Nashua’s Corporation Council is drafting a City Charter change at the request of Alderwoman Patricia Klee. It proposes to alter the governance structure of the Nashua Board of Education to look pretty much the same as that of the Board of Alderman.
The proposal would change the nine at-large member Board to thirteen members, one from each of the nine wards and four at-large.
Keep in mind that the Board of Education is independent of the City government, other than overall funding. Yet, Alderman Patricia Klee has been secretly interfering by personally calling every Board of Education member, one at a time, to obtain their support and approval for her proposed Charter change.
Klee is essentially holding a public meeting without public notice, which is marginally legal since she’s not on the school board. It’s extremely inappropriate and not at all transparent. She knows better.
Why not ask to discuss this proposal at a public school board meeting and allow the people to weigh in? The obvious answer is that she doesn’t want her proposal to be strangled in the cradle.
There’s been no public outcry for a change in the Board of Education governance structure. Parents have asked for, actually demanded, a lot of things, but not that. They’ve asked for in-person instruction after a year of remote learning. They’ve asked for students to participate in athletics without a mask so they won’t keel over. All refused by the Board.
Klee claims that is that there is no representation for parents in each ward. She doesn’t know or deliberately ignores that district schools are not aligned with ward boundaries. For example, many Ward 5 children attend a Ward 4 elementary school, so in which should their representative reside? In Ward 5, or Ward 4?
There are nine wards, twelve elementary schools, three middle schools, and two high schools in Nashua. Students do not attend schools based upon ward boundaries. The school district doesn’t lend itself to division by wards, which is why school board members are currently elected city-wide, i.e., at-large. It’s more effective to have the Board pull together and consider the entire district when making decisions rather than have ward representatives fight amongst each other to obtain favors for their ward at the district’s expense.
Klee argues that it’s too costly for candidates to run city-wide or at-large instead of running in their own ward. Candidates don’t typically spend a lot of money on these school board campaigns, other than, of course, the union endorsed candidates.
Sadly, union PACs don’t report their campaign expenditures, leaving the public in the dark on how much is actually spent. And their spending is substantial.
Nashua ordinances require PACs to file campaign expenditure reports or pay a fine of $100 per day for failure to do so. Union PACs owe over a million dollars in unpaid fines because there have been no filings for 12 years. No investigation either, despite complaints filed with the City Clerk and Corporation Counsel.
The draft of this Charter change has not yet been released, so we don’t have all the details. But, based on what we do know, it looks like another board-packing scheme. Right now, all board members are elected at-large with staggered four-year terms. At each municipal election, four or five seats are open. Voters can replace up to half the board at each election. They can’t replace all members at once, ensuring stability and giving new members time to learn from existing members.
With the new proposal, eleven out of thirteen members could be replaced at municipal elections every two years. That could destabilize the Board, leaving only two members with any comprehensive knowledge of the district. The administration would know far more than the Board, leaving parents and their board representatives at a distinct disadvantage. It could get a lot worse.
Is this the real goal of the City Attorney and Alderwoman Klee? Are they trying to destabilize the Board, not rectify some illusory per-ward lack of representation? It would certainly be easier for the Mayor and Board of Aldermen to control an “independent” Board of Education if it turned over every two years.
