I have asked this question before and will ask it again. If I cast my vote for Phase 2 of the school building/renovation plan, what assurance do the taxpayers have that these new/renovated structures will be maintained properly? It is obvious to me that the reason we need to address all the crumbling structures around our Town is due to the deliberate neglect to provide adeqaute maintenance year after year. If the Town or School District will not maintain the sctructures they have then we will be right back where we are now in another 15 years. I have no confidence in our Town Leaders that they will commit to fully maintaining these structures after they are built. As for teacher salaries, I agree GOOD teachers should be paid well, unfortunately, that is not how the salary system works. The BAD teachers also get the same salary increase. Pay increases should be based on merit, not just because you have a union card in your wallet. It is unfortunate that there is not a better system in place to weed out the poor teachers (and there are quite a few of them) and reward those that are outstanding. The unions will never allow it, which is why the public educational system will always be nothing better than mediocre in this country.

Maybe the raise articles would not have failed the last few years if the school board had not put everything else into an Operating Budget and calculated a default number that gave the voters no choice. The school board is reaping what it sowed by not listening to the whole town. When you talk about your natural constituency (families with children) you are telling other people you do not care what they think.

Your letter makes it sound like no other school district has been turning down raises or facing the sconomic troubles Salem has. Windham which has a much higher average income is arguing over some of the same things we are. The amount of money being spent per child has been increasing the last six years much faster than peoples incomes and yet it does not seem at least as measured by test scores that there has been any return for the additional money. That is why so many people are rejecting all this talk that we are not spending enough money. Why is it for ten months in the year if you watch the school board meeting everything is great and yet the last two months before voting everything is so dire?

Stephen Campbell

With the town tax in December being so high .And now the tax is going to 16% if we stand by and say nothing ,All the while the School is handing out Raises to the super of schools > to the tune of $10.000 and 3 year contracts to town employes .
,Why not the tax payer will foot the bill .No one in the private sector comes close to that ,My feelings are the Selectmen we had that are now leaveing (good) .Gave away every thing in a down market ,While town folks faced uninployment ,There care was not for the town tax payer as you can see, and adding new roads to the tax bill at 16% ,And now Selectmen pushing trash removel with more tax ,Who is thinking of us .Now the Bell Ringers want longer contracts because they know the next Selectmen may not be so willing to spend the tax payers money , Then you have board members that want the grass removed from between the cracks in the side walks at a cost of $6000 dollars and there wanting new side walks too why not your paying the bill
But i will vote NO to all, abd Yes the ending of the town hall method of overturning our town vote to a bunch of bell ringers and let the next Selectmen in office work it out .

Mr Morgan, wonderful letter. Our kids deserve better than what they have in this town. If we do not fix our schools, the whole town will suffer and property values will fall even more. The tax implication is so small. We need to do the right thing and vote yes.

Invest = SPEND. Spending does NOT equal quality. Look at the 11th grade NECAP results. Roughly HALF of the students are NOT proficient in mathematics. Maybe that's because they receive a lousy k-8 math education through fuzzy math.
NO, let's not waste more money until they fix the mess they created. Our kids are paying a price and until we see an effort to bring in a quality math education, I will not SPEND another DIME

Sadly our School Boards are nothing but rubber stamps for Administrators who continue to fail the kids. No accountability for the lousy programs they choose. Has anyone asked Mr. Morgan if the Board has surveyed the parents to see if they like the quality of math in the school? Or how many of our Grads go on to college but are placed in remedial classes? Has anyone surveyed the teachers to see if they even like the math program (anonymous of course)
Instead of looking for ways to spend more money, why doesn't this board go the the PARENTS and start asking them what they think.

I was at a Boston Hospital this afternoon and got chatting with my nurse. She and her family recently moved to Londonderry NH from Waltham MA. The reason she and her husband decided on Londonderry was because of the schools, they felt the Salem schools looked "ghetto" and they wanted better.

Has the school board surveyed parents to see how many kids are in private tutoring? Do they even care about the quality of education ? Or do they simply want MORE money?

If you want to see a government dept that knows that maintenance has to be a priority just look at the Kelley Library. Eleanor Strang knew that just buying books or giving raises to the employees made no sense if the roof leaked anf the heating system did not work. She understood that the people of Salem where willing to give what they could and never berated the taxpayers. She never said that you should just give up your Dunkin Donut coffee like the leader of the SOS crowd. She never said only people with a library card should vote on her budget. She never complained about how only people that used the library should move into the town. She never blamed anyone and she just did the very best she could which was very good indeed.

I wish more government departments had a leader like Eleanor Strang.

Stephen Campbell

Let's stick to the issues of why these schools need renovating. These schools have lasted 50 years, and the issue at hand is primarily adequate educational spaces and safety code. There aren't enough small group instructional classrooms to meet the need, and spaces are sub-standard. Buildings don't meet safety code. Gym classes are being conducted in sub-standard spaces. Storage is occurring in hallways because classes have moved into closets because of the lack of space. These are facts that are undisputable. The schools have real need to be expanded and renovated.

Mr Campbell do you have children??

Educators say it is all for the kids. Don't you believe educators. If it were really for the kids, they would not care about teacher certification. Even Brookings and many left wingers will tell you that teacher certification is a union card to restrict the labor pool and promote Ed Schools. Although most studies show that teacher quality is the most important factor in education outcomes, most also say that the first step in improving teacher quality is to get rid of the bottom 5% or more of the existing teachers. A recent study of PISA scores showed this beyond any doubt.

Folks, this is a good discussion but I want to say a personal question like the one asked of Mr. Campbell is out of bounds. I would have taken it down had Mr. Campbell not addressed it directly before I saw it. Please stick to the discussion without getting personal. Thanks.

I have children. I love my children. I'm very involved in my children's education. I have had to be becuase I have to teach my children math to compensate for the fact that the district has used Everyday Math for the past 8 years. I have polled the teachers that my children have had and while it is far from a scientific poll, i can tell you that this year they are ALL relieved that Everyday Math was downgraded from the "must use" to "a tool to use" in teaching. They do not embrace the program and are glad that now they can pick the strengths and discard the uselessness. These same teachers would rather have raises than a new multi-purpose room and the teachers I know that live in town will be voting NO on the renovations. When I asked them how they would vote and i learned this, I was able to hop off the fence into the No on #2 category.

Our schools need renovations, but they do not need the current phase 2, 3 or 4 level of renovations.

I'd just like to also mention that although Jake O'Donnell is the editor of this page and has the authority to monitor and delete posts he feels are inappropriate he does have a relationship with most of the politicians we tend to comment about.

Remember that Jake spends many nights out during the week attending most of the meetings of the BOS, school board and others so it is bound to happen. Anyone who has followed the Salem Patch can decide on their own whether or not he shows any favoritism to those politicians.

I'm sure Jake would not mind if any of us has a complaint about his monitoring of this page reached out to his superiors. I have, i'll let you know how that turns out.

Underwater, my understanding is that Hickey signed a three-year contract in March 2011, so he therefore has just over two years remaining on his. I can try to get an answer on Delahanty.

Here is my dilemma with phase 2. I have generally have been supportive of the school system. If we are to live in a society wherein any one of us may seek and potentially be elected to public office, than; everyone must be educated to level to allow them to function therein. The higher the bar the better the leadership potential, hopefully.
In the beginning of phase 1 the message from the School Board, school administration and their hired consultants was: “Now is the time, building conditions will never be better & interest rates are low.” I agreed and supported phase 1.
However, the School Board decided to take interest free state/federal loans. This required us to pay union scale wages for the project so we lost the advantage of favorable building conditions. IN MY OPINION this caused the project to be cheapened by downgrading & eliminating some proposed furnishings. Still and all, the project ran over budget. The North Salem elevator was funded by the school department’s maintenance account not the building fund. The project was not finished on time, it was “substantially complete” on time. So I ask, “Just what is behind that coat of paint?”
Do we need phase 2 – yes, but; IN MY OPINION these five School Board members and this Superintendent of School are not the ones to entrust this project to. Sadly me and mine vote – no.

Folks, realizing things were about to spiral out of control here, I decided to take down this entire conversation that was just had. Things have been going pretty well with the comments here of late. I think we all need to take a deep breath and walk away from saying things that get too personal. If you want to know why someone is against a tax increase, then ask it that way without having to throw in a personal question that could be construed as an attack. At first I did not want to take comments down in an effort to keep a discussion going. But that was a mistake on my part when I saw where the discussion was heading.

So much for free speech on this page.

Thanks, Hocus Pocus. Now can we please get back to the issue of investing in education, as was the title of Mr. Morgan's letter?

School Warrant Article 2 is a fiscally conservative plan. Construction costs are still low and bond rates are unprecedentedly low. By waiting, we not only risk the loss of momentum to pass ANY renovations, but the costs will increase. This has happened many times with the schools and the town. We already lost by not approving the high school when it was on the ballot. Costs were low then, and we lost state aid. Let's not risk this happening again, and also give the high school a fighting chance in 2014. What, realistically, will it cost us if we wait?

I think the problem with all of this is, the title of the article. INVEST in EDUCATION. This is NOT an investment in education. It may be an article to spend money to fix schools that need to be repaired, but I think it upsets many people when the term INVEST is used instead of SPEND. And when it implies that if you don't support a maintenance expenditure, you must not care or support education.

Let's be a little more accurate in how we sell a tax increase to voters. I think that would help in the future.

Russ: In answer to your question above about default budgets being bigger than what is being asked for, there is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. One year there was money in the budget to remove underground oil tanks at one of the schools. When the school district calculated the default budget the next year in my opinion they should have deleted the approx $10,000 since those oil tanks would never need to be removed again so was by definition a one time expenditure. The school board disagreed saying there would be other "maintenance" items in the future so it should be used in the default calculation. I am not sure if they met the letter of the law, but they certainly did not follow the spirit of the law. On the bright side the people in Concord are aware oof the issues with the default number and there are bills to try and fix the problem.

Stephen Campbell

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Salem-NH-Taxpayers-Association/305572479481252

Taxpayers have "invested" in the school system at 60 million a year. It is not fair to blame the taxpayers for not investing or caring about the schools, the money was there and apparently was not managed as promised and spent on other items, whether agreed or not that the other items were important, the money was spent and now they ask the taxpayers to pay even more to cover the expenses we already paid for? Deferred maintenance of small repairs leads to large cumbersome repairs that require bonds, had the money given to the school district been spent on exactly what it was supposed to be spent on, maintenance, the taxpayer would not be put into this position. The plan that should be looked at is School board member Bernie Campbell's plan to close Haigh and renovate Fisk and Soule. The initial savings is seen immediately in the savings of 1.4 million dollars to renovate the Haigh. The savings continue over the life of the Fisk/Soule bond (20 years) and is seen as 1 million dollars annually this savings is seen over the life of the bond and represents a large savings to the taxpayers of Salem. The actual total savings of 22 million dollars is enough to pay the complete cost of renovating only the Fisk and Soule schools. In addition, the school district should sell Haigh property and give back the proceeds directly to the General Fund and reduce taxes for the overburdened taxpayers.

On the school side the power resides with the school board not so much with the sdminstrators. If anyone needs to go it's the school board. Hopefully young Carney will not lock step as Pat Corbett did.

Jane—students can use calculators on both the NECAP and NAEP tests. The NAEP calculator policy (which I've abridged) is as follows: "The mathematics assessment contains some sections for which calculators are not allowed, and other sections that contain some questions that would be difficult to solve without a calculator. At each grade level, approximately two-thirds of the assessment measures students’ mathematical knowledge and skills without access to a calculator; the other third allow a calculator’s use. For students who do not bring a calculator to use on the assessment, NAEP will provide a scientific calculator. " The NECAP has a similar policy in that certain sections of the test allows calculators while others do not.

I agree with you that MA has very high standards. And I certainly don't advocate for "dumbing down" the tests. But if you research various state standards and how they compare to the NAEP, NH is among the top (# 7 on the stats I was able to find). And the Northeastern states generally rank higher than the rest of the country. Don't get me wrong, I am always an advocate for progress and believe that we must strive to do better but to suggest that NH has a "lousy standards" is just inaccurate. The MCAS requirements are different than NH in that students can retake it as juniors and seniors and must "pass" to graduate. I do think that NECAP should be tied to some sort of grade requirement otherwise HS students don't try their best.

When Bernie Campbell first talked about his “5 School Idea”, I was intrigued. But at the same time, I was disheartened that it was introduced at the 11th hour when in fact it should have been brought to light much sooner. Even so, I reviewed the plan with the hope that it might be a viable option. If it could accommodate the needs of our students and save the taxpayers money, I needed to consider it. However, after doing some research on enrollment figures and the projected “cost savings”, I could not support it.

Historical figures demonstrate that enrollment has been cyclical. There are no plans to close Haigh School simply because our enrollment figures don’t warrant it. Furthermore, there would be a net loss of 3 classrooms in the 5-school plan and no additional small group space to accommodate the students which would need to be absorbed by Barron and Lancaster.

In the end, the 5- school idea only met one of my requirements – saving money. It didn't adequately address future enrollment and “small group instruction” space. I don’t want to see us 10 years from now with overcrowded facilities and lack of adequate space for special education services. That's where we started 2 years ago.

It’s important for me to mention that my support for Phase 2 is not self-serving. Should this pass, my youngest son would benefit for only ONE year at a new school. My older kids are already in the MS and HS. But I believe that it's the right thing to do.

Ms Nippert, The plan that School Board Member Bernard Campbell brought forth made good sense for all. The word "cyclical" has been bantered around lately but when it comes to things occuring in cycles, often as Mr. Campbell stated, there are several changes that affect the ability of enrollments to rebound, those things have already happened, the economy, zoning changes, tax rates, family sizes, unemployment. The fact is, families are no longer made of 7,8 plus children, they have 1 maybe 2 or 3, this all by itself dictates that enrollments will not be cyclical to 30 years ago. It also seems odd that when the SOS group discusses enrollments they use figures from 30 years ago to support the argument, but outside of the argument, anyone who brings up 30 years ago as reference, is told that its different these days? Well, it is different these days, bottom line is there are no more extra funds to make up for years of "deferred" maintenance. Had the funds given each year to the district been properly and fiscally managed, the district would not find themselves in this bind of needing to ask for so much to counteract so much neglect. A little neglect is one thing, but a snowball gets bigger when rolled and maintenance problems do not get smaller and cheaper with years of neglect, they only get larger, more expensive & harder to convince taxpayers to pay for.

School board member Campbell's plan to close Haigh, renovate Fisk /Soule saves millions, Vote No Article 2.

I believe that the superintendent said that the current renovations do not give us "room to grow" if the school age population rebounds. If we are on a down swing now, then the upswing would already cause us to have overcrowding. This is regardless of the open/closed status of the Haigh. Can someone confirm for me if i'm remembering our current/future capacity correctly?

Why is it the Barron and Lancaster are the one's who would take on the overflow from Haigh? Why not North Salem and the Fisk or Soule ?,,,,,,HMMMM,,,,,,

Mr Campbell,,,,having some experience with economics I question which hard numbers you are using for your arguments regarding the school district, and actually the town as a entity ? You remind me of the people trying to push some of these so called "right to work" legislation's at the State House. It's all the Republican based arguments to slow down our economy, eliminate unions and drive wages down. Funny how it is coming when the National Replublican party realizes they will probably lose their majority in ten months. Better get it done fast!

I hope you plan on attending the night at the High School when Bully O'Brien and his side kick Bettencourt come to town,,,,,Believe me,,there will be lots of hard questions asked.

PS: the latest poll shows most people very dissatisfied with what's happening in Concord and most Independent voters are heading fast to the other side!

Do you realize NH ranks 11th in High Tech States ? Out of the 22 States that have right to work, none have as good as a economy as NH does and they wish they had the NH economy we do ?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Salem-NH-Taxpayers-Association/305572479481252

1. Article 2 School renovations is not fiscally in the best interest of taxpayers.
2. It is not necessary to renovate a school (Haigh) that we no longer need due to declining enrollments.
3. There are two schools located within 1 mile of Haigh that can accomodate the students from Haigh that will number about 180 next year and declining.
4. The initial savings of 1.4 million by not renovating Haigh saves taxpayers thousands in interest over the life of the bond (20 years).
5. The operational costs of 1 million dollars a year to operate Haigh will be a direct annual savings to the taxpayers of Salem, and if managed correctly, can be turned around to actually pay for the bond to renovate the Fisk and Soule schools.
6. A Salem School Board member brought forth a plan that makes sense for Salem's changing dynamics and saves the taxpayers 22 million dollars over 20 years.
7. Maintenance was deferred intentionally on the schools involved in the bonds while the budgeted funding for maintenance was used.
8. Renovating the schools we use and need is a better choice for Salem's population given the changing dynamics of smaller families, economic strife, unemployment and an overall downed economic picture.

Vote No to School Article 2 on March 13, 2012.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Salem-NH-Taxpayers-Association/305572479481252

Being part of the Lancaster School community, I will tell you there is no room for Haigh students.

Well I don't know where they would put an addition at Lancaster, and seeing North Salem I don't think there is much room left there either. Not if they want to have a playground and ball field.