Paul Dargie

Milford Cost Per Student Trends

2009-06-28T20:44:00.003-05:00

The state recently published the cost per student data for the 07-08 school year. The data is published on the New Hampshire Department of Education - Financial Reports web page.

Milford reached a milestone with this latest report. Our cost per student for the entire District was below the state average for the first time in at least 11 years!!!

Shown below is a graphic that shows the data from the state site summarized for Milford. The first block shows the total spending per student for the past 11 years. We have been showing continuous improvement in our cost per student spending during the past 11 years. Our per student spending was 110% of the state average 11 years ago. The percentage has steadily dropped over the years, and we are now at only 98% of the state average.

This came about because our percentage growth in spending has been less than the state percentage growth over this time period. Our total spending per student has gone up 71% over the 11 years (from $6394 to $10,933), while the state average 's cost per student has gone up 93% (from $5780 to $11,135).

There are a lot of factors that go into spending for a school district that feed into the overall results. In my opinion, we have provided the right focus on our spending to provide good outcomes. The District is in much better shape than it was 11 years ago. We have gotten where we are by being consistent in our spending practices. We have been following the practice of trying to make continuous improvement each year, but in a modest way. We have avoided years of no progress due to severe cutbacks, and we have also not tried to do too much in any given year.

We have followed the teachings of the Tortoise and the Hare fable, where slow but steady wins the race. We have become a good Tortoise, where we move along at a steady pace each year, taking consistent steps towards an improved District. The only difference is that we do not have a finish line - we are just trying to do better all the time.

The spending area that contributed the most to our overall improvement was the elementary schools calculations. Eleven years ago we were at 111% of the state average, and now we are now at 91%. This is likely the result of going from operating out of three aging schools (Garden Street, Bales, and Jacques), and transitioning to newer schools (Heron Pond and renovated Jacques). We get economies of scale by operating out of a relatively large Heron Pond school. Most elementary schools in the state are much smaller, and they cost more to operate per student. We get by with fewer support staff members than a typical District due to the larger school size. There was additional savings when the Fifth grade was added onto Heron Pond, where we added about 200 more students with minimal additional overhead cost.

3/10/09 Voting Results

2009-03-10T22:12:00.000-05:00

There were 1683 ballots cast today in the Milford local elections.

School Votes

1302 Peter Bragdon, School Board

Question 1 Jacques School Addition to Implement Public Kindergarten
yes 943 (57%), no 713 (43%) - question failed as it needed a 60% supermajority to pass

Question 2 Operating Budget
yes 856 no 802

Question 3 Teachers Association contract
yes 932 no 721

Question 4 Special meeting allowed if question 3 fails
yes 1060 no 565

Question 5 Milford Educational Support Staff contract
yes 931 no 718

Question 6 Special meeting allowed if question 5 fails
yes 1055 no 583

Question 7 Deputy Treasurer
yes 1072 no 562

Town Votes

Article 1 Elections of Officers

Selectman ( two 3-year terms)

1128 Gary Daniels
637 Nathaniel Carmen
519 Frank Corey
387 John Cass, Sr.

Cemetery Trustee - 3 year term

1360 Mary Dickson

Checklist Supervisor - 1 year term

1362 Polly Cote

Trustee of the Trust Funds - one 3 year term

1039 Brad Chappell
356 Kevin Taylor

Library Trustee - three 3-year terms

1142 Tim Barr
1105 Edith March
1070 Kristie Popp

Water/Wastewater Commissioner - 3 year term

1342 Mike Putnam

Water/Wastewater Commissioner - 2 year term

1389 Robert Courage

Article 2 Zoning Questions

Vote 1 Definitions
yes 1218 no 267
Vote 2 Replace principal route of access with Class V or better
yes 1194 no 301
Vote 3 Yard requirements
yes 1048 no 450
Vote 4 Administrative wording
yes 1247 no 263
Vote 5 Expiration of variances
yes 1229 no 269
Vote 6 Growth management sunset date
yes 1095 no 396
Vote 7 Small wind energy system restrictions
yes 1139 no 373

Article 3 Curtis well facility improvements
yes 1121 no 495

Article 4 Operating budget
yes 879 no 755

Article 5 Wastewater treatment budget
yes 1213 no 412

Article 6 Water treatment operating budget
yes 1194 no 415

Article 7 Route 101a / route 13 / oval improvements grant
yes 1142 no 510

Article 8 Teamsters union collective bargaining agreement
yes 504 no 1114

Article 9 Social services
yes 1054 no 547

Article 10 Wastewater treatment facility wheel loader replacement
yes 989 no 598

Article 11 Pumpkin festival, holiday decorations and plantings
yes 956 no 667

Article 12 Reinstating library hours
yes 854 no 765

Article 13 DO-IT operating budget support
yes 925 no 676

Article 14 Fireworks
yes 692 no 920

Article 15 Summer band concerts
yes 889 no 732

Article 16 Memorial, Veterans, and Labor Day parade town support
yes 1195 no 430

Article 17 South street railroad crossing
yes 1155 no 442

Article 18 Distontinuance of a portion of Hartshorn Mill Road
yes 1261 no 305

Article 19 Authorization to expend funds to purchase interest in lands outside town boundaries
yes 897 no 687

Article 20 Adjustment to income and asset levels for elderly exemptions
yes 1383 no 226

Article 21 Authorize special meeting if collective bargaining agreement warrant article is defeated
yes 1008 no 539

Article 22 Authorization to selectmen to establish and amend town ordinances
yes 1008 no 539

Article 23 Grant of access easement to Saint Joseph Hospital
yes 1406 no 207

Article 25 Cable access revolving fund
yes 865 no 702

Article 26 Non-emergency medical transportation bus service budgetary funding request
yes 1122 no 490

Article 27 Railroad pond fishing age limits - McBriarty Memorial Fishing Derby
yes 1041 no 541

Article 28 Request for adoption of New Hampshire RSA 79-F Taxation of farm structures and land under farm structures
yes 952 no 548

High School Renovation Project 4/10/08

2008-04-13T21:30:00.002-05:00

General Comments

The MHS Project Management Advisory Committee met on Thursday 4/10/08 to review the status of the High School Renovation Project.

There continues to be good progress made on the project, and it is basically on schedule, will completion expected by the end of the summer.

Work on the track portion should resume in the next few weeks, when the loam piles have warmed completely, and have dried out a bit. They will then spread the loam, and install the sprinkler system. The sod will be put down after that, and allowed to sit for a while before it is used. Conduit to feed electrical and data feeds to the press box will be fed under the parking lot during the April vacation.

The actual track surface will not be installed until sometime in the summer. The top layer of track surface will bond better to the lower surface when the ground is good an warm. The warmer the better, so they will not do it until June or July. It will all be complete in time for start up of school in the fall.

The interior work is progressing, The music room is almost complete, and the students will move into it in a week or so.

Some of the interior rooms are nearing completion, and classes are moving into them, freeing up more rooms to be worked on.

Minor Problems

The committee reviewed and approved seven different change orders totaling $13,343. These are the typical types of change orders that arise during a renovation project. They included items such as the need for additional sprinkler heads in some new closets, adding sprinkler heads above the ceilings since the ceilings had to be lowered to accommodate piping changes, increasing the snow loading specification for the pressbox, etc.

Major Problems

Three issues have come up that are more serious due to the cost factors involved.

* We are adding new fire detection points to the fire alarm system. These points are being added to provide detection in various sections of the renovation project, including in the mechanicals in the music room and in various areas of room 4. It was not anticipated, but it was discovered that the fire annunciator panel at the front of the building has been maxed-out, and will need to be expanded to add new detection points to the system. It is important that the points be properly identified on the panel, to allow the fire department to quickly develop a plan of action when they respond to a call at the building.

The various people involved are looking at our alternatives at this point in time. One course of action would be to do the minimum amount necessary to get the planned changes identified on the panel. This would leave the panel in a maxed-out state, and require major changes if additional points were needed in the future.

Another alternative would be to expand the panel significantly to allow for future point expansion. This would require that the existing system be taken out and replaced by a completely new system. This will cost a lot more, but has the advantage of allowing us to change the technology that is used to allow for more open source technology, and multiple source sourcing.

The cost penalty for this issue is not known for sure, but it is being investigated. A rough guesstimate is that it is somewhere between $17K and $40K depending on which approach is chosen.

* The budget included $30K for the foundation work for the bleachers. This figure was based on typical foundations for similar bleachers.

It turned out that there are special problems with our particular installation, and a more costly foundation is needed. The basic problem is that there is very little room between the rear of the bleachers and the fence, and the elevation change is steep in that area. Because of this, the design engineer has specified that we install a retaining wall at the rear of the foundation concrete pad to insure that there is the proper support.

The first estimate for the more elaborate foundation was $75K, or $45K over the budgeted amount. We reviewed this issue in detail at the meeting. The final decision was that we asked the people involved to go back and see if they can come up with a design that uses a full size retaining wall at the rear of the press box, but uses a smaller or no retaining wall at all in the other areas of the bleachers where the distance from the structure to the fencing will be greater.

* We received a bill from the water utilities group for a new service entrance fee. This fee is based on anticipated annual usage, and was $22,691 for our filed irrigation system.

We spent a lot of time discussing this fee, and trying to find alternatives. We are going to look into the feasibility of installing a well to replace or supplement the town water service, with the expectation that this would reduce the entrance fee and/or reduce our annual water charges.

Mike Trojano had received a rough guesstimate of a typical well installation for a service of this type. The cost was $15K for the well or wells plus $5K for design/consultation services, for a total of $20K. In some cases, the cost could be higher if the well(s) need to be a lot deeper, if water treatment is needed, or if storage system(s) are needed to provide that the flow rates.

Several committee members questioned the feasibility of being able to get a well in this area that will have the needed gallons per minute flow capacity to meet the needs of the system. They are going to review the geologic maps of the area to get a rough estimate of the difficulties that can be expected to be encountered.

We are going to have another meeting in two weeks to review each of these issues.

Budget Summary

We were doing relatively well with the budget, until we hit these various cost adders. Business Administrator Mike Trojano will be putting together another cost roll-up for our next meeting, but this is where I think that we are based on a rough update of the previous roll-ups.

We had been at around $250K of unallocated contingency funds at the last roll-up. Subtracting out $13K for the approved changes, $35K for the annunciator panel, $30K for extra bleacher foundations, $5K for a negotiated water entrance fee, and $20K for a well for irrigation, leaves about $145K of unallocated contingency funds.

There is another large issue that is pending, and this is that many of the doors that we had thought had been included in the bid process were actually not part of the bid. The only doors that were included were ones that were attached or next to areas that were being worked on separately. Doors for rooms that were not otherwise being renovated were not included.

The cost for renovating these extra doors is still being scoped out. Many of them are very expensive to renovate since they are non-standard sized and new door frames are needed to get new doors installed.

It is my opinion that renovating the doors is one of the higher priorities of the overall project. The current doors cannot be locked from the inside, and in a school lock-down mode, the occupants of the room would have to go into the corridors to lock the doors, thus exposing them to any potential threats. Adding more doors for the project could be as much as $50K-100K.

This lack of unallocated contingency is getting very tight for this portion of the project, as there are still a few areas that have not even been touched as of yet. There may be more unanticipated problems to be found.

We are carrying $82K for parking improvements in the budget, and we have not tapped in to this at all yet. We have done no work so far in designing what will be done for parking improvements. This is an area that could be a safety valve if needed to accommodate unanticipated expenditures. If we have to cut something from the project, then this might be an area that could be attacked.

We should have a better idea on the overall project costs when we meet again in two weeks.

Milford School Board 4/7/08

2008-04-09T17:39:00.003-05:00

MESSA

The meeting started with Deb Hayes from the High School talking in public comment as a representative from MESSA (Milford Educational Support Staff Association). This is the bargaining unit that has been in negotiations with the School Board for a year and a half. The group had previously requested that the entire school board meet with them directly to negotiate the contract, and the board had subsequently turned down their request. Ms. Hayes reiterated their request and asked the board to reconsider the decision. Chairman Bragdon indicated that the board would probably bring this up at the previously scheduled non-public session that would be held at the end of the meeting.

Bob Willette Presentation

Peter Bragdon presented Bob Willette with a granite plaque as a memento of his five years of service on the board. Lorna Willette was also there to help with the ceremony.

Superintendent's Report

Bob Suprenant had these comments:

* The Middle School Math Counts team entered the Ultimate Math Competition, and the team achieved Gold Level status. This means that at least 12 members of the team scored 80% or higher on the test. There will be a banner posted in the school to commemorate the achievement.

* 16 High school students were named Granite State Scholars. They will be eligible to apply for scholarships if they meet certain criteria, such as attending particular state schools.

* There were 9 winners at the State History Day competition.

* 10 Students were in the New Hampshire Science day competition
Liam Hurley won first in the state Skills competition in the carpentry section, and he will be going to the national competition (which is usually in Kansas City, but I'm not sure about this year).

* 9 High School Students did well at the state FBLA Future Business Leaders of America competition, including Joe Stagnone who won 1st place in the accounting 2 competition.

* Libby Wehrle-Anderson is sponsoring a Teen Alcohol Use Forum on 6/9/08 at the Middle School.

* The Bales Study Committee is having a forum to receive public input regarding anyone's thought about potential futures uses for the Bales facility, to be held at the Selectman's room in Town Hall.

* Teachers and Administrators have been doing a lot of work at reviewing the NECAP test results. They are completing their findings, and Laurie Johnson will be presenting them at an upcoming meeting.

* The District job fair was held on 3/20/08. There were 101 initial interviews conducted at the fair, with follow-on interviews scheduled for some candidates. There are only 13 openings right now, which is a bit lower than what we have seen in the past few years. A few of the openings might be difficult to fill, with 3 in math and 2 in science at the high school.

* Bob Suprenant and Burt Becker went to Concord to testify on the subject of Senate bill 530 regarding education funding. They recommended that the funding for temporary classrooms be put back in the bill, and that new kindergarten construction aid be done at the 100% level instead of the planned 75% level.
The High School graduation will be held on 6/14/08 at 10:00 am in the Hampshire Dome since the football field will not be available this year. Thanks to Rick Holder of Hampshire Hills for making this happen - the Hampshire Dome will be a much better venue than the High School Gym which was the alternate choice.

Writing Across the Curriculum

Ms. Jackie Theriaque gave a presentation regarding the John Collins "Writing Across the Curriculum" program. This is a structured approach to try to incorporate writing skill improvement as part of all curriculum activities. For example, if a teacher is working with the class on a math unit, then she might include a writing assignment at the same time.

One aspect of this process is to include the concept of "Focused Correction Areas" FCAs for assignments. In this approach, the students are told in advance which particular portions of the writing assignment will be graded, and what the weightings will be. For example, one FCA might be proper capitalization with a weighting of 20%. The students will then know to focus on making sure that their capitalization is correct, and not worry about a non-graded area such as word choice. The FCAs are rotated during the year to insure that all grade level expectations are covered during the school year.

There are also permanent FCAs which apply for all writing assignments. These vary by grade level and for individual capability. They are set at a level where the student can be reasonably expected to be able to meet them at all times.

Committee Reports

There were few reports from the standard committees, except that Lori Pitsas made a summary presentation regarding the status of the MAFC Milford Athletics Fundraising Committee.

* April 17th, 7PM, at the High School cafeteria. This is being put on and being promoted by the High School Football Boosters group. Tickets are $8 in advance, or $10 at the door.

* Golf Tournament, Friday August 22nd, at Amherst Country Club.

* Road race in the fall, perhaps in early October near the date of the pumpkin festival

The fundraising group is continuing to look for donations of cash or in-kind items.

Lori mentioned that there are about 100 students on the track team at the Middle school, and about 70 on the track team at the High school.

Bob Suprenant mentioned that he had submitted Lori's name to the New Hampshire School Administrators Association NHSAA in nomination for the "Champions for Children" award for the Southwest district. Someone from Peterborough won the district nomination, but Lori was a well-deserved candidate.

CIP Capital Improvement Plan Committee

I was appointed as the School Board rep to the CIP. Peter Bragdon had been the rep on this committee for the past few years, but he felt that he could not fit it into his schedule this year. The purpose of the committee is to try to set up a unified capital improvement plan for the next few years (5?) to help in establishing priorities on capital spending.

After the meeting, I learned that there will be a more inclusive meeting set up this year to try to include most of the stakeholders in the discussion of capital planning. All 5 School Board members will be invited to the expanded meeting.

Water Utilities Entrance Fee Charge

We received a bill from the Milford Water Utilities for an Entrance Fee charge for the new irrigation system for the fields under construction. This is a fee that none of us had ever heard of before now, and it was not in the budget. The fee was assessed at $22,691, so it is not an insignificant issue.

We discussed this at some length, with the outcome that we directed the Superintendent to meet with the water utilities folks to see what our options might be.

Len Mannino suggested that we look into drilling a well to replace or supplement the water to be obtained from the town system. This might help with lowering the Entrance fee, and it should help with lowering the amount that we pay for water on an ongoing basis. This will be researched by the High School Renovations committee, along with the district administration.

Policy Review

Our ongoing review of policies continued, with policies relating to Instruction, School Calendar, and Length of School Day going to first reading, and Controvertial Issues not going to first reading. Some members wanted some more time to reflect on the Controversial Issues policy before moving it to first reading.

PEG Committee

John Parker was appointed to be the School Board rep to the PEG (Public/Education/Government) cable access committee.

School Board Goals

We reviewed the goals that were suggested at the previous meeting, and decided to create goals for these topics for the 08/09 School Board term.

* Develop a plan for a temporary solution for providing public kindergarten starting in the 09/10 school year. This should be completed in time to have it as part of the warrant for next year.

* Develop a plan for a permanent solution for providing public kindergarten, probably starting in the 10/11 school year. This should be completed in time to have it as part of the warrant for next year.

* Complete contract negotiations with the Teachers bargaining unit in time for a warrant article for next year.

* Complete contract negotiations with MESSA Milford Educational Support Staff Association in time for a warrant article for next year.

* Negotiate with Mason to provide educational support for their students on a tuition basis, probably starting in the 09/10 school year.

* Learn more about the standardized testing process, assess what we are doing, and decide if we need to do something different.

These items were also discussed, but were not set up as items to be tracked on a goal basis:

* Provide oversight on the high school renovation project.

* Develop action plans based on the results obtained from the Bales study committee which is expected to provide their final report at the second meeting in June.

* Provide oversight on the subdivision of the Heron Pond property.

* Modify the district policy manual to match the structure of the New Hampshire School Boards Association model policy manual.

* Investigate the impact of the increase of retirement account spending at the state level.

* Work to minimize the impact of gang development in Milford.

Milford School Board 3/17/08

2008-03-18T20:13:00.002-05:00

We held our first meeting of the new school board on Monday 3/17/08. Newly-elected member John Parker and I were sworn in prior to the start of the meeting.

I usually enjoy the first meeting of the year. Everything seems fresh and new, and we get to look forward to trying to make improvements. Much of the activity during the year is geared towards providing good choices for voters on the March ballot, and it is somewhat satisfying to finally finish the process. The final outcome is not always what I had hoped for, but it is good to have a completion of some type. The March elections are a bit like taking finals at the end of the year; you study and do the best you can during the year with the hope that there is confirmation of your work by doing well on the final test.

We held a "non-meeting" before the regular meeting to discuss contract negotiations. This type of meeting is specifically excluded from the right to know law, and the discussion is confidential.

Elections and Appointments

The first meeting of the year is an organizational meeting. We made the following elections and appointments:

Peter Bragdon - Chairperson
Paul Dargie - Vice Chairperson
No Secretary was elected; there is not much of a need for this position

No Truant Officer was appointed; we will search for a candidate

Paul - Professional Development Committee
Bert Becker - ATC Regional Center Advisory Committee
Paul - Technology Committee
John Parker - Wellness Committee
No appointment - PEG Committee
Paul - High School Renovations Committee
Paul - Athletics Fund-Raising Committee
Paul - Finance Committee
Bert - Finance Committee
Bert - Policy Review

Bob Willette, while no longer on the board, was kept as the board representative on the Bales Study Committee

Public Comment

Bob Willette spoke at some length discussing Milford's test scores.

MathCounts Presentation

Mrs. Page made a short presentation to the board regarding the MathCounts team at the Middle School. She has been the coach for the team for a long time, and has done a great job with it. She had three current members of the team with her, and they each discussed an aspect of the team. The team recently competed at the Keene regional competition, and will be going to the Plymouth State College state meet soon.

My daughter was on the MathCounts team about five years ago, and I was able attend the Plymouth state meet. It was a great event - the kids were all excited about Math, which can be a difficult thing to get them excited about.

Superintendent's Report

* The district has started an internal newsletter called Milford Minutes. The first issue was distributed to board members.

* The annual job fair is this Thursday. This has been a great way to get quality candidates for anticipated openings.

* The workshop day on voting day went well. There were a variety of programs available including responsive classroom, personalized profiles, and CPR training.

* The recent 11th grade NECAP scores were reviewed, with a comparison to state scores. In summary, Milford's results were very close to the state average, but the scores for both seemed low, especially for math. It is not clear if the problem was that students in general are not able to complete work at grade level expectations, or if there was some sort of a problem with the test. I'm guessing that at least some of the blame is due to the test. For example, I find it very hard to believe that 17% of 11th grade students are proficient with distinction on Reading, but only 1% or 2% are proficient with distinction in Math. There is usually a much higher correlation between the two categories than that.

* Laurie Johnson announced some grants that had been won: $10K for e-portfolio development, $10k for various items such as professional development reading improvement, etc.

Calendars

We set up the school board calendar for the year, with all the standard events scheduled.

We approved the school district calendar for the 08-09 year. School starts on 8/27/08 and Christmas break is 8 weekdays: 12/24/08 to 1/2/09. The last day of school without snow days is Monday 6/15/09, which means that the real last day will be around 6/18/09 or 6/19/09.

School Board Goals

Each year the school board sets their goals for the year. Each member can bring up options at the first meeting of the year, and we set the goals at the second meeting. The final list is usually a subset of the ones that are first presented. These are the potential goals for the year:

* Develop plans for a 09-10 start-up for a public kindergarten program in Milford. This is likely to take the form of adding portables to Jacques to create the space needed for the program.

* Develop plans for the presentation of a warrant article on the 2009 ballot for the construction of permanent space for public kindergarten. This is likely to be a proposal that is similar to the one that was article one on this year's ballot.

* Negotiate with the Teachers bargaining unit and the Support Staff bargaining unit with the objective of agreeing to contracts that will be presented to the voters on the 2009 ballot.

* Develop action plans based on the final Bales Study report due in June.

* Do some sort of activity regarding the potential severe Retirement System cost problems.

* Do some sort of activity regarding the development of gangs in Milford. This might involve working with law enforcement professionals in some manner.

* Manage the High School, Track, and Bales Roof renovation projects.

* Subdivide the Heron Pond lots.

* Negotiate with Mason regarding having their Middle and High school students attend Milford schools on a tuition basis, perhaps starting in the 09-10 school year.

* Do some sort of activity regarding the poor test scores, especially the 11th grade math scores.

* Start a conversion of our district policies to match the model policy format used by the New Hampshire School Board Association.

High School Renovation Project

2008-03-14T18:12:00.002-05:00

The MHS Project Management Advisory Committee held their monthly meeting yesterday to review the status of the ongoing renovations at the High School. Everything seems to be moving along well, with the overall project appearing to be on budget and on schedule.

Track and Field Update

Good progress was made on the track and field portion of the project during the fall months. Most of the major field work was completed, the drainage was installed, some fencing was put up, old bleachers were torn down, excess loam was removed from the site, lights were moved, subsurface and base coat for the track were installed, and the foundation for the storage building was installed.

Work has stopped on the site for the winter, except that the ATC construction program will be starting to construct the storage building soon. When the weather improves, they will start up again. Some of the major activities to be done include finishing off the track surface, building an appropriate foundation and installing bleachers, installing the press box, electrical and data feeds to the press box and scoreboard, and installing sod.

Most of the work should be completed by late spring or early summer. The football field will be rested for a while to allow the sod to take. It is expected that the field will be in great shape in time for the next football season.

High School Renovations Update

There are a number of renovation activities that will occur in the High School. Some activities have occurred over the past couple of months and will continue through the school year, but most of the activity will occur during the next summer.

The band room renovation is coming along well. It was gutted, new walls put up, stage storage area was constructed, stage handicapped lift area constructed, drainage put in, and practice rooms were created. The instrument storage system will be installed soon.

There are several interior rooms that are in progress. We ran into a minor snag in a couple of the rooms in that the roof supports turned out to be inverted wooden trusses instead of steel as had be expected. Some rooftop units were being installed, so they had to figure out a way to beef up the support structure to handle all the loads. They did come up with an approach that is safe and relatively inexpensive.

Bales Roof

The contract for the replacement of the Bales roof was given to Turnstone Corp, the construction manager for the high school project. The work will be done next summer.

Financial Update

The high school project is largely a renovation project, and it is always difficult to be exact on the costs up front since you never know what you are going to run into. There have been some items that were more expensive than expected and others that were lower, but in total, our best estimate at this time is that we have roughly $200k that is not spoken for as of yet, out of the $4,900k total project budget. There are quite a few items that still have place holder values in the cost roll-up, so this is subject to considerable change as we go through the project. In very rough numbers, we have committed spending of about $4,400k so far, with another $500k remaining to be committed.

The project management committee has worked well at making decisions to keep the project on budget. Priority decisions have been made, and in my opinion, good choices have been made.

The project seems to be in good financial shape at this point, with the majority of the big cost items mostly set, with only minor activities still up in the air.

Kindergarten - What Now?

2008-03-12T21:09:00.002-05:00

With the failure of all three kindergarten articles, we now need to develop alternative plans on what to do going forward.

It is very likely that the current state mandate for providing public kindergarten starting in September 2008 will be pushed back to September 2009. It is also likely that there will be no more delays allowed beyond that date so, we need a solution to meet the mandate.

Our options for providing a public kindergarten program in 2009 are fairly limited. The most realistic and obvious approach is to add portable classrooms to Jacques to provide the needed space. It is likely that the state will pay 100% of the cost of portables for 3 years to help get programs going while alternative permanent solutions are developed. Adding portables should now be our plan for a 2009 start-up.

In parallel with planning to start the program with portables, we should also review our permanent solutions again with the goal of having a warrant article on the 2009 ballot for a September 2010 implementation.

Article 1 did fairly well this year by getting 50% of the vote. This is respectable considering that it was not supported by the school board, there were two other competing articles to confuse the issue, and the state funding details were not complete. As of now, I expect that the permanent solution to be presented next year will be similar to or identical to the plan that was presented this year.

One big difference is that there are now three board members that are generally in favor of public kindergarten, and it is likely that the proposal will have board support. There may still be competing petition warrant articles, but having board support should make some sort of a difference. Also, the state funding situation should be a lot clearer by then, so there won't be so much FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) going around on the subject.

Doing a construction project while the kindergarten program is active and the portables are on site will be more difficult, and we will need to be very careful about construction activity scheduling to make sure that there are no safety issues relating to the project.

The fact that article 1 failed is a set-back, but I think that it is only a temporary one. Most people are reasonable, and once they see the dust settle on the state funding issue, they will be more likely to support a cost-effective long term solution.

What Happened in the School Board Election?

2008-03-12T18:50:00.002-05:00

I was surprised by the results of the school board election. I had been expecting the Bob Willette and I would be re-elected, and that John Parker would come in third. My simplistic thought was that Bob and I are fairly well-known and thus we would get the most votes, and that John was somewhat of an unknown to most voters in Milford and would thus receive fewer votes.

Upon reflection, I have an idea as to what happened, and it relates to the way a three-way race for two positions can play out.

There are three types of voters for this school board race:
1. Status quo voters: ones that like the way things are going and want to stay with the current directions.
2. Conservative voters: ones that are relatively conservative and want to move the board to the right from the status quo.
3. Liberal voters: ones that are relatively liberal and want to move the board to the left from the status quo.

As a general rule, Bob is fairly conservative, and I am more liberal than him. John's political leanings are less well known, but my impression is that he is perceived as being somewhat in the middle relative to Bob and I. Whether that is true or not doesn't matter; what does matter when making a voting choice is the perception of the voters. Assuming the perceived positioning is correct, then:

* Status quo voters would tend to vote for Bob and I, to try to keep things moving in the same direction as today.

* Relatively conservative voters would tend to vote for Bob and John, since John is perceived as being more conservative than me.

* Relatively liberal voters would tend to vote for John and I since John is perceived as being more liberal than Bob.

This three-way arrangement is common for a three way race for two openings. The three choices are evaluated on some sort of a continuum (such as liberal-conservative), and then they are ranked according to the perception.

Each candidate is chosen in two out of the three possibilities. The number of votes that any one candidate gets is determined by the distribution of voters into the three categories, neglecting bullet voters that only vote for one candidate instead of two.

It seems to me that the candidate that is in the middle when the three choices are rank ordered will have an advantage since he will be the second choice for voters on both ends of the spectrum.

I think that there were somewhat fewer status quo voters this year, and that of the voters that were not leaning towards status quo, there were more liberal leaning voters than conservative leaning voters. This mix would end up with John getting more votes than he would normally get as an unknown candidate.

I'm sure that these types of electoral dynamics are studied in depth somewhere, but I could not find any studies with a brief google search. I would be interested in reading them if anyone has a link to a discussion somewhere on this topic.

2008 Milford Election Results

2008-03-11T20:30:00.006-05:00

This are the results from the March 11th, 2008 election. There were a total of 1723 votes cast.

School District Election

School Board
1033 Paul Dargie
906 John Parker
859 Bob Willette

School Treasurer
1381 Rose Evans

School Moderator
615 Peter Basiliere
578 Gary Daniels
259 Carolyn Magri Halstead

School District Clerk
1377 Joan Dargie

Question 1 Jacques addition for public kindergarten (failed)
823 Yes
838 No

Question 2 Brox stand-alone school for public kindergarten (failed)
228 Yes
1397 No

Question 3 Study private kindergarten options (failed)
661 Yes
980 No

Question 4 Operating Budget (passed)
1076 Yes
598 No

Question 5 Tuition Agreements (passed)
1226 Yes
439 No

Question 6 Subdivision Approval (passed)
1103 Yes
556 No

Question 7 Deputy Treasurer (passed)
1229 Yes
416 No

======================================
Town Election

Selectmen
1314 Mike Putnam
1173 Katherine Bauer

Cemetery Trustee
1407 Leonard Harten

Library Trustee
1320 Sarah Philbrick Sandhage
1116 Michael Tule

Moderator
1435 Peter Basiliere

Supervisor of the Checklist - 2 Year
1332 Gil Archambault

Supervisor of the Checklist - 6 Year
1377 Bobbi Schelberg

Trustee of the Trust Funds
1375 Bill King

Water-Wastewater Commisioner
1321 Peter Leishman

Zoning Changes - All 8 passed
All 18 Ballot questions passed

Zoning 1 - Offensive land use in residential districts
1304 Yes
312 No

Zoning 2 - Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) definition
1224 Yes
362 No

Zoning 3 - ADU by special exception
1115 Yes
455 No

Zoning 4 - Corridor Overlay District
1358 Yes
254 No

Zoning 5 - Driveway paving permits
1285 Yes
309 No

Zoning 6 - ADU special exceptions for Zoning Board
1126 Yes
430 No

Zoning 7 - Storage of goods in home occupation space
1170 Yes
391 No

Zoning 8 - Growth management restriction revisions
1352 Yes
252 No

Question 3 Operating Budget
1209 Yes
449 No

4 Wastewater budget
1368 yes
278 No

5 Water Department
1310 Yes
308 No

6 Route 101A Oval Improvements
1327 Yes
349 No

7 Cemetery Building
1030 yes
629 No

8 DPW Dump Truck
1129 Yes
532 No

9 Social Services
1302 Yes
338 No

10 Pumpkin Festival
1207 Yes
453 No

11 DO-IT
1163 Yes
485 No

12 Fireworks
1121 Yes
536 No

13 Band Concerts
1245 Yes
413 No

14 Parades
1387 Yes
280 No

15 Patch Hill Open Space
1241 Yes
386 No

16 Beech Ridge Lot
1392 Yes
233 No

17 Transportation Needs
1332 Yes
315 No

18 Property Tax Resolution
1311 Yes
292 No

2008 Milford School Warrant - Recommendation Summary

2008-03-01T22:52:00.003-05:00

Here is a summary of my recommendations for this year's warrant articles:

1. YES - Jacques addition for kindergarten

2. NO - Brox stand-alone building for kindergarten

3. NO - Study private kindergarten

4. YES - Operating budget

5. YES - Tuition agreements

6. YES - Subdivision approval

Warrant Article 6 - Subdivision Approval

2008-03-01T22:41:00.002-05:00

This article will give the school board the authorization to sell off two building lots from the Heron Pond site. These potential lots abut Brookview Drive.

This land is not really suitable for any district function. It is property that is behind the playing field at Heron Pond, and can not be easily used for any extra function such as parking.

The property is best used for building lots, so that is what we want to do. Although it is not certain, it is likely that the lots will be used in the building construction program. They will build houses on the lots over a couple of years per house. This will probably start in the 09-10 school year, since we are not set up to do it next year. We need to allocate construction money in the budget to make the program work.

We are not sure how much the lots will generate in terms of profit. There will be a cost associated with making the subdivision. They need to be surveyed, and a road and associated utilities needs to be provided.

Please vote in favor of article 6.

Warrant Article 5 - Tuition Agreement

2008-03-01T22:11:00.003-05:00

Warrant Article 5 will allow the school board to enter into a tuition agreement with other towns such as Mason. We had developed a preliminary draft of an agreement with them a few years ago, but they were unable to get out of their agreement with Mascenic.

It now appears that they will be able to withdraw from Mascenic and contract with another district such as Milford. They have roughly 90 students in grades 6 through 12 that would come to Milford. This is roughly 12-15 students per grade level, and we should be able to absorb them without too much in the way of additional spending.

The tuition agreement would be very straight-forward. Mason would pay a per student fee for the students to attend Milford. The fee is based on a formula that starts with our total per pupil spending, subtracts out some items such as special education costs, some transportation costs, and a few other items. Mason will be responsible themselves for the excluded items.

The idea is for the Mason students to become unified with Milford students. They would be eligible for all extra items such as co-curricular activities, clubs, and sports on the same terms as Milford students.

Mason would not have a seat on the school board or any other similar rights; this would be a straight tuition agreement.

This would raise perhaps $700k-$800k in revenue, depending on the number of students and the formula for the tuition. The spending that will be needed is harder to estimate. There will be some spending for consumable items such as workbooks and books and other variable costs, but the big issue as usual will be if we will have to hire new employees for any area. It is possible that there will be some grades or subjects where we are right on the edge of needing a new teacher, where the addition of 12-15 students in the grade might require that we hire another person where we would normally not have done so. In any event, it is expected that the total extra spending will be much less than the additional income.

It is important that we try to find additional revenue sources as much as possible in order to try to minimize the amount of money that we need to raise by local property taxes. The addition of Mason students to Milford would be a big help.

Please vote in favor of article 5.

Warrant Article 4 - Operating Budget

2008-03-01T21:14:00.002-05:00

The district administration, school board, and budget committee spent a lot of time going over the budget this year (as usual), and have come up with a responsible budget that I support.

The operating budget spending is less than I would actually prefer from a programs perspective, but the impact on taxes is high due to low state adequacy aid, that we need to be very tight this year.

We follow a process for budget development that seems to work fairly well. These are the main steps of the process:

* The school board decides whether to set a bottom-line number up front, or to wait to see what is presented before deciding on a number. We have chosen to use the wait and see approach in recent years, and this has worked well since the administration has made good faith efforts at developing responsible budgets.

* Administrators responsible for various areas of the budget develop their first pass at the budget. The Superintendent gives them guidelines to follow while developing their budget. The budgets are built using a bottoms-up approach, where the planned spending for each cost account is individually developed. Any new positions or programs are included in the overall numbers, but are separately identified for ease of discussion.

* The individual budgets are loaded into the system, and then reviewed in total by the Superintendent. The Superintendent will then remove some items from the budget. New positions and new programs are areas that get the greatest scrutiny.

* The budget is distributed to the school board and the budget committee. It is reviewed in detail at an all-day Saturday meeting so that everyone involved has a common understanding of the issues.

* The school board then gives a reduction task to the administration to achieve a bottom line number. The administration revises the budget to meet the task amount. It is reviewed again to see the impact of the cuts. This process may be repeated as we home in on an appropriate bottom line number.

This year there were three iterations of the budget that occurred over several meetings. The first request made by Peter Bragdon was for a $400k reduction. The second request made by me was for a $180k reduction. The third request made by Len Mannino was for a final $50k reduction.

The progression of budget reductions was fairly typical, except for the fact that it took more time than usual. Each cut was more painful than the previous one, and it was more difficult to find areas to cut that would not have direct impacts on education delivery.

The final budget number we ended up at was $32,618,179 as compared to the default budget of $32, 455,230. The default budget is a calculation based on last year's budget plus spending changes that are legally mandated by law or contract, minus special items. Since there are some items that are excluded from the default budget that make sense to include, the fact that we are so close to the default budget shows that we are holding tight on the spending this year.

Some of the larger items excluded from the default budget but included in the proposed budget are things like raises for employees not part of a bargaining unit, and new equipment. We typically try to include raises each year for everyone to keep up with inflation. We also try to spend money each year on curriculum improvement as part of our planned improvement cycle where each major area is refreshed on a regular schedule that results in relatively level loading of improvement spending.

On a side note, Bob Willette had made a motion to reduce the budget by $50k just before Len's motion, but his was geared toward making the cuts in specific areas such as co-curricular activities. It is my philosophy to try to just manage to a bottom line number and not try to second guess the Administration as to the priorities for the spending. We all have our pet projects and areas, so it would be slippery slope if we start doing the cutting on a line item basis. One board member might want to preserve spending in one area and another member may have a totally opposite viewpoint. Once we start picking and choosing, then we would have trouble coming to an agreement on the items. Bob's motion failed due to lack of a second, so it appears that most other board members share my opinion on this.

I urge everyone to support the operating budget.

Warrant Article 3 - Study Private Kindergarten Options

2008-02-26T21:52:00.002-05:00

Warrant Article 3 requests that the School Board investigate contracting with Public or Private Kindergartens.

The ability for a school district to contract with another public or private kindergarten is governed by RSA 198:48-a Alternative Kindergarten Programs.

There is a key section of this RSA that seriously limits the possibility that enough viable programs will be found that meet the requirements.

RSA 198:48-a II. states that "An alternative kindergarten program shall satisfy the same criteria established for public kindergarten programs in the New Hampshire standards for school approval." This means that the alternative program will have to meet all the standards found in Ed 306 Minimum Standards for Public School Approval"

The alternative program needs to be non-sectarian, be staffed by qualified teachers, and provide for accessibility of students with disabilities, among many other requirements.

There is a grandfathering section in the article that exempts programs that had been contracted prior to 1999, but that does not apply for Milford, and we have to meet all the requirements.

Based on this RSA rule, it is almost certain that there will not be enough programs in the nearby area to meet all the needs of the district. There may be some programs that will meet the requirements, but we will have to provide for the rest of the requirements by having some in-district classes.

If we are going to have to provide for a large portion of the requirements internally in any event, then it makes sense to me to just handle all the requirements internally and not try to split them up. If we have a split program where there are some in-district classes and a few private kindergarten classes, then we will have a problem when we assign students to the various programs as there will be a fairness issue that will need to be addressed. I would prefer to avoid the whole issue and put everyone on an even footing.

There really is no harm in conducting a study, other than the fact that it will consume the efforts of the district administration for a period of time. It doesn't matter if this article passes or not, but I plan to vote against it to minimize the distractions.

Warrant Article 2 - New School at Brox

2008-02-25T22:47:00.003-05:00

Article 2 on the Milford school warrant authorizes the construction of a six-classroom stand-alone building on the Brox property.

This article has several problems, and in my opinion, is not a good choice for Milford.

Requires 100% State Funding

The article requires that the state fully fund all the costs of the facility. That is nice in concept, but the practical matter is that the state adequate education costing committee is recommending that the funding be at a 75% level. As I detailed in a previous posting, it is my opinion that the state meets the requirements of article 28-a of the state constitution that bans unfunded mandates.

If the state only provides 75% funding, then this article does not allow the construction of a building since no local money is allowed to be used for the project.

Locks in Extra Overhead Spending

The fact that this is a stand-alone school results in the need for additional overhead spending to make it operational and safe. There are several extra positions that are needed to operate a stand-alone school as compared to an addition as proposed in article 1.

The district administration has estimated the the additional overhead spending will be in the $200,000 per year range. This is due to the need for extra positions such as custodians, nurse, office support, lead teacher stipend, etc. This corresponds to perhaps $30 or $40 per year in extra taxes for a $300,0o0 house.

There is no need for these extra positions, and we should strive to keep our overhead spending as low as possible.

Commits to a Brox Strategy

The Brox master space allocation diagram has reserved space for schools in a broad concept without any specifics. There is a basic understanding that there will be a need for space for schools some time in the future, but the specifics of that need won't be obvious until we closer to the time of need.

Keeping the school portion of the Brox site in unbuilt status keeps our options open for future development. It will be better if at the time of need of a new school that we are able to start with a fresh site and build it out in a manner that meets the needs the best.

If we construct a kindergarten on the site, then we will have locked in that portion of the site to a kindergarten or early learning facility. It would be difficult to use it for later grades such as a middle school since the needs are so different.

In our space needs discussions in the past, we have discussed various potential options for future needs. One concept was that if the overall enrollments in town grew quite a bit, then we would convert the current middle school to extra classes in support of the high school, making the high school a campus arrangement. This concept would require the construction of a new middle school to replace the grades moved out of the current middle school. The Brox property would be a good location for this type of school.

Another option that has been discussed would be the construction of a new school that would be a K-2 school. In this scenario, Jacques would be converted to a K-2 school and Heron Pond would be converted to a 3-5 school. This is more of a mid-term possibility (as compared to the high school expansion scenario), as it would come into play if the there was a more modest increase in enrollments in town. I don't see the need for this within 10 years, but it may happen someday.

It would be better to keep our power dry, so to speak, on the use of the Brox property with regards to schools. Let's leave the space alone and wait until the future needs become clearer.

Vote No on Article 2

The budget committee voted 1 in favor and 7 against this option. The district administration does not favor this article. The school board is split on this article: Len Mannino and Bob Willette (opposed to public kindergarten) are in favor of it, Paul Dargie and Bert Becker (in favor of public kindergarten) are against it, and Peter Bragdon abstained (personal financial conflict).

Please join me in voting against article 2.

Warrant Article 1 - Four Room Addition to Jacques

2008-02-25T19:09:00.002-05:00

There are three warrant articles that deal with the subject of public kindergarten. This post concerns article 1.

This article authorizes the razing of the Bales annex, and the construction of a four-room addition to the Jacques school to allow for the integration of a half-day kindergarten program into the building. The addition will be on the east end of the building.

The kindergarten program will actually be located in the west end of the building, since each of the rooms in that end of the building have in-room toilets as specified in kindergarten facility requirements. The newly constructed rooms will be used for alternate requirements such as first grade classrooms. The actual configuration of the building and allocation of rooms to specific functions will be done at a later date when there is a better understanding of the specific enrollments.

This proposal for providing space for a half-day kindergarten program has several distinct advantages that (in my opinion) make it the best option for the Milford school district.

Unified Programming

Having kindergarten and first grade in the same building will help the staff to collaborate and coordinate their efforts. They will be able to easily discuss issues to insure that the programs are aligned and that they are working towards a common curriculum. There are a lot of benefits from the informal discussions that will happen every day in the staff lunchroom.

Fewer Transitions

Starting school for the first time can be a very scary time for students. Going to a new school, meeting new teachers, meeting new support staff, learning the physical layout, and learning all the new rules can all be difficult. It will be much easier on the students for them to start kindergarten in one building, and then to transition to first grade in the same place. They will have a new teacher, but most of all the other elements will be familiar. They will be able to more quickly adjust from the half-day kindergarten program to the full-day first grade program.

This is especially helpful for those students with the greatest needs. If a student is receiving additional help for some issue in kindergarten, then it is likely that they will be receiving the same help from the same person in the same room or facility in the first grade. It is hard to put a specific value on this, but in some cases, this can be huge.

Lower Overhead

Building a four-room addition to Jacques will help to minimize the overhead associated with the new program. Most of the overhead functions should be able to handle the increased student load with a minimal impact. There are a few areas that will need additional help, but these are relatively few. There will be a need for an extra half-time custodian, and the office will need some more secretarial support.

This is not the case with a stand-alone building as outlined in warrant article 2. If kindergarten is in a stand-alone building, then there are many duplicate support functions that need to be provided. It needs to be scoped out to see if it can be pared back, but an initial estimate by the district administration showed extra overhead costs that are above the baseline costs for the Jacques addition proposal of about $200,000 per year. This includes costs for things like extra custodial services, a nurse, extra office personnel, lead teacher stipend. Perhaps this could be parred down some, but it is unlikely to go below an extra $150,000 per year to support a stand-alone building. This is roughly $0.10 to $0.14 per year on the tax rate, or $30 to $40 per year for a $300,000 house.

The school board and the school administration work closely together to try to provide a quality learning environment for our students while minimizing the tax impacts of the choices that we make. I hate to see us waste money on needless overhead functions since it means that we are not being effective stewards of the taxpayers money.

Money is tight, and we need to focus our spending on areas that make a difference to students. If we were to choose to spend an extra $150,000 to $200,000, then I would much rather spend it where it can do some good. I'd much prefer to spend it on curriculum or teachers or some other area with a direct influence on students. I hate to see it spent on extra custodians, or for an extra nurse when the need for these positions can be easily avoided.

Having good custodians and nurses and other similar positions is very important to a quality experience for students, but if we can structure our organization to keep these positions to a minimum, then we need to do that.

Low Cost

Article 1 authorizes local tax spending of no more than $462,054 for the addition. The balance of the construction spending will come from the state kindergarten construction program. This will be bonded over 10 years, and equals about $0.04 on the tax rate, or about $12 a year for a $300,000 house. This is a modest amount for the benefit of having a nice permanent facility.

This is based on the assumption that the state will fund 75% of the construction as recommended by the state adequate education costing committee. Normal building aid is only 30% of the cost of construction, so we will be getting much more bang for our buck than is normally expected. If we don't take advantage of the kindergarten construction aid soon, then it will run out and we will be back to the 30% match level.

There is a slight chance that the state will increase their funding to 100% of the kindergarten construction cost. If that happens, then the state would fund the entire project, and there would be no construction cost for this option. In any event, there is not a huge difference between $0 per year and $12 per year per property.

Medium Term Solution

Over the past few years, I have tried to find methods to better predict where our school enrollments are heading. This is important since the school board adopts enrollment projections each fall that form the basis of the budget for the next year.

We normally predict enrollments for grades two through twelve by comparing the average cohort survival rate for the past few years, and use that to predict the next year. An example would be if there were on average 200 students in grade three each year and an average of 202 students in grade four the following year, then there is an average pick up of 1% when going from grade three to grade four. If we have 190 in grade three this year, then we would expect to have about 192 in grade four next year.

This approach seems to work well, and is simple to implement.

The problem comes when we need to predict the enrollments for the initial grades where there are no cohorts to compare to. We have been using the birth rates from five or six years earlier, and factoring them up by an average amount to get this years number. A typical calculation would be that 150 births 6 years ago correlates to 200 first grade students this year. This seems to work to some degree, but there are wider variations on the correlation than the cohort survival method since the data is more suspect, and there is a longer period of time between events.

This method does not allow us to go beyond a five or six year forecast, so some other method is needed to forecast for longer periods. Peter Bragdon brought the following report to my attention. The Housing and School Enrollment in New Hampshire: An Expanded View report is a study that was published in 2005 that helps to understand the basic demographics that are driving school enrollments in New Hampshire. The study does not discuss Milford in particular, but it looks at overall demographic trends in the state, especially as they relate to numbers of students per dwelling unit.

One key forecast of the study is found on page nine of the report. There is a chart that shows that the total school age population in New Hampshire grew by 39,700 from 1990 to 2000, it is expected to grow 5,500 from 2000 to 2010, and it is expected to decline 13,600 from 2010 to 2020. The theme of the report is that this overall demographic forecast is the main driver in school enrollments, not the number of new dwelling units as is commonly believed.

This makes sense to me. You can compare this to tides raising and lowering the overall level of boats, while waves, wind, and other local conditions have a supplementary effect. The tides are the key factor and the waves are a secondary factor.

We have seen an easing of enrollments in Milford, and we should see declines in the future as some of our larger class sizes age out of the system. It is my belief that the overall demographic trends of lowered enrollments in New Hampshire for the next decade or so will also apply to Milford. Based on this, I expect that the addition to Jacques will handle our first grade and kindergarten needs at least for the next decade. This assumes that we don't have a disruptive event such as the combination with another school district or the change to full-day kindergarten. I doubt that there will be a statewide move to full-day kindergarten any time soon since we are just now moving to implementing a half-day program.

Trying to forecast out even 10 years is difficult at best, and trying to go beyond that is probably hopeless. But based on everything that I know, we should be set for a while.

Vote for Article 1!!!

It is my opinion that article 1 is by far the best choice for providing space for a public kindergarten program in Milford. The key factor is that it saves $150,000 to $200,000 per year in unnecessary overhead costs associated with a stand-alone building. That is real money that needs to be preserved.

This article is also the one that is favored by the school district administration. The budget committee voted 8-1 in favor of this article. The school board was split on it, with Bert Becker and myself in favor of it (both public kindergarten supporters), Len Mannino and Bob Willette against it (both opposed to public kindergarten), and Peter Bragdon abstaining (he has a personal financial conflict of interest).

Please vote for Article 1 on the March 11th ballot, and bring a quality public kindergarten program to Milford at an affordable cost.

State Mandate for Public Kindergarten is Fully Funded

2008-02-24T14:34:00.003-05:00

I haven't posted for a while, but I am going to try to get back into it. I want to cover various topics relevant to this year's vote on March 11th.

The key issue on the school side this year is the subject of public kindergarten. There are three petition warrant articles on the ballot that each have a different point of view on the subject. I will discuss each of these in additional posts.

I first want to summarize my understanding and viewpoint on the background of the legislation that governs the situation.

Court Decision

In October 2006 in Londonderry School District SAU #12 v. State of New Hampshire the State Supreme Court held that the previous state education funding schemes were unconstitutional. There is a long history of court cases that preceded this recent case, but this is the one that is currently being implemented.

There were four specific actions that were required based on this decision. They were:
* Define an adequate education , by 2007,
* Determine the cost, by 2008,
* Fund it with constitutional taxes,
* Ensure its delivery through accountability.

These four mandates comprise the state's duty to provide an adequate education. The state's duties do not extend beyond adequacy.

Step 1 - Define an adequate education

In June 2007, the legislature passed an update to RSA 193-E that defines an adequate education. There were a number of changes to this law, but one notable change is that it now appears to include half-day kindergarten as part of an adequate education. There is a bit of controversy on that since the language is not 100% clear, but it is likely that there will be some clarifying changes to make it clear. Certainly, everyone is going on the assumption that half-day kindergarten is included in the definition.

Step 2 - Determine the cost of an adequate education

The legislature set up a committee to determine the cost of an adequate education. The committee issued the Final Report and Findings of the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee Pursuant to 2007 Laws Chapter 270 a few weeks ago. The report details the findings of the committee.

The report found that the universal cost of an adequate education was $3,456 per student. Additional funds will be added to this for:

* Students that are English language learners (ELL) ($675 per ELL student)
* Special education students, ($1,798 or $3,610 per special ed student depending on category)
* Economically disadvantaged students and students in schools with significant concentrations of economically disadvantaged students. (They did not quite finish their work in this area. Funds will be allocated based on a formula based on the percentage of students receiving free or reduced price lunches. This aid could go up to $3,456 depending on the formula, which was not available in time for the final report.)

Half day kindergarten will be funded at half the regular adequate education aid level. This equals $1,728 per student plus half of the other applicable funding items.

Section X of the final report was a special section that discussed the findings of the subcommittee that identified "Transitional Assistance for Kindergarten" for the 11 districts in the state that do not currently have public kindergarten. These were some of the key recommendations in this section:

* Implementation of public kindergarten may be delayed to September 2009 from the September 2008 date originally specified in the updated RSA 193-E.
* Full funding of portable classrooms will be made for 3 years.
* The kindergarten construction aid program will be reauthorized. This program pays 75% of the construction cost for kindergarten facilities.

The report will now be reviewed by the full house and senate, and a final definition of the cost of an adequate education is expected in June 2008.

Article 28-A of the State Constitution

In 1984, Article 28-A was added to the state constitution. This article states: "The state shall not mandate or assign any new, expanded or modified programs or responsibilities to any political subdivision in such a way as to necessitate additional local expenditures by the political subdivision unless such programs or responsibilities are fully funded by the state or unless such programs or responsibilities are approved for funding by a vote of the local legislative body of the political subdivision."

There have been very few actual court cases that test the scope of article 28-A, but these are the keys aspects of it as relates to the implementation of public kindergarten.

* Half-day public kindergarten is a new state mandate that has come into existence after 1984. As such, article 28-A applies and the mandated new spending needs to be fully funded.

* The court mandate is for the state to supply full funding for an adequate education, not to fully fund all aspects of public education. This is a key point in determining whether the state is funding the mandate or not.

* There are two types of funding associated with this new mandate. The first is start-up expense, and the second is ongoing operational expense.

* By definition, if the final costing formula for an adequate education is deemed constitutional (and is fully funded), then the portion that relates to public kindergarten will be constitutional and will be fully funded. Therefore, the ongoing operational expense aspect will be fully funded and passes the 28-A test.

* The state is offering to pay for all expendable start-up expense, and they will also pay for portable classrooms to provide the space for the new programs. This covers all the start-up expense at a minimal level, and meets the requirements of fully funding an adequate education. There is one point in that the state is expected to only offer to pay for portables for three years, but the portables could be purchased on a three year lease-to-own basis which would convert the three year time frame to a permanent time frame.

* The offer of 75% funding for permanent classroom construction is in excess of an adequate education funding level, and in my opinion, will meet the requirements of 28-A.

The public kindergarten mandate is fully funded and 28-A does not apply

In my opinion, the fact that the state is paying 100% of the start-up expense at an adequate level, and that they are paying 100% of the cost of an adequate education on an ongoing expense basis, then the new public kindergarten program is fully funded on an adequate education basis, and article 28-A does not apply.

In my opinion, a lawsuit against the state to require additional payments for new public kindergarten programs is doomed to failure and would be a waste of money.

The last phrase of article 28-A in essence states that a favorable vote by the political subdivision will negate the application of 28-A. In my opinion, this is a moot point since the requirements of 28-A are met by the proposed funding levels, so there is no point in applying the second test.

Milford School Board 11/19/07

2007-11-20T16:42:00.000-05:00

The meeting was delayed by a half-hour because we had a "non-meeting meeting" with Attorney Bill Drescher before the regular school board meeting, and the non-meeting ran longer than expected. A meeting is technically defined by NH RSA 91-A:2, and according to 91-A:2 (c), consultations with legal counsel are by definition not a meeting, so It's not appropriate for me to discuss what was reviewed in the non-meeting.

The regular session was a rather lengthy meeting, and covered a variety of hot topics. We skipped the Superintendent's report this week due to time constraints.

Vote Regarding Sale of Bonds - We passed a formal motion to authorize the sale of bonds for the High School renovation project. We had some trouble a month or two ago where the bond bank had some problems with the wording of the warrant article, but those are all resolved now. Passing this motion will enable the sale of bonds to go forward.

High School Renovation Project - The Phase I track portion of renovation project is progressing well. The first course of pavement was laid this week and the field work is on schedule. We processed a change order to revamp the way the electrical and data feeds to the field are arranged.

Bids were received for the main building renovation portion, or Phase II of the project. We awarded the mechanical and electrical bids at the previous meeting, and we awarded about a dozen additional bids during this meeting. Netting everything out, it appears that we are on budget for the project, with about $250K of contingency still available. This is needed since you never know what you will run into on a renovation project, and we need to be able to cover whatever problems arise during the project.

Policy Reviews - Bert Becker was appointed to the policy committee, replacing Bob Willete who will focus on the Bales study committee. We reviewed 8 policies, moving 4 to a first reading and 4 to a second reading and enactment.

We passed new policy 5095 on Searches of Students, Student's Property and School Owned Property. This policy was modeled after the NH School Board Association model policy. The policy documents current practice, and provides details on what procedures are allowed.

We also passed revised policy 6030 Computer Software and Hardware Policy. The major changes in the policy relate to the use of non-district owned equipment within the district. The main point is that anyone wishing to use non-district equipment must first gain the approval of the Technology Director.

Matt Ballou will soon be installing equipment that will automatically identify new equipment that is added to the network to help to curb any unintentional or intentional violations of this policy.

Budget Items - This was the meat of the meeting. We held a joint meeting with the budget committee on Saturday where the administration reviewed all aspects of the budget. We followed the basic flow that we have developed over the years, and we were able to gain good insight to the budget during the day.

The main problem is that there were a lot of special situations this year, and the budget was higher than desired.

Kindergarten - We first reviewed Kindergarten in some detail, since that is a topic that has a lot of influence on the overall budget. The state committee that is addressing the cost of an adequate education had made some preliminary decisions, and these were discussed at the meeting by Peter Bragdon. Some of the more significant proposals.
- The state will allow districts to delay implementation of public kindergarten by one year. they will need to present a plan to the state showing how they will be implementing it in the following year.
- Kindergarten construction will be eligible for 75% state aid for the portions of the building that are actual classrooms or connecting corridors.
- Kindergarten students will be eligible for 1/2 the adequacy money that is made available to full-time students. This amount is still to be determined, but will be at least $1200 per student according to Peter Bragdon. The Telegraph reported today that it will be at least $1900.
- One of the key drivers of how the state will calculate adequate education cost is the cost of teachers. Some members of the state committee want to set it at the cost of the lowest paid teacher in the state, and others want to set it at the average salary of new teachers in the state. In either case, this will be much less than the average cost of teachers in the state since only a small portion of teachers are new teachers.
- The state authorized 100% of portables for three years to help get the programs started.

Kindergarten delayed - I made a motion to delay the implementation of public kindergarten until 2009. There was some confusion about the motion, and it was not initially supported. We changed the wording slightly, and the motion passed.

Kindergarten Bond Issue - The main issue with implementing kindergarten in Milford is that we need to have a facility to provide the program. There are several options, but the one that makes the most sense to me at this time is what is known as option 3, where we tear down the Bales annex and add a four room addition to Jacques. This is the option that is supported by the district administration.

The advantages of option 3 are that it is relatively low cost ($1.8M), and gets the kindergarten and first grades under the same roof. This eliminates the issues relating to moving across the parking lot to get to the annex as would occur in option 2 (renovating the annex). The downside is that there is little upside space options, and a sustained upturn in enrollments may require a new construction fix at some time in the future. The space looks like it will meet our needs for the near term, and I don't see anything on the horizon that would indicate a large upturn in enrollments. The trend in New Hampshire in recent years has been for declining enrollments, and this should continue, at least for a while.

I had been originally in favor of constructing a new building at Brox (option 4) as the preferred choice for two main reasons. One is that it is the option that provides the most future flexibility. If we get an upturn in enrollments, then we would still have the option to add four classrooms to Jacques to handle the first grade enrollments, and we would be able to add classrooms to the Brox building to handle the kindergarten increases.

The second reason that I supported the Brox construction option is that it is likely that we will get 75% building aid now, but we will only get 30% if we build the same project in the future. The difference in state aid is roughly $2M on the $4.5M Brox construction project. Our portion of the increase from option 3 (Jacques addition) to option 4 (new Brox construction) is roughly $700K. It seemed to me that spending an extra $700K now would be a good investment to save $2M at some time in the future (perhaps 10-15 years down the road. Another way to look at is that we would get four extra classrooms plus some other supporting functions for only $700K. (The Jacques addition is for four classrooms, and the separate Brox building would be eight rooms).

The point that changed my mind on this is that the administration brought some new information to us at the budget meeting last Saturday. It turns out that there a several additional people required to run a separate building instead of just adding on to an existing building. I knew that there would be an additional expense, but I did not expect it to be so high. Adding all the additional support staff for a separate building adds roughly $250K to the operating budget each year. Over 10-15 years, this would add up to $2.5m to $3.8M in additional operational costs, which is more than the $2M savings. Since it is a negative number, we might as well go with the lower cost option and save the money.

There has been some discussion about what will happen if sometime soon we change to full-day kindergarten instead of half-day kindergarten. My response to that is that in my opinion it is very unlikely that the Milford voters would approve a move to full-day kindergarten on their own any time soon, so we should not plan on that as a viable option. On the other side, if the state mandates that we move to full-day kindergarten, then that would be a new mandate, and they would provide funding at that time at some increased level (perhaps the same 75% that is offered now). We would be in the same position as we are now, so there is no reason to plan for it.

I doubt that the state will mandate full-day kindergarten any time soon either. The cost to the state would be very high since there are very few districts currently providing full-day programs. As a rough estimate, if there are 15,000 kindergarten students in the state, and it costs $2500 in adequacy aid to upgrade them from half-day to full-day, then that is an extra $38M for the entire state. They are struggling to make the current situation work, so I doubt that they want to make the cost problem $38M worse.

I made a motion to choose option 3 as our method for implementing public kindergarten in the 09-10 school year. Bert Becker appeared to support the motion, but it did not look like anyone else would support the motion at this time, so I withdrew it. We have some parliamentary rules that make it more difficult to pass something that had already been defeated once, so it is not helpful to have a losing vote on the record.

I am hopeful that we will be able to come up with some sort of a plan that can be supported by a majority of the board. The issue is that we are now legally obligated to provide public kindergarten, and if we choose to ignore that legal requirement, then we could be liable to pay penalties if we are sued by an aggrieved party.

Operating Budget - The administration has done another fine job this year with developing the first draft of the operating budget. They reviewed all the costs and provided forecasts based on reasonable expectations. Their first draft was based on the assumption that we would continue along the same path as we have been following where we make continuous improvements each year with respect to curriculum and programs. The district as a whole has been on the right track for several years, and we have gotten better each year, perhaps not at a rate that everyone would like, but at least at a steady pace that yields positive improvements.

The problem was that the first pass of the budget came in too high relative to what we can afford. A rough rule of thumb that we frequently use is to keep our cost increases to a level not to exceed the inflation rate as measured by the CPI plus the net change in enrollment. The current trailing 12 month CPI is 3.1%, and we expect an enrollment increase of 1.4% for a total target increase of 4.5%.

Peter Bragdon made a motion to bring the increase down to 4.9%. There are some additional special education costs expected next year, with the need for three additional one-on-one associates to meet IEP requirements. Special education costs are mandated by federal law, and we are required to fulfill them. It seems reasonable to allow a slightly higher increase when there are significant increase in special education costs. The net effect of this motion was the creation of the need to identify $400K of cuts to be made to the proposed budget. The administration was tasked with coming back to the next meeting with a prioritized list of cuts to meet the $400K requirement, with the proviso that the cuts not come out of debt service, food service, or fund transfers. The motion passed 5-0.

Even with these cuts, this increase results in a large tax increase. The main factor is that the state had their big increase in adequacy aid this past year, and unless the rules change, the adequacy aid will be the same next year. Since there will not be an increase in state aid, all of the increase in costs will have to be borne by local property taxes. Since the increase will be divided by a smaller base, the percentage increase is higher. The adequacy aid and other revenues source are excluded from the local tax rate calculation.

Now, the state is currently going through their adequacy costing formula and there could be huge shifts in adequacy aid which throw this out the window. We will have to wait and see.

My philosophy is to watch the actual spending closely since that is what we have the most control over. If we manage our spending, then the corresponding taxes will tend to follow over time. Sometimes we make out with revenue sources, like last year where we ended up with a decrease in taxes due to increased state aid. Other times we lose out, such as this year were it looks like there will not be an increase in aid.

Default budget: We received our first draft of the default budget. I haven't had a chance to review it in detail yet, so I don't have a comment on it at this time. As presented, it does not include kindergarten funding. It is not clear to me if kindergarten funding should be in the default budget this year or not since the legal status of the kindergarten mandate for this year is murky at best. It was mandated for the o8-09 school year by the law that passed in June, but the adequacy aid group has indicated that they plan to ask for it to be moved to the 09-10 school year. The question is, do you follow a course of action based on the rules as they currently exist, or do you follow a course of action based on how you think that the rules will end up?

I think that it is clear that it will need to be in the default budget next year since it is very likely that the law will mandate it for that year.

Milford School Board 10/15/07

2007-10-16T21:11:00.000-05:00

Superintendent's Report

* The Volunteer New Hampshire Organization named Milford a 2007 Spirit of New Hampshire Program Award Winner. The award will be presented on November 7th at the Grappone Center in Concord, and Governor Lynch will attend the ceremony.

The Volunteer Program Champion Awards recognize outstanding volunteer programs that provide the infrastructure for volunteers to be successful in their service. Awards in the Volunteer Program Champion category recognize excellent program management, fund development efforts that sustain volunteer programs, and commitment of time/resources to engage employees in community volunteer roles.

* Reading information night will be held at the Jacques Memorial School on Thursday 10/18 at 6:30. This will be hosted by the early education literacy team.

* The open houses at each school were completed and all were well attended. The Global Connect telephone messaging service was used to notify parents of the nights, and the notification system seemed to work well.

* Rivier College is sponsoring a professional development program titled "Developing Teacher Leaders of Elementary and Middle School Science" for some of the science teachers in the District.

Project Management Committee

Tom Hurley (Committee Chair) gave an update on the various issues that were addressed at the committee meeting on Thursday. Tom updated all the items that were described in my previous posting. The board approved the fencing and the bleacher recommendations.

ATC Curriculum

Rosie Deloge (Director of Technical Studies) presented the ATC curriculum that was recently developed. This book was the result of a lot of work by various individuals throughout the state. The objective was to develop a common curriculum for many of the ATC's (Applied Technology Center) around the state. Previously each ATC developed their own curriculum for each program, which led to an inability to compare the results from each school.

The new curriculum seems quite good. Each of the 12 program areas has a defined curriculum that is in a structured format.

Kindergarten

The school administration presented the results of their studies on the feasibility of various kindergarten options that are available to us in our efforts to implement public kindergarten as is now required by state law.

Laurie Johnson (Assistant Superintendent of Schools) was the lead presenter of the information, but everyone chimed in as needed.

State Funding

There was a lot of discussion about what are the potential funding sources for the programs from the state. We will not know for some time as to what portions will be funded by the state. Len Mannino seemed pessimistic about the potential for state funding, but based on what I have read about the subject, I am much more optimistic that we can expect to receive significant funding levels for implementation.

The old formula for construction aid for kindergarten start-ups was 75% kindergarten construction funding for the project plus 30% building aid for the portion not funded, for a total of 82.5% aid. It is my opinion that we can expect to receive at least that level of funding, and there is a possibility that it could be even greater.

While there is some debate on this topic, the feeling of many people is that an adequate portion of public kindergarten costs is a new state mandate, and the state constitution requires that all new mandates be funded by the state. I expect that the legislature will decide to 100% fund an "adequate portion" of new kindergarten programs, and that they will be generous with support of construction projects.

Peter Bragdon, who is on the state committee that is working on the funding aspects of an adequate education, seemed to agree with my assessment of the situation, and that there would be some significant level of funding.

Five Options

Five construction options were presented. The start-up costs and annual operating costs for each option were estimated, and the resulting tax impact was also estimated based on various assumptions. Options one to four were for half-day kindergarten and option five was whole-day kindergarten.

We identified some relatively minor items would need additional costing review prior to submitting a warrant article, but the options were developed in enough detail where we can get a fairly good estimate of the tax impacts of the choices.

The four half-day options have similar ongoing costs of about $0.22 per 1,000, or $55.80 for a $250k house. This is net of state adequacy funding of $1,200 per student. The whole-day option is $.86/1,000, or $176.00 for a $250k house.

The main differences in cost are for the construction costs for each option.

These are the options (with tax impacts based on continuation of existing state funding):

1. Jacques 2 Portables - Add two portables containing four classrooms to the rear of the Jacques school. This is the least cost option, but did not get support from any board member. My opinion is that this version is OK as a stopgap measure to enable us to get the program implemented next year if needed, but is not suitable as a long-term solution. Portables are OK when future needs are uncertain, but when it appears that you have a long term need, then it is less costly in the long run to have a long term solution. The construction cost is $190k, or an extra $0.01 on the tax rate for five years, or $2.50 for a $250k house.

2. Renovate Bales Annex - Construction is $1.3M or $0.05 on the tax rate for ten years, or $12.50 on a $250k house. The is the option that I have discussed in the past. It is the least cost option for a semi-permanent solution. The total cost (start-up and operating costs) for this option is about $0.27 per 1000, or $68.30 on a $250k house.

3. Four-room addition to Jacques - This would include tearing down the Bales Annex, and adding a four-room addition to the front end of Jacques. This has the advantage of putting all the students under one roof so they don't have to go outside to move to other areas of the building. The traffic patterns may be better also, but I'm not sure of that. Construction is $1.8M or $0.07 on the tax rate for ten years. Total cost is about $0.29 per 1000, or $73.30 for a $250k house.

4. Stand-alone building on Brox property - This is an eight room stand-alone building on the Brox property near the Heron Pond school. This would include six rooms for kindergarten and two for pre-school. Construction cost is $4.5M, or $0.17 per 1000 on the tax rate for 20 years. Total cost is about $0.39 per 1000, or $98.30 for a $250k house.

5. Full-day stand-alone building on Brox - This is similar to option 4, but is a 14 room building to allow for the full day programs. Construction cost is $10.4M, or $0.39 per 1000 on the tax rate for 20 years. Total cost is about $273.50 for a $250k house.

Options 2 and 3 are lower cost options that provide a solution for the nearer time periods, say perhaps 10 years. At some point the enrollments will rise and further solutions would be required. They do save money in the near term, and it may even extend to longer periods if enrollments rise slowly.

Option 4 costs more now, but provides a longer term solution. It leaves open the option of expanding Jacques or renovating the Annex at some time in the future if the first grade enrollments expand, and the Brox building will be designed to be easily added to if needed.

Option 5 costs the most, but provides for a full-day kindergarten program which is educationally desirable.

In my opinion, although a full-day program is desirable, I think that we should stick with a half-day program for now. We need to walk before we can run, so lets move forward with a half-day program and leave the full-day program discussion for future times.

I think that it probably makes sense to go with the complete new building instead of the renovation/addition options. The stand-alone building gives us more flexibility for future changes. There is also the chance that the state will pay for most or all of it at this time, and this might be a one-time shot at a high funding level for construction. The cost adder of $25 or $30 per household for this option seems like a good value for the future flexibility.

Enrollment Projections

We went over the enrollment projections for next year. We do this at this time each year in preparation for the budget development process. We use average cohort survival rates for most of the estimating, but we use a different process for the R-1 grades. The cohort process seems to work well, but we are less successful at estimating the numbers of students that are enrolling in R-1 for the first time. We reviewed the numbers, and we will formally adopt them at the next meeting.

High School Renovation Project

2007-10-12T16:19:00.000-05:00

The MHS Project Management Advisory Committee met last night to review the status of the Milford High School renovation project.

Schedule

Leighton White is making excellent progress on the field work. The weather has been favorable, and the on-site materials have been relatively easy to work with. Everything seems to be tracking on schedule to this point. They are going to go as long as they can before the weather turns against them. They expect to have most of the significant site work done before winter. A couple of big items that will hold until the spring are the top surface on the track and the sod for the fields. One item that might get done this fall or it might wait for the spring is the rough surface underlayment for the track. This will depend on the weather.

Bleachers

The committee reviewed the bids that came in for bleachers. We had long discussions on the pros and cons of the various alternatives, but in the end, we decided to recommend to the School Board that we purchase the seven-year-old used bleachers that came from Adelphi University that are currently being stored in New Jersey. They are available from Seating Solutions. The company is headquartered in Commack, NY, but the bleachers are being stored in Newark, NJ.

As of now, the configuration will consist of seating for roughly 1,000 people on one side only with no visitors side. This is not a final decision, but based on cost issues, it seems like it is the right thing to do. Once we have a better handle on the overall costs for the project, we will revisit this since the general consensus is that breaking up the bleachers into a home and a visitors side is a better alternative.

We have $210k in the budget for bleachers and press box, and this alternative will be about $179k. This savings will help to make up some of the overages that we have seen elsewhere.

Fencing

We received three bids for fencing, and the committee voted to recommend to the School Board that the work be awarded to the low bidder for $47,525. Penney Fence from Londonderry was the low bidder, but I did not find a web site for them.

The fencing budget was $40k, so we are over budget in this area. There were some significant changes to the plan recently where the state environmental review required us to add more fencing around the detention pond and a 12 foot swing gate into the area.

Change Orders

The committee approved two change orders.

1. The water line going down West street is on the west side of the road instead of the east side of the road as shown on the town plans. Leighton White now has to cut across the road to tie into the main to feed the irrigation system. This extra work is going to cost $5,991.

2. The School District decided that we need to increase the size of the manhole access cover to the below ground sprinkler system shut-offs. The old design was a 32" circular egress and the new design is a 36" square opening. The cost for this change is $1,627.

Engineering Oversight

We are not going to hire a clerk of the works for the project (to avoid a $54k cost), and try to seek alternative less expensive options to achieve the same results. Mostly this will consist of Mike Trojano and Bill Cooper spending more time overseeing the project at no added cost, but their knowledge is limited in some areas. We are going to hire Bill Davidson from Meridian Land Services to oversee various aspects of the field construction, including the drainage. They would be doing some of this work as part of their normal part of the process, but this is for additional work that is excluded from their normal scope. We will pay him by the hour, and we capped the expense for him at $6k for now.

Interior Work

Most of the work that will be done on the interior is out for bid now. The bids are due back next week, and the committee will meet again on October 25th to review all the bids. We expect to get bids on all the major items such as mechanical and electrical, but there may be some items that get no-bid by everyone. This is a renovation project that will be a pain for some trades to do because of the timing or access issues that have to be dealt with.

We should have an excellent overall view of the cost of the program at our next meeting. We all have our fingers crossed that the bids will come in low, and we will be able to complete the project as originally planned.

Milford School Board 10/1/07

2007-10-10T17:57:00.000-05:00

Superintendent's Report

* Marc Maurais (Athletics Director) announced that Milford High School was one of 24 schools that received the NHIAA/ National Federation of State High School Association Award of Excellence for the previous school year, recognizing that the school did not receive a game disqualification by a player or a coach. The Milford football team also received the Division III Sportsmanship Award, which was selected by the NH Football Officials Association.

* The adult education classes were starting, with 8 to 14 enrolled in Spanish, Photoshop, Excel, and Word. We are restarting adult education this year, and this will be our trial run to see how much interest there will be in the classes.

* The evening classes for High School students in need will start later in the year, perhaps after the holidays. It takes a few months for students to recognize that they need the extra help to make good progress.

* The Freshman Transitions program was held in late September, and was well received by all. Parents and students attended a variety of classes that addressed common problems encountered by students in High School.

High School Renovations

Field work and earth moving by Leighton White has moved into high gear. The weather has been good, and they have made significant progress towards the field portion of the project.

There will be more loam available than originally estimated. This will be discussed at the next Renovations Committee meeting to be held on 10/11, but it is likely that there will be a proposal to sell off some of the excess material. We are going to store some of it on the Brox property for future use, but the amount that will be available will be more than we expect to use in the near future.

2006-2007 Test Scores Presentation

Laurie Johnson (Asst. Superintendent of Schools) gave a very informative presentation on the results from standardized testing during the previous year. The tests that were reviewed were:

NECAP - New England Comprehensive Assessment Program. This is the test used by Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont to calculate the No Child Left Behind scores. It is administered to grades 3-8 and 11 in Reading, Math, and Writing in October, and Science in the Spring. It can take months to get the scoring for this test.

NWEA - North West Evaluation Association. This is a computerized adaptive assessment program that Milford administers in grades 3-8 and in the Sage School, usually 2-3 times per year. There are two tests, one in Reading and one in Math. The results are available right after the test is taken, and this test can be effectively used by teachers to personalize educational plans for students.

SAT - Scholastic Aptitude Test. College entrance exam taken by Juniors and Seniors.

Core Performance Assessments - Local assessments created by Milford teachers to insure that uniform core competency is learned across the various classes that are offered in a subject.

Laurie provided detail explanations on all of these tests, but here are some of the highlights.

No Child Left Behind. The NCLB test results for Milford were generally good for this past year, with one exception. Milford met "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) in all areas except the Reading portion of the Heron Pond Special Education subgroup. If any Heron Pond subgroup does not meet AYP in Reading next year, then Heron Pond will be designated as a school in need of improvement. There are specific actions that will need to be taken if that occurs.

The NECAP scores that are used to calculate AYP were fairly good this past year. Milford's scores were higher than the state average in all areas except for 3rd grade reading.

NWEA - Milford scored above the national average in Reading, and well above the national average in Math. We are guessing that this indicates that the math curriculum that we instituted several years ago as the first implementation of our ongoing curriculum coordination program has been working well. The reading program is much newer and has not had a chance to work yet.

SAT - SAT scores in 2007 were either at or above the NH state average scores and the National average scores.

Core Assessments - These are new rubrics that are are being created for many classes. There are a few tests in existence today, and they expect to have a full complement by next year.

Jacques Summer School Program

Johanna Johnson (Director of Special Studies) and John Foss (Jacques Memorial School Principal) presented an overview of the summer school program that was held this year for students that were entering Readiness or First grade this fall and who were classified as in need of strategic or intensive support.

The DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) test was used to identify students in need. This is a test that enables a very quick assessment of the relative abilities of early learners. Identified students were given two levels of support. The lowest level was the District provided learning kits to parents to work with their children at home. The kits had various elements, but typically contained games that help students to learn things like letters, shapes and colors.

The more intensive program was a summer school program where the students came to the Jacques School for 1- 4 days per week for about a month.

Johanna and John gave a very detailed review of the activities and results of the summer school which I won't go through here. But netting it all out, it appears that the program was very successful at raising the literacy level of the incoming students. Learning to read is critically important to students, and we need to do all we can to get them started on the right foot. Many of the students were at very low levels of literacy after kindergarten, and after having gone through just one month of intensive summer school, they had made significant progress towards meeting the benchmark levels.

Mason Withdrawal Letter

The town of Mason is still trying to leave the Mascenic School District, and they asked for the Milford School Board to provide a letter indicating our support of the proposal. We voted 5-0 to send a letter stating that we would probably be willing to ask our voters if they would support Mason coming to Milford.

Deanna (Dee-Dee) Carter came to the meeting and expressed her strong disapproval of this idea. She discussed the history of Amherst coming to Milford, and then eventually leaving to go on their own. She warned us to be careful, as there is a lot of undeveloped land in Mason and their population could skyrocket in just a few years.

In my opinion, this is a different situation than what was encountered with Amherst. Amherst was about equal to Milford in size, and Mason is only about 5% the size of Milford. They are currently at about 100 students in grades 6-12, and we should be able to absorb the 12-15 students per grade without too much added cost. They will pay tuition based on a formula that will be roughly $8K per year, and our real added variable costs will be much less than that, perhaps only about half as much. This would be very favorable to the Milford taxpayers.

Report of the Schools Document

This has been finalized and will be distributed. Copies are available at the SAU office if you want one. This is a nice folded document that provides summary information about various items of interest about the District.

Bales Study Committee

Rodny Richey and Lorraine Marchildon were appointed to the Bales Study Committee. They join previously appointed members Ron Carvell, Paula Durand, and Bob Willette.

Pavilions are Popping Up All Over

2007-09-30T19:35:00.000-05:00

There are two new pavilions being built in Milford right now, and another one was built last year. These are great examples of projects that get done in town behind the scenes by dedicated citizens, often without town funding.

1. The old pavilion at Keyes field was in bad shape and was torn down a couple of years ago. Through the work of a group of people and the donations of a few, a new pavilion was built and dedicated this year. Some of the key organizations and people were the Trustees of the Keyes Memorial Trust, Milford Lumber Company, Granite State Concrete, Skip Gautier, and Jerry Guthrie. Thanks everyone!

2. The Lions Club is building a pavilion at the MCAA fields on North River Road based on the same plans that were created for the Keyes field pavilion. A major portion of the cost of this pavilion was donated by Peter Leishman in memory of Muzzy Morell. This is the bio of Muzzy that was published in the 2006 town report:

"Arthur J. “Muzzy” Morell Jr. - “A life long resident who gave back to the community he loved so much”
We all mourn the passing of a friend who has touched so many people in this wonderful town. His generosity was felt by so many and went unnoticed by those who honored him with the 2006 Citizen of the Year.
One of the founding members of the Milford Community Athletic Association (MCAA) and was instrumental in creating the Keyes Field Recreation Complex. He was a coach, mentor, friend and Dad who loved sports. He also volunteered many hours to the SHARE program and was known as the “guardian angel”.
Muzzy was a member of the American Legion, Knights of Columbus and the Milford Lions Club who honored him with a Melvin Jones Fellow. He was an Army veteran having served during the Korean War. Over the years he served on various Town committees.
A graduate of Milford High School class of 1947 and a self employed electrician for more than 40 years, you could always find him in service with a smile. His dedication of service and friendship will be surely missed by all."

The construction project is headed by John Miller who has spearheaded all aspects of the project, and has done a great job. Joe Stella has contributed a lot, and a few other Lions have helped out. There will be a dedication ceremony on Sunday October 22nd. Thanks John!

3. Matt Clemens(a senior at Milford High) is building a stage at Keyes field for his Boy Scouts Eagle project. The stage is between the pool and the other pavilion that was recently built. This is an ambitious project for a young man like Matt, and it is a real test of character. He had to decide what to do, develop the plans for the project, gain the proper approvals (which was especially difficult due to all the red tape in town), fund raise all the money for the project, beg for help from lots of people, and do a lot of the work. He is about 75% done on the project, and is planning a dedication concert on Saturday October 21st in the afternoon. Great work Matt!

Manifest Educational Hardship

2007-09-23T21:27:00.000-05:00

I've been doing some work on the school district policies, and there is one obscure one that I just reviewed I'd like to bring to your attention. This is Milford School District Policy # 5090, Manifest Educational Hardship.

In general, resident students of a New Hampshire school district are assigned to a public school within the district by the Superintendent or his designee.

However, in unusual and extraordinary circumstances, parents or guardians may request a change of assignment to another public school within the district, or to another public school in a another district. When the parent or guardian believes that the assignment which has been made will result in a manifest educational hardship to the student, the School Board will consider these requests, according to the procedures in the policy.

This policy is based upon New Hampshire RSA 193:3 Change of School or Assignment; Manifest Educational Hardship or Best Interest; Excusing Attendance.

There are a bunch of details on how this works, but basically, the idea is that if a student has a problem with their assigned school, then there is a mechanism for the student to move to a different location.

Normally, the sending school board (where the student is first assigned) will review that case and decide whether they will support the change in venue for the student. If the move is approved, then the Superintendent for the sending location will contact a Superintendent for a proposed receiving location to see if the receiving district is willing to accept the student. If the school board for the receiving district approves the request, the the student will move to the new district. The sending district would then pay full tuition to the receiving district for the student.

This is a rare event, but has the potential for being very important to an individual student. Students can have major difficulties with interactions with a particular peer group where a complete divorce from the situation is the best course of action.

It is good for people to know that this process exists. You never know when the need to apply it will arise. A student may have drug, alcohol, or relationship problems that are best addressed by a completely new environment.

Stellos Stadium

2007-09-20T21:28:00.000-05:00

I went to the Milford High School "Home" football game last weekend that was held at Stellos Stadium near Nashua South High School. I had heard about Stellos Stadium on many occasions, but I had never been there before this game.

I left the game with that dreaded disease, (first described by Freud?), commonly known as "Stadium Envy". Stellos is a great football stadium with every amenity that is needed for a local football game. It has great parking, stands, concessions, lighting, and artificial turf.

The stands in particular were noteworthy. The home stands appear to hold about 2500 people and the visitor stands hold about 500, for a total of about 3,000 seats.

We are upgrading the Milford football facilities, but they will not be anywhere near the class of Stellos. We are hoping to get stands with seating for a total of 1,000 people. This is a far cry from the 3,000 at Stellos. Our field will be sod, which will be an upgrade from the dust bowl that we had previously, but it is not as nice as artificial turf.

Well, I'll just have to get over my Stadium Envy and be happy with what we are getting in Milford. The new track and field will be light-years ahead of what we had before and will be a wonderful improvement for the town. (I can still dream though...)

Milford School Board 9/17/07

2007-09-18T20:47:00.000-05:00

Superintendent's Report

* Liz O'Hare and Toby Tarnow are offering a new course for students at the High School that is geared toward creating radio drama shows. The course is called the Riverbend iTheater, and they will be creating radio theater productions at the Amato Performing Arts Center at the Boys and Girls Club. More information on the program can be found if you click this link.

* NECAP testing will occur during the first three weeks of October. A summary of last year's NECAP test results will be presented to the school board within the next month.

* There has been some developments on the issue of the windows at the Heron Pond School. Some of the windows in the original portion of the building are difficult to open, and we have been trying to figure out what to do about the problem since the building was originally built. I have tested roughly 15 windows in different rooms, and I have found that I can open all of them, but they are somewhat difficult to operate. Some of the women teachers do not have the physical strength to open some of the windows since it takes a bit of force, and you usually have to lean over a bit to apply the force. We had determined several years ago that the windows were within spec, but were still more difficult to open than we wanted. Recently I have heard that there are at least a small number of windows that are more difficult to open than others, and they may be out of spec.

The manufacturer of the windows, Mannix Windows from Brentwood, NY, has agreed that the windows are in warranty, and that they are guaranteed to be within opening force specifications, which is a pull of 45 pounds. By coincidence, they have a company representative in the area this week, and he will come to the school and do an inspection on all the windows to see if they are within spec or not. If they are out of spec, then Mannix will bring them back within spec.

The company representative will also provide training to District personnel as to how to adjust the windows. They will also provide information on kits that may be available to retrofit windows that are within spec but still harder to open than what is desired.

* The Mason School District is still looking to leave their current arrangement and send their students to Milford schools instead. They are asking for a letter from our District to the Dept of Education that indicates that we want to have them. We had looked at this in some detail a couple of years ago, and this is a win-win situation. They have slightly less than 100 students in grades 6-12, and we should be able to accommodate them in Milford with minimal impact. They would pay tuition based on a formula, and the tuition payments would be in excess of our incremental costs for educating the students. It is likely that at our next meeting we will authorize the administration to issue the letter that Mason is looking to receive.

Potential Warrant Articles

At the beginning of the budget preparation period each year, we try to identify all the potential warrant articles that may be on the March ballot. Putting this list together helps to insure that we consider each item during the budget preparation, but it does not mean that we will necessarily have each of these warrant articles. These are the potential articles, in no particular order.

* Asking for authorization for Mason or other school districts to send tuition students to Milford schools

* One or more construction requests for the creation of Kindergarten facilities. Possibilities include the renovation of the Bales Annex, new construction on the Brox property, and/or purchase/lease of other unidentified facilities.

* Purchase of the property next to the High School on West Street for use as a parking lot.

* Authorization to sell two building lots off of the Heron Pond site. These lots would be used to build houses by the building trades ATC program.

* Potential contract with classified staff bargaining unit.

Bales Study Committee

Ron Carvell and Paula Durand were appointed to the Bales Study Committee. Bob Willette is the School Board Rep.

High School Renovations

The board voted to award the track surfacing bid to Maine Tennis and Track for $203,045.

Leighton A. White has started construction in a big way on the field. They have torn down the bleachers and have started the dirt work.

Our construction management firm, Turnstone Corporation, is looking into the availability of some used bleachers from Adelphi University on Long Island. They have some bleachers that are relatively new that they have taken down because they are building a new stadium. A lot of details need to be worked out, but if it dows work, then there is the possibility that we could get larger bleachers for the same money they we were planning on spending on new. It is unusual to be able to buy used bleachers in good condition, so it is not even something that we had originally planned on investigating.