A Dublin man is advocating for school choice and for the town to withdraw from the ConVal School District, citing its high cost.

Leo Plante has sent selectmen a letter urging them to study withdrawing Dublin from the school district. In the letter, dated July 23, Plante introduced himself as a representative of the Dublin School Choice Committee, a group of five residents that has met monthly since January to study the benefits of withdrawing the town of Dublin from the ConVal School District.

Plante referred to himself as “one of the victims of the high taxes we pay here,” in an interview on Wednesday, and said his interest in the issue came from complaints he observed from other Dublin residents, as well as his own sense of an unequal situation.

“About 58 percent of our taxes go to ConVal and we’re just not getting anything in return,” he said.

The recent ConVal lawsuit triggered his forming the Dublin School Choice Committee, he said. Part of his mission is to “give these Dublin families – the low and middle-income families – the same options as wealthy families have,” in choosing a school for their children. Plante is retired, and moved to Dublin four years ago from Virginia. He does not have school-age children.

Plante declined to name other committee members, citing his role as spokesperson was a critical stipulation, but described them as a “grassroots handful of people” who share an interest in school choice issues.

In the report he drafted for the Select Board, Plante cited high tax costs as a central argument for leaving ConVal, noting that the total annual cost to the town divided by the number of its students comes out to $23,000 a year per pupil. He referenced inefficiencies in staffing and underutilized capacity at the Dublin Consolidated School, as well as ConVal High School’s academic underperformance as compared to nearby Souhegan High School.

“We’ve concluded that we’re not getting a very good deal,” Plante said.

The School Choice Committee studied the feasibility of awarding a $15,000 annual voucher to families of Dublin students, and that of reorganizing the Dublin Consolidated School as an independent or public charter school to save money and increase enrollment. Plante said that all the information in his report came from public sources, and he leaned heavily on information available on the New Hampshire Department of Education website.

Sherry Miller, Town Administrator, said the members of the Dublin School Choice Committee “are not appointed by the selectmen and they are not a town committee,” and that Plante had not contacted her, as of Wednesday, to be on the agenda for the next Select Board meeting on Aug 5. Plante said that he would not be attending the meeting unless he was invited, and that he met with the Select Board when he formed the committee.

Selectman Chris Raymond said, “I have not gone into [the report] in-depth but I’m sure we will discuss it” at the upcoming Select Board meeting.

Bernd Foecking, the ConVal School Board Dublin representative, said on Wednesday that he had attended several of the School Choice Committee meetings.

“I really appreciate people being involved, I love controversial discussions about education,” he said, however, adding, “I do not see this as an honest effort to improve the education of students in ConVal. … I had the feeling it was more of a tax-savings committee than an education committee.”

Foecking said that Plante invited ConVal School Board members, the superintendent, and Dublin Consolidated School PTO members to the meetings, and estimated there were about twenty people in attendance at each. Foecking also estimated that a little more than half the attendees at each meeting were critical of the ideas that Plante proposed.

“I am certainly highly critical of everything that came out in his report,” Foecking said.

He also expressed doubt about some of the numbers Plante cited, and said he does not see the initiative going further. Foecking said he would, though, try to be at the Select Board meeting.