[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)
Lee:
Renee Beauregard-Bennett (no online candidate information found)
Rebecca Blake (no online candidate information found)
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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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."
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.
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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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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