By Patrick Adrian
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NEWPORT — Community members advocated for more collaboration and dialogue between the selectboard and school board, stressing the need to cease the fighting between the entities over annual budgets.
At the selectboard meeting on Monday, Newport resident Lisa Ferrigno said that the tensions and incivility between the governing bodies is taking a serious toll on the community as a whole. While agreeing that the SAU has been “a mess” and committed costly mistakes over the years, Ferrigno suggested that the SAU’s instability may be symptomatic of the district’s larger turnover problem.
In Ferrigno’s 27 years as a Newport resident, she said there’s been “at least 10 superintendents, more business administrators than [she] can count and a school board that has had a full turnover at least seven times.”
“So that kind of makes sense that the SAU office is a mess,” Ferrigno told the board.
Over that time Ferrigno said there’s been a history of division between the town selectboard and school board, sparked by bouts of incivility and difficulty for the two bodies to work together.
“The only way we’re going to attract new community members to this area is if we stop butting heads, stop allowing the discourse that’s been allowed and start working together to be congenial and disrespectful,” she said.
New Hampshire State Rep. Biddy Irwin, a former Newport School Board member, recommended the forming of a joint board, comprised of town and school officials, to identify the “fundamental problem” between the boards and develop a better understanding of each board’s processes and needs.
“We need to have a community dialogue about this,” Irwin said. “Because we can’t keep fighting. We have to become more collegial and less adversarial.”
Selectboard members said that they have attempted to work with the school board but have found too much resistance by the school board to accept other ideas.
“My perspective is that the school board feels that money or the tax rate shouldn’t matter,” Selectboard Vice-Chair Todd Fratzel said. “Until that attitude changes, I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere.”
Fratzel said that, based on his communication with constituents, everyone in the community wants to have good schools, but those schools need to be affordable. He also said that the school budgets need to become more consistent, rather than having frequent and significant spikes in tax impact, as that inconsistency creates a public distrust toward the school system.
Fratzel said the selectboard’s budgeting approach is to start with a budget amount based on previous budgets and determine spending to meet that target.
Selectboard Chair Jeffrey Kessler said he’s offered numerous opportunities to the school board and Interim Superintendent Brendan Minnihan to get their message out about this year’s budget proposal, including space in this year’s annual town report and invitations to present at a selectboard meeting, but those offers weren’t taken.
“What I wish the school board and superintendent would have been doing over the past couple of weeks was getting the message out,” Kessler said. “Yes, they had a school board meeting where they discussed. But they weren’t talking to various groups [in the community], answering questions or finding out what the people think are important. They’re not in touch with the community.”
Irwin said that there is an overall lack of community engagement toward the selectboard as well, which is why she advocates organizing a joint-board discussion after the town budget vote.
School Board member Jenna Darling, who was in attendance, told the selectboard that she had taken down notes to share with the school board for discussion and agreed about the need to improve the school board’s budget conversations with the community.
Darling also voice her support for joint-discussions between the two boards and collaborating to promote civility.
“I do think we need to work together and stop fighting,” Darling said. “And you’re absolutely right there some things are a mess. And I really hope that [our school board] is making changes that will improve the trust and transparency.
Fratzel said the best way the selectboard might help the school board is by showing them how the select board puts together its budget. To do that, the school board must be willing to try budgeting around a set monetary limit.
“There’s been so much that hasn’t worked the last few years,” he said. “Just taking a chance and saying ‘This is what we think the community can afford in an increase’ and then try what we [the selectboard] has done.”
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