Fall Mountain joint board discusses Articles of Agreement, communication

By Patrick Adrian
[email protected]
LANGDON — Town selectmen joined with Fall Mountain Regional School Board members this week to discuss the district’s terms of agreement, among other issues, in preparation for an imminent committee review of its articles, which will study and make recommendations for revision early next year.

Town and school officials from Fall Mountain Regional School District’s five communities — Acworth, Alstead, Charlestown, Langdon and Walpole — met on Tuesday for their quarterly joint meeting, held to bridge communication and partnership between the district and the municipalities.

The Articles of Agreement is the contract among the five communities that explains how the communities will co-fund and govern the district. The agreement was first drawn up in 1964 after Charlestown replaced Westmoreland as the district’s fifth partner, and it has not had a formal review since 2007.

Reasons for committee review

With the district’s considerable geographic size and differing demographics among the five towns, like population and assessed land value, towns have long debated the equitability within the district’s funding distributions. The district applies six varying methods to fund total operations, many based on each community’s number of students. Officials from larger communities like Walpole and Charlestown see some funding formulas being more favorable to the smaller towns.

“The smaller towns benefit from the inclusion of larger towns,” Selectman Cheryl Mayberry of Walpole, told the group. “For fixed costs, like for the superintendent, I would like to see that being a little more equitable across towns. All of the towns need the superintendent and benefit equally.”

In Charlestown, where voters approved a district-withdrawal feasibility study this spring, selectmen and residents specified perceived inequalities in the funding system as reason for proposing a school option exploration in February 2018.

Boards hold workshop discussion

For officials and school administrators, reviewing the Articles of Agreement is like a “community project,” both literally and in spirit, of five communities working together to find mutually acceptable solutions.

“We need to study the Articles of Agreement like a study of our own improvement as a district,” said Fall Mountain Superintendent Lori Landry.

The tax burdens felt by constituents are felt across New Hampshire, and sourced greatly in the state’s continual underfunding of its education system, Landry said. Reviewing the Articles becomes a task to adapt.

“We have an opportunity to look at the Articles of Agreement differently and come to a resolution that works.

The discussion took place in a workshop format, where officials separated into small groups to discuss areas they would recommend for the future committee to study. After recording discussion points, members reconvened to share.

Michael Herrington, school board chair, said that identified items were not necessarily positives or negatives, nor ones that members will perceive similarly.

“These items are something for the committee to discuss,” he said.

Issues discussed for committee consideration

Topics discussed by the small groups included funding methods, board structure and how to strengthen communication between the school district and communities.

Common funding issues among groups included transportation and the high school parking lot, where budgeted items undergo some hard use.

“High school costs like lighting and heat remain the same,” said Walpole school board member Billy Stahl, “Whereas the parking lot undergoes a lot of wear and tear.”

For many of these items, members said during small groups, the question of funding fairness depends upon perception, and in some cases each town’s vantage.

Using the parking lot as example, Charlestown shoulders roughly 45 percent of the maintenance cost because that reflects their portion of the student enrollment. Some might consider that formula fair. Others say that parking lot is a fixed expense whether a town has one school bus or several, or that the number of busses rather than students causes the rate of wear.

Transportation costs are another challenge for Charlestown, according to Charlestown Selectman Albert St. Pierre. Because Charlestown covers a large geographic area, its busses often have to travel a considerable distance to the high school in Langdon. Meanwhile the district’s funding formula for replacing and repairing busses includes a measurement of mileage.

That formula, however, does not factor in a community’s road conditions on vehicle wear, Stahl said; road conditions in Alstead might contribute to more wear than Charlestown’s, which are arguably better maintained.

Stahl’s group discussed the district’s approach to funding special education as “both a plus and a minus,” Stahl said. Each town’s portion to cover special education costs is based on its average daily membership, or average total student enrollment. This number reflects a town’s total number of students without, however, considering how many require specialized services.

According to Stahl’s group, that might mean one town pays for services used more by another, yet the formula also provides an insurance for one’s community because student numbers requiring special services fluctuate constantly.

Increasing costs and lack of funding

Earlier in the meeting Fall Mountain Finance Director James Fenn shared his findings from studying district spending and revenue over the past 10 years.

“What was most revealing to me,” he said, “is that the high school budget was up about $300,000, about $30,000 a year, our elementary [school] spending is up over $3 million, and our state funding is down about $2 million. So the funding for what they consider an adequate education continues to go down, our annual spending, though not out of control, continues to go up.”

Fenn said this trend is a New Hampshire problem, not just one for Fall Mountain’s communities, and that he does not know what the answer is, given the state’s continued failure to find a better solution.

He also reminded the boards that some of the elementary school budget’s growth is caused by adding universal pre-kindergarten programs and expanding to full-day kindergarten, which they did to capture learning and behavioral issues during early child development when intervention is more successful.

“And because we just started some of these programs, it’s going to take a few more years [for our communities] to realize that value,” said school board vice-chair Mary Henry of Langdon. “By the time those children reach the other end it become $8 saved for every dollar spent.”

The need to better inform and educate communities about where spending goes and why was also a major focus of the boards.

“We need to explore ways to break down spending and revenue at our annual budget presentations,” Landry said, sharing her group’s discussion. “We need to make it easier for citizens to understand where the money is going.”

According to a school board letter to the communities sent out this month, the school board is currently reviewing candidates for the Articles of Agreement Review Committee, and hopes to have one parent and one general community member from each town. The committee will meet twice each month through January 2020, with the bulk of its work conducted between now and November, in order to place recommendations on ballots for voters in the spring.