Rebecca Hipps of Greenfield has been hired as the new principal of Temple Elementary School.
At the Tuesday night meeting of the ConVal School Board, Superintendent Ann Forrest announced that the decision had been finalized “just within the past hour.”
Hipps holds a doctorate in education from Vanderbilt University and has worked as an educational consultant, as well as a classroom teacher and department chair.
“Ms. Hipps most recently worked as a consultant for CKLA, which is the curriculum we are adopting,” Forrest said.
Forrest said Hipps had spent half a day at TES visiting classrooms, meeting with the principal, and teaching a lesson with small groups.
“We feel really good about who we are hiring. This is a great match,” Forrest said.
Board, administration concerned about state legislation
The ConVal School Board Communications Committee is sending two letters to Gov. Kelly Ayotte to express opposition to two bills currently on the governor’s desk, HB 1300 and HB 1610, on behalf of the entire board.
HB 1300 would require every town and ward in New Hampshire to add a tax cap question to the ballot in November.
Previous attempts at state-mandated tax caps have been defeated by local voters statewide.
HB 1610 would require school districts to vote on retaining fund balance funds every year, potentially overriding previous decisions of local district voters.
Communications Committee Chair Curtis Hamilton of Greenfield said HB 1610 had been amended in executive session after the public hearing on the bill closed.
“HB 1610 seeks to mandate a vote every year by district voters to re-authorize the retained unassigned fund balance. In ConVal, district voters have already approved retaining 2.5% fund balance every year,” Hamilton said. “The legislature changed the bill to become effective immediately and to retroactively rescind our ability to retain funds. That means for the funds we are carrying now, we would not be able to retain them this year, and this would create a stressor on the district and the taxpayers.”
Hamilton added that in his opinion, “to disenfranchise our authority to do what the voters wanted us to do is beyond my comprehension.”
He said that in the ConVal district, the funds are used only for emergencies.
ConVal Business Administrator Neal Cass concurred that if HB 1610 passes, it would remove the 2.5% fund balance already approved by ConVal voters in March from the district’s budget.
“The bill almost retroactively takes effect. The voters would have to vote every year on whether fund balance could be retained, but obviously, we can’t go back to March and vote, because we already had that authority,” Cass said.
Forrest said if both bills pass, it would put the district “in a poor position.”
“We got a legal brief; a lot of people were caught off guard by this. House Bill 1610 will potentially impact our fund balance for this year, as of June 30. The N.H. School Board Association and the N.H. School Administrators Association encouraged school boards to write letters. We also put together a letter from the SAU,” Forrest said.
Hamilton voiced concern about the volume of education legislation currently in process in the state.
“It’s a tsunami of regulation that is headed our way. I don’t know how you cap administrative spending while continually adding more administrative burdens to the schools,” Hamilton said. “If people are wondering why administrative costs are so high, look to Concord.”
Board member Michael Hoyt said many of the bills being proposed by New Hampshire legislators contradict the requirements of federal law.
“If these pass, we’ll be in the same situation that other bills have put us in, which is that the state is requiring us to do things the federal government says we’re not supposed to be doing,” Hoyt said. “So we will have to figure out how we can comply with what the federal government is asking us to do while, at the same time, meet what the state is requiring us to do, so we will have to be researching that.”
District to share data on middle schools
Tom Burgess, a representative from Peterborough, reported that the board’s Facilities Committee will be sharing data gathered about the condition and capacity of the district’s two middle schools.
“We are creating a schedule for next school year to meet with the community to share the data we have gathered about Great Brook and South Meadow, the needs of the schools, their similarities, and their differences,” Burgess said. “We will be looking to the public for feedback and we will be looking to get all this information out there to the public.”
The district will announce a timeline of public forums and information sessions about the middle schools in the 2026-27 school year.
New SAU Board to hold first meeting
The district’s new SAU Board will meet for the first time Tuesday, June 30.
The SAU board will administer the new multi-district SAU created by the withdrawal of Francestown from SAU 1.
SAU 1 has been a single-district SAU since 1970, when ConVal was created. Under state law, SAUs that contain multiple districts must also create an SAU board.
Francestown has stated its intent to withdraw from SAU 1 and create its own SAU to lessen the administrative burden on ConVal and lower costs for district voters, but the town cannot begin the process until after July 1, 2027, when Francestown officially withdraws from the ConVal district.