More Coffee, Please

I’ve been talking about the school board situation—and the changes—for a few posts now, and there’s no doubt that it’s going to get worse before it gets any better.

Kristen Goodenough was one of the “good” schoolboard members—one of the ones who listened, tried to find solutions, and worked to make things better for everyone—instead of pursuing a partisan agenda. Yesterday, she made her resignation official, and she sent the following explanation out.

It bears repeating in its entirety:

I’m emailing you to let you know that I resigned from the school board and tonight it will become official. This was an incredibly difficult decision.

I am very sorry and want to apologize to each and everyone of you for letting you down but I also feel as though I owe you a bit of an explanation…

At the last school board meeting Dick Bauries (president Monadnock Taxpayers Association) attack the School Board members calling us names and going on a tirade about our district for 20 minutes. He singled me out and called Mr. William Felton an “Ugly Old Man”. This in its self was disturbing but what you must understand this was the last straw for me.

In the 9 months that I have been a School Board member it has become quite clear to me that there are very few members on the current school board that are qualified and able to conduct and/or participate in meetings with any professionalism and decorum. The personal agendas are rampant and egregious. As you know, the Town of Swanzey has a 50% stake in this board and therefore when I submitted my resignation I requested that the Swanzey Board of Selectmen consider a formal (or informal) inquiry into the current situation.

“The goal of the Monadnock Regional School Board is to improve student achievement.”

To me this is laughable! We are NOT working toward improving student achievement because we are too busy combating conspiracy theories and bullying tactics. This has become a circus and truly is a case of “the inmates running the asylum.”

It has been my goal, as a promised, to improve overall community awareness and communication of the school board activities. But I feel that without the support of the School Board this is an unattainable goal.

The CRC has had an opening since Colleen Dreyfuss left the board and no obvious attempt has been made to fill the position, although work has been done to fill other openings in other committees.

I was nominated to become the CRC Chairperson. During my first meeting as chair I presented a meager proposal to look at allocating existing funds to the Community Relations Committee in the amount of $7 – 11k, which I believe already exists in the budget so it would be a line item transfer to be used for improving communications to the voters and over all Public Relations with the School Board. As a point of reference, Keene has a full-time PR employee.

In fact, I was told by one committee member that there was “NO POINT in communicating to the public, (that) it doesn’t do any good.”

Another committee member told me that he is going to resign from the CRC in January because he cannot be a part of any of the promotion of the warrant articles that he doesn’t support.

I would also like to point out that there are several members of the board that feel we don’t need to bother with NEASC and take a “who cares” attitude when it comes to the reality that MRHS may in-fact lose its accreditation. It has even been stated that perhaps “we just cannot afford to be accredited.” I have had a parent contact me to say that during his child’s College interview it was stated that they will require him take the GED exam IF our school loses accreditation. This is REALITY.

Is this really what we really want for our children???

There is also the constant snickering and under current of whispers during voting that are clearly meant to intimidate other board members.

Coupled with the outside influences of the Monadnock Taxpayers Association and Richmond Rooster being used to bully and discredit board members and serve ONLY to further distract from the stated goal “…to improve student achievement.”

Overall, I believe this behavior is VERY dangerous to the integrity of the school board and the administration.

Brian Pickering and his team have made some tremendous strides toward improving our status with NEASC do we really want to risk all the progress that has been made?

We need your help!!

I would like to make an appeal to all of you to PLEASE come to the school board meeting tonight December 2nd there is a MRSD School Board meeting at 7:00pm in the Library at the High School. Please come to speak in defense of education and accreditation.

Please come and speak during public comments. It really is quite easy. You sign up with Laura (secretary) before the meeting starts, you get 3 minutes to speak, you only address the board chair.. You can just state your name and town and say a few words, like “I support education!”

We need to show the board that we DO care. It is so important that the public starts showing up. Please come.

The public comment time is in the beginning of the meeting so if you can’t stay for the entire meeting you can state your thoughts and then leave. Please pass this email on to your friends and relatives and see if we can get lots of folks on Tuesday to come!

I’m not entirely sure how to underscore how important all this is. In March, there will be elections for school board officials, and they need to be good people. Conversely, those same factions which have dedicated themselves to ending public education are going to do their very best to put in people who will be amenable to their views.

In short, it’s going to take people getting out there and being willing to serve their community—otherwise there won’t be a community to serve. Ask Surry—schools are the center of a town.

Start looking at your neighbors, and talking to the ones you think would be good. March is going to be here too quickly.

Technorati Tags:
Education, Monadnock Regional School District, School Board, School Change

Gregarious

Share This