Parents and taxpayers in SAU16 have been engaged in many battles over the last few years. Much of it started during COVID when they were one of the last districts to reopen. It actually took the Governor to step in and force the reopening. Then, parents were frustrated that the district forced every child to wear a mask, without any regard for students who had mental or physical challenges.
Parents and taxpayers have been engaged in additional battles to get the administrators to focus on academics.
It was just announced that the DEIJ Director, who is also the Vice Chair of Black Lives Matter Seacoast, was resigning. This is welcome news to many parents and residents who didn’t see any benefit from a political activist working in their school. In the announcement by the Superintendent Esther Asbell, she indicates that they will be looking for another DEIJ Director. Clearly, the Administrators are good with flushing tax dollars down the toilet.
Let’s look at ways this money could be spent that would actually help students succeed. (Or, God Forbid, returned to taxpayers)
1) Hire additional tutors for kids who are struggling
2) Quality professional development for teachers to support them in the classroom. (Focused on academics and pedagogy)
3) Bonuses or raises for good teachers and paras. The ones who are doing the most to educate children in the school.
4) Lower the school budget which will help taxpayers who may be struggling during this period of high inflation.
The DEIJ Director was hired, making more money than many of the teachers in the district. Wasn’t that a slap in the face to the ones who are there doing the important job of teaching children?
Seabrook school board members have been discussing a withdrawal from SAU21. They even put a warrant article on the ballot asking residents if they should study withdrawing from the SAU. The voters said YES.
What do you get for your money by paying the SAU?
1) Inflated administrative salaries. The SAU16 Superintendent is making close to $200,000.00.
2) Dues paid to lobbying organizations that lobby against parental rights. Don’t forget that Superintendent Esther Asbell is the Director for The New Hampshire School Administrators Association.(NHSAA) SAU16 funnels money to the NHSAA through dues paid out of the budget. Talk about a scam on taxpayers.
3) Administrators instead of educators
It was a lobbyist from the NHSAA, who testified before state legislators, and opposed prohibiting schools from making pornographic content available to children. Providing pornography to children would get you arrested, but the NHSAA says it’s ok for schools to provide obscene books to your children.
The materials now provided to children in schools also include information to connect students with child sexual predators.You can listen to that here. (1:08:00) You can also read more about all of this here and here.
Maybe the taxpayers in Exeter do not mind connecting their children up to child sexual predators. Maybe they don’t mind wasting their money on a DEIJ director, who is more about dividing children versus teaching children how to read. But the parents in the other schools within SAU16 may have a different opinion on all of this.
If so, it may be time to look at removing your school from SAU16. There is absolutely no reason any school has to be part of an SAU, especially one that continues to turn a deaf ear to the residents, and wastes a lot of taxpayer money.
