Newfound board votes to enter partnership for special ed charter school

BRISTOL — Superintendent Paul Hoiriis, speaking during the Jan. 12 meeting of the Newfound Area School Board, told the board joining the Lakes Region Special Education Charter School Consortium may mean committing to spending between $100,000 and $200,000.

Several school districts, from Plymouth, Franklin and Laconia, to Wolfeboro and Concord, are working together to create a charter school to hire high-level special needs personnel. The discussion was continued from the district budget hearing that preceded the meeting.

“It’s, as we said, to address some of the high special ed needs of the students that typically get placed out of district, sometimes far away, sometimes very expensive, sometimes both,” Hoiriis said. “And often it’s not, you know, the best pathway or the best learning for them. So the Lakes Region school districts would have the option of joining a coalition of public schools to create one applicant pool for a designated charter public school.”

The consortium has received pre-approval for a $1.5 million startup grant to set up the charter school and provide training.

“Once it’s formed, it will address a significant unmet regional need around high-quality, local, inclusive learning pathways for children K-8 with significant special education needs,” Hoiriis said. The facility would avoid the “long commutes and pricey transportation” to distant locations, allowing the students to receive more local services, “as well as help some of our highly individualized in-district programming, also accessing some of those services,” the superintendent said.

The coalition is asking school districts to place an article on their warrants for voter approval. The wording of the article is not yet finalized, but Hoiriis said he expects the group would provide more guidance in time for it to appear on the warrant.

“So they’re looking tonight for a motion that you would want to be a part of the coalition,” he told the school board. “So having a warrant article this year would be for, I guess, the blessing from the voters, ‘Yes, join this coalition.’ But there’s no funding attached to it yet for this year, because this school would not go into effect ’til the fall of 2027, ... but it would commit us to engaging in the future for the following year with some fiscal funds.”

The district currently has four out-of-district placements, and Hoiriis said at least two of them exceed the cost of being part of the charter school. It would provide students with more personalized services, allowing case managers and the student services administrator to see them locally.

“Some of these students are hardly ever seen by anyone in our district, and they belong to our district,” Hoiriis said.

Each contributing member district would have an allotted number of seats at the charter school, and if some seats are not filled, non-member schools could apply to send students there, Hoiriis said. “So all of those special ed costs that they’re paying for would help even out the financial burden of members of the coalition who haven’t filled their own seats.”

As to location, Hoiriis said the group had been considering siting the charter school at Holy Trinity in Laconia, which was poised to close. That did not happen, and they are looking for another site.

“We’re a big enough region by geography that eventually this coalition might need two locations,” he said in response to a question about whether it might be sited in Newfound.

“I don’t think we’ll have a free building in time for the first need,” Hoiriis said, but with the potential of closing the outlying elementary schools in a consolidation effort, there might be space for a second location.

The school board unanimously supported the motion to join the coalition.

Hoiriis reiterated the savings included in three warrant articles for the high school: LED lighting, a solar array, and an updated heating and cooling system.

“Between the rebates and the guaranteed energy savings, they would cover the first year’s lease payment [for the lighting and solar] in the operating budget,” he said. “Unfortunately, the most needed one, the most desperate one, the HVAC, would not be completely covered by those rebate and guaranteed energy savings.”

“That’s the most at risk to fail in the coming years, weeks, months,” said Facilities Director Armand Girouard. 

The board voted unanimously to recommend the HVAC warrant article and that for LED lighting, but Francine Wendelboe and and Michele Lang, both of New Hampton, voted against the solar energy article. Wendelboe also voted against the $26 million operating budget and an article to establish an expendable trust fund for special education.

All voted in favor of the three-year teachers’ contract.