ORCSD FY27 Budget Increased $519K in Agonizing Deliberative Session

School board proposed cuts

At the ORCSD Deliberative Session yesterday, ORMS math interventionist and former board member Krista Butts* gave an impassioned appeal to undo the board's proposed cut of the three interventionists, and Amanda Hassan (?) argued against the nurse cut. In response, the citizens overwhelmingly approved State Rep and former board member Al Howland's motion to increase the proposed $61.8M budget by $519K.  

The amended budget and a dozen other warrant articles will be voted on by the citizenry of the three towns on election day, Tuesday, March 10, 2026.  Should the budget pass as it always has, the board is free to do what it wants with the extra money, including just giving it back to the taxpayers at the end of the school year. 

Estimated tax impact (not including the $519K increase)

My understanding is the administration was laying off the two teachers because they no longer needed them, due to the changes in the number of students at each grade. The students aren't really going anywhere and the class size guidelines have not changed, so the district will just hire new teachers for the grades that need them. This is a big part of what we pay the district administration to do. While the board should give due weight to the relatively clear intent of the voters at DS, they are still obligated to run the district in a responsible manner. We'll see what happens.

It took four and a half hours to go through most of the 13 warrant articles (ballot questions), including four added by citizen petition.  Attempts were made to amend five of the warrant articles, three successfully: Article 4 (operating budget) was amended to add $519K, Citizen Petition Article 12 was amended to make the proposed tax cap 15%, more like a tax ten-gallon hat, and Citizen Petition Article 13 (performance audit) was amended to appropriate only $100.

The queue for Durham voters went around the room

We knew it was going to be a long meeting when it took about 45 minutes to check in all the Durham folks.  I have no idea why the attendees were so disproportionately from Durham. I initially guessed maybe they were angry about their taxes going up. Perhaps they were erroneously told there would be snacks.  They turned out to be most of the substantial majorities that voted for more spending by the district, and voted against the various attempts to restrict spending in the district.  [That's my glib characterization of the four citizen petition articles, perhaps mistaken: please see Colin Butler's* comment below.]

Kenneth Stuff moved to amend Article 3, the $9.5M elementary school construction project bond, with an amendment changing the bond amount to $3.9M.  [Although it was not very clearly presented at the DS, the proposers had a justification for this number, also detailed in Colin Butler's comment below.]  The board implied if it passed, this would waste the half million dollars already spent on planning, and at minimum delay the project, perhaps forever.  Colin Butler had the requisite five signatures for a secret ballot, which took forever to cast, collect and count; that would be nice to fix.  The amendment failed with 42 (15%) in favor and 237 (85%) against.  I'm having flashbacks to the similar fate I suffered at the 2022 DS.

Citizen Petitioners

Articles 10 through 13 are the four citizen petitions, presented by a group of four people: Rita Mason, Eric Mason, Daniel Day, and Colin Butler. Kenneth Stuff and Peter Johnson also commented in support.

Daniel Day is son of board member and former chair Denise Day, who is retiring after 12 years of service, thanks Denise! I fondly remember then recent graduate Daniel Day from a school board meeting around 13 years ago where he said he'd be fired from his job had he tweeted the stuff board member Kach had.

A few of the amendments were by the proposers to fix defects in the language to accord with state law.  Those were uniformly thwarted by the voters, presumably on the theory that an article cannot be enacted even if passed if it does not obey state law.  It was a tough crowd; the group learned the hard way to do their homework and get the wording right the first time. 

Amendments passed effectively neutering Article 12 (tax cap) and Article 13 (performance audit).  Article 10 (statutory budget committee) remains intact.  Article 11 (end retaining of fund balance) attempts to end the power the voters granted to the board to divert some appropriated but unspent money at school year end into various funds.  Instead, if passed, the unspent funds will be used to offset next year's taxes. This was one of the articles where the voters prevented a language fix; not sure of the consequences if it passes.

The presenting group was not uniformly against all spending; Mr. Butler was the one who seconded the motion to add back the $519K.   

Kudos to moderator Michael Williams, who did an excellent job keeping this unwieldy meeting moving forward.  One suggestion: while counting secret ballots in public, it is best not to have one of the counters appearing to stick a few in her pocket. These turned out to be non-ballots in the ballot box, voter cards of frustrated voters who had apparently fled in search of a shorter meeting. Still, appearance is important.

The district is playing some games as well.  Article 9 asks the voters to raise and appropriate $0 for funding ORCSD Open Enrollment.  The money would be used to pay tuition for students from the district to attend other schools.  The district believes the $0 appropriation will prevent the state from imposing the cost on us later.

The meeting began with a presentation of the Distinguished Service Award.  Congratulations to 2026 ORCSD Distinguished Service Award winner Daniel Couture, who was honored for his many years of volunteer service with our ORCSD F.I.R.S.T. Robotics program.

This is the first time I've written about the district since last March, so let's not stretch it out.  Future topics include: the school board election, the elementary school project, the budget, the various contracts and funds, and the four citizen petitions.  No need to do it all today; I've have another meeting report to write, for my actual job. Talk to you all soon.

*Full disclosure: (1) Krista Butts and I are the ORMS MATHCOUNTS co-coaches; the Seacoast Regional Competition is at UNH this Saturday, go Bobcats!  (2) I've exchanged a few texts with Colin Butler about what I thought about the warrant articles and DS procedures, as I would be happy to with anyone interested in participating in our school governance.  

References:

Warrant as proposed 

District Handout at DS

District Slides at DS

YouTube of DS

Elementary School Project

I asked Colin Butler to comment on this article. He shared it with Daniel Day who straightened me out when I said he worked for Rite Aid; sorry about that, Daniel, I've corrected the post. Colin also helped me with some names, which I've incorporated above.  He further replied:

To provide some context on the $3.9M figure: it wasn't an arbitrary number intended to stall the project. The analysis utilized a 'Total Impacted Square Footage' methodology (encompassing demolition, construction, and renovation) to establish a baseline cost per building. This base rate was then applied to specific functional areas, including classrooms, the cafeteria, and 'art on a cart' spaces. The objective was to quantify the project’s original scope prior to its expansion by the administration. Notably, this figure aligns closely with the baseline estimates previously cited by Dr. Morse during the June 5, 2024 Meeting. While this high-level calculation differs from a construction firm's detailed line-item build-up, it serves as a directionally accurate benchmark for the initial project scale.

For what it’s worth, none of the articles were intended to be anti-spending. On the contrary, they were designed to promote smarter spending and more disciplined decision-making utilizing the same tools that now higher-ranked NH SB2 districts and $60M organizations use as standard practice. We aimed to make that distinction clear in our presentation and slide; however, I'll take the note that the "group is not uniformly against all spending" as feedback that we need to be much more effective in communicating that nuance. If you have any suggestions as to how we can do that I'd love to hear them!

Article 13: The district’s actions were equally questionable. Legally, the district does not have the authority to unilaterally cherry-pick portions of a petitioned warrant article. We were denied our right to have the article restored to the original language authorized by the signers, which undermines the very purpose of the petition process.

Thank you for the extensive comment, Mr. Butler. - Dean

Heather Smith, Renee Bennett, Sean Harrison elected to ORCSD School Board

In an unsurprising result, Renee Beauregard Bennett was elected to the Lee school board seat, Heather Smith was reelected to an at-large seat, and newcomer Sean Harrison won the remaining at-large seat. Moderator Michael Williams was reelected. Congratulations to you all. YES won on all school district questions, including the $58M budget appropriation and the $531K architect fee; congratulations to the District. The rather large budget passed with 68% support, down from the usual 75%, but hardly a citizen revolt despite some grumbling. Thanks to wonderful outgoing member Brian Cisneros for his 8 years of service on the board. Please enjoy this spreadsheet history of district elections that covers the time I've been paying attention. Thanks to Todd Selig for these unofficial results; I've added the percentages. SCHOOL DISTRICT UNOFFICIAL RESULTS (Durham, Lee, and Madbury Combined Ballots from all three precincts.)     ARTICLE 1: For Moderator (1 Year) (Vote for not more than one) Michael Williams - 1541     ARTICLE 2: For School Board - Lee (2 years) (Vote for not more than one) Renee Beauregard Bennett - 1401     For School Board - At-Large (3 Years) (Vote for not more than two) Nancy Smith            510    18.7% Sean Harrison         947     34.8% William Howard       190      7.0% Heather D. Smith  1078     39.6%     ARTICLE 3: Shall the District raise and appropriate as an operating budget, not including appropriations by special warrant article and other appropriations voted separately, the amount set forth on the budget posted with the warrant or as amended by vote of the first session, for the purposes set forth therein, totaling $58,002,091? Should this article be defeated, the operating budget shall be $57,478,995 (Default Budget) which is the same as last year with certain adjustments required by previous action of the District or by law; or the District may hold one special meeting in accordance with RSA 40:13, X, and XVI to take up the issue of the revised operating budget only. The School Board recommends this appropriation. (Majority vote required)   Note: Fund 10 = $56,002,463 (regular operating budget); Fund 21 = $1,249,628 (expenditures from food service revenues); Fund 22 = $645,000 (expenditures from federal/special revenues); Fund 23 = $105,000 (expenditures from pass through funds).   YES  1168  67.9% NO     551   32.1%     ARTICLE 4: Shall the District vote to approve within the provisions of New Hampshire RSA 273-A:3 the cost items included in the collective bargaining agreement reached between the Oyster River Teacher's Guild and the Oyster River School Board which calls for the following increases in salaries and benefits at the current staffing levels: 2025-2026 $1,141,204 2026-2027 $1,055,526 2027-2028 $1,226,536 and further to raise and appropriate the sum of $1,141,204 for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, such sum representing the additional costs attributable to the increases in salaries and benefits required by the new agreement over those that would be paid at current staffing levels?  The School Board recommends this appropriation. (Majority vote required)   YES  1335  75.4% NO      435  24.3%   ARTICLE 5: To see if the District will vote to raise and appropriate the sum of $530,922 for architectural and engineering fees for the expansion and renovations at Moharimet Elementary and Mast Way Elementary schools. The School Board recommends this appropriation. (Majority vote required)    YES  1062  60.1% NO      705  39.9%   ARTICLE 6: Shall the District vote to raise and appropriate the sum of $125,000 to be added to the Facilities Development, Maintenance, and Replacement Expendable Trust Fund which was established in March of 2017?  This sum to come from June 30 fund balance available for transer on July 1.  The School Board recommends this appropriation.  No amounts to be raised from taxation. (Majority vote required)   YES  1334  75.7% NO     428   24.3%   ARTICLE 7: Shall the District vote to raise and appropriate the sum of $125,000 to be added to the Artificial Turf Replacement Expendable Trust Fund which was established in March of 2024?  This sum to come from June 30 fund balance available for transfer on July 1.  The school Board recommends this appropriation.  No amounts t be raised from taxation. (Majority vote required)    YES  1144  65.1% NO     613   34.9%   Total ORCSD votes cast today:  1825

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Guide to the March 2025 Oyster River School District Election

It's election day!  This is my annual voting guide to the ORCSD election.  I promised myself I wouldn't just post around election day, and now I've procrastinated for a year to the point that very few people will see this before the election. 

I'll try to clearly delineate my opinion in italics from the factual information.

TL;DR: I'm not that sure this year, because I haven't been paying that close attention, but I'm voting for Heather Smith and Sean Harrison in the contested school board race, and YES on everything but article 5, the $531K for architects making plans to mod the elementary schools. 

Voting Mechanics

Election Day is Tuesday March 11, 2025.   If you're a US citizen at least 18 years of age who lives in Lee, Madbury or Durham (including UNH students who live in the district), you can do same day registration on election day at your town's polling place and vote. Even if you've never voted or registered to vote in New Hampshire before, you can vote Tuesday.  Until recently, you could show up without ID and sign affidavits, but now, according to Lee's website:  "Proofs of identity, age, citizenship and domicile MUST be presented to register to vote. Click here for an explanation of the requirements to register to vote under the new law." A passport or birth certificate, driver's license and a utility bill or government check with your address would be good documentation for a same-day registrant to have. Already registered voters just need a state photo ID.

Your election day polling place and voting times depend on where you live:

Durham: Oyster River High School 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Lee: Public Safety Complex 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. 

Madbury: Town Hall 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. Madbury also has a genuine town meeting, 7 pm at Madbury Town Hall, where they vote on the majority of their warrant articles, but the school district stuff is in the daytime Town Hall election.

The Issues

This year the issues are the large budget increase, the controversial teachers' contract, the pricey Moharimet extension and Mast Way renovation (with a down payment on the ballot), the Trump administration ordering DEI programs such as ours ended, and the possible end of our Department of Education funding, and of course the consequence on taxes.  We'll talk about them as they pop up below.

The School District Ballot

As always, voters in each town are given identical school district ballots. Let's briefly go through the ballot questions, also known as the warrant articles.  

Article 1 elects the moderator.  Former Chair of the school board, Michael Williams, has been doing a great job as moderator, and no one else wants the job, so I'm voting for Michael.

Over a one year term, the moderator generally works two days.  The moderator runs the Deliberative Session in February and oversees the school district election and ballot counting in March. Michael has added a third task: moderator of Meet the Candidates night. 

The moderator's goal is an unbiased election process in accordance with New Hampshire law. The Town Meeting and School Meeting Handbook, mostly instructions for moderators, runs 101 pages. It says moderators have two year terms; I don't know why ours has a one year term.

Article 2 is the school board member vote.  The ORCSD school board consists of three town-specific seats, one each for Durham, Lee and Madbury, which is held by an eligible voter from the specific town, and four at-large seats, each open to candidates from all three towns. Terms are three years. Voters in all three towns get to vote on all members, including the town-specific ones.

This year we choose two at-large school board members for a three year term and fill the Lee school board seat for a two year term.  

Renee Beauregard Bennett is an Assistant Superintendent at SAU 16, Exeter.  After she failed to win election last March, she was appointed to the board to fill an at-large seat that then member (now chair) Matt Bacon resigned from after he won the Madbury seat last year.  She is now running unopposed for the Lee seat.  I'm voting for Renee Bennett.  

The Lee seat was vacated when current member Brian Cisneros decided to resign.  Brian has served in the Lee seat since he was appointed in June 2017. He was just reelected last year.  Thank you for your 8 years of service, Brian. 

The real race is four people running for the two at-large seats.  

Heather Smith is the incumbent, up for reelection after her first three year term. Back then I was initially skeptical as I had never seen anyone who wanted the position so much. But that's Heather -- very enthusiastic, very competent, very hard working, always with the students' best interests at heart. I'm voting for Heather Smith.

I don't know the other candidates.  I'll try to gather information.  There's very little out there.  I can't find candidate facebook sites (except for Harrison) or articles or questionnaires. The main source of information is Candidates Night.  I made an auto-transcript and labeled the speakers.  I haven't wrestled it into English, but you may be able to skim through that faster than watching the 95 minute forum.  I'll jot down a few tidbits.

Nancy Smith - from Madbury.  "Principal and music teacher, 5 grandchildren in the district." "I have a desire to protect the district the next few years as things become tumultuous with our government." 

I couldn't find anything about Nancy Smith running for school board, the school she worked or works at, or the instrument she plays.  She mentioned MATHCOUNTS at the middle school as one of the programs she liked a couple of times, which I appreciate -- I've been the volunteer co-coach for five or six years.  ORMS came in first at the Seacoast Regional Meet last month; state meet Saturday!

Sean Harrison - Durham, 2 children, 1 graduated, 1 still in school. Job: Risk Mitigation and Compliance. "I believe in public education." "...policy changes that are coming down from the state or the federal government, whatever they are, we adapt but we don't get distracted, we still stay on it so that when the kids come through those school doors they're provided the best opportunity, the best learning environment they can possibly have, and we support the staff that provides that to them."

He's gotten it together enough to produce a candidate facebook site and I even saw some signs out there in the real world.  They're full color, with an apple. They're not the single color signs that subtly convey Yankee frugality.

  

William Howard - did not participate.

This isn't much information upon which to make a decision between these three.  Rule out Howard; we don't know anything about him. Either of the others appear fine. Neither of them knows all that much about the issues like DEI at ORCSD. Smith surprisingly knew about Andrew Smith's (no relation) work here back in 2017, though she seemed to think he was district staff, not just a consultant.  She did know he sadly died.  But she thought we should hire someone to continue the work; i.e. she didn't appear to know the district has a DEIJ Director, Rachel Blansett. So I'm left to choose between a MATHCOUNTS shoutout and the minimum competency demonstrated by getting a facebook page together.  I want to go with MATHCOUNTS lady but it looks like Harrison made much more of an effort to run, indicating he'd work hard. Politically, I'll guess they're both on the left, Harrison more centrist.  As of now, 2:30 am on election day, I'm leaning toward Harrison.  

Article 3 is the giant budget appropriation.  One interesting measure is the difference between the operating budget and the default budget,  $58M vs $57.48M, $523K, less than one percent.  That means a NO win won't have much effect on your taxes -- it would be a mostly symbolic victory.  It would however be a huge symbol; in my entire time watching ORCSD politics, for the budget YES always wins in Oyster River, usually by 50 points.  

Here's some history:  In 2020, this read $47.5M, 2021: 50.2M, 2022: 52.2M, 2023: 53.2M: 2024: 56.2M now $58.0M.  That's 5% over last year, 4% annual inflation over the five years. School inflation generally runs higher than the 2.3% general inflation we'd gotten used to. This doesn't seem burn-it-all-down terrible; in fact it's hard to see the spike in inflation in 2022.  This doesn't include the spending below.

I'm voting YES, but I'm grumpy about it.  The truth is, inflation hits schools like everywhere else.

It's 3AM; let's just include the district's information about the major drivers and the tax increase:

If we believe these numbers, we're looking at (assuming everything passes) at 13.81/12.73=8.4% increase in Durham, 19.72/18.16=8.6% increase in Lee and 22.67/21.34=6.2% increase in Madbury.  Ouch.  

There's plenty of spending to talk about, but let's just move on.

Article 4 is the teacher's guild contract, a $1.14M increase this year.  It's hard to get a straight answer on what the baseline being paid to teachers is (including taxes, benefits, etc. ) that we're voting to increase.  They used to report the percentage increase; but we get nothing here.  I got a few different numbers when I asked at Deliberative Session this year.

Oyster River used to be at the high end of the market, paying teachers well.  I think what happened is that the teachers negotiated their contract in November, 2019, assuming the last three decades of 2 - 2.5% annual inflation would continue.  They negotiated a five year deal of raises of around that magnitude that was approved in March, 2020.  Then COVID hit, and we got a bout of inflation 2021 - 2023. Suddenly those raises weren't looking so good.  The five years has elapsed, so it's time to get teacher pay back up to market rates, which looks like it happens more gradually than I would have expected.  

I gathered a fair amount of gossip about the contract negotiations that I'm not going to report.  I'm voting YES.

Back in 2014, we expanded the Moharimet multipurpose space to the property line.  It cost $570K to do the entire project! A YES win here means we're paying that just for a year of architectural services this time around, to generate images like the one below.  The project will probably cost five or ten times that. 

I miss the days of the prefab classrooms at $20K a year.  Enrollments are down from those days, enough that the board thought they could safely get rid of the prefabs a few years ago. Enrollment isn't really projected to increase, but space is still tight because we want so many programs.  I'm feeling grumpy.  I may vote NO.

This is a payment toward buying the middle school solar array, same as the last few years.  It's a good deal for the taxpayers to own the array.  I'm voting YES.  "No amounts to be raised from taxation" is the usual boilerplate lie.

The district realized it needs to buy two new turf fields every decade or so, so it puts away money in this account.  I'm voting YES.

See everybody at the polls on Tuesday.

Ickes, Cisneros and Bacon Win

Newcomer Kelly Ickes won Durham's town-specific school board seat, incumbent Brian Cisneros won Lee's seat, and member Matt Bacon won Madbury's seat in today's election.  Michael Williams remains moderator; he ran unopposed.  Congratulations to all the winners.

YES won on all school district questions, including the $56.2M budget appropriation; congratulations to the District.

Thanks to wonderful outgoing members Tom Newkirk and Dan Klein for their 11 years and 9 years of service on the board, respectively.  

The election of Matt Bacon to Madbury's seat means that he will resign the at-large seat he currently holds.  The board has the duty to appoint someone for the remaining year of Bacon's at-large term; my guess is they will appoint the next-highest vote getter, Renee Beauregard-Bennett from Lee.

Though Madbury's results are still not in, Lee's own Erik Johnson (D) appears to have won the special election for state representative from Lee/Dover/Madbury.  Congratulations, Erik!  The state house currently leans slightly Republican, but the majority is really determined by who shows up at the legislature on any particular voting day (Fosters, Union Leader).

I'm still on vacation with a terrible Internet connection, so I'm just going to paste the results here (thanks Todd Selig) and finish this post when I get home tomorrow.

[Edit 3/16]  It's been a few days.  I'll update in my district history in spreadsheet form and calculate percentages.  I'm not sure what if anything was the overall issue in this election; let's say inflation.

SCHOOL DISTRICT UNOFFICIAL RESULTS (Durham, Lee, and Madbury Combined Ballots from all three precincts.)

 

 

ARTICLE 1:

For Moderator (1 Year) (Vote for not more than one)

Michael Williams - 1525   ELECTED

 

 

ARTICLE 2:

For School Board - Lee (3 years) (Vote for not more than one)

Renee Beauregard Bennett - 347    25.6%

Rebecca Blake - 285                      21.0%

Brian Cisneros - 726                       53.5%   ELECTED

 

For School Board - Durham (3 Years) (Vote for not more than one)

Jason Kolligs - 82        6.1%

Stephanie Pitts - 210  15.6%

Andrea Chan - 142      10.5%

John Colwell - 158      11.7%

Kelly Ickes - 754          56.0%   ELECTED

 

For School Board - Madbury (3 Years) (Vote for not more than one)

 

Matt Bacon - 369   87.4%   ELECTED

Others - 53            12.6%

 

ARTICLE 3:

Shall the District raise and appropriate as an operating budget, not including appropriations by special warrant article and other appropriations voted separately, the amount set forth on the budget posted with the warrant or as amended by vote of the first session, for the purposes set forth therein, totaling $56,248,037. Should this article be defeated, the operating budget shall be $55,929,305 (Default Budget) which is the same as last year with certain adjustments required by previous action of the District or by law; or the District may hold one special meeting in accordance with RSA 40:1 3, X, and XVI to take up the issue of the revised operating budget only. The School Board recommends this appropriation. (Majority vote required)

 

Note: Fund 10 = $54,415,352 (regular operating budget); Fund 21 = $1,191,685 (expenditures from food service revenues); Fund 22 = $600,000 (expenditures from federal/special revenues); Fund 23 = $41,000 (expenditures from pass through funds).

 

YES - 1208  74.4%    PASSED

NO -  415    23.1%

 

 

ARTICLE 4:

Shall the District vote to approve within the provisions of New Hampshire RSA 273-A:3 the cost items included in the collective bargaining agreement reached between the Oyster River Intervention and Tutors Association and the Oyster River School Board which calls for the following increases in salaries and benefits at the current staffing levels:

2024-2025 $139,846.63

2025-2026 $ 35,219.00

2026-2027 $ 18,695.59

and further to raise and appropriate the sum of $139,846.63 for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, such sum representing the additional costs attributable to the increases in salaries and benefits required by the new agreement over those that would be paid at current staffing levels?  The School Board recommends this appropriation. (Majority vote required)

 

YES - 1367   76.9%    PASSED

NO - 411      23.1%

 

ARTICLE 5:

Shall the District vote to raise and appropriate the sum of $125,000 to be added to the Facilities Development, Maintenance, and Replacement Trust which was established in March of 2017.This sum to come from June 30 fund balance available for transfer on July 1. The School Board recommends this appropriation. (Majority vote required) No amounts to be raised from taxation.

 

YES - 1408   92.3%    PASSED

NO - 118       7.7%

 

ARTICLE 6:

Shall the District establish an Artificial Turf Field Replacement Expendable Trust Fund under the provisions of RSA I98:20-c,for replacing the District's Artificial Athletics Turf Fields, and raise and appropriate up to $125,000 for this purpose with such amount to be funded from the year-end undesignated fund balance, and further, to name the School Board as agents to expend from the Artificial Turf Field Replacement Trust. (Majority vote required)

 

YES - 1036  59.6%    PASSED

NO - 701     40.4%

 

ARTICLE 7:

Shall the District establish a non-lapsing Athletic Field Revolving Fund in accordance with RSA 194:3-c to be funded by receipts from the use of the District's athletic fields for the purpose of maintaining and replacing the athletic fields. Further to raise and appropriate the sum of one dollar($1.00).  Withdrawals from the revolving fund will be made on an annual basis as needed. (Majority vote required) 

 

YES - 1252 72.0%    PASSED

NO - 487    28.0%

 

Total ORCSD votes cast today:  1890

 

The Race Is On, But You Wouldn't Know It

[EDIT 3/9] The Candidates Forum on Thursday night implied that Andrea Chan and Rebecca Blake weren't running -- at least they weren't announced as candidates.  Watch the forum here; it starts around 56 minutes in.  There's also a piece in Fosters.

I'm on vacation, so this will be my only post before election day.  Here are last year's voting instructions; no guarantee that they'll apply this year.

Election Day, Tuesday, March 12, 2024

There are contested school board elections on March 12.  Vote at your usual polling place; same day registration is available.  

The campaigns seem silent; at least I haven't seen any sign of them online or driving around.  There's a students' candidate forum scheduled for 6pm, March 7 in the ORHS auditorium.  I haven't seen any commitment to making it available online, and there's a very spotty history of timely posting of Candidates Night videos because the district tries to remain at arms length, but hopefully Alex is on it and we'll get to see something before election day.  Sometimes the PTOs, the teachers' guild or Oyster River Equity put out voting information; I haven't seen any of that yet, but be on the lookout.

The ORCSD board consists of seven members: four at-large seats and three town-specific seats, one each from Durham, Lee and Madbury.  You must reside in the town to hold the town-specific seat, even though voters from all three towns get to vote for or against you. School board terms are three years.

No one asked me this year, so I didn't give anyone my usual free advice for a contested race.  I'll give it here for everyone; it's mostly too late for this cycle: (1) buy 100 coroplastic signs with stands, nothing fancy, last name in large, readable letters, (2) make a facebook page and post things to it, (3) maybe team up with another candidate and do a mailer, (4) make a sign with your name on it for Candidates Night, and (5) talk to voters at the transfer stations.

The Candidates

This year it's the three town-specific seats that are up for election.  Here are the candidates; I'll feed the names into facebook and link to any school-board specific pages that come up.  It looks like Seacoast Online / Portsmouth Herald is doing candidate stories;  I've found four so far, all dated February 22, so that may be it. I'll include those links as well.  Add to the free advice: (6) when the Portsmouth Herald asks questions, answer them.

Durham:

Andrea Chan  (no online candidate information found)

John Colwell  (Seacoast Online)

Kelly Ickes  (Seacoast Online)

Jason Kolligs (facebook)

Stephanie Pitts (Seacoast Online, facebook)

Lee:

Renee Beauregard-Bennett (no online candidate information found)

Rebecca Blake (no online candidate information found)

Brian Cisneros (Seacoast Online, facebook)

Madbury:  No candidate signed up

Of this list, I only know Brian Cisneros.  Let's see what information we can gather from publicly available sources.  I don't know these people so these are my best guess; it's possible I've found someone else with the same name.  Candidates, if you prefer I remove your photo or use a different image or bio, please comment below.  I'll try to keep this section unbiased and tell you who I'm voting for at the end.

DURHAM CANDIDATES

Andrea Chan

Andrea Chan appears to be the proprietor of Andrea Chan Photography, specializing in children's photography.  I didn't find any additional biographical information on Ms. Chan.

John Colwell

Mr. Colwell has a bachelor of science in chemical engineering, a bachelor of arts in German language, and is an engineer for a battery materials startup.  He moved to Durham in 2022, and he has a second grader and a soon to be kindergartener in the district.  This is his first time running for any office.

Kelly Ickes

According to her LinkedIn page, Ms. Ickes is an experienced leader and program manager with a diverse background developing team members and running education assessment programs, skilled in client management, staff development, program evaluation, program management, and project management.  She has no current employer listed, but had a 5.5 year stint as Director of Content Development-Accessibility at Cognia after 14 years at Measured Progress, and as a special education teacher before that.

Members are no longer allowed to endorse, but long-time chair and current holder of the Durham seat Tom Newkirk tells me that he served with Ms. Ickes on the superintendent search committee, and that she has kids in the district and has been active in PTO. Tom says her background in educational assessment makes her a "good fit."

Jason 'Jabo' Kolligs

Kudos to Mr. Kolligs, who's gotten it together enough to create a candidate facebook page.  He hasn't really posted much on it yet.  We don't get a bio, just an image with some emblems and words. From the image we can infer a wife, five kids and a doggie. We also get among his publicly available personal photos a "proud to be a Libertarian."  Libertarians / Free Staters were notoriously responsible for the chaos in Croydon’s schools a few year ago.

Stephanie Pitts

Ms. Pitts has a bachelors of science in environmental management, and lists her occupation as safety manager. She has no previous political or civic experience. She gave a pithy answer in her Seacoast Online piece, which I'll just quote here:

What would be your top three priorities if you are elected? 1. Ensure quality education is provided for all students, based on scientific principles and proven methods for education content and delivery.  2. Ensure public schools remain truly public and free from bias of politics, religion, or other cultural pressures.  3. Improve/ensure student safety at all educational levels from both internal and external threats (teacher/administrative screening, visitor policies, threats and violence, etc.).

LEE CANDIDATES

Renee Beauregard-Bennett 

Dr. Renee Beauregard-Bennett doesn't seem to have created a candidate page, but from her personal facebook page we find out that she's been Assistant Superintendent/Director of Student Services at SAU 16, Exeter Region Cooperative School District, since 2015.  That's an excellent credential for a school board member. Before that she lists special education at Dover Area School District.  

She's a local: Dover Senior High, UNH Political Science class of 2002, masters from Keene State and a doctorate of Education from New England College.

Rebecca Blake

I didn't find much relevant information about Rebecca Blake; judging from her publicly available facebook photos she has two school-aged children and a nice smile.

[Edit 3/5] I got a message from James Lolano that Ms. Blake is a para at Mast Way who told him she has decided to keep her job rather than seek a board seat. She apparently was unable to withdraw in time to stay off the ballot.  I have no reason to doubt Mr. Lolano, and RSA 671:18 indeed says district employees cannot serve on their district's board. I didn't find Ms. Blake listed in the district employee directory, so I cannot verify her district employment.  She is or was co-president of the Mast Way PTO.

Brian Cisneros

Brian Cisneros is the incumbent Lee representative; he's served seven years in the seat.  His day job is as Business Administrator for SAU 1, ConVal (Contoocook Valley) School District.  That's a recent change; he was Business Administrator for SAU 61, Farmington for many years. Brian applied for the ORCSD BA job last year, and appeared to be the front-runner, but the board ultimately chose Amy Ransom.

MADBURY

No one filed to run for Madbury's seat, so the winner will be determined by write in votes.  I've been told the plan is to ask folks to write in current at-large school board member Matt Bacon.  The plan makes sense.

I think of the district as a seven slice pizza, four for Durham, two for Lee and one for Madbury.  That's approximately the ratio of total property values of the towns, and of students from each town.  So if we were after some ideal of proportional representation, we'd have four reps from Durham, two from Lee and one from Madbury.  We currently have three reps from Madbury on the board, which is a bit lopsided. Basically everyone from Madbury who wants to be on the school board already is. After nine years of service, member Dan Klein is not seeking reelection for the Madbury seat.

The write-in plan rebalances the board a bit. Matt gets elected to the Madbury seat and resigns his at-large seat; the board is then free to appoint someone (presumably not from Madbury) for the remaining year of Matt's at-large term.  I suppose it's a good bet the board will pick one of the candidates that didn't win, perhaps from among the second placers.  That at-large seat will be on the ballot at the March, 2025 election.

It's very rare that there's some dispute in the district that pits the towns against each other, so the towns of the members and the at-large/town-specific distinction matter very little in practice.  The main difference is when an at-large seat is vacated, the school board gets to appoint a replacement to serve until the next election, but when a town-specific seat is vacated, the town gets to choose the replacement.

Who I'm voting for

This is the biased part of the post, where I give my opinion. This year it's pretty uninformed; feel free to stop reading now.  I'm away for a week so I'm going to vote absentee in the next day or two if I can.

I don't know who to vote for for the Durham seat. 

For Lee, I'm going to vote for Brian Cisneros, who's always done a great job.  Dr. Beauregard-Bennett seems like a great candidate as well, and I'd be more inclined to consider her had I seen any effort at campaigning.

For Madbury, of course I'm writing in Matt Bacon.

I'm voting YES on the remaining questions; please see my Guide to the ORCSD 2024 Deliberative Session for a bit more detail on the ballot.  I suppose I should report that the warrant was unchanged at deliberate session.  Two people thanked me for asking the questions I did, and three others told me I could have asked them at the budget hearing or budget workshop and not bothered the good folks at DS.

A cursory search didn't turn up a Guild or Equity questionnaire or anything from the PTOs; please let me know if I've missed anything and I'll add it here.

[Edit 3/6]  Rumor Report

I'm hearing rumors that: Andrea Chan and Rebecca Black want to withdraw but it's too late to get off the ballot.  It's only rumors at this point, but sometimes that's all we get. I'm leaving town in a couple of hours, so you all will have to sort this out yourself.  Candidates, if you disagree with anything, please comment below and I will incorporate your words.

ORCSD Deliberative Session Tuesday February 6, 2024

Last year I promised myself I wouldn't only post around election time, and yet here we are.  I'm not even a district parent anymore, as my boy graduated in June.  I'm still the middle school MATHCOUNTS co-coach with Ms. Gehling, and I was the NH state MATHCOUNTS coach this year.  On Saturday Oyster River made it into the state MATHCOUNTS finals, which are slated for March 9.

I'm probably like a lot of people and haven't been paying too much attention to the school district lately. Let's take this opportunity to catch up together.  There's of course been plenty of news in the intervening year, including a new superintendent who'll start in July.  It's after midnight on Monday morning so let's just focus on the immediate future, Tuesday's Deliberative Session.  I'll make it easy on myself and just watch and comment on the Budget Hearing video, pasting in screenshots as we go.  I'll skip the self-congratulatory introduction, which will just get me angry.

Tax Impact

Most people reading are probably more concerned about their taxes going up than the details of the Deliberative Session and the warrant, so let's start there.  We're given two tables:

I think the historical millages in the table add the local and state education lines, which is misleading as the district budget only affects the local ed line, but I'm too tired to worry about it. The Durham millage isn't helpful either; we want to use these as a proxy for how much our taxes will go up, so they should give us a pro-forma number when there's a town-wide reassessment.  

We calculate the estimated school tax increase in Durham as  .40/13.35=3.0%, in Lee as .82/15.32=5.4% and in Madbury as .97/19.20=5.1%.

If you're wondering why your tax bill hurts more in December than July, it's because there's not enough time from the election in March to calculate taxes to be collected in July, so July's bill is always half of the previous year's taxes.  Then the December tax bills are calculated to make up the total appropriated by the voters in March, so all the increase lands there. 

Deliberative Session Tuesday February 6, 2024, 7pm, Oyster River Middle School 

The ORCSD Deliberative Session is Tuesday February 6th, 7pm, at the new ORMS recital hall (1 Coe Dr, Durham) for the second time.  It will be Superintendent Morse's last DS as superintendent.

What's a Deliberative Session?

As I always say, the Deliberative Session is a real election where the citizenry gets to amend the budget.  It's the vestige of the traditional NH town meeting. Unlike most NH elections, same day registration is usually not available at DS.  So you need to be already registered to vote in one of the three towns to be given a voting card at DS. There is no provision for remote voting -- to vote at DS you must attend.

Attendance at DS varies between around 25 voters in bad weather to around 200 voters when there's a controversial issue.  It's worth showing up just to keep a small group of renegades from cutting the budget in half, like what happened in Croydon.  That's not likely to happen here because the voters can always choose the default budget on election day. 

The purpose of the Deliberative Session is to give the voters an opportunity to amend the warrant articles before they're voted on.  Some articles, such as negotiated contracts, cannot be amended.  Some, like the main budget, can.  A majority of voters at DS can change those numbers, overriding the judgement of the board.  Then on election day (March 12, 2024), the voters get to vote each possibly amended warrant article up or down.

Each warrant article (except the ones that elect people) is read at DS, then explained by a board member.  Voters can then line up at the podium, and when it's your turn you can ask questions that the panel, which includes the board, the superintendent, business administrator, district lawyer, maybe others, will attempt to answer. You're free to make a speech, but if your speech doesn't propose an amendment or comment on an already proposed amendment, you might want to think twice about making it. The safest amendments, in the sense you may be sure they are allowed and will survive a court challenge, are changes to the budget numbers.

Note from by John Parsons, used with permission; thanks John:  I'd like to add an observation to this statement you included: "You're free to make a speech, but if your speech doesn't propose an amendment or comment on an already proposed amendment, you might want to think twice about making it." I second that, but I'll be more blunt about it. The moderators at district meeting have generally been patient over the years with speakers veering, usually on purpose, off-topic to make points unrelated to the article/amendment at hand. Technically speaking, all comments are supposed to directly address the specific topic under discussion. Please, everyone, stay on topic. Leave your rants to the 'any other business' portion of the meeting near the end.

The Warrant

The Warrant is the name for the ballot, and Warrant Article is the name for a ballot question. The warrant articles are the subject of the Deliberative Session, so let's go through them.

Oh my, this is asking to appropriate $56.2M from taxpayers, up 5.7% from $53.2M in this article last year.  That's a lot, but it's good to see that it's only $319K (0.6%) above the $55.9M default budget (what we get if NO wins).  YES always wins in Oyster River, and the closeness of these numbers is one indicator that the board is doing a good job in these difficult inflationary times. In any case, there's not much savings in a NO win this year, making a NO campaign difficult. 

YES or NO is a concern for election day in March; at the DS any voter may propose an amendment to change the top line number. They're free to give a speech about what to cut if the amendment is approved, but the board has wide discretion and doesn't have to listen to anything but the number. If the number is lowered below the default budget (which cannot be changed), the usual YES voters could organize a vote NO campaign and then at least get the default budget.

 

Here we see the board adopted a goal near the high end of its usual increases, which is perhaps expected as they attempt to keep up with the recent inflation.  As for expenses, we got a nasty health insurance increase. The 15.1% is a `guaranteed maximum' for budgeting; often the actual number comes in less and the district gets to use the difference as a slush fund.  The next five aren't a surprise; these are contracts negotiated in previous years. That includes the middle school bond; the $583K is the first payment of a second bond. 

The Utilities number represents actual inflation.  The mental health counselor was hired to cover the increasing demand in our post-COVID world.  Music teacher Andrea von Oeyen has built Oyster River's strings program into a reported 260 students, which I think means an incredible 12% of Oyster River students are currently getting string instrument lessons through the school. The budget includes an additional strings teacher to share the load. 

The two new positions account for $237K of the $319K difference between the default budget and the proposed budget; I don't know about the rest.

It's getting late so I better move this along.  If you haven't seen ORITA before, it's because the Oyster River Intervention and Tutors Association is a new union. I believe they're paraprofessionals, so I'm not sure why they're not part of ORPaSS. We have the usual exasperating lack of context: no indication of how many tutors we're talking about, no report of the associated expenses for total wages, benefits, FICA, etc.  We're told the large number this upcoming year is due to the addition of health care for these folks.  There's no amending negotiated contracts, but maybe we can get some answers at DS.

Note from Krista Butts, used with permission; thanks Krista:  ORITA is not paraprofessionals, they are the interventionists and speech and language assistants (people who teach speech and language but aren’t specialists.) These are teachers, most are fully certified, that have been getting paid an hourly rate just above paraeducators and are designing curriculum for up to 7 different classes a day. The majority of their classes are made up of kids who don’t meet benchmark or classroom expectations but do not qualify for an IEP.

This is the middle school solar array fund. The school has the option to buy the solar array after seven years.  This article first appeared in 2021 so this will be the fourth year.  It's a good move financially to buy the array, so to that end we put away $125K every year.  

The fund balance is the unspent money at the end of the year. The boilerplate `No amounts to be raised from taxation' is misleading.  What really happened is this money was already raised from taxation in March, 2023 so doesn't need to be added to the March, 2024 total. Unspent funds that are not diverted by a warrant article like this offset the following year's taxes, so however it's phrased, passing this article extracts an additional $125K from the citizenry.

This fund is new.  The district now owns two turf fields, with the older high school field (built in summer 2016 at a cost of $2.3M) needing major maintenance. The $125K is not a one-time expense; this is expected to be a recurring article that annually puts away what is presumably the estimated annual cost to maintain two turf fields.  The life of a field is 10 to 13 years, so I don't think the math works out here; in 13 years we'll have collected $1.625M, not enough for one field, let alone two. Then again, I can imagine the installation costing more the first time than subsequent times.

It was Dr. Bob Barth who back in 2015 successfully worked to get the board to pay an additional $260K for safer, more expensive fill rather than tire crumb for the turf field, citing cancer concerns. Bob sadly passed away in November, 2023.  Rest in peace, Bob, you were a model to us all.  Bob is survived by his wife, former school board chair Maria Barth, and his children and grandchildren.

Even though it's funded from the fund balance, surprisingly the article is missing the boilerplate about `no amounts...' (at least on this slide).  The amount may be amended at DS.

This is yet another fund dedicated to maintaining the fields. This fund is used to park the rent collected from renting out the athletic fields. It's a nice idea, almost certain to pass.

There's not much here to amend at DS;  you could change the dollar to a penny, I suppose.  My view of these funds is that they almost always contain money that would otherwise be in the pockets of taxpayers.  That's true here; without this fund the receipts go into the operating account, where they add to the fund balance and offset next year's taxes.  Now that I'm a grumpy old man and no longer a district parent, I'm inclined to believe that the money is better off with taxpayers. But I can see how it makes sense for the district to try to fill some coffers by stashing away unspent money, in order to ease the pain of the shocks that will inevitably occur.   

Revenue

This is an ominous warrant, because in addition to a large increase in the operating budget, we see a trend of new warrant articles that aren't one-time expenses, but are intended to be annual appropriations. We see how the warrant asks for money to be added to various funds this year. The warrant doesn't explicitly indicate that the opposite is happening as well: taxes are being lowered by withdrawals from other funds.  That gets us to the subject of revenue.

The warrant is about expenses, but of course the taxpayers are on the hook for expenses minus revenue.  In the world of municipal accounting, withdrawing savings to pay for expenses counts as revenue, which is a bit of magical thinking.  There are some actual revenue increases on this list: the increase in tuition income and in interest income.  School Nutrition revenue is a wash with additional School Nutrition expenses.  The rest are withdrawals from funds (and retained fund balance, otherwise unspent money this year). These withdrawals achieve a one-time reduction of a recurring cost, so have the effect of shifting some of the tax increase to the following budget year. 

It's 3:40 am so this will have to be it.  See you all tomorrow (Tuesday) at the Deliberative Session.