The recently established Francestown Independent School District will host a Special District Meeting on Aug. 8 to present four warrant articles to Francestown voters. If the articles pass, they will enable the town to move forward with completing the process of withdrawing from the ConVal School District.
The meeting will start at 10 a.m. at Francestown Elementary School, 352 2nd NH Turnpike South.
Francestown voters approved withdrawal from ConVal in March 2026. In June, the State Department of Education appointed Laura Mafera, Pat Troy and David Stahlin as temporary members of the Francestown Independent School Board to enable the board to start completing the steps for withdrawal by December 2026.
The first warrant article on the Aug. 8 ballot proposes the election of three members and officers for the town’s new independent school board, including moderator, clerk and treasurer.
At the most recent meeting of the ConVal School Board, Chair Mike Hoyt of Bennington presented a letter from ConVal’s attorney specifying that school board member Kevin Pobst, who represents Francestown, will have to recuse himself from any discussions about Francestown, as it would create a conflict of interest.
Pobst sent a letter to the ConVal School Board on July 21 expressing his understanding of his role and his intention to cooperate fully.
“We are totally in support and completely on board with it,” Pobst said Thursday. “There will not be any conflict. We are very happy to cooperate to make this process run as smoothly as possible.”
The second article proposes an appropriation of $100,000 “for the purpose of funding the organizational, administrative, legal, financial and operational expenses of the Francestown Independent School District through June 30, 2027.”
“This budget is just a small amount to enable us to operate in the transition year leading up to withdrawal,” Mafera said.
The budget includes $50,000 for anticipated legal fees during the negotiating process, $6,500 for stakeholder communications, $27,000 for consulting services, including special education and superintendent services; $5,000 for membership dues in the New Hampshire School Board Association and associated expenses with hiring and legal fees; and $11,000 for operational expenses.
The third article would establish a retained fund balance, as required by law, which would enable the district to retain a small percentage of any funds that had not been spent in the previous year. School districts typically set these funds aside for emergencies.
The fourth article calls for the establishment of an SAU Withdrawal Planning Committee.
Since 1969, when the nine-town ConVal district was created, SAU 1 has been a one-district SAU. But after ConVal voters approved Francestown’s withdrawal from the district in March, it automatically became a multi-district SAU. The change required the establishment of an SAU board, which will administer the budgets of both districts. ConVal created the SAU board in June.
Mafera said the Francestown School Committee, which represented Francestown during the process of preparing for the withdrawal votes in 2025 and 2026, began to think about also withdrawing from the SAU after the district presented data indicating that adding a second district to the SAU would increase costs for all nine towns in the ConVal district.
“When we did our withdrawal study two years ago, which included Dublin at that time, we saw that the costs went high because then there would have been three districts. We don’t want to have to pay that cost, or have anybody pay that cost, so it makes sense for us to withdraw from the SAU as well,” Mafera said. “ConVal is a large district with many buildings and a lot of moving parts. They have a need for a lot more administration than we will need for our tiny district. The cost for us to run our own SAU would be much smaller; it would remove an extra layer of work and expense for ConVal, and it just makes sense.”
Both Mafera and Pobst say working with ConVal on the withdrawal process has been positive and smooth.
“We have worked very closely with [Superintendent] Ann Forrest and [Business Administrator] Neal Cass. It’s been a really great relationship that we hope to continue in the future. We have all learned a lot, and everyone has been very agreeable,” Mafera said. “Neal is just really on top of everything, and we know we are always going to get a good answer to any questions we ask, and it’s the same with Ann. This is all new to her, starting from the ground up — it’s new for all of us — and if she doesn’t know something, she is not afraid to say it. They have been absolutely fantastic.”
