Articles

In absence of a strategic plan, the adhoc decisions of the School Board impacts the entire community. The author highlights some of the more burdensome decisions of the board.  

Voters are seeing numerous school district warrant articles that are being funded with unassigned fund balance. Most of these articles are for contributions to capital reserve funds (CRFs) for items related to maintenance, special education, technology, etc. While it makes sense to have these CRFs in place and to properly fund them, the funds should be coming from new taxation, and not from unassigned fund balance.

Despite the optimistic hopes that SAU39 enrollment will increase, the reality is that enrollments have been and are trending downward. Observe the following table for enrollments, excluding pre-K, of the Amherst School District.

The short article compares the age of all school buildings between Amherst and Hollis-Brookline with some thought provoking questions.

Once upon a time, Amherst School District Schools had academic outcomes that were the envy of other schools. Now, not so much.  In this article, the author shares NH SAS performance results from 2009 to present for Grades 3 through 8. With whom the accountability lies? 

The author attempts to clarify why the continued discussion to explore the possibility to use the Souhegan High School Annex remains relevant, and how in late stages of the local election cycle a last minute write-in candidate for Souhegan Cooperative School Board (SCSB) member has been introduced by the proponents of a new Wilkins Elementary School building (Article 12)

The author questions whether it behooves the ASB and SCSB to consider wholistic solutions for K through 12thgrades?  For the last 5 or so years, both JFAC and ASB insist on the NEW excessively large elementary school, relocating 5th grade down to a lower elementary. Not only does this desire create a need for more space, it also creates a burden on the immediate community by creating more congestion within the Amherst Village. Even more unfortunate, this unnecessary expanse will be levied on 100% of the taxpayers, even though approximately 75% to 80% of all residents DO NOT have children in any of the Amherst Schools. Is this fair to the entire community?

Operating under the default budget is not an hardship for the district. Default budgets are not bare-bone budgets.  It's a number the district is limited to spending when a proposed budget fails. For the next few years, vote NO on any future ASD proposed budgets that are larger than the default budget calculation. This will flush out a lot of the excess that currently exists in the proposed budgets.

There are two sources of public domain data that allow us to assess SAU39  Academic Proficency:

· New Hampshire Department of Education (NH-DOE)
provides proficiency data associated with all NH Districts, Schools and Grades

· NWEA provides proficiency data and performance projections associated with the tens of thousands of NWEA subscriber Districts, Schools and Grades across the US.

Following is a summary of NH-DOE Reading (ELA) and Math Proficiency data …

To better see the distribution of results, for Reading, 75% Proficient is ‘White’; for Math 60% Proficient is ‘White’, below Proficient results are shades of Red’, above Proficient results are shades of Green.

Warrant articles paid for with unassigned fund balance have a tax impact.  They are paid for with tax dollars.  The warrant articles state that no NEW taxation is required.  The warrant articles do not state that no taxation is required.  Taxation IS required.  For those who think no taxes are required, the obvious question becomes, where do you think this money comes from?