Put students back into Towle building

To the Editor:

We as Newporters moved our school district forward with a complete renovation of Richards School a few short years ago.

We as Newport taxpayers put our students as our No. 1 priority with a significant addition to Richards, specifically to care for pre-schoolers and kindergartners. It was specially designed for little people washrooms, ramps, special needs rooms, etc.

A full gymnasium for inside activities was included for inside activities when the little students couldn’t get outside into their specially designed schoolyard because of foul weather.

Now we have overcrowding at Richards because the school board closed Towle and put the fifth graders into Richards. The Newport School Board moved the sixth graders from Towle to the high school. The move has been very hard for the sixth graders, both physically and emotionally.

As citizens of Newport we must understand a very important aspect of this issue. Moving the fifth grade to Richards and the sixth grade to the high school had nothing to do with their education as our ratings are lower than the lowest academically.

The move had nothing to do with saving us tax dollars as this issue cost us millions in misallocations of our tax dollars.

The moves had everything to do with our administration being pushed by our Newport School Board into the Towle building. I’ll paraphrase Cindy Gallagher from a Newport School Board meeting when she stood and faced me and said, “Kurt, don’t worry, the SAU will not move into Towle. I had no reason not to believe her.

Please stop with this disruptive madness and put the SAU back into the annex building at the high school. Please put the fourth, fifth and sixth graders back into their school building, Towle.

Kurt Minich

Newport, N.H.