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.