is too much of a burden on the taxpayers. We are told constantly that the board needs to do something to rein in costs. This is what we’re trying to do. If the vote fails, it’s hard to determine what will happen. We would probably be looking at more cuts in programming. We will not have an increase in programming, that is for sure.

My biggest concern is the amount of money being taken away from public schools in general. The past few years have seen a steady process of moving funds away from public schools to private and charter schools. That is my real concern. Because someone has to advocate for those children who have no option but public school. That is why we are here.