Community

Meet The Candidates: Claremont School Board forum shows unity around transparency

By Patrick Adrian
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Claremont School Board candidate Penny Gallow.

CLAREMONT — Four candidates for the Claremont School Board met on Wednesday with local voters to field questions from residents about education and the school district, one week before elections.

Approximately 40 residents participated in a candidate forum at the Claremont community center, where four candidates shared their background, listened to residents about their educational concerns, and fielded a handful of questions which ranged from strengthening public communication and transparency and education costs to the more controversial subject of racially-sensitive curriculum.

Four Claremont residents are vying to fill two vacant seats on the school board. The candidates include one incumbent, Nicholas Stone, and three challengers, Penny Gallow, Bonnie Miles, and Whitney Skillen. Skillen is running as a write-in candidate.

Nicholas Stone is a graduate of Stevens High School, joined the school board in June 2021, when the board appointed him to fill the seat formerly held by Carolyn Towle, who passed away last year.

Stone said he wishes to improve the district’s quality of education, which Stone felt “was not at the level where it should be” when he was a student.

Two key priorities to Stone are increasing access to early child education and career-tech education opportunities, which he said benefited his own education and helps to broaden student learning and experience.

Penny Gallow is a former district employee and has had two children in the school district, one current and one graduate.

“I have a heart for kids and I want to see the education in the community improve,” Gallow said, referring to her experiences working in the preschool program and in her daughter’s education at the high school level.

Bonnie Miles is a Claremont realtor who has lived in the city for 40 years and raised her children through the school system.

Miles said her concerns about the future of Claremont’s career-tech education center drove her attention to joining the school board.

“I could see from the fewer classes, which have dwindled down, that we could lose it,” Miles said, adding that during her campaign she has broadened her awareness of issues that concern residents and families.

Whitney Skillen is a new resident but spent formative years of her youth in Claremont, where multiple generations of her family were raised.

“I begged my dad to let us move here in high school,” Skillen said. “That wasn’t an option, but as soon as that opportunity presented itself, I said yes, let’s do it.”

Skillen, a medical researcher, said she wants to be a positive difference-maker in the community and sees local education as an ideal place for her strengths.

“I’m really good at problem solving, researching and interpreting data, and I thought that those skills would be needed on the school board,” Skillen said.

The moderators posed topics to the candidates based on priorities and concerns that residents identified during a pair of small group discussions.

Central topics of concern included public transparency and communication and the teaching of controversial topics such as subjects involving race.

Public transparency and communication

The candidates mutually agreed about the need to improve the board’s and district’s communication regarding meetings to the community and to make the budget process more public.

Skillen, citing her professional background in community research, said that the school district needs to better utilize the numerous resources it has available to improve public information and communication, from social media platforms, local newspapers and the school website.

“I think that all of those resources are being underutilized as a way to communicate what’s happening on the school board, when the meetings are or the community will have opportunities to give their view on what’s happening,” Skillen said. “Once we use those tools more I think we will see a lot more community engagement, which I believe is absolutely necessary for the board to make informed decisions.”

Miles added the school district needs to work with the city council to avoid scheduling their meetings on the same nights, which has been a problem historically.

“They are both very important meetings,” Miles said. “I think that the school board and city council need to figure out [their schedules] so that people can participate in both.”

Stone said he would like the school board to consider a similar budget discussion process to the Claremont City Council, who holds all-day public budget meetings in which the council meets with department heads and goes through the individual line items.

“I think that would help flesh out some of the public concerns,” Stone said. “We would also get more comments from the public.”

Stone also suggested the district publish the full agenda packets prior to the scheduled meetings to help inform and engage the public ahead of scheduled discussions.

Gallow agreed about the need for more detailed meeting agendas and information packets.

“It needs to show what the board will actually be discussing, not just bullet points, that come out [just before the meeting],” Gallow said. “We need to know more details.”

Curriculum involving race-based issues

The candidates differed more prominently when asked about diversity-based topics, or educational topics that acknowledge a range of differences between perspectives and experiences based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender or culture. This type of content is sometimes referred to as “Critical Race Theory” or CRT, though as Skillen noted, CRT is an advanced sociological theory that has traditionally been contained to post-secondary classrooms and should not be interchangeable with how elementary or secondary schools approach race-relevant topics in history or literature.

Miles said while racial injustice is a “touchy” subject, some historical injustices remain relevant today that students should understand.

One example, Miles said, was “redlining” a discriminatory practice in which services are denied to people based on their location, such as the approval of mortgages, insurance, loans or other financial services. These practices, which were lawfully practiced during the mid-20th century, frequently targeted black communities, making it difficult for black families to buy homes, build equity or start businesses.

“I don’t like the idea that people can’t teach certain things,” Miles said. “That’s history. And the kids need to know that.”

Stone said that the district needs to evaluate and adapt its courses to today’s changing views, though in a careful way, particularly due to New Hampshire’s “divisive teaching” statute under RSA 193:40.

The state statute, which the state legislature passed last year, does not appear to forbid the teaching of topics such as redlining or slavery. Explicitly, the statute prohibits teaching students that a person’s race, or other biological or cultural identity, “is inherently superior to people of another [identity].”

In regard to teaching about race, Stone said, “there is not much the school board can do to overlap” the state legislation and recommended that concerned people address their local representatives to change those restrictions.

Gallow said that history needs to be taught appropriately and free of “personal opinions.”

“History needs to be discussed as facts, not personal opinions,” Gallow said. “[Topics like race] should be left to parents to discuss at home with their children, not to be taught by an educator.”

Skillen said the goal of educators is not to introduce Critical Race Theory, which is far too complex for a high school discussion, but to “have an honest telling of history.”

“We want to make sure that children understand the Holocaust happened and that the destruction of Black Wall Street happened,” Skillen said. “I have ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and I also have ancestors who had to sharecrop to buy their land and didn’t become landowners until the 1950s because of racist policies. I think it’s important to share both those histories because I come from both.”

Claremont Community Television filmed the full candidate forum and is expected to publish the video for online streaming.

The election is scheduled on Tuesday, March 8. Polls open at 8 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. Residents from Ward 1 and Ward 2 will vote at Claremont Middle School. Ward 3 residents will vote at Disnard Elementary.

Residents were reminded that, if voting for a write-in candidate, the candidate’s name must be correctly written and the oval filled next to the name for the vote to be considered valid.

reporter @eagletimes.com

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