By BOB MARTIN
Eagle Times Staff
NEWPORT, N.H. — The Newport School District and Town of Newport hosted a Candidates Forum on Wednesday night at Newport Middle School, where members of the public were able to ask local candidates questions about education and how their work will help a struggling district if they are elected.
The two-hour forum included Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Stephen Villee; state senator candidates Ruth Ward and David Trumble; District 3 state representative candidates Steven Smith, Walter “Terry” Spilsbury and Skip Rollins; District 7 state representative candidates Margaret Drye and Jenny Ramsey; and Executive Council District 2 candidate Karen Liot Hill.
A highly contentious topic was if they would support the changes to the Ed 306 Rules, which remove some of the state’s minimum education standards. Notably they pertain to eliminating student-teacher ratios, as well as a number of programs and other requirements. They were approved by the board of education in February, but adopting the rules has presented challenges due to litigation surrounding the language involved.
Newport School Board member Melissa Mitchler formerly taught in Newport, and she pointed out that Newport Middle School students get art, music, physical education, health and band for electives. She said this is the “bare minimum” compared to other towns, who have foreign language before even hitting the high school level. She said Newport and other local towns do not have the resources to allow their students to compete.
Mitchler asked the candidates if they support the N.H. Board of Education’s recent changes to the Ed 306 rules. If so, she asked why they believe the changes are beneficial.
Here is how the candidates responded:
Villee: “I am not familiar with the changes, so I will stay neutral on this.”
Trumble: “Commissioner Edelbut is on his mission to hurt the public schools because he would prefer private schools. So, what he has done with these proposed regulations is to weaken the minimum standard. I will give you one example: Right now, the rule says you have to have a certain class size. You can have 25 children per teacher. They decided to change the word “teacher” to “educator,” which includes a paraprofessional. Paraprofessionals are essential to education, but under this new regulation, you can have 50 children in classroom with one teacher and one paraprofessional. That paraprofessional could very well be working one-on-one with a child. That would be acceptable under Commissioner Edelbut’s versions of the 306 rules. That’s totally unacceptable. There are other problems with it.”
Ward: “I saw you sitting out there discussing the 306 rules. I have not read all of the 306 rules. The whole discussion on that particular part on that day had to do with the class size. If I remember right, you couldn’t have more than 20 in the classroom for a certain age group. I don’t remember any part of the other sizes of the classrooms, but I think that, from my point of view, we have misinterpreted the rules. The rules have not been finished. It was voted on by people to have all the rules together. We listened to just the half of it, the first 14, I don’t know how many rules there are. Probably less than half of it. I can’t say much about the rest of it, but the conversation had to do with class size. I don’t think that Edelbut is really geared toward destroying the public schools. He wants them to be able to compete.”
Spilsbury: “I am totally unfamiliar with the rule making that is going on in the Department of Education, so I won’t pretend to address the decisions.”
He added about school resources, “I would do everything I can to direct more funds to the schools Newport, Charlestown and Unity.”
Smith: “Teachers are working hard now, and they always seem to be in the middle of a conflict. They seem to be constrained on how they can control their classroom. I want teachers to be respected. I want them to make more money than administrators. I look at some of the salaries of superintendents and, honestly, there are a few cases where maybe you can do without them.”
Rollins: “I don’t think we should be increasing class size, but I am not that familiar with the 306 program.”
He added, “We want to keep a high standard for our students. We want the students to have the best education they can. When we go back to Concord next year, when re-elected, I’ll work to give money back into the community so we can get better teachers, more teachers, and have a full staff of teachers in these schools. That’s where it’s going to count. That’s where we’ll get the best education for these kids that we possibly can.”
Ramsey: “The 306 is absolutely one of the reasons I am running, and I am shocked and appalled that we don’t all know about it. These standards are being eroded and washed away. There were 20 sessions around the state, I went to one in Kearsarge, where there were listening sessions to hear the public talk about these changes. It should be state headlines. They should be on the front pages of our newspapers. They should be in every bulletin that goes out from our schools.”
Drye: “I did a little homework because I knew this was going to come up, and I have to say, we are right in the middle of things. Part 1 and Part 2 in the 306, Part 1 is being reviewed by the Oversight Committee and is now in the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules. The initial criticisms from misconceptions, for addressing language, there are changes that the commissioner might make based on the Oversight Committee’s recommendations. Part 2 is to be reviewed by the Oversight Committee this Thursday.”
She added, “We all need to do our homework on this before we have a discussion.”
Liot-Hill: “I strongly oppose the proposed amendments to the Section 306 standards, defining a minimum adequate education in New Hampshire. I think one of the most insidious examples, is the replacement with the word “shall” with the word “may.” These proposed standards literally water down an adequate education in New Hampshire.”
She added, “This is extremely dangerous. Watering down our public education in New Hampshire is not the answer to making our students all across the state competitive in a modern economy. As an Executive Councilor I will make sure that members of the state Board of Education are replaced with people who believe and support public education.”
