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CONCORD, NH — Dozens of residents upset by a vote to move a new middle school to the east side of the city have launched an effort to make charter changes in the wake of the decision.
Concord Concerned Citizens Inc. has been meeting for months after the Concord School District Board of Education voted 6 to 3 in December 2023 to build a new middle school in East Concord on the Broken Ground parcel, where the district owns dozens of acres of unused land. Since the vote, the board has moved full steam toward building a new school, currently priced at around $176 million with a final cost of around a quarter of a billion dollars, including interest and state aid.
The board has held several meetings discussing the project while working with architects. “Tentative” community “Q&A” meetings are lined up for June 11 and June 18, with a June 26 “tentative” working session with the board to “review cost estimate.”
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Barbara Higgins, the long-time school board member who was chairwoman of the buildings and facilities committee, was also removed from the position. She believes it was due to her vote against the project — although Pamela Walsh, the school board president, denied it was retaliation for her vote.
Concord Concerned Citizens, about a dozen activists responding to “serious public concerns and questions” about relocating the school to “the Broken Ground forest,” have forwarded two changes to amend the district’s charter.
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The group proposes to add a provision for “mandatory voter approval for school relocation” and “voter oversight on property transactions.” The first charter amendment, the group said, mandated any plans to relocate the middle school to receive approval from the voters first. The second provision “demands voter consent before the sale of certain school-owned real estate,” including the current Rundlett Middle School.
“This initiative seeks to allow a community voice before the actions of a single school board can bind our district for many decades or forever,” the org said.
The org said, after review and approval by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, the Secretary of State, and the Department of Revenue Administration, a petitioner’s committee will begin collecting the signatures needed for ballot access.
The proposal, the org said, was in “direct response” to the “lame-duck school board” vote to move the middle school to East Concord “without answering key questions raised by the public over months of testimony.” The group claimed “widespread opposition” to the project even though only a dozen or so activists out of tens of thousands of residents questioned the proposal in December 2023 (an online petition garnered around 1,200 signatures, about 3 percent of the city’s population).
The org noted the price of a new middle school had more than doubled during the past few years.
But the charter changes proposed will not prevent the building of a new school, the building of a new school on the east side of the city, or the selling of the district’s land holdings. A new middle school could receive voter approval despite the city being told during the elementary school consolidation process that a new middle school would not be built until that bond was paid off in 2041. After the new middle school is built, which is slated for 2028, the district would need to do something with the 19 acres currently zoned for housing at the Rundlett site.
Changing the SAU 8 charter may not be easy to revise due to changes made and approved by voters in 2022.
In 2021, a new charter commission was seated, and those members made drastic changes to the previous charter. The first change was to remove the provision requiring another review of the charter in 10 years to never require another revision. A second change appeared to require school board approval before any changes can be considered.
18 Revisions or Amendments to the Charter. The charter shall be subject to revision or amendment in accordance with the provisions of RSA Chapter 49-B, as such statute may be amended from time to time; provided, however:
(1) That a vote of at least seven members of the Board shall be required either to submit any charter amendment directly to the voters as set forth in RSA 49-B:5, and that a vote of at least six members of the Board shall be required to establish a charter commission for the purpose of considering a new charter, charter revision, or charter amendment; and
(2) That at least a 3/5 (60%) majority vote of the voters shall be required for the adoption of any new charter, charter revision, or charter amendment.
Voters approved the new charter in November 2022.
In late April, Patrick Taylor, the district clerk, stated he was reviewing the request by the organization and had no comment about whether the new language in the charter required school board approval before placing the amendments on the ballot. Earlier this month, he said Tuesday, the amendments were forwarded to the attorney general’s office, secretary of state, and revenue administration for review.
Charlie Russell, a local attorney involved with the group, said his reading of the charter differed. The 49-B process referred to in the first paragraph was state law and controls the process, he said. The second section allows the board to do so in an alternative way, he added. Russell said the org had sent the proposed amendments to the state for comment, review, and approval, or possible revisions, too.
“If your interpretation is correct,” he added, “then the state will tell us that before we start gathering signatures.”
One revision, he noted, might be to acknowledge they were not amendments but proposals for change requiring signatures, about 1,500, and voter support at the polls, with a 60 percent plus 1 to be enacted.
“I’m confident it’s an amendment,” Russell said, “but we’ll see.”
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