Day and Farwell for School Board

Election day is Tuesday March 11th, just a few days from today.  I want to urge everyone in Oyster River to vote for Sarah Farwell and Denise Day to fill the two at-large school board seats.  Both Sarah and Denise have extensive experience with the district, making each the right choice to win a school board seat this year.

Sarah Farwell

Sarah Farwell is the long-time co-chair of the PTO of Mast Way.  She's a former teacher whose three children attend Mast Way and ORMS.  As a Mast Way parent the last five years, it's been unsettling to me to have had three different principals.  Fortunately, there has always been Sarah there helping out.

Under her guidance, the PTO purchased items for teachers that wouldn't fit in the school budget, including sets of readers, a whiteboard and a Promethean board.  Sarah is behind the scenes at most every PTO event, organizing volunteers and providing the knowledge and experience so they can do their work.  She's served as a parent representative on two principal hiring committees, visiting candidates' schools, hosting their visits to Mast Way and participating in the excellent choices made.

When she's not running the PTO, you can usually find Sarah volunteering in the library or classroom at Mast Way or the middle school.  If you can't, look out the window -- she's probably doing the landscaping.   Or training middle schoolers to compost.  Or something else that is just making things better for the students, teachers and staff around her.  Sarah has been an incredibly positive force advocating for our children, parents and teachers and I am sure as a school board member she will continue to be so.

I've been posting on the district since the beginning of 2012.  Before becoming a candidate, Sarah Farwell showed up twice, each time with pictures!  Here's a story I wrote about the search that led us to Principal Carrie Vaich and here's a story about last election day.

Denise Day

I met Denise Day during the myriad controversies several years ago: a principal quitting in disgust, a botched principal search that led to a student walkout, a board member's hateful tweets discovered and illegal meetings to swap superintendents uncovered.  It was a pretty crazy, intense time in the district that if you ever cared to you could read all about by starting from the beginning of this blog and reading the first 15 or 20 posts.  There's nothing quite like a school board run amok to arouse the citizenry, and that was what got me and apparently Denise interested.

For as long as I've known Denise, she has always been the voice of reason, intelligence and calm.  This is of course especially valuable when emotions were running so high during the controversies.  Since then, we've both been regulars at school board meetings.  Denise has impressed me with her knowledge of the issues and with her ability to make insightful public comments, usually urging prudent and careful consideration with an eye toward how things were handled in the past.   Along with her deep grasp of issues in the district, Denise possesses a calm demeanor that is well suited to handling the many hot potatoes the board will have to deal with.  She is already shown herself to be a valuable part of the board discussion, as you can tell from her public comments. I especially like how she often asks what we can learn from events and how we can improve.  Denise has demonstrated she's ready for a seat at the table.

As a parent, Denise has experienced every grade Oyster River has to offer, as her son completed K through 12 here.  Denise was active in the PTOs all through her son's education, and, incredibly, still attends high school PTO meetings.  Her knowledge of the district goes all the way back to the mid 1990s.  Professionally, Denise has relevant experience from her current position as a supervisor for Strafford County Head Start and from a 7 year stint as a middle school counselor.  We are very fortunate to have such a qualified candidate as Denise Day.

Denise too has appeared in ORCSDcleanslate.org before becoming a candidate (here and here).

Conclusion

I don't mean to imply anything bad about the third candidate in the race, Michael Williams.   I don't know him very well.  He is a relative newcomer to the district.  One silver lining of turmoil like from the elementary reconfiguration decision is that it inspires good folks like Mr. Williams to get the idea to serve.  I welcome him.  While I believe that Sarah and Denise each bring knowledge of the district that make them superior candidates this cycle, I look forward to perhaps supporting Mr. Williams for school board in the future.

Sarah and Denise are known quantities, and known to be very good.   Unfortunately, we know much less about Mr. Williams, who missed the Candidates Forum on February 17 and did not attend last night's board meeting, the last before the election.   He seems pretty busy with a brand new baby and a job that requires travel.  Mr. Williams did attend yesterday's Student Candidate Forum, and I've asked the video folks to post it while it's timely. I'll post a link if they do.

It's been a relatively pleasant couple of years since Chairman Barth took the reins as chair.  The recent controversies surrounding football, tuition students and elementary school reconfiguration were passionately debated, but without the severe rancor that characterized the aforementioned tweet-era controversies.  After a sometimes long process the board reached the correct decisions.

 I'll point out that the decisions each were resolved in accordance with our history.  Redraw with family exemption is the district's traditional response to an elementary school imbalance.    We already take Barrington tuition students, and the decision to slowly ramp up and take more is really just a continuation and expansion of the status quo.  Similarly, the district has said no to football in the past and did so again last year.   I believe it's usually best when the district does things the way it has in the past (and thus reasonably expected by the public to do it that way again).

Sarah and Denise will help by bringing their long experience with the district to bear on future problems.  In the process, they will continue to unify and heal the community.  I urge you to vote for them on Tuesday.  

[A 350 word version of this essay was sent to Letters@Fosters.com.  There's a fair amount to say about last night's board meeting, the last one for the current board, but I'll save that for another post.  You can watch here or on our new cable channel, channel 95, which is all Oyster River School District.  Durham keeps channel 22 all to itself. ]