Resident Paul Teller criticized the Dublin Education Advisory Committee during a DEAC forum Thursday for coming to what he sees as a predetermined solution of withdrawing from the ConVal School District.
“Why are you allowing questions when you don’t really want to hear what people have to say? I think withdrawing from ConVal is the worst idea I’ve heard in 40 years in Dublin – and there’s no opportunity to say that,” Tuller said.
The DEAC was formed by the Select Board after Dublin residents voted at 2024 Town Meeting to direct the ConVal School Board to conduct a feasibility study into the town’s potential withdrawal from the school district. The DEAC states that its job is to find the best and most cost-effective method of providing public education in town. According to the committee’s research, Dublin sends the most money per student into ConVal at about $35,000, a number that committee Chair Jay Schechter has called “unsustainable” for the town.
Each town’s tax apportionment was set in 1967 in the district’s Articles of Agreement after its creation. A change to the articles requires an affirmative vote from two-thirds of district voters, which would be unlikely in this case, according to the DEAC. The DEAC feels that the withdrawal feasibility study is the only leverage they have to influence the articles, although they have not yet come to an official decision on how to provide public education to Dublin residents. To that end, they have explored several different options and recently began distributing a survey to residents to get their input on the state of public education in Dublin.
Tuller accused the DEAC of using leading questions in the survey, potentially influencing participants’ answers.
“You have rigged the survey – you don’t want to hear what people are saying,” he said. “You’ve worded everything with ‘unsustainable’ – that’s your opinion. You have to let us say what we think about it, not just ask us questions. Public school is what made our country great. The state has been working systematically to destroy public education – I feel like your committee is as well.”
Tuller concluded by saying, “I’m going to do everything I can to stop the committee from pulling out of ConVal, it’s the craziest idea I’ve heard in 40 years.”
Schechter noted that the purpose of the forum that evening was to gather feedback from residents, and that while the feasibility study was looking into Dublin’s potential withdrawal from the district, members have not yet decided if that is the best course of action.
“There’s been no decision to pull out of ConVal,” he said. “I said it at the beginning of the meeting – it’s one possible option.”
During Schechter’s opening remarks, he laid out four possible options for education in Dublin that the committee was exploring: remain in ConVal with restructured Articles of Agreement, withdraw from the ConVal district while remaining in the SAU, remain in ConVal while restructuring Dublin Consolidated School (DCS) to a specialty school, allowing other districts to tuition in; and some combination of the previous options, using a voucher system for maximum parental choice.
“With regards to sustainability – for the last six years, the ConVal budget has increased by 36%, while the ConVal student population has declined 9%,” Schecter said, adding that this data comes right from the ConVal website. “I extrapolated 40 years into the future based on previous increases, and you could very possibly see us paying $50,000 per student.”
Committee member Blake Anderson also responded to Tuller’s criticism, saying, “There’s no particular outcome we would like other than an outcome that reflects the wishes of the community as best we understand it – that’s why we put out a survey.”
The DEAC also faced some criticism from resident Chris Gallagher about the survey, the preliminary results of which the committee discussed at their meeting June 11. Gallagher said releasing early results would influence future responses to the survey.
“The statements in the [Monadnock Ledger-Transcript] kind of void having a survey,” he said. “Anyone that’s doing the survey would be influenced by the conclusions in the paper, one way or another. The survey, from my point of view, is irrelevant now.”
Anderson, who discussed the results of the survey, responded: “I shared the survey information in discussion with people who bothered to come to the meeting. We wanted absolute transparency about where we are at any point in time during this process. All we’re trying to do is share the data with people. I would be happy to have anyone make a presentation on staying in ConVal, because we’ve identified a majority of options that involve continuing to be in the ConVal universe in some way.”
Resident May Clark, a former ConVal School Board member and DCS principal, acknowledged the difficulties that ConVal is facing, but noted that they were nationwide and not exclusive to ConVal, to which Schechter agreed. She suggested that the nine ConVal towns should engage in a full dialogue about how to move forward, instead of individual towns attempting to withdraw.
Lisa Buzick, a parent of two current ConVal students, expressed her overall satisfaction with the district, but also acknowledged its recent shortcomings, including the lack of technical programs such as an automotive course. ConVal currently sends a small number of students to the Mascenic district for automotive maintenance education. She noted that Dublin should be getting more value considering the amount of money the town contributes to the district.
“People don’t realize how much money we’re sending into the district,” she said. “If we’re not getting back some of that, it’s really unfortunate.”