This is my annual guide to the March 8, 2022 Oyster River Cooperative School District election. I will keep this guide unbiased until the
section, where I tell you who I am and am not voting for and why. In this unbiased part I will endeavor to provide links to all the information out there to help you make your own decision so you don't have to read that far.
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There's late breaking news at
School Board Members Put Foot on Scale on Election Eve!
Voting MechanicsIf 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 just show up on Tuesday at your town's polling place and vote. Like almost all elections in New Hampshire, same day registration is available. So even if you've never voted or registered to vote in New Hampshire before, you can vote Tuesday. It's easier if everyone brings a state photo ID and if new registrants also bring proof of address (a utility bill), but under New Hampshire's voter ID law you can vote even if you don't bring those by signing affidavit forms at the polls.
There are new rules (
Durham,
Lee) that prevent absentee ballots from being returned in person on election day, so be sure to get your absentee ballot in by 5pm Monday.
It may not be too late to obtain an absentee ballot from your Town Clerk and vote it on Monday; they're
still saying it's OK to check the disability box on the absentee ballot application form if you have pandemic concerns.
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. Lee is
requesting voters mask up. Note that at the Deliberative Session the moderator mistakenly said Lee was voting at the transfer station like last year, and that mistake has been repeated a couple times that I've seen since then.
Madbury: Town Hall 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. [EDIT: I had 7:30, sorry.] Madbury also has a
genuine town meeting, 7:30pm at Moharimet, where they vote on the majority of their warrant articles, but the school district stuff is in the daytime Town Hall election.
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. For more information, please see my previous few posts and the recently released
SAU 5 Annual Report 2022.
Article 1 elects the moderator. It's always Rick Laughton. His family is a bit of an Oyster River dynasty. His mother in law was
beloved citizen and former school board chair Shirley Thompson (rest in peace) and I thought his daughter Jessica Laughton was District Clerk [EDIT: I'm told she resigned as District Clerk]. This year the ballot says the clerk is Sue Caswell, which is odd as Ms. Caswell already has a job as our business administrator.
Article 2 chooses two at-large school board members. The top two vote getters of the five candidates win a three year term on the board. The Oyster River 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.
Here's a quick recap of where to find just about all the information available on the candidates.
OK, let's continue with the ballot. Article 3 asks the voters if the district can spend $52.1 million. The other three articles add $400K for a total of $52.5M. That's a lot of dollars.
If NO wins we get the default budget of $51.7 M, a decrease of $400K or 0.8%. NO never wins in Oyster River, especially this budget which includes the popular DEIJ Coordinator position.
These budget numbers are total expenses, only part of the fiscal story as far as the taxpayers are concerned. There's also an estimated revenue side, with large items being expected tuition income and scheduled withdrawals from trust funds. It's the difference between expected expenses ($52.5M assuming all articles pass) and expected revenue that's apportioned between the towns. Half the bill is proportional to the number of students in town, half proportional to the equalized town valuations (i.e. the total taxable property in each town). Then the state puts its finger on the scale by granting each town adequacy aid according to a formula. What's left in each town is billed to the property owners, the Local Education Tax millage being the total asked of the town divided by the total assessed value of the taxable property in town. The adequacy aid comes from the State Education Tax line, which is the same rate for every property owner in the state (the millage is equalized to reflect different assessment styles between towns).
Yes it's complicated, and there are still many more details I haven't mentioned you can read about
here. The bottom line is the board really only controls expenses minus revenue, which they usually do a good job keeping to a 3%+ year on year increase, lately even while shoehorning in an entire $50M middle school . After expenses minus revenue is determined, the apportionment formula and the state aid takes over, generally falling harder on one town than the other two and pissing folks off.
I've been meaning to write about the spending this budget and I guess this is it. It will probably degenerate into a rant so I'm going to label this part as BIASED OPINION.
This year the board went a little bit crazy on spending. They approved a 4.1% increase (compared to a more usual 3.25%) and then took an additional $900K from reserve funds, 1.7%, for a total spending increase of 5.8% [No, see below]. (Plus there's another $596K, 1.1%, spending mentioned below).
EDIT: 3/7 Chair Michael Williams
thoughtfully responded to this post. I'll call him Michael here since he's responding as an individual, not in his role as chair. Thanks Michael.
Michael makes some excellent points, and I will attempt correct things accordingly, responding in italics, excerpting Michael's responses as needed. Here we go.
This is my mistake, sorry about that folks. It's not really for the reason specified; I know and I hope I've made it clear the $900K counts as revenue. It's a odd municipal quirk -- taxes collected in previous years that were unspent and put in the bank in reserve funds are called revenue when withdrawn, because they appear on the income side of the ledger.
My mistake was not accounting for the fact that they played the same game last year, using I think $500K of trust fund money to reduce taxes.
What's the emergency?
Michael points out "emergency" is a misnomer; in statutes it's called a contingency fund. I know it's there for the board to use to smooth out the tax hikes, but if they're going to call it an emergency fund, I'm going to ask "what's the emergency?" when they use it. The emergency is people get mad at the board and district when taxes go up too fast.
Here's their list of big ticket expenses driving up the budget.
I
complained about this slide the first time and they added the numbers at the bottom. Curiously, there is this item "Capital Account" which doesn't really seem like an expense, and it doesn't have a number; it presumably refers to the $900K they're employing so the taxpayers don't revolt [
No, see below]. This is about $2M of annual spending, 4%, that rolls forward forever. We're left to wonder what happens next year without these trust fund boosts.
Clarification: What’s the Capital Account? The Capital Account that is referred to in the Deliberative Session budget slides and the CleanSlate post is really the capital spending line in the budget. It’s called an “account” sometimes because the categories in the budget are called General Ledger Account numbers. It’s not a separate account like a bank account. The capital spending (outside of finishing the new middle school fields, parking, and landscaping) totals $940,000 for 2022-2023.
Thanks Michael. I don't think it's too much to ask to put the amount after the description for every item. I know $940,000 is scary to put on a slide but what are we to think when numbers are left off slides?
There were things I expected but didn't see here -- a couple of Mandarin teachers and $500K for Tennis Courts; those are probably in the current year. The good citizens of Oyster River would have heard all about spending concerns at Deliberative Session if they hadn't voted to
call the question.
We see some new positions even though the enrollment is not growing, but it's all pretty regular until the last two items. I can't find in the minutes where they decided two additional custodians were necessary to take care of our brand new state of the art building (it's before 9/2021; I'll keep looking). The new building literally isn't sustainable if the taxpayers can't afford to keep it open. Is this the emergency?
In Lee the Select Board is looking under sofas for change trying to tamp down tax increases; they cut the Sustainability Committee budget from $500 to $0, for an example I'm personally aware of. But the new school needs two additional custodians. It's incongruous.
There's an additional $596K of contingency funds from the middle school coming in under budget that they spent on bus block heaters they forgot they needed and middle school furniture and playground equipment they cut -- apparently $49.8M is not guaranteed to buy a fully furnished middle school, but might just be enough to cover it. There wasn't a single breath where anyone uttered something like, "maybe we don't need to take $500K from the emergency fund now" or "let's give the taxpayers a break."
Michael and I aren't disagreeing here. This money was meant for the middle school; I know that. What I want the board to remember is they don't really represent the students, the teachers or the administrators; they represent us citizens as a whole who are paying the bills. They don't have to do anything different; just acknowledge that we're out here, that every time they raise taxes some of the folks they represent have to work a little harder just to stay in the district.
Then there's the DEIJ Coordinator, which I've
made myself unpopular by complaining about. But I persist. I'm not against DEIJ; I just hate paying retail. Manchester got their
3 year experiment with a Chief Equity Officer funded via private donations. Is there really a DEIJ emergency in town that requires this expenditure of $130K this year? And did I understand that this doesn't include the retirement benefit? I can't find any of it in the
budget.
The precipitating incident
in 2017 is rumored to be more nuanced than initially reported, where the purportedly racist boy was suffering from behavioral/mental health issues, making it more a Special Education Department problem than a DEIJ Coordinator problem. (The district keeps these incidents confidential so all we get is rumors.)
What I really object to is rap sessions outside the Right-to-Know boundaries which suddenly result in a $130K annual expense we all have to bear. In contrast, we just wrapped up the Regional Compost Working Group (Durham, Lee, ORCSD & UNH) where we had public meetings with posted agendas and minutes because we thought in the end it might result in recommendations of public expenditures of maybe at most $30K annually on a relatively non-controversial topic. To my knowledge nothing like that is posted from the DEIJ committee.
Let's get to the tax rates.
Overall the big increase ended up a pretty average increase by the time it reached the taxpayer, and there it mostly landed on Durham; pretty much the luck of the draw with the apportionment formula and the state aid. Durham grows its taxable property base more aggressively than the other towns which is a double edged sword: the millage in town is lowered as the amount billed to the town is split over more property value, but with a lag of a year or two the increased valuation works its way into the apportionment formula, where half the bill is split proportionally to the towns' property value, increasing Durham's share. We may be seeing that rebound here; I haven't tried to figure it out.
The presentation is an improvement over previous years when I don't think we got the percentages, which I find easier to understand than the naked millages. There was a part that struck me as disingenuous where Member Cisneros
tried to downplay the predicted increases by pointing out last year the Lee Local School Tax millage was predicted at $24.19 and came in at $15.18. That was not some magical miracle of taxes coming in lower than expected in Lee, but the result of a town-wide reassessment which raised the average valuation in Lee 56%. Just raising everyone's assessment by a constant factor doesn't change anyone's tax bill, even though the millage does decrease by the same factor, as Member Cisneros surely knows from his day job as a school business administrator. There's nothing here pointing to a failure of the prediction, which really just tries to predict how much your taxes will go up in the guise of a millage. To determine prediction accuracy would require a more detailed look. (In Lee the reassessment seems unfortunately to have disproportionately raised values on the lowest valued properties in town, making it harder on the least well off among us.)
END BIASED OPINION. I'm griping in the hopes it will change things, but I'm not suggesting anyone vote NO on the budget.
Article 4 asks us to vote on the negotiated agreement with ORESPA, the Oyster River Educational Support Personnel Association, the collective bargaining unit for the Secretaries and Custodians. I'm not sure if the figures, which are the aggregate annual raises, include the two new custodians; probably not due to the phrase "current staffing levels". My pet peeve is we're generally asked to vote on these numbers without any context like the number of employees covered and their current aggregate wages, benefits, FICA and other costs. I'm not going to try to figure it out today. This is a four year contract; up from the usual three.
Article 5 asks us to approve the ORPaSS, Oyster River Para-Educators and Support Staff, raises. I asked at Deliberative Session and Business Administrator Caswell said the $183K was a 5% raise for 84 staff. I think the board was OK with this raise because we're trying to keep our pay competitive in these difficult-to-hire, low-unemployment times.
There was a question on
Candidates Night about cutting the budget to get paras a living wage. I don't know that they don't have one; what they do have is American Federation of Teachers union representation that sent around this mailer urging us to vote for the article, unfortunately repeating the wrong Lee polling location.
Article 6 appropriates $125,000 to put away toward the eventual purchase of the middle school solar array. The "no amounts to be raised from taxation" is a boilerplate fib; they mean no money from the current warrant. The fund balance is the unspent money at the end of the year; it's of course money that was raised from the taxpayers with last year's warrant. But if we didn't put it aside as asked for here, it would lower this year's taxes. So we end this unbiased part with a fib.
I must say I was more enthusiastic about the middle school solar array before I heard a rumor that they're just giving away the power to charge folks' electric cars under it. It's like they never miss an opportunity to hurt the taxpayers. I need to verify this one before I officially gripe about it.
Correction: I am not aware of any proposal to provide free electric vehicle charging for private vehicles at the new ORMS. Apparently there is “a rumor that they’re just giving away the power to charge folks’ electric cars under it” per Clean Slate. I will vote against any proposal like that. I have to admit that the line Dean wrote after that about fiscal irresponsibility stung a little. But Dean is entitled to his opinion.
I'm sorry, Michael. I shouldn't have said anything before I verified but a few people have mentioned it to me. I take it all back. Thanks for the clarification. Let's call this rumor: FALSE.
Thanks again for responding, Michael.
Dean's Ballot
This is the BIASED part where I tell you who and what I'm voting for. Let's dispense with the easy stuff: In Article 1 I'm voting for Rick Laughton for Moderator, and I'm voting YES on all the questions. I griped about the spending but overall it's a pretty good budget and I support it and the board that produced it. I won't belabor the other ballot questions. That leaves the school board.
Before I tell you my choices I want to say just how lucky we are to have five candidates, each of whom would bring a wealth of experience and unique strengths to the board table, and each of whom just wants to work for the best interests of the district. The district will be well served by whichever two win.
I probably don't say enough that I'm Dean Rubine, Lee resident, district parent and ORMS Mathcounts coach. I've been a school board gadfly since I got involved in 2011 when Tea Partiers had taken over the ORCSD school board and started
acting badly. We've had a good ten year run with very little of that, though during the pandemic public comments at school board meetings have sometimes become a bit, uh, boisterous. Hopefully that abates now that the mask mandate is lifted.
Those formerly fringe Tea Party activists have donned their MAGA caps and teamed up with some Free Staters to become the mainstream of the Republican party, currently in complete control in Concord. They're getting elected to school boards and passing laws taking away money from public education to put toward private school and meddling in the curriculum, like the latest law preventing the teaching of
divisive concepts.
I normally leave partisan politics out of this blog, because it usually doesn't enter in to school district affairs. But now, after a decade of radical right gains, it's clear that what I believe is the side of good, well-funded public education where we trust the teachers rather than the politicians to make curriculum decisions, is seriously under threat. This is the fight of our times. My main concern is to choose school board members willing to forcefully get into the fight on the side of good.
Of the candidates, there's only one that's made it clear that's she'll passionately defend public schools against such attacks. That's Giana Gelsey, who I strongly support for ORCSD board. She's a bold progressive voice, perhaps in the mold of previous school board members Maria Barth, Kenny Rotner, and going back a bit, Ann Wright. Of the five, it's Giana with the activist experience, the practiced courage not to shrink from these fights. I see the other candidates, and maybe most of the existing board members, more inclined to not rock the boat and just acquiesce to the government's edicts simply because the school district is essentially part of the government.
It's not just going against Concord when appropriate; it's clear Ms. Gelsey has enough skepticism and experience to seek out the downsides that lurk in every policy, who it hurts, no matter how good the intentions are behind it, and she won't shy away from raising the issue. The board won't always choose to make a change, but it will be great to hear Giana making the case. Giana's experience as a biologist is particularly useful these days as well.
The other thing I can mention is that Ms. Gelsey ran the most successful Candidates Night last year that the district has seen in years. It was hosted by the elementary PTOs, with Ms. Gelsey chair of the Moharimet PTO. It ran two nights, with Ms. Gelsey hosting five candidates
the first night. According to
my report, 53 folks watched on Zoom with a similar number on facebook live. Questions were widely solicited beforehand, and the live audience was also able to ask questions via chat. There were essentially no technical problems beyond reminding folks to unmute. You wouldn't think that was that impressive, but it's an outsized success compared to the two live streams this year which both which had awful technical problems and did not afford any audience interaction, and to a decade of Candidates Nights with just me, or on a good year, maybe 10 people in the audience, with the video record often lost or posted too late.
The criticism I've heard of Ms. Gelsey is she doesn't listen. I certainly haven't found that; in my interactions with her she's been an active listener, probing to understand the other party's position, not just waiting to respond. But she will strongly state her own view when appropriate, which might make some people think she doesn't listen, but it's of course a different thing, and admirable.
I should probably make it clear that neither Ms. Gelsey nor any of the candidates share my belief that committing to a DEIJ Coordinator administrative level position is premature; they all are fully supportive of the DEIJ Coordinator position.
I try to put myself out there, reaching out to the candidates, loitering in the back of school board meetings, that kind of thing. I've made myself a bit of a pariah, which is helpful here. It's easy to talk about inclusion and listening to all sides; it's a bit harder to walk up and start the conversation. I thought Debra Harmon might try to say a few words to me at the last board meeting, but she didn't.
Heather Smith did say a couple of words to me at the meeting , indicating the LRPC might adopt my public comment to report true two standard deviation error ranges, which are the typical 95% wide confidence intervals, instead of the 50% wide mean absolute deviations they currently report (meaning, as our illustrious school board chair Williams pointed out, half the time the observed error will be outside the predicted bounds). I've made a similar comment at many past board meetings after the LRPC presentation; they've been doing it this rather shameless way forever. One way I suggested to fix their report was to just multiply the reported mean absolute deviation by 2.5; fun fact: the exact factor is √(2Ï€). It probably makes more sense to estimate the standard deviation directly (then multiply by 2).
I geeked out there for a minute. My second vote goes to Matt Bacon. As a National Guardsman there's no doubt about his courage. I don't really know Matt, but talking to folks, it's clear he's running for school board to be of service to the community, a way of giving back just as he did in the National Guard. I don't really see him rocking the boat; Matt's superpower is his people skills. He was the only one of the candidates to really try to connect with me at the meeting. He asked me about my visual aid for Archimedes' calculation of the area of a parabola section. He immediately said he did badly in calculus, probably true but also I think very much in his self-deprecating style, which is disarming. I was of course ready to do fifty minutes on the topic, happily going on about weighing parabolas against triangles. I see Matt as playing the role of mediator, bringing disparate people and views together. Matt, working with Giana, was also part of the crew in the only successful Candidates Night in recent memory.
All the candidates have excellent, relevant experience in their past. Matt's is as a National Guard member, a high school paraeducator, Moharimet PTO, ORYA coach and Madbury Zoning Board chair. He at least
answered questions about his political affiliation, which is Undeclared, so doesn't tell us all that much. More helpfully he added his family and he are all vaccinated, he believes in science, critical thinking, the climate crisis is real, and not banning books. Me too.
My third choice was Heather Smith. It was really hard for me to choose between Heather and Matt; both would and will make great board members. I'm partial to folks with Ph.D.s like Heather; I have one myself, as does my wife. It's clear Heather wants the job badly, more than I've seen anyone want it. She's like the
graphic she produced: very impressive and appealing but ultimately a bit hard to read. I liked her support for sustainability, but then in the next sentence she spun it into not overworking the staff, which is important but do we have to call everything sustainability? She mentioned "pain points" several times, which I thought was some DEIJ jargon but really comes from marketing: learn your customer's "pain points" and tailor your pitch to show how your product or service alleviates them. She also referred to using $900K of trust fund money to lower taxes a "creative way to manage expenses," which shocked me (Candidates Night again). Going back to the ATM to get more money to continue the party is not managing expenses -- it's the opposite.
My next choice is Debra Harmon. Ms. Harmon is clearly excellent at listening and then seriously considering and addressing any situations posed to her. For any sort of event or project I would feel confident that I could specify to Ms. Harmon what I wanted and she would carefully listen and faithfully carry it out. While that is a great skill in a school board member, I would hope for something deeper -- not just accepting the problem as presented, but asking what's really going on before diving into action. It's there I thought Ms. Harmon fell short of the other candidates. An example was the question about what to cut to give paras a livable wage, where Ms. Harmon accepted the question at face value rather than asking if it's really true and if so, if cutting was the best solution.
My last choice is Marie D'Agostino. It's remarkable because Ms. D'Agostino is incredibly well qualified, with lots of relevant former experience as a school board chair, school business administrator, insurance executive and more. I just thought that despite this awesome resume, she didn't seem particularly engaged with Oyster River. Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall Ms. D'Agostino ever attending an Oyster River board meeting or other event or making a public comment. She repeatedly
refers to the district as ORSD, which shows a certain disengagement; we're Oyster River Cooperative School District, consistently abbreviated ORCSD. As far as I can tell, Ms. D'Agostino did not create any web presence, which further reinforces this impression of non-involvement with the district. We already happen to have a working NH school business administrator on the board, Brian Cisneros.
Let me illustrate the candidates using the responses to the DEIJ question from Candidates Night, which seems to be my issue this year. The question was something like: What objective metrics would you use to evaluate the performance of the DEIJ coordinator?
Ms. D'Agostino focused on the job description, saying to develop metrics out of that, but not specifying any, saying the position was an opportunity to bring the community together. Ms. Gelsey addressed the question head on, referring to the job description and explicitly indicating the hiring of a more diverse staff as a metric, utilizing metrics already afforded by our existing programs, like MTSS, and collecting student and teacher responses. Mr. Bacon made the quite reasonable suggestion that the board sit down with the coordinator to set goals which are then used for evaluation. Ms. Smith wanted to "have conversations" with teachers, staff and students that utilized the DEIJ Coordinator about their "relationship" with the coordinator, but admitted we might not see measurable outcomes that first year. Ms. Harmon wanted the job description narrowed and the position evaluated annually to assure we're meeting the goals we set.
This was a question that should be answered head on. Ms. Gelsey did that; the others less so. None of the candidates mentioned what would be part of my answer: The superintendent was insisting the DEIJ Coordinator's main role would be in supporting curriculum changes; presumably teachers could be surveyed to determine the number and depth of the curriculum changes.
It's 4 am and I've been writing this post for two days, so it's clearly time to wrap up. In the confirmation bias department, I see in the photo Ms. Gelsey and Mr. Bacon are still wearing their masks now that they're optional; probably wise given the current 2% positivity rate. I too am
partial to The Expanse and Snow Crash, though my favorite is the lesser known The Diamond Age.
There's a real race for Select Board in Lee, with long time incumbent Cary Brown (no candidate site known) running against district parent
Rebecca Hawthorne. I am thrilled be supporting Ms. Hawthorne. With her full color signs and the mailer I got, she is definitely raising the campaign game around here.
I like Cary; he's a nice, grandfatherly fellow with cool hobbies and interesting stories. On the downside, he'll occasionally post some pretty Trumpy thing that leaves me wondering how he's selectperson in a town that went for Biden around 2 to 1. Hopefully after Tuesday I won't have to wonder that any more. If Ms. Hawthorne is elected, it will truly be the dawn of something new in Lee, with Ms. Hawthorne joining likely ally Selectperson Kasper for a majority on the three person board. I forsee great stuff ahead for Lee.
Rebecca Hawthorne was already my hero as Mast Way PTO chair, for her role in the very successful Candidates Night
last year, with a great turnout, wide audience participation and no technical issues.
I would extol the virtues of Ms. Hawthorne more here but it's late so instead I'll just point you to her
facebook candidate page and tell you this crazy story I heard about Lee's Candidates Night, which happened at the same time as the ORCSD Candidate Forum with the ORHS Debate Club, which I was watching, so this is secondhand. There's no recording posted of the Lee event, and there probably won't ever be.
Lee Candidates Night was a virtual event on Zoom, hosted by the Lee Library, who may not be the most tech savvy folks. Apparently the candidates were still in the introductions when the open event was Zoom Bombed by four or five trolls, who apparently had prepared scripts detailing anatomical, uh, details. The Library flailed around, eventually ending and restarting the meeting. Only candidate Hawthorne returned to the meeting. Rumor has it selectperson Brown got in his car and drove to the library when the first Zoom ended, which was a nice idea except that the library was empty because everyone had Zoomed in from their homes. Ms. Hawthorne had the night to herself, but it seems we're not likely to ever see it.
In other town news, Durham has the Mill Pond Dam removal vote that will likely increase turnout there. I'm glad I'm from Lee so I don't have to figure out which way to vote on that one, and I'm real glad I didn't buy Mill Pond Center when we were looking for a house 15 years ago.
See everybody at the polls on Tuesday.
