Charlestown residents make case for withdrawal from Fall Mountain

By Patrick Adrian
[email protected]
LANGDON — Advocates for Charlestown’s withdrawal from the Fall Mountain Regional School District said that their town seeks to regain local control of their own education spending.

Members of Charlestown’s School Research Committee, who formed last year and later recommended funding a withdrawal study from Fall Mountain, met with the newly formed Withdrawal Study Committee, comprised of school board members, selectmen and residents of Fall Mountain’s five communities — Charlestown, Alstead, Acworth, Langdon, and Walpole — to provide historical background and reasons for Charlestown’s current desire to leave the district.

The Charlestown committee said they want to create their own district with a five-member school board. Their district would continue educating students in their current schools for grades K-8 and tuition their high school students to other districts, the majority of whom would likely tuition back into Fall Mountain Regional High School.

Charlestown committee member Terry Spillsbury told the withdrawal study committee that Charlestown residents cannot afford to continue funding the continually growing cost of education in Fall Mountain.

“Charlestown has been sending out S.O.S. signals for decades,” Spillsbury said. “Every year Charlestown voters vote down the Fall Mountain school budget, and every year they get outvoted. The mood of our voters and taxpayers is frustration.”

Spillsbury described the economic situation in Charlestown as a “death spiral,” with a cycle of falling property values driving higher tax rates and limiting the town’s spending power to replace equipment and repair infrastructure.

The Charlestown committee said that the demands of Fall Mountain’s school budgets consume most of Charlestown’s spending. Charlestown’s current tax rate of $37.54 per $1,000 of assessed value is second highest in the state, second only to Claremont’s, Spillsbury said. Of that $37.54, local education tax comprises $23.71, the highest in New Hampshire.

“Not something to be proud of,” Spillsbury said.

Whether Charlestown will be able to leave Fall Mountain, however, will depend partly on whether the rest of Fall Mountain voters approve the withdrawal plan.

Charlestown attorney Jim O’Shaughnessy, also in attendance, told the Study Withdrawal Committee that, provided they recommend withdrawal, their plan must meet with the approval of the state, Charlestown voters, and finally Fall Mountain voters.

While Charlestown already has a framework for their plan in place, the Withdrawal Study Committee will also need to create a substantive plan for how the remaining Fall Mountain towns will operate the district without Charlestown, whose population of over 900 students comprise about 45 percent of the district.

According to Withdrawal Committee Chairman Albert St. Pierre, Charlestown’s attempts to leave the district or change the funding formula span back to 1986. While Charlestown voters passed past measures, when those proposals reached the school board or Fall Mountain voters they were defeated.

This time, however, Charlestown advocates believe the feasibility of the committee’s plan for all the towns will decide.