Newfound school board names interim superintendent

BRISTOL — The Newfound Area School Board named Brian Connelly as interim superintendent to succeed Paul Hoiriis, who has served as superintendent for the past two years, and will leave to become principal at Merrimack Valley High School on July 1.

Connelly, who has served as the superintendent of the Hill School District for the last six years, will continue his role there while assuming his new duties at Newfound. Connelly informed the Hill School Board of his plans before applying at Newfound, and he made continued employment in Hill a condition of accepting the interim job.

The Hill School District withdrew from an enrollment area agreement with Franklin School District, after years of conflict with Franklin due to the city’s weighted vote in decisions which controlled the outcome, regardless of Hill voters’ wishes. Hill leadership created an AREA Withdrawal Study Committee in 2014, to learn the feasibility of separating, and looked at sending its middle and high school students to either Newfound or Winnisquam, rather than Franklin. It ultimately entered into tuition agreements with Newfound.

When Hill created a new school administration in 2017, the board hired Michelle Munson as part-time superintendent, while Connelly, who was principal at Jennie D. Blake School, earned his certification. After taking on the top leadership role in Hill, Connelly oversaw the integration of Jennie D. Blake students into Newfound’s middle and high school classes.

“My world changed on April 13, after a long deliberation with my wife and family and friends,” he said after the Newfound school board’s vote May 26. “I decided this was the best option for me at this point in my life. Whereas I told my teachers repeatedly for years, and my board, that there’s no place I’d rather retire than Hill — Jennie Blake School — or here in Newfound, it’s been widely known my affinity for this district.”

Connelly said he discovered Newfound “has so much to offer, and there’s so much opportunity, so I look forward to being part of that and helping to transform and improve and continue the great work that’s already established here, and the great team of people that’s already here and just building on those successes and making it even a better and more stronger district in the state.”

At the same meeting, Hoiriis introduced the new business administrator, Michael Limanni, who will replace Angela Carpenter on Wednesday, July 1, as well as Melissa Muzzy, who will be the district’s new student services administrator.

“Mike brings with him a lot of experience, both in the private sector as well as in public schools,” Hoiriis said.

Limanni had served as Newfound’s business administrator for seven years before moving on to the Dover School District. Hoiriis said Newfound has engaged him as a consultant a few times since his departure, “and he really helped us out this year during the budget season. When I ran into something earlier this year, and needed some [Department of Education] help and guidance, and I was on the phone with the commissioner, he said, ‘Oh, Mike’s helping with that? I’m not worried; you’ll be fine.’ So, I think that comes with high praise, and the district’s lucky to have you back.”

“It’s a hard choice in some degree to come back, you know, from a larger school district,” Limanni said. “This is a wonderful place. It has a lot of potential. It was very disappointing for me to have come from here to see your cooperative, like, shrink over time, because there is a lot of value for those kids to be able to meet each other in that format.”

He was referring to Bridgewater, Groton and Hebron withdrawing from the Newfound Area School District to form the new Pasquaney School District. Many Pasquaney students continue to attend Newfound schools through tuition agreements.

“I never left here,” Limanni said. “I always kept my Rotary membership. My kids are runners at the Penny Sale.

"I’ve always enjoyed the area. I’m from the Lakes Region; I live here, too.”

Hoiriis said Muzzy comes “with a lot of knowledge on school board policy and special ed law. It doesn’t hurt that she currently sits on her own school board’s policy committee.”

The board also approved a tentative timeline to resolve some budget irregularities through a special “procedural defects” district meeting.

Hoiriis said the business office had a problem posting the budget and warrant articles on time for the state Department of Revenue Administration.

“The system was actually down on the morning it was due, and that wasn’t the only struggle,” Hoiriis said. “The actual documents were posted on time, but not on the DRA forms with the board signature, so that is the defect that needs to be corrected at the meeting.”

The other concern was the Newfound Area School District Budget Committee’s decision to not recommend a budget for the coming year. Under the Municipal Budget Act, it is the budget committee’s proposal, not the one prepared by the school board, which voters approve or reject. That budget legally has to fall within the district’s tax cap. For the past two years, the budget committee has voted against recommending the school board’s tax-cap compliant budget, because of the constraints it imposes on school expenditures. It did not recommend an alternative, because that, too, would be illegal.

Voters rejected the school board’s proposed budget for the last two years, triggering the adoption of a default budget, as required under the Official Ballot Act. This year, that led to the school board’s decision to close Danbury Elementary School, part of efforts to shrink spending to meet the default budget number.

“In speaking with the attorneys in the DRA, they weren’t sure,” Hoiriis said of the budget committee’s apparently illegal action. “They thought it might be more the board’s budget, but they could see where maybe they would have to look into it more. At any rate, the procedural defect warrant article doesn’t list specific things it’s correcting; it just asks the voters to correct any and all defects, without listing them specifically. So in case there is a concern around the budget committee voting against the budget, it will be corrected by the procedural defect vote.”

Hoiriis plans to present the warrant article to the school board for approval on Monday, June 8. The law requires the district to hold a hearing at least seven days prior to the special meeting, so, “assuming that we can move on this timeline, we were thinking of having the hearing at the June 22 board meeting, ... then a single-session meeting June 29, if that works for the towns, and that way, it can be done and clear before the new administration comes in.”

Normally, as an Official Ballot district, Newfound holds a deliberative session and a separate meeting to cast ballots on the warrant articles. With a single issue to be resolved, Hoiriis said, the two meetings can be combined into a single session.