Informational meeting tonight about Inter-Lakes School dissolution

The Inter-Lakes School District will host an informational meeting tonight to hear a detailed explanation of how state laws permit the dissolution of a cooperative school district. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 6:30 at the Inter-Lakes Elementary School's library.

The issue of the district's dissolution was raised at the Meredith Town Meeting this year, when resident Mark Flanders gained support for a motion to begin a withdrawal study. Flanders was one of the minority of attendants at the School District meeting who spoke in favor of conservative budgeting. A majority at the meeting, which featured a disproportionate turnout from Sandwich, overturned many of the School Board's budget cuts.

Superintendent Phil McCormack said the meeting tonight will be "strictly informational," and that the only item on the agenda is a presentation from a New Hampshire School Board Association attorney, who will provide "his review of the statutes, which is the process." He added the evening was not intended to include a debate over the merits of a withdrawal.

The agenda does not include a period for public input or questions, although McCormack noted it is within the board chair's prerogative to recognize a speaker from the audience.

The School Board, in recent meetings, has not been eager to embark upon the study, choosing to only schedule this meeting as a form of self-education about the process. Flanders's original motion at Town Meeting specifically asked the town's selectmen to request the School Board to begin the study, and if the board declines to take action, Flanders's motion calls for the town to host a special town meeting to take a vote and so compel the school district to act.

"The board of selectmen has not taken action as of today," McCormack said yesterday afternoon. The Meredith selectmen have been invited to the meeting, he said, as have their counterparts in the district's other towns of Center Harbor and Sandwich.